Progressive deserter debuff thought?

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find it extremely annoying to join a losing BG in progress because someone rage AFK’d. We’ve all seen it many times “You guys are all effing idiots and suck at this game” followed by XX has left the battleground. Then some poor soul wasted his time to join a loss in progress, to replace the aforementioned raging afk’er.

My suggestion is to have the deserter debuff penalty increase every time someone leaves a BG in progress.

  1. 15 minute debuff
  2. 30 minute debuff
  3. 1 Hour debuff

After your 3rd AFK in a week it should increase sharply, and be account wide:

  1. 8 hour deserter
  2. 24 hour deserter
  3. Remainder of reset week

Upon the Tuesday reset the penalties would reset back to 15 minutes. The penalty would not be applied if you don’t take queue, or if you leave before the start.

I don’t think would harshly punish someone that had a RL emergency, only the chronic BG leavers. The type of people that call everyone noobs as soon as the first flag gets capped, or as soon as the initial fight at Water Works is lost type of players.

I’ve seen this on both factions, but the penalty impacts Alliance less since the queues are so fast. The 15 min debuff is usually shorter than the horde queue. I hate losing as much as anyone, but I don’t want someone to be stuck with “my loss” either. And I sure don’t want to join a loss in progress either. I think we should have to take the losses along with our wins, and not pass them off to someone else.

Thoughts, or this me just being a grumpy old man?

7 Likes

Only if they removed the deserter buff from people who get voted out by the elitist people who vote people out they don’t like, not because they were not contributing.

2 Likes

But you can’t vote someone out that’s not actually AFK can you? yesterday in AV we tried to vote out this hunter that wasn’t actively participating, rather smelting ore the entire time.

I’m wanting this to apply to people that leave voluntarily though, not someone that is kicked. The player has to choose “leave battleground” for the penalty to progress.

I was referring to the posts I’ve seen where people complain that they were participating and get voted out and end up with a deserter buff. I cannot confirm if they’re true but there were several.

Yeah, my suggestion here is for the players that leave by choice.

I’d be fine with that, personally.

I understand some people get frustrated and are willing to take a deserter for the sake of slight efficiency loss (or they just have anger issues) but it makes loss inevitable for the rest.

You can be insta-kicked if enough people report you afk simultaneously. You probably have to at least be out of combat, though.

Anyways, random BG’s are casual content and leaving them isn’t a big deal. The deserter debuff is fine as it is. Your suggestion wouldn’t even make games better. With steeper deserter penalties, someone who would normally /afk out and make room for someone else would instead just stay in the game and not contribute.

1 Like

That’s why it wouldn’t penalize the occasional AFK harshly. You forgot something was in the oven, only 15 minutes. You’ve AFK’d out of 3 + BGs this week, then we don’t want you on our team. I think the rage AFK’er is most likely a chonic offender, rather than someone that is just having a “bad moment”.

1 Like

You used to be able to. You had to have have a certain percentage of the BG team vote yes all within like 5 seconds of the Kick Vote. I remember quite a few pre-made AVs where someone who was kicked that was not following the BG leaders lead. You have enough people sitting int Vent/Discord/TS/whatever you can coordinate a kick pretty easily. Its the random PUG filled BGs where it seems a bit harder to pull off.

Appreciate the reply. Curious, do you AFK out of losses with any sort of regularity? I considered my annoyance at this behavior might not be shared by most. But I was wondering of the people that would be in opposition are the type that leaves a loss in progress.

Let’s say this is implemented. Now you’re playing while it is storming outside, and in the course of an evening, you lose power three times. That now screws you out of being able to BG the rest of the week. Better hope its a Monday!

Now, you’re probably thinking, “obviously we’ll treat disconnects differently than AFKs”. Well, people will simply stop /afk or right-click > leave battleground and just disable their network adapter. It will produce the same disconnect server side as the power loss would.

I appreciate where the idea is coming from, but it’s too easy to get around or will punish too many unintentionally.

2 Likes

lol queing into av and just using the smelter all game what a guy I approve.

So I get leavers can be a problem (though if they leave early enough you can still win) but we want to punish them more than those who are legitimately afk (or bots if they ever come back)?

1 Like

Leaving a game within the first 2 minutes is poor form I wouldn’t mind seeing them punished for it. It can demoralize a team to see 3-4 players just quit right out the gate. I have run into quite a few twinks that do this its annoying.

That’s really reaching.

I disagree.

That’s nice, but I still do not ever see that 1 specific scenario happening at all, if ever.

I’m so terribly sorry you lack the ability to postulate. You don’t have to. Over my years of playing WoW I’ve dealt with a plethora of internet and power outages ranging from living in the dorms when I first started to playing on hotel internet while on the road for work, to ISP intermittent connectivity.

The point should remain the same regardless of your ability to understand the hypothetical situation…you can’t tell the difference between an unintentional internet loss and an intentional network adapter disabling. Too many situations are possible to lose connectivity unintentionally, and it sucks to be punished for something you can’t control.

1 Like

I understand that concern while I personally wouldn’t mind seeing a change like this based on my own experiences while playing I can see the frustration of being locked out of bgs because something like an instance abort happened which is 100% out of your control.

Of course. It’s pretty easy to tell when a game isn’t going to be worth my time. I’m not going to waste my time and effort trying to drag a hopeless team to victory.