Dealing with 4v5 scenarios
There needs to be some way to not waste 9 players' time with this, or have 5 people enjoy demolishing 4 people and ruining their moods.
The problem: 4v5 scenarios waste at least 3 man hours of time, and can be a beyond frustrating experience when coupled with bad sportsmanship. This is a source of frustration that causes toxicity. As Lyte has talked about in some of the Player Behavior videos, one person starting a game with a bad mood can lead to dozens more down the road. Playing a 4v5 where the team with 5 is intentionally abusing the situation causes up to 4 people to go into their next game upset. By reducing the frustration of a 4v5 scenario, one can reduce the total impact of negative attitudes resulting from a bad game like that.
How can we reduce the frustration of these games? Well, the frustration itself has two parts. The first is simply the time being wasted. There's nothing to be learned from this situation, no skill involved in winning or strategy in losing. If a 4 man team beats a 5 man team, it is simply because the 5 man team threw the game, intentionally or unintentionally.
The second and more aggravating part of the problem is the lack of fun for the 4 man team. With no realistic hope of winning, all 4 remaining members are forced to participate for the remaining 20 minutes due to LeaverBuster. The 5 man team can take advantage of their captive audience to bully and dominate the 4 man team. Simply by numbers they can tower dive, force objectives, camp lanes and deny farm, removing all possibility of a come back if the AFK were to return. And if 2 members of the 4 man team decide they want to continue with a pointless game, the other 2 are then trapped for as long as 60 minutes in an unfair competition.
The current solution that Riot has set in place is LeaverBuster. LeaverBuster punishes the player who causes the scenario, but does nothing to reduce the frustration that the other 9 players are forced to deal with by the same system. While it is low maintenance and does exactly what it was intended to do, it is insufficient in regards to the majority of the players involved in the game.
I propose that some form of ending the game early when a leaver is detected be implemented. A "No Contest" will be added to each of the 9 players' match histories, and players will not be rewarded IP or experience.
For instance, if one player from the blue team disconnects during loading, the game will load and proceed as normal. From the time "(Name) has disconnected" is shown, the offending player will have X minutes to reconnect before the game ends in no contest. At that point, the offending player is punished by LeaverBuster just like the current system, but the remaining 9 players are free to continue with their lives.
I'm certainly open to other solutions. The possibility of voting whether or not to end the game (with all 9 players participating, or with only the 4, or if either both, where if either one succeeds by majority, the game ends) is certainly an option, but is open to the last problem I mentioned of trapping a minority of players in a game that isn't fair.