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New LeaverBuster Is Not Player-Friendly

Eleshakai·11/20/2014, 5:44:12 PM·1 votes·1,071 views

I really dislike the changes to Leaverbuster in theory. We haven't seen them too much in practice yet, but I fear that by the time we do it will be too late.

That isn't to say I dislike their ideas for the 'low priority queue' that just increases the time you wait to get into games as an early form of punishment. This is a fairly nice tailored idea. By leaving games, you have to 'make up' the time by waiting longer in queue. That's great... and I think a very solid compromise - providing a punishment that fits the infraction, as it were.

But the issue I have is the impression it's going to create for people who have leaves that are beyond their control. Especially in ranked games where, according to Lyte, you can get punished after a single occurence.

I'm going to provide a few circumstances to consider... picture, if you will, three people who don't read updates about Player Behaviour systems and don't follow the PBE so thus have little to no info about the new leaverbuster. All three of them are ideal teammates. They're relatively decent players, they carry sometimes, they usually don't feed. They're nice, they communicate well and just generally have a good time with the game. They might even still have ribbons.

Person #1 joins ranked for the first time since the new patch. He'd played a few test custom games, and not had any issues. Then he loads into the ranked game and encounters a bug splat on the loading screen(new patches can cause this - not every bug gets caught afterall) that he can't get around. He's already frustrated spending ~20 minutes trying frantically to fix the issue only to find out that his team surrendered at 20 and he got marked as a leaver since he was never able to connect. Now, he goes to join a ranked game and gets informed, in addition to the loss, the leave, and his 20 minutes of frustration... he's now been placed in some special queue that means he has to wait 5 minutes before getting into a game.

Person #2 has been playing for ages without problems. He's literally never had a leave on his record. He's in the middle of a game, doing fairly well - his team is ahead but not enough to close the game quite yet, he's got a good score and is having a blast. Then someone drives into the power lines feeding his house, cutting off his power for several hours. He finally gets it back after an extremely frustrating 6 hours, and goes to play a game... only to find out that the power outage has not only caused him to lose a good game, caused him whatever other frustrations the power outage caused for him(up here it'd mean being freezingly cold for 6 hours, for example), but also caused Riot to deem him worthy of PUNISHMENT for this. For a power outage caused by some idiot driving into a pole?

Person #3 had intermittent internet for a while, so they opted out of playing. They'd gotten it fixed a few days back, but still didn't play for a couple days to make sure everything was stable. After a few days of no internet drops, they assume everything's good and decide to play a game... then suddenly, the internet problem they'd been working with their provider to fix returns and causes them to disconnect from the game. Already upset at the situation, they then find out that they have been punished for them.

How would you feel in any of these situations? Would you be inclined to be forgiving or understanding? I don't think most people would. They'd expect Riot to be at least a LITTLE bit forgiving of the fact that these issues happen sometimes and that they're unavoidable and not be throwing around punishments like they meant nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were so upset it caused them to look elsewhere for a game to play.

And then there's the problem with Riot's servers frequently taking 30-60 minuts to detect that THEY are having problems... and while I do understand why this is the case and why loss forgiven isn't turned on immediately. But if we're going to be implementing a system that punishes on the first offense, we need to take this into account. The next time someone hacks your servers, or you have one of those sudden 'everyone dcs' issues, you're going to be giving out THOUSANDS of these 'leaver' bans if not more. And not one of them will have been due to anyone voluntarily leaving a game. Every single one will be completely 100% Riot's issue. That's not a good thing.

Yes, we get it, a person who dcs - regardless of cause - inconveniences from 3 to 9 other individuals(depending on how many people on your team are actually bothered by it and how many people on the enemy team aren't thrilled at the easy win). But there still needs to be some lenience built into the system. Perhaps the current system is too lenient(I'm not so sure about this but... I don't leave games, so I can't judge)... but this new system is far too aggressive, it's downright unfriendly to the average player. I suspect that, in the new system, most of the people punished will end up having no say in whether they were punished or not - it'll be due to almost entirely issues outside of their control. I don't think the number of voluntary leavers is as high as people like to think but I have no statistical data to back this up.

As I've said elsewhere, if I ever get a 'leaver' penalty due to an issue I had 0 control over - like the three hypotheticals I mentioned above - Riot is losing me as a customer. I think there are others who may react the same way, although possibly without the same conviction.

Edit: TLDR? Read the title, that's the TLDR.

28 Comments

slippykitten11/20/2014, 9:08:22 PM2 votes

Your entire premise is focusing on the person leaving when there are 4 other victims to the offense. The players that have to deal with the leaver are the ones that need the attention. I honestly dont care what your reasoning is for leaving, it should get dealt with just like it does for everyone else, because it caused 4 other people to have their time wasted, their lp lost, and their anger kindled. The ONLY exception i see is when the disconnect is caused by a problem on riots end, which should ALWAYS give the team a loss forgiven and shouldnt count as a leave.

I Happy Hour I11/20/2014, 11:08:51 PM2 votes

What about those times you get into a game and you get that bad route that causes you to dc repeatedly it happened to me yesterday. I was playing all day no issues then i got into a game with a friend and suddenly i dc'ed repeatedly over and over again. I know it was not on my end as i was in skype with my buddy at the time and had zero lag.

Eawaf11/20/2014, 9:57:27 PM1 votes

There is a line in the sand, and riot is drawing it. With this new Leaver buster they have determined that whatever false positives come from the system, its worth the overall improvement of those that maintain stable connections have.

If you don't have reliable internet, don't play the game. If you lose connection enough to be worried about it, then your on your way to getting punished to begin with.

The end.

Jubbinaut11/20/2014, 10:57:05 PM1 votes

One can cause punishments. I mentioned it earlier, but I'm very concerned about the details of that particular statement, and without knowing what circumstances would be required for a single leave to cause a punishment (or not).

I'm not even really trying to play devil's advocate, here. I just think that, before we get too bent out of shape about it, we should be sure that we know what we need to know.

Of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't express concern, just that I believe we should do so from a perspective of questioning, rather than of declaration.

Jubbinaut11/20/2014, 10:59:33 PM1 votes

My guess (and obviously, this has no basis) is that the ban aspect of the system will be basically untouched. Which is to say that if you haven't been receiving bans before, you shouldn't after this is released.

I say that, because it feels like applying a new aspect to the system to target a different group. And since the prior functions of the system have done a fairly good job of hitting the targets they were after, I don't see any solid reason to both change them and apply new functions.

Should that prove to be wrong, I can promise I'll be railing right alongside you, but in the meantime, I don't see any real reason to assume the worst.

Eawaf11/21/2014, 3:08:57 PM1 votes

murder= 25-life.

Manslaughter- 10-15. Either way both get punished.(i personally don't see much of a difference between them ; /)

And no, unless someone can come up with a benevolent version of skynet i don't see another system better then this for determining afk's/leavers.

There is no AI system that can account for intent. And with 27 million daily players(according to LoL), there is not a team they could build and maintain that would be worth it over an automated system.

Rito makes a big deal about saying how they listen to the community, well if even a smidgen of that is true i'm sure they've listened to countless complaints about afk's and leavers. And realize it is a serious enough problem to implement this system.

We can also assume that with the increase in aggressiveness of the system the previous one needed to be tweaked and strengthened.

Jubbinaut11/20/2014, 6:02:57 PM1 votes

I dunno. I mean, I agree with you in principle, but - and I'm not well-read on the details of how it's intended to work - I just don't see a tiny extension on queue as being meaningful enough to send players away. I know that something that minor wouldn't do much more than momentarily frustrate me. Let's be honest: five minutes is the same delay applied to players that dodge in champ select. In that context, applying that same amount of time to a player who leaves mid-game doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Again, however, I haven't really read up much on new LB, so there may be aspects to it that I'm missing.

Eawaf11/21/2014, 8:40:01 PM1 votes

The problem is, the system you are asking for does not exist, and will not exist any time soon. You can value Rito however which way you want. Until someone can come up with that system to manage 27 million people a day i don't blame them for using the system they have and buffing it.

To me this is a much more cut and dry system then people that are toxic. What endless drone do i keep hearing when people bitch about being banned or chat restricted? "don't be a jerk". Well the definition of being a jerk is established by the community according to Rito.

Afk and leaving is a completely different thing. If someone says they are afking in game, that's one thing. But you cannot prove that a person that disconnects from a game or leaves one did it intentionally, maliciously, accidentally, etc.

You cannot prove it one way or the other. And i'm absolutely for Rito deciding to lean more harshly on people that disconnect for any reason.

Unfortunately, this is the league of legends, not the U.S.A. there is no bill of rights, we basically take what Rito gives us and gladly pay them for it. Rito values us as far as the bottom line takes em. Sure there are bleeding hearts and some such that would surly sympathize with your sentiment. But overall they are out to profit.

I'd much rather them come out with a cold hard system like this then leave potential loop holes for people to exploit. False positives be damned.

BRBGTGBOWFLEX11/20/2014, 9:36:22 PM1 votes

I disagree with you entirely and think you are wrong.

If you are going to play a ranked game you should:

  1. Make sure that you have a free hour.
  2. Make sure that your connection is stable and will be for that hour. If you have had any connectivity issues recently, play a normal game first to assure there are no connectivity issues at this time.

Person 1 and Person 3 should not play ranked at this time. Person 2 should have one or two games of the queue and then move on.

How do we really know that Person 1 actually solved the bug splat problem? Do they really belong in ranked at the moment? Person 3 I have the least amount of pity for. They basically just joined a game hoping their normally bad net wouldn't act up.

In the cases of person 2, they lost power for 6 hours, I think they can wait an extra five minutes.