There are a lot of threads lately, citing problems with people giving up/leaving. I’m just suggesting that the deserter debuff doesn’t seem to be a big enough penalty to punish the quitter/leaver mentality. Even if a stiffer penalty doesn’t accomplish this, it will at least keep leavers out of the next few games.
A big problem is that people tend to give up early. Those of us who have been around long enough, know that, historically, BG’s can turn around, and those tend to be very exciting games. When people give up so immediately, this stifles any chance we have of enjoying those exciting turnarounds. If Blizzard makes the deserter debuff 20-30 minutes instead of 15, it will at least keep leavers from re-joining and ruining more games, and possibly encourage them to adopt a more constructive attitude. Upvote this post if you agree.
From my experience, the two most common scenario’s where this issue seems to be the most prevalent:
Epics, more specifically since the introduction of Ashran and Wintergrasp. It does happen in IoC and AV but not nearly as common. Until the the emergence of these 2 BG’s, the request for several features were fairly quiet, such as bringing back “blacklisting” and now the increase to the “deserter” buff. I have commented on countless occasions that the disproportionate number of people leaving these specific Bg’s is merely symptomatic of the real problem which is driving these requests. It’s apparent to me, that the bigger issue is the format of the content that inadvertently creates the “win or lose” attitudes in the first few minutes. If the content was more conducive to comeback alternatives then a major contributor to the issue would no longer exist.
The “Stat Padder”, I cannot believe how many people will leave a BG, normal or Eipic when there is less than 10 minutes left. Some are a result of AFKrs’, sure, but a great number are people who upon the realization that they are going to lose will abandon the BG as NOT to take a loss. I’ve observed a number of regular perpetrators lol and looking at their stats, what a fantastic win ratio lol… As opposed to the aforementioned which takes place in the early minutes, this one occurs well into the BG.
All that said, if we exclude epics from penalization until they fix the content, then I can agree that normal BG’s should have a graduated punishment system.
First offense 15 minutes
Second offense 30 minutes
Third Offense - 1 hour account wide
This can continue to escalate, however a reset is also required to counter unfortunate life coincidences,which happens. therefore lets say going 5 consecutive BG’s without deserter will reset a person back to the default 15 minutes / 1st offender rule.
Only problem I see people afk in is epics and that’s in 2 bgs wintergrasp and the reasons are already known why and ashran also known why. everything else is fine I would much rather people just afk out of the bg and get new people then people who just pretend to afk at a base or in some cases because I have seen it happen throw the game and lose faster
I don’t think the penalty should be increased and I don’t think Blizzard would do it. Players are going to blame the game or their bad connection because they dc’d, or whatever happened. Whether it’s true or not.
What does seem reasonable is the serial deserters being punished to a point of being banned from joining BG’s (account wide). For example, if you leave a BG 5 times out of 20 you get a 7 day ban from BG’s and it escalates from there.
Crank it up… I read one thread that said a one day ban for leaving early. Lets do it! I’m calling it in advance if they increase penalty without bringing BG rewards up to par with other content BGs will drop in participation drastically. That said increase the penalty so I can read the complaint threads about long BG queues later😂
Other games have fixed this issue by adding participation related rewards…capping flags, defending capture points, kill medals, heals medals all of which contribute to a persons reward at the end of the BG with a bonus for a win. WoWs going with the old penalize the player that pays for the game to get crap rewards because they happen to like BGs… its a design problem at its core. The reward system for BGs is garbage. That said Im sure the HC PvP is its own reward comment is inbound.
If something more influential like conquest were given, you’d see an influx of road warriors chasing kills or squishy specs grabbing the flag to the detriment of the team.
I don’t think people fully understand the ramifications of the extended penalty. Queue times will be severely impacted as more and more people suffer outrageous debuff times deterring them from PVP’ing at all. Blizzard already knows and understands this which consequently would result in a great deal of lost subs. People who only want to PVP are not going to resign to PVE as consolation due to being locked out of PVP.
And yes, it is a design problem at it’s core like you stated. From content to rewards, they are providing virtually no incentive to play and stay. Increasing penalties will not motivate people to participate, however rewards will, again as you mentioned a few examples.
Also, it could be interesting to match these deserters together? So frequent deserter will most likely end up in the same BG with similar or worse players? And the only way out is to fix the bad reputation by finishing more matches properly.
Regardless which counter measure got implemented, we might see a rise of ‘Let them win’ or AFK movements. We will need some mechanic against those as well… It would be good to tag those player (by voting?) so they end up getting bad rep causing them to frequently end up in a match with other similar players
