Honest question regarding games with leavers

Hello All,

I have an honest question about the way that this game works when played with someone who leaves:

Why is it that the players on the team with the leaver are punished for the actions of another?

It seems to me that, though this may not happen all that often, it does contribute to a fair amount of lost time, lost ranked points, and animosity towards this game. I'm going to go into this a little and I will admit that I am writing this out of frustration due to a few games played recently with leavers or players who decided that afking/intentionally losing was the best coarse of action.

So, a player gets upset or just decides they have to go, and they leave the game. Now, the rest of the players on that team are forced to try to play a game 4v5, which in my experience is quite difficult to come out of with a win. The players can choose to /ff at the 15 minute mark if everyone agrees and if not, wait until the 20 minute mark where only 3/4 players have to agree. So best case scenario, 15 minutes of game time has been lost and a few more for the pre-game (I'll call it 20 minutes). Also, if it is a ranked game then there is a loss of LP. The game may or may not have been winnable had the player stayed, but the opportunity to gain LP has been removed. In order to regain LP back to the amount entering the game with the leaver, another game must be played. Best case scenario, you win that game and are back to where you started. If that game took 20 minutes (which I believe is below the average time of a ranked game), you have now spent close to 45 minutes and ended right back where you started before the game with the leaver. If this happens even 3 times a week, you've now lost an hour of time if you just consider the time from the games with leavers, and two hours and fifteen minutes if you consider the games you play to make up for the lost LP.

The odds are that a win will not occur for the team with 4 players and is almost a guaranteed loss. If one of the players decides that playing the game anymore is not worth their time, they are then most likely reported for also going afk/feeding/leaving. I'm not sure if punishment for this second player is issued by Riot, but that would seem unfair to punish someone for no longer wanting to play a game that is unwinnable due to someone else's actions. Is there any data on players getting issued punishment for afking in a game where someone has left?

The /remake system has been a great addition to the game, and surely has helped with situations where a player did not connect to the game at all. It mitigates the majority of the issues I mentioned above and allows players to move on to their next game. Is there some sort of system that could be in-place for when a player leaves after the start of the game? I've seen many posts theory-crafting on this topic by community members and am sure that something could be done, but it's not our job to implement a solution. I feel as though this has been an issue for the life of this game and am sure that Riot is aware of it.

So why hasn't anything been put in place to address this? @Riot

Thanks for reading this if you did and please up-vote if you agree. I would love it if we could get a Riot rep to comment and provide some sort of insight on the topic.

glhf, Smallwalrus