Leaver's and AFK's in ranked games

To whom it may concern, I'm writing this sitting in a room of 5 other ranked league players who all feel the same way, and this post contains a concern that's been troubling us for a long time. We find it absolutely amazing that a harsher system is not in place for people who leave a game, more importantly a ranked game, halfway through. I'll admit, I'm still in bronze, and my friends are just silver, so I don't know if the system in place caters well to higher ranks (although I don't see how it could make a difference), but we've lost countless games as a result of people leaving halfway through. Look, I know it's just a video game, and video games are supposed to be taken lightly and serve no other purpose but to be fun (below the professional level that is). This, however, is exactly our point. Losing a close match because suddenly it's a 4v5 just completely takes the fun out of the game.

We understand that banning anyone who leaves any game halfway through would get ridiculous. At the very least, however, we feel that ranked should be taken more seriously, and therefore the punishments should be a bit harsher. The fun of ranked games is derived solely from its competitive nature, and if players are allowed to leave a game halfway through with what seems to be little to no consequence, is the competitive nature of the game not lost? Doesn't the fun get sucked out of a game like that?

Honestly, this issue is disheartening. I'd love to play this game competitively and attempt to work my way up to at least the gold level, but logistically this just isn't possible without putting an enormous amount of hours in. At least half of the ranked games I've personally lost have been due to someone leaving, and to be honest it makes me want to uninstall the client and advise anyone I meet to do the same. A game lost because of an AFK or leaver is a waste of whatever time you've just put in, and a major annoyance to boot. Then, on top of all of this annoyance, riot has deemed it necessary to punish us by taking away what lp progress we have made because of a loss that had nothing to do with our ability to play the game. This makes no sense anyone I've had this discussion with. This, for us, is the last straw. We can't think of any reason to keep playing a game that punishes us for other people's rule breaking. A loss forgiven for the members of a team with a leaver/afk in a ranked game seems to us the least riot could do to help solve a community problem.

We didn't know where else to send these feelings of ours to get a response, so we figured why not post them here. If anyone agrees with us, disagrees for some valid reason that we haven't thought of, or knows why a system like the one we want isn't in place, we'd happily try to understand and move past the issue. If not, I have to think that enough people agreeing with this post can't go ignored for very long because riot does really care about their community of users. The constant balancing of champions, items, and maps are proof of that. This issue just seems an obvious problem to us, and we can't see why a change here could be anything but good for the community.

If you read all of this, thank you. If you respond to this, thank you again. It means a lot. Sincerely, Someone desperately trying to get out of bronze.