New Players and their Introduction to League and Leaver Buster

Last month I recommended League to one of friends. He was a new player to MOBAs in general, as in the past he only played shooters on Xbox. He liked the game but was very confused by it despite my best efforts to help him out.

Now, many paragraphs can be written about the bad experiences of new players, but the point of this post is to draw some light on something about League's Leaver Buster System. My friend, used to the relative, incredibly relaxed view on leavers of COD or GoW, had in eventually been marked a leaver for one of his first games. He says that it was not him who disconnected him and the game just stopped working, but it seems irrelevant as Leaver Buster had him temporarily banned for three days. I'm guessing that the system saw he had only played a few a games and calculated the one left game as a large percentage and banned him, only a level five.

Sure it may be my fault for not explaining that the game does not take AFKer's or leavers lightly, but this punishment which had him banned for more days than he had even played seems too harsh. It made him stop playing the game. Completely.

I'm sure Riot as a company does not want to lose possible paying customers so early on in their experience of League and this is just one aspect of a bigger picture of difficulties of new players, not just limited to smurfs, a giant learning curve, and not easily accessible information about the game and how it works.

Most of the bad experiences of new players can be improved by giving more information about the game and how it works, but at the same time making it easily digestible. And to keep it from being boring for players with more experience with MOBAs able to be opted out of.

But regarding Leaver Buster, this is just one case and I would greatly appreciate if anyone would comment about similar stories or what may actually going on here as I could be wrong in assuming Leaver Buster is more at fault than my friend.

Thank you for reading.