Overview
This guide will explain its flaws and a permanent solution.
Actual leaver penalty and kick problem reports
Okay! so the newest update brought the leaver penalty to a mostly fair point and I’m impressed. However it still has problems that must be solved.
How it works: in short, if someone leaves early in the game the game will end and nothing will be scored. It is unknown for us how much time is called “early game”. If it’s done mid or late game, the game will go on normally, and you’ll be able to leave with no penalty -the game will still be recorded, but no rewards will go to the leaver, no matter which one-
The game starts without checking if there’s an imbalance. What does it mean? it means that if someone is in the lobby and leaves at the last millisecond before the game starts, the game won’t check in-game if there’s an imbalance. The game will start normally, being this a 3v4. Logically you’d think you can leave with no penalty, but no. The game will penalize you for leaving an already started 3v4 match and it won’t end early, the system will think it’s a perfectly normal match..
4v0 matches don’t end. They still force you to stay in-game until all the minutes have passed. This is incredibly annoying for the new and the old system.
A person left less than 40 seconds after the game started in Ranked, and it still didn’t do the early leaver surrender.
if Ranked closes and you’re inside a game (no matter how long) it’ll kick you out. No questions asked, no warning nor reward given.
IMPORTANT.
The section below is outdated. I leave it as a record of events.
The base idea
The base idea for the leaver penalty is pretty much the same as DotA, someone leaves the game and gets punished. This seems pretty fair, except that it diverges from that point on.
The problem
Pretty much what you expect after reading that is: ‘How can this be flawed? it’s perfect! someone leaves, someone gets punished.’ and you’ll be right from that point, but thinking it further (or just playing a couple matches) discovers its flaws.
The problems behind it are that you are FORCED to stay in the game, even when it becomes a 3 versus 4 match until someone arrives in Unranked (can take from a minute to not happen at all in the whole match) or, the worst thing of all, forced to stay 3 versus 4 the whole match in Ranked. Teammates don’t join the game to fill the empty slot, and that is a HUGE disadvantage. The game becomes excessively high in difficulty from the 3 player perspective, and barely challenging from the 4 player perspective, becoming a loss/loss match. Everyone wants the game to end quickly.
Another problem is that, in theory, you can rejoin the game. However, I can only reconnect 10% of the time. Either it doesn’t work properly and it instantly gives the leaver penalty, or the time limit is very short.
‘Then don’t leave!’
It’s not my intention and I’m sure some teammates that leave try to get back inside only to face the penalty instead of the reconnect button. Internet connection isn’t perfect, and Nosgoth servers aren’t perfect either. I had been disconnected myself and some friends at the same time in different countries to face the leaver penalty. For what? for playing, since we had nothing to do with it.
Sometimes the game just decides to break and it freezes. And not just the normal freeze that you just can Alt+Tab out of. It’s the black screen that is printed in your whole monitor and the only solution is to reset the computer. By the time you get back in, what happens? you guessed it, leaver penalty. Happened to me TWICE IN A ROW, leaving me with a 30 minute ban from matchmaking and god knows how many ranked points less. It’ll be explained better in the next section.
‘Well, play in a Borderless Window!’
That is NOT a solution. The game is flawed at the windowed function. For some reason the FPS drop by a mile when you use a windowed mode. And I have more than enough RAM, processor, and video card. Also I hate being forced to do something to make a game work correctly.
Also, the game has been buggier and buggier since the latest updates. Don’t get me wrong, I love an updated game, but the problem will be explained in the next section.
The f*ckup update
Most people know that the latest update brought Ranked back, and how to complain at that? We all love some challenging matches. Well, they broke that too. After every ranked match (the bug starts after every ranked match from Bronze onward) you are brought back to the menu screen, and greeted with the message ‘Syncing Leagues Data’. That starts a game breaking bug, starting a countdown that can be a 30 seconds or a minute to happen. There is only one way to dodge it (and it’s not self-explanatory) I explained it in my other guide (which is here). If you don’t do it, the game crashes and you have to start the game all over again.
Another thing that this lovely update brought is INCREASED penalties! that’s right. Instead of making it fair, they made it more unforgiving than before. You don’t just get banned from the matchmaking for 10 minutes, you now have increased time for every leave you have AND you lose hard-earned League points! So you now have even MORE reasons to stay in an unfair match. And in ranked, thats a guaranteed loss if you’re in the 3 player team.
‘Well, bigger penalties, less quitters!’
Not at all. Almost every ranked match has a leaver, and I’m pretty sure that some of them get bugged or kicked out and are unable to reconnect, crippling the whole team. I feel awful every time it happens to me and I’m unable to connect, though I’m not the one to blame.
A solution
Well, after all those complaints, I’ve thought a little and came up with the solution.
The solution I came up is to improve the matchmaking for unranked matches so the empty slot gets filled fast. That’ll decrease the time the match is unfair.
As for Ranked matches, the option to surrender. (would be nice if that can be done in Unranked too) The first thing that may cross your mind is that it’s unfair in the point that the match can be 1 minute long and everyone gets the gold, experience and items. It can be avoided in a few simple steps:
1. Keep the leaver penalty, but fix the bugs explained in this guide.
2. Make an option to surrender available from the start.
3. Make the money earned increase after time decreases. If it’s 4 minutes of the 1st half, get a total of 25% of the total gold of a win or lose, and 100% of the total gold and experience by score (they would’ve got that money/exp anyway and it’s too little to make a big difference) this continues every 4 minutes, up to 16 minutes of playtime and 100% of bonuses. That could trigger the “get item” option. If it’s done too early, nobody’ll get anything, to avoid item farming.
I know it isn’t perfect, but it’s way better than the one we have now, where we have to sit even when the quitter has been punished.
Or if it’s too complicated, just let everyone leave without punishment after the first leaver (who does get punished), geez.
That’s all.