Replacing AFKs with Human Players

tehnoobshowpwned·Jun 30, 2015·5 votes·383 views

I would like to suggest the idea of replacing people who have disconnected for more than four minutes with a human player. There will be a special queue for joining in existing games, with an incentive of getting a 1/32(or lower) chance of getting a skin contingent on winning the game. These queues will look through existing games with AFKs and find one with a suitable MMR to the matchmaker, and join them in. AFKing is a large issue in ranked games, where the loss of one key game can mean farming up wins to get back to the same opportunity. Please leave suggestions in the comments, thanks for reading

5 Comments

Too TonJun 30, 20151 votes

My only concern is that joining in at 50 min and LOSING.... does your mmr drop from that? Or is this only normals?

tehnoobshowpwnedJun 30, 20152 votes

I think your MMR should be unaffected, otherwise not entirely fair for you. The incentive to get the skin is why you want to win, not for mmr.

kile147Jun 30, 20151 votes

Yeah make it so that you neither win nor lose MMR, because otherwise it's just not going to be worth the risk.

LlaniteJun 30, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Too Ton,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=0LfJ5i3j,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-06-30T04:09:48.879+0000)

My only concern is that joining in at 50 min and LOSING.... does your mmr drop from that? Or is this only normals?

Should not since the AFK already paid the loss. But yes, it's one of the complication.

AsphodelNextJun 30, 20151 votes

Riot's view is that you shouldn't leave games, and making it easier on your team after you leave doesn't stop people from leaving. Thus, their solution is punishments for leavers. Why? Because long term, it will solve the problem, once everyone who habitually leaves is removed from the playerbase. Whereas if we have replacements, people will continue to leave, and leave even more cause they know their team won't suffer for it.

Should people be allowed to leave? That's a value judgement, and people feel differently about it. Does real life trump games always, or do you have a commitment to your teammates to stay for however long it takes, winning or losing? Somewhere in between, IMO, but there are people who will leave for pretty much any trivial reason(to get a snack, to go to the bathroom(cause they didn't realize they needed to go before the game started...), to go watch their second favorite TV show, etc.), and there are people who have to be dragged out of burning buildings.

I think what you're suggesting will increase the number of leavers, but decrease the overall penalty they have on games. Sure, it sucks to have your 5/0/7 Jinx replaced by a first time player, but it sucks more to have them replaced by a vegetable. But Riot's already made their position here, and I don't think they're going to change it. And, as a player who will play through most non-emergency situations, I'm sort of looking forward to the day where there are no more people leaving to eat dinner cause they didn't plan ahead. Sort of sucks in the meantime, but I think it'll get better eventually.

TL;DR Riot hates leavers, so they're going to solve the problem by banning them or forcing them to improve their habits, not by making games with leavers better.