Dealing with 4v5 scenarios

Pteor PhD·10/21/2013, 5:50:13 AM·2 votes·1,025 views

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.

14 Comments

GwingMaster10/21/2013, 8:49:53 AM2 votes

I see where you're coming from (i had two such instances this weekend actually) but I don't like the timer idea for a no contest. It just eliminates the possibility of your team doing the opposite of falling apart and raging- i.e. banding together and making things happen. winning a 4v5 can be a really fun experience that encourages a ton of teamwork and positive attitudes.

That said, i agree there needs to be some way of accounting for the problem. Why not have a situation where after a player leaves/disconnects, the game accounts for this and allows the victim team to surrender earlier than 20 minutes? That way it wastes less time without punishing those who actually want to fight 4v5 and try to win.

ArisenHero10/21/2013, 1:26:58 PM1 votes

Another solution that may encourage the 4 man team to fight and win is the possibility of universal gold objectives (turrets, baron, dragon) being distributed among the 4 players and the dc'd players gold is also given to the four players. I.e. dragon is worth 190 gold per person on the team for a total of 950 gold. Well instead of the dc'd person's gold being wasted just redistribute it to the rest of the team. I.e. each player receives 237 gold for dragon.

J0HN C3N410/21/2013, 2:15:47 PM1 votes

OP, you'd be surprised how many 5v5 matches are 4v5. I mainly say this because in my experience there has always or most of the time been at least 1 out of the 5 players who is insignificant in the game or even worse, a feeder. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the only way to get out of this is by carrying games yourself and breaking out of the crappy MMR you may have AKA ELO Hell. It will involve you having to get a whole lot better but it hopefully will pay off. When I did my first 10 matches I got into Silver 3 automatically but sadly the poor performance of others and the me making mistakes sometimes (yes I'm by far not perfect) dropped me down all the way to silver V. I was finally able to get back into Silver IV yesterday and I'm hoping to climb some more. There's a lot of guides out there that will help you play better. I suggest you check out trick2g, phylol, angryhoneybadger and ciderhelm among others. Not only that, I suggest you watch some streams as well. I watch trick2g (he's amusing too) all the time. He streams almost every day and has these subwars where he has his subs play vs other famous streamer's subs and he commentates with that other streamer on the match. The best part is that they give tips about what you should and shouldn't do during games and things you should keep an eye out for. For example map awareness: your 5 guys are together and one opponent is alone in a lane while the other 4 are in the turret your team is trying to push. you have 2 choices, 1 go for the loner or get into a 5v4 and win them and possibly get a couple of turrets out of it. I did not have that kind of awareness when I was Silver 3 at first. That's just one example though. I hope this Zac (blob) of text helps you out some. Good luck.

Sgt Froggy10/22/2013, 6:23:36 PM1 votes

Winning a 4v5 depends on your laning phrase. You have to win the laning phrase and then later in game try to catch out the enemies. The support should build a little damage and force a lot on wards. I win 4v5 all the time. It is a great feeling.

FancyIndia10/31/2013, 6:16:24 AM1 votes

I was actually talking about this because it happens a lot. I am not great at knowing what's capable in video game making world, so I will kinda just ask if it's possible too... Can the game see there is one person missing and have the other team vote to boot one of their players to make it a 4v4? It sucks for the booted player, but if everyone votes, then it's at least a little fair. I dunno, most people probably wouldn't like that lol Just thinking of different ideas >.<