Should summoners be penalized for leaving a game in champion select?

J Moose·Oct 15, 2014·1 votes·2,109 views

Good afternoon league of legends community,

A warning before we start: this thread is quite lengthy so if you wish to engage in a critical discussion about what it entails, please be prepared to give up no less than 15 minutes of your time. I hope you all enjoy!

The title of this thread captures what I want to discuss almost perfectly but, for simplicity's sake, I have left out a couple of things that I think are, in fact, important to the discussion. The first being that I am only concerned with the penalties levied onto summoners who are in champion select for a ranked game (whether it be solo queue, 5v5, or 3v3). As I'm sure most of you could deduce from this, I am not against the time penalty issued to summoners who leave a game in champion select, ranked or normal (you will see why shortly).

What it is that I am concerned about are the other penalties taxed to summoners for the ability to leave a ranked game in champion select. Namely, loss of LP (when a summoner is not in their series for promotion) and a lost game (when a summoner is in their series for promotion). Now, for these penalties to be justified, there must be some benefit to their attribution. If these penalties do no good towards the league of legends community at all or that the good they do produce is overshadowed by the harm of using them, then we'd be apt to remove these penalties.

Now, for clarity, I will name the three different penalties accordingly. The penalty present in both normal and ranked matches will be called the timeout penalty. The two penalties present in only ranked matches will be named the -LP penalty and the loss penalty, respectively. Lets move on to why I think the last two penalties should be reconsidered. The first step in reaching that, however, is to praise the the timeout penalty.

The timeout penalty works wonders for the league of legends community. For one, it stops summoners from repeatedly leaving games at champion select. This one effect is a huge benefit for the community, it allows summoner's to enter games with haste and does as best as it can at limiting the number a picks and bans phases a summoner has to sit through before playing. Less time waiting to play, is, at least relatively, more time playing. We don't wait to play games because it's fun, we wait to play games because playing them is fun. If we could remove as much wait time as possible we would be optimizing the amount of fun we have! Of course, some can say that the pick and ban phase is itself a mini-game and a player does derive fun from analyzing team compositions, counter-picking, deliberating on what champions to ban, and deciding what champion, over all, to play. I agree to all of this, but if the real fun lied within the picks and bans phase, why wouldn't we have a simulator that gives us just that and not play the actual game at all? The truth is that while the picks and bans phase is fun in its own way, it is nowhere near as fun as playing the actual game. In short, the timeout penalty grants the league of legends community more fun because it reduces the amount of (less fun) champion selects a summoner has to go through to get to a (more fun) game. To show that it affords the community a larger amount of benefit than harm is a simple task.

Let us assume that there is no timeout penalty and the queue is a normal one. Suppose we have 11 summoners looking for a match, 10 of which are willing to follow pick order and choose a role that is open to them depending on their pick number while the other summoner is ignorant of this practice and will only play the role he wants to play (lets call it "support"). The odd summoner time and time again gets paired with 9 of the normal summoners who understand that pick order primarily governs role availability and it turns out he is never first pick and that someone always chooses to play support before him. Time and again the odd summoner is faced with this circumstance and each time he decides to leave the champion select. It is because of this odd summoner that 10 normal summoners must continuously wait for a match, hoping that the system will leave out the odd summoner so that they may get into an actual game. Of course, without a penalty such as the timeout penalty there is no way to prevent the odd summoner from getting into each game and therefore denying the rest of them from actually playing. The importance of the timeout penalty described in the preceding paragraph is illustrated in this example. Simply put, without the timeout penalty the league of legends community would not be as happy. In my case, it causes more benefit for the group of normal summoners than harm for the odd summoner.

Now that we've established why the timeout penalty ought to remain intact, it is time to investigate the remaining two. Do the -LP and loss penalties grant the league of legends community more benefit than harm? As we saw before the timeout penalty does in fact give the community a ton of happiness by reducing the amount of time summoners must wait to get into a game. But this penalty holds across all matchmaking queues and therefore does the job for everything it could possibly do it for. What is to be gained by the -LP penalty and the loss penalty?

**An interesting side-argument.**When a summoner enters a champion select and is not participating in a series for promotion he is faced with two options: he may stay in the champion select or he may leave it. If he chooses the latter then he will be unable to join another game for a period of time (the timeout penalty) and he will be taxed a number of LP depending on how many times he has left champion select in the last 24 hours. What is it exactly that the loss of LP does that benefits the league of legends community? Does it promote more time playing and less time waiting as the timeout penalty does? Maybe. It could very well be the case that summoner's on average will be less willing to leave a champion select if it would result in the loss of LP. If so, does that lead to a happier community? If it does, than whats stopping us from using that penalty in a normal draft as well as a ranked draft? The only difference here is that there is no chance to gain LP in a normal draft. Why not encourage less people to abandon a game in champion select for a normal draft by penalizing them with a loss of LP, what exactly is the difference? My contention is that there is no difference. If a penalty that taxes summoners LP for leaving a champion select deters summoners from acting in such a way and this is good for the community why don't we use it across all game modes? In short, if this penalty does benefit the community why limit its scope? Some may say that summoners are happy to lose LP for leaving a ranked game but wouldn't be happy with losing LP for leaving a normal game. I implore these people to give me a response detailing why.

The -LP penalty isn't a benefit to the community, but a hindrance. There are a large number of scenarios where a summoner may want to leave champion select but may be deterred by the guarantee of a loss of LP and this in turn might harm his teammates. Suppose we have the loving Dad who is also an avid league of legends player. He enters a ranked queue, finds a match, and, upon entering champion select, his wife tells him that she has to leave the house to pick up a few things and that he must take care of their child during this time. The dad is left in a horrible situation here. He needs to take care of his child and he will but will he do that while playing league of legends? Suppose the only thing that stops him from leaving the champion select is the guarantee of losing LP for it. He believes he could stick it out and has a decent chance at winning the game. He tells his team what he is about to do and they begin to panic as anyone who takes ranked games seriously would. They know that taking care of a child is no meager task and certainly isn't one that can be adequately done whilst playing a game of league of legends. All of his teammates want him to leave but he is adamant that he can do well and sticks around. These summoners on his team may have chosen to leave if they would not lose LP for it and maybe even a couple of them are in their series and don't want to be given a loss. Is it fair to these summoner's that the only way to rid themselves of the loving dad is to lose LP or even lose a match in a series? Is it fair that the enemy team be granted a surefire victory because of the loving dad's under-performance? In this case it seems that removing the -LP and loss penalties would give the community great benefit. It would allow the summoner's to leave without penalizing their ranked scores each time they were paired with someone like the loving dad and therefore allow the loving dad to not participate in the match and take adequate care of his child.

The same situation can be drawn up for the loss penalty and is perhaps more understandable. The point being made is that losing LP and losing a match in a series for leaving a ranked champion select doesn't do much in the way of benefiting the league of legends community. It puts another constraint on someone who is deliberating leaving a game and this will usually lead to bad and unfair outcomes. The loss penalty is even more drastic and perhaps more harmful to the community. Suppose someone is in their series and gets into a champion select with four other summoners who are in their series. The first summoner has an emergency and needs to step away from the computer after locking in a champion and he tells his teammates this. They are all deterred from quitting the game because it guarantees a loss for them in their series, so no one leaves. The game proceeds as a four on five and the enemy team easily enough comes up with a win. Is this result fair? Shouldn't we avoid this scenario if we could? The loss penalty hinders the community just as much as the -LP penalty if not more. It seems apparent to me that these two penalties grant the community more harm the good as they make it harder for the average summoner to leave a ranked queue in sticky situations and leads to unfairness in match outcomes.

It is my contention that the timeout penalty is the only penalty enacted that grants the community a net benefit through its existence and that we'd be wise to remove the other two penalties as they cause more harm than good. The timeout penalty allow summoners to enter a match speedily. The -LP and loss penalties constrain summoner's from getting out of bad situations and promote unfairness within the community. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this. I look forward to any response and hope that I have convinced some of you to feel the same way as i do. Lets get rid of the -LP and loss penalties!

13 Comments

Matthias9119Oct 15, 20142 votes

I didn't read most of your giant wall of text, sorry.

For a while they had the "timeout" penalty only and it was heavily abused. A significant number of players would either:

dodge whenever they didn't get "their" lane
dodge whenever they didn't get "their" champ
dodge whenever they didn't like their team's bans
dodge whenever an "OP" champ wasn't banned and ended up on the other team
dodge whenever they were counter picked
dodge whenever a "bad" champ was picked on their team
dodge whenever they felt someone was "trolling"

And if a dodge doesn't count as a promo series loss, there is a VERY strong incentive for any player in a promo series to dodge until conditions are ideal.

There has to be a significant "cost" to dodging a Ranked match or players are incentivized to abuse it for competitive reasons.

J MooseOct 15, 20141 votes

Hi Matthias9119. Thanks for your reply!

I don't know if you made it that far into my post but I do defend the timeout penalty as it does prevent a lot of bad scenarios from taking place.

I will rebut to your claims about the loss penalty's benefit in the following way.

So, I do concede that removing it would provide an incentive for summoner's to leave queue if situations aren't ideal. I question how strong of an incentive this is because you would still have to wait an increasingly long time to play which is definitely harmful to the player. What is so wrong with just that? Why does there have to be a more significant cost than a timeout?

As I explain in my post there are plenty of awful situations that can and do occur when a summoner is guaranteed a loss in a series for leaving a ranked champion select. He may be forced to play in conditions that will make it nearly impossible to win (an ally summoner has to afk) and he is forced to commit to the game when an emergency might arise while in champion select that requires his attention (he has to afk).

To close I disagree that the cost need be any more significant for leaving a ranked champion select than a normal one. In fact, I believe more harm is done with the current system than good. Thanks again for your response!

wolfaxOct 15, 20141 votes

If there's a way to abuse it people will use it. I'd say they are more disastrous to the game because they will increase queue times for everyone and if you don't game the system yourself you will run into a lot more times where they set it up to screw your team. Not to mention you increase the ability to troll by getting in and leaving to make people wait.

J MooseOct 15, 20141 votes

You make sense when you say if there is a way to gimmick the system people will use it. However, I don't see how a summoner leaving a champion select will make the other summoner's involved wait longer than they do now to reenter a champion select. Can you more clearly state the harm caused to summoners who do not leave the champion select when a summoner does leave the champion select?

I don't see how you could abuse the system when the timeout penalty is extant. You still suffer some cost for leaving the champion select and this cost does not exceed the benefits the community receives as a result of it.

Matthias9119Oct 15, 20141 votes

So, I do concede that removing it would provide an incentive for summoner's to leave queue if situations aren't ideal. I question how strong of an incentive this is because you would still have to wait an increasingly long time to play which is definitely harmful to the player. What is so wrong with just that? Why does there have to be a more significant cost than a timeout?

Because they tried "just have a timeout" and it was abused to an unacceptable degree in Ranked play. This isn't theoretical, they actually had that for a while in Season 2 and it caused problems. When you have to go through three or four drafts to start a game it annoys the hell out of everyone.

Timeouts aren't much of a deterrent when you can just jump on a smurf to evade the "penalty". Dropping a division or losing a promo series is MUCH MUCH worse than not being able to play on that account for a little while.

The problem is that even small increases in the rate that the average player dodges have big effects. The probability of a match not being dodged is roughly P(player doesn't dodge) ^ 10. If the average player dodges one match out of 100 (P(not-dodge) = 0.99), there's about a 10% chance of any given match being dodged. With a 5% dodge rate that jumps to 40% (.95^10 ~= .60, so a 60% chance of nobody dodging).

J MooseOct 15, 20141 votes

Smurfing isn't an option for every league of legends player; whether or not it is for a lot of players, I don't know.

You bring up valid points regarding the probabilities of having a game where someone dodges but I don't think that the other two penalties are the right solution as they lead to very bad cases that are harmful to the community. A possibility for change is a more intensive timeout penalty. I do still think the system is flawed and requires reconsideration. Whether or not just removing the -LP penalty and the loss penalty is the right choice remains to be seen. It is definitely not the only option. One could perhaps do away with just the loss penalty. I still believe that these two penalties do more harm than good to the community.

Thank you so much for your followup response. It is well thought out and constructive to the discussion.

Matthias9119Oct 15, 20141 votes

Smurfing isn't an option for every league of legends player; whether or not it is for a lot of players, I don't know.

I don't understand this statement. It is trivial for any player to create a new account in a free-to-play game.

Really draconian timeout penalties for infrequent dodges just push people to smurf more, and unnecessarily punish players who had a one-time technical issue during champion select.

The underlying problem is that in Ranked play, if you can identify matches with a <50% chance of victory in champion select, dodging those matches results in a competitive advantage. You need to treat a dodge as a 'partial loss' in order to discourage such use of dodges. Otherwise players get frustrated because it becomes much harder to actually start a Ranked match, and players who don't game the dodging system are put at a competitive disadvantage.

It might be reasonable to do something like allowing players one dodge (that doesn't count as a loss) in a 5-game promotion series. I don't know. But I'm quite sure it needs to result in some amount of LP loss, and maybe even a small amount of MMR loss (although that has other effects that might be problematic.)

Arch Mage MagnusOct 15, 20142 votes

If there was ever a too long didn't read it's for this. If you want a publisher let me know, I can hook you up.

wolfaxOct 15, 20141 votes

There needs to be a significant cost to dodging. Timeout does very little deterring. It's barely a slap on the wrist for people that want to abuse the system. You give people to many chances to game the system to where it's always favorable to them.

J MooseOct 15, 20141 votes

Hello Wolfax. Thanks for your response!

I agree the cost needs to be significant. I am curious as to why you think the timeout penalty provides very little deterrence? It forces you to not play the game for a certain matter of time. That seems to me at least to be pretty significant.

My response to you is if you believe the current timeout system does little in the way of deterrence maybe we should amplify the time a summoner has to wait before playing? This would seem to be a lot less harmful than our current system and would indeed deter people further from dodging when situations aren't ideal. Thanks again for your response!

ezreal stinksOct 15, 20141 votes

I agree with op about the timeout. You basically get one free dodge every 24 hours. The LP loss isn't that big and it's definitely not as much as losing the game, on top of that you only have to wait for 5 minutes. As time goes on though it gets worse and unacceptable tbh. There are games that need to be dodged, like op brought up with the "loving dad" It isn't fair that I am basically forced to play these games because while at best I could maybe get a 20 minute surrender (if my team isn't trolling or we don't have one of those "we've got this" guys as our team is 1-25 20 minutes in.

I had a game a few days ago where we had a mid teemo who I had played with before, and I knew he was going to cost us the game. His average kda on teemo was 3/11/4 and he had a 0% win rate with him. There was no way in hell we were going to win that game, especially considering he was laning against an orianna. I wanted to dodge so bad, but I had already dodged a normal game earlier because something came up and I had to leave in champ select. I was not about to wait 30 minutes and lose my series and I toughed it out. Needless to say that teemo pulled out another star performance and we got absolutely slaughtered. It's a lose/lose situation for me no matter what and I don't think that's fair at all.

J MooseOct 15, 20142 votes

Hi Haunterz. Thank you for your response!

I am glad that you have replied to my post because your in game situation describes very well some of the harm caused by the loss penalty. I am sorry for your having to experience the situation however. Hopefully we will be able to rid ourselves of these harmful penalties!

RunBtchNov 14, 20171 votes

I believe that the LP penalty and the Loss penalty should be removed, especially the latter. The scenario of the loving dad is a very effective one, due to the fact that it puts no party at blame. However, in real playing scenarios, the role of the loving dad is normally replaced with people who rage quit, troll, or expresses a significant amount of negativity and verbal abuse. Such people can be predicted during champion select when they intentionally ban a champion that a teammate has selected because their presumptuous minds have deemed that champion unfit for that certain role; or when they start expressing signs of negativity early on, during champion select. There has been instances when I select an unconventional champion, which I am good at for that certain role, and immediately received backlash. The negative player either intentionally ban the champion that I selected, or verbally abused me out of selecting such champion. In instances where I successfully start the game with my preferred champion, they will express their discontent and negativity throughout the game, to shift the blame on the champion I have selected and not their own pitiful performance.

In instances where players wish to explore new play options by going with an unconventional but effective champion, these unconventional players are often the target for abuse to the conservative players; and once the verbal abuser has successfully labeled their targeted victim, the rest of the team will join in blaming the person, to elevate their own guilt. Such a scenario can be evaded if victimized players are free to leave without penalty during champion selection.