Blizzard's Stance on Leavers

Deep Terror Nami·11/8/2014, 12:09:20 AM·1 votes·359 views

Watching BlizzCon, and they are talking about their "Team Brawler" (cough MOBA cough) Heroes of the Storm.

Discussing their position and solution to Leavers (people who leave a game in progress) has been a bit mild, simply not giving them xp/currency for the match, and making them wait for that one to end before joining another one. They announced that they are going to try something new;

We have determined that Leavers must like that style of play, so we will support them; Instead of punishing them, we will place them in matches with other Leavers since they like it so much. If they decide "Hey, I don't like this style of play after all", they can earn their way out simply by not leaving matches anymore."

Take notes Riot, I think they're on to something.

4 Comments

AdderTude11/9/2014, 12:36:17 PM2 votes

This position kind of echoes VALVe's leaver system. Defense of the Ancients 2 puts leavers into "low priority" queue that they must play off (at least three matches). Essentially, low priority makes it so that they (the players) take longer to be placed in matches and if they continue leaving, they'll be stuck in that long-wait queue until they learn to consistently stay for the whole game.

Jubbinaut11/8/2014, 2:05:03 AM1 votes

That's actually one of the possible solutions that's under consideration. Lyte has said that while he thinks Prisoner's Island is a terrible idea for toxic players, it's viable and workable for the far more binary behavior demonstrated by leavers.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing "Leaver's Island" be a thing, if only so that people complaining about being always stuck with Leavers will both a) have validity and b) have a genuine reason. And maybe then people will listen when it's explained to them, instead of pulling their tin-foil hats on tighter.

Squeaky Dreemurr11/8/2014, 2:08:25 AM1 votes

I think this would create somewhat of a Utopian leaver society within the larger League community. Consistent leavers obviously don't take their games too seriously. Why pool them together to create a League of Legends that is essentially different than the one everyone else plays? Now the volume of left games must factor into matchmaking as much as wins and losses. This could possibly create significant discrepancies in skill level among players in the same tier. Unless "Leaver Island" prevents players from playing ranked games.