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Riot Should Change the Leaverbuster System When Players Return to the Game

lampshade91·2/2/2019, 12:53:50 AM·2 votes·1,732 views

Hello All, I want to premise this discussion with saying that I am in no way angry at Riot or the support team-- in fact, I have nothing but positive things to say about the support team and how they have handled any issues that I have had. I genuinely want to hear people's thoughts about this issue and how to change it to make a better player experience for everyone.

That said, let me paint a scenario for you: you just loaded into a game, wanting to have a good time. You run out of base and to your jungler's blue buff and are ready to leash. The blue pops up, you start auto attacking it. And thats when it happens-- the dreaded bug splat. Your game sends you an error message and freezes. You can't alt+ tab out, you can't do anything. This has never happened to you before, and it takes you a few minutes to realize that you have to ctrl+alt+delete and completely shut down your computer and restart to get back into the game. Five minutes go by, and your finally back in. You apologize profusely to your team, who have been decently hanging on, all things considered. They are very nice about what happened-- hey man, it happens to all of us sometimes. Sometimes there are things that aren't your fault that cause your game to close, whether it is a freeze, a bugsplat, or the dreaded windows restart. Either way, you play your heart out during the game, and miraculously, your team wins. In the post game lobby, you look at your lp and what you see completely surprises you. You have lost -16 lp, even though you have won. It tells you that it is because you left the game. "But I came back," you think, "and we won the game. I was only gone for 5 minutes." None of these reasons matter. If you leave the game for any amount of time (maybe there is a lower limit of a few seconds or something) you are hit with an lp loss, regardless of the outcome of the game.

Now I understand (in theory) why this system is in place. It wants to deter trolls from disconnecting. And I'm sure on some level it works. But what I want to argue is that if someone disconnects and then reconnects and finishes out the game and wins, they should not lose lp. Instead, my proposed solution would be that if a player disconnects, but later reconnects and their team ends up winning, they should receive zero lp. No loss, but also no reward.

There are several reasons for this. The first (and maybe most obvious) is that a lot of disconnects are not the players fault. As the scenario above mentions, there are a lot of tech issues that can cause dc's that players can recover from in a timely manner. If they can do so, come back into the game, and their team ends up winning, they should not be punished for that. The bigger reason, however, is that by having a system that automatically counts any dc as a loss and punishes the player, you are giving the player absolutely no incentive to try and get back into the game. Next time I dc due to a tech issue, I might as well close out the client and do something more productive for the next 30 minutes until the game is over, because I know I am going to get hit with an lp loss either way. This actually creates a more negative experience not only for me, but also for my teammates in game who now have to play a 4v5 and are desperately hoping that their 5th player will reconnect, because they will most likely lose without them. Many people might say that they would reconnect out of their own kindness to help their team, but lets be honest, WAY more people would do this if there was an actual incentive to prevent an lp loss.

This logic can even extend to people who dc on purpose. If someone rage quits in the middle of the game, but then 10 minutes later calms down and wants to reconnect, there is no reason for them to do that, as the game is now. However, if they knew they could log back in and play the game out to prevent the loss of lp, it might give them incentive to do so. People may say that they would prefer someone who rage quits to stay dced since they already showed they are toxic by doing so, but in my personal experience, I almost always would rather have the person reconnect and try to win, because the 4v5 is almost inevitably a loss anyway (unless that person actually just starts running down mid, which I would think is a minority of cases).

TL:DR: In conclusion, I think Riot should change their LeaverBuster system to award 0 lp to people who disconnect (either accidently or on purpose) instead of -15, if they reconnect and their team wins the game. This will give them an incentive to actually reconnect and continue to play. This will lead to a more positive experience for both the person who disconnected (if it was an accident), and also the rest of the team, who are more likely to win the game if their 5th player comes back and contributes to the win.

I'm really interested to hear people's opinion on this subject or whether anyone has thought of either a better solution or a good argument to why this would be a bad idea. I would also be particularly interested in a Riot employee commenting and explaining why their system is this way in the first place.

10 Comments

GatekeeperTDS2/2/2019, 1:32:30 AM3 votes

Nope to the wall of text. We can work right off the title.

Riot Should Change the Leaverbuster System When Players Return to the Game

Even if you come back, even if you win, the game has been impacted for 9 other people who shouldn't have to deal with one person's problems. Whether that person ragequit, has terrible Internet, has a bugsplat, or explosive diarrhea from both ends, the game has been adversely affected.

This whole "incentive" thing repeated over and over again is pointless. Don't leave games. The amount of times a game should be left for a legitimate reason should be next to zero. If someone is a ragequitter, absolutely no pity. If they have a terrible connection, probably should stop playing.

In conclusion, I think Riot should change their LeaverBuster system to award 0 lp to people who disconnect (either accidently or on purpose)

Absolutely not to people who leave on purpose, no way. Do you seriously not see how this could be exploitable?

Silent Gravity2/2/2019, 2:05:04 AM2 votes

One loss of 16 LP out of hundreds of games is not going to have a meaningful effect. If it happens more than that, the penalty, while being more harsh, is also more deserved.

People who rage quit should be banned. We should not coddle them in any manner.

lampshade912/2/2019, 2:35:32 AM1 votes

If it makes it more convincing, lets look at it from the perspective of the 4 other players who did nothing wrong. Don't you think they would rather have the fifth player come back (provided they were not an inter) so that all four of them do not experience a 16 lp loss? Giving someone who did not intentionally leave a slightly less harsh punishment of 0 lp if they come back and win the game is more beneficial for the other four people who will gain lp instead of lose it because the player had no reason to come back.

Awf Meta2/2/2019, 5:13:57 AM1 votes

Leaverbuster is the AFK detector. It is possible to trigger the leaverbuster while remaining connected to the game.

Your idea would have to be a completely new system.

I believe your idea would work. I would consider scaling lp. For example:

Playing over 90% of the game would result in only slightly adjusted lp gain/loss. The less time played, the more severe the lp adjustment.

Syrile2/2/2019, 4:46:45 PM1 votes

I could live with a slightly lessened punishment for someone who comes back and legitimately helps the team win (and they do). On the whole though, there are very few excuses for leaving a game. The client crashing is a problem and if it was legitimately a problem caused by Riot, they need to fix it and players should not be punished for their mistakes. On the other hand, if it is not Riot's fault, the player should be punished for ruining the game for others. If you are rage-quitting or intentionally destroying a game for others, you need banned.

lampshade912/2/2019, 2:21:07 AM1 votes

Maybe it is too nice of a punishment for people who leave on purpose. The only reason I added that was because it might be hard for an automated system to tell the difference in intent.

That being said, I was hoping to have a more constructive conversation about this topic than "dont leave games". Yes, one 16 lp loss doesnt mean anything in the long run, but it still stings at the time. Maybe this was your promos and you lost them because of a 3 minute disconnect. You are talking to someone who has never left a game (other than the occasional unforseeable tech issue) and did not even solo queue rank last year. Im not some person who is salty at Riot for something I've personally experienced. I have just seen this system in place through watching stream and talking to other players, and honestly don't understand how it makes sense as far as player satisfaction.

But by all means, take the high and mighty route that there is no possible reason for anyone to afk and that everyone should be able to predict tech issues before they happen.

lampshade912/2/2019, 1:40:00 AM1 votes

if you dont read the "wall of text" I don't think you could understand the whole argument. What impacts people more than someone accidentally leaving for 3 minutes is playing the entire game as a 4v5 which will almost inevitably be a loss. If the player comes back, the team has a better chance to win (actual inters aside), so it seems like having something in place to give incentive to come back is not a terrible idea. Again, they would be getting 0 lp, so they would not be rewarded by coming back, they would just be avoiding a harsher punishment.

As for your second comment, no, I honestly don't see how that would be exploitable. Keep in mind that they would only get the 0 lp if their team won the game. So the only way you could exploit it is in a set of circumstances where 1) you left on purpose 2) your team is winning without you there 3) you can predict when exactly the game will end and join again before that time.

If you are actually inting or afk, there are report buttons after the game that can still be used. They could even implement something that puts in a fourth parameter that you had to be in the game for at least the majority of the game in order to avoid the lp loss, if you still think this is exploitable.