commentary on LeaverBuster
Frustrating as it is that my most recent disconnect was resultant to a widespread internet outage in my ISP that lasted several hours and was entirely out of my control, as a general concept I can understand the LeaverBuster system. Riot wants to penalize players who make a habit of leaving games.
This game is extremely team oriented, and having a deficiency on your team of a player who disconnected almost ensures your team will lose. And I get that the LeaverBuster system, as enacted on Riot's end, can not feasibly differentiate between a player who just says "screw you guys I'm out" and quits, and people who have any one of the myriad possible sudden connectivity issues. As far as Riot servers can tell, you were in the game and now you are not--whether you ragequit, your house was destroyed in an earthquake, or your ISP suffered an outage--you left a game prematurely. And Riot maintains the stance (correct me if I am wrong) that they would rather catch and curb this behavior in 1000 "guilty" leavers with the unintended side effect of unduly punishing a few "innocent" leavers, than do nothing and let the quality of gameplay suffer overall. So be it.
Just like the abhorrent criminal justice system in our not-so-United States, this is a bucket system that successfully catches the many willful offenders at the unmitigated expense of inadvertently punishing the occasional non-offender too. C'est la vie.
My own personal circumstances not withstanding, my concerns with LeaverBuster however are not in it's application but in it's technical application.
Specifically: Why does it make the League of Legends game screen unminimizable and unmovable? Why does it thus render my computer largely inoperable? As I type this very post, I was forced to put LoL in the corner of my monitor before clicking the "Play" button and initiating my timer, such that it is exposed so I may click it and initiate the LeaverBuster timer, while also positioning it sufficiently out of the way so that I can open and read a web browser.
Further, now that League of Legends client has a LeaverBuster timer open, the screen can not be moved or minimized in any way. So over 25% of the monitor of my computer is unusable for the next 20 minutes, and I can not physically move the window, nor respond to the incoming messages I can hear arriving within the LoL client.
There has to be some semblance in the middle where the LeaverBuster can be used to penalize players, while also leaving them free to use their computer in the interim.
PS: Before anyone accuses me of not being a team player, let me say I main sup Sona almost every game, provide helpful friendly coaching to other players instead of the typical "WTF YOU'RE SO BAD KILL YOURSELF" rhetoric the casual LoL community is known for, and always try to encourage positive team dynamics as the singularly most important factor in wining. I do not wilfully disconnect from games, I just have shoddy internet and a Linux PC that crashes all the time. So I'm okay with LeaverBuster relegating me to the kids table for 20 minutes for 5 games, I just wish I could continue to use MY computer at my own leisure while sitting there.
