Boards›Player Behavior

Leaver Buster rework?

Latinnus··1 votes·318 views

Hi All,

I am quite sure that I am not the only one on this - problems with the leaver buster are affecting a considerable amount of players rather unfairly.

My current situation: I have received a penalty of 20 mins before each match due to afk behaviours. How did I get to the 20 mins? Easy (not saying I am fully innocent on this, I had left a couple of games).

1st - Couple of drops at loading screen after the pre-season rework - 5 minute ban for 10 games. Complained and only had a reply after I served my "punishment", apologizing for the problems,. Either way I consider 5 minutes fair - it is a pain, enough to demotivate people from rage quitting and not too harmful if people are targeted unfairly.

2nd strike - One DC due to poor connection, and other one where I left the game. 10 minute ban for 5 games. Fair enough - my bad here, took it.

3rd Strike - Another failure at loading and a power out. 20 mins for 5 games. An this is the point where I am at. I got the 3 strikes between the start of the pre-season and today.

I do agree that it is important to punish afk / leavers. But at this point, with 20 mins wait, I am guessing that it would take me 30-35 mins to start a game. With that waiting time, it becomes a lot more likely that something would come up in mid'game that would force me to quit, and at that point - yes, I became a real "leaver".

I feel it would be better suited to ban a person for a set period of time ' 1 day, 2 days, a week even. Give them a chance to go outside and appreciate life!

3 Comments

Zielmann2 votes

not saying I am fully innocent on this, I had left a couple of games

Had you not, you'd be at a lower penalty level. The system has built-in forgiveness for occasional leaves, because sometimes something happens and you suddenly can't play (loss of power, internet cutout, family emergency, etc). But you abused that forgiveness, and now you're upset that it's gone in scenarios where it normally would have saved you?

Lesson to learn: Don't leave games and abuse the system's forgiveness for occasional leaves. You never know when something will come up.

Latinnus1 votes

When I say I left a couple of games it was exactly due to the last reason - work phone calls / family situations (I wouldn't call picking up the kids or making a last minute supermarket run an emergency), but they sometimes happen. Now, match one of this situations with problems related with Riot - and voila - you are stuck with a very strange ban.

I have never left a game or went afk just because I felt like it. Usually the policy is - push it till it breaks, even if it is a lost cause. Who knows, sometime the opposite team is not as solid as they seem.

If you took the time to read it fully, I am not saying for them to remove leaver buster. I am mostly saying that the tool should be a bit more sensible - especially when it is related with connection problems or problems at loading - which unfortunately are not that uncommon when a patch is released.

Furthermore, I find it particularly upsetting to have an afk report in the couple of situations where for some reason I only managed to join 1-2 mins after the game started, and the team decided to quit.

Personally, I am finding some hard time accepting the leaverbuster where perhaps 70% of the cases where I was considered at afk was due to:

  • Problems at loading
  • Connection problems / team being to hasty to surrender

As a side note, I think all players should be aware of the following - if someone gets disconnected in blind pick / draft, please dont hit surrender straight away. Play safe, hold it, because it is quite likely the other player will be back as soon as possible.

Zielmann1 votes

It sucks to have that level of bad luck to get escalated up to a 20-minute queue penalty. When you're having repeated issues with loading in or consistent network issues, you should stop and spend some time addressing those, first. A simple run of the client repair tool may have alleviated all of this.

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