the prob with quitters is only on xbox live, when the player that quits is the host of the game. in most games the game ends then, or freezes, or makes your console crash or explode.
cod mv2 has this feature to migrate the host, but that doesn’t work always.
host migration for brink would bee sweet. but i would preferre dedicated servers anyway
In a game like this on pub level play there is no reason to penalize something like this.
Games like League of Legends DO penalise leavers, but only if you leave AND DO NOT RETURN before teh game ends. In this game being 1 man down is an instant loss unless he was shit and the entire other team is. The penalty means you get no xp for that match and a counter next to your name showing your leaves. That is all, and it’s a good system imo. It gives you a bad reputation, but it doesn’t stop you from doing it again.
[QUOTE=3Suns;213024]This may be a problem of greater significance in the console market than in the PC market. I am unfamiliar with the PC situation.
In a relatively small team game (8v8 and less), having a player join and then quit halfway through a match can ruin the balance of the game, and thus the enjoyment as well. Unfortunately, I have had this happen to me often (depending on the game) and often several times in a row - to the point where I would just take the game out of the tray and play something else.
In an effort to encourage players to finish the game they started, Bungie in Halo 3, for example, started using experience points to reward or punish gamers according to their behavior. In practice, it proved completely ineffectual in dealing with quitters.
I do have a solution that I think is reasonble and effective: put the gamer in the “penalty box”. (Again, I am suggesting this solution for the XBL gamer - I don’t know if quitting is even a problem for the PC community). If someone quits in the middle of the match, don’t let him rejoin a new match for at least 5 minutes. If the gamer quit for legitimate reasons (e.g., their cat just crapped on their lap, their mother isn’t bringing them their chocolate milk in a timely fashion, or their child is on fire) then it is reasonable to expect that they will be indisposed for at least five minutes. They won’t even notice the “penalty” time because they were busy with other things anyway. If on the other hand, they quit just because they weren’t winning or someone else was wearing the same outfit, then, they need to be given a cool-down period, so that they can’t just join and quit, and ruin three more games in the meantime. I think there are risks to this approach (it is relatively severe), but I think that in the end, it would make everyone take the game more seriously, and the more serious gamers would be delighted by the fact that once the game starts, chances are everyone will “stay until the job’s done” and if they lose, at least it won’t be because half their team quit out in the first 2 minutes of the match.
What are your experiences with quitters and dealing with them? I would love to hear directly from Splash Damage and anyone who has an opinion on this issue.
:stroggtapir:[/QUOTE]
Isn’t there a bot joining then?
depends on how smart the bots are lol.
In ETQW 360, once you have a team of pros, bots become dumb.
[QUOTE=3Suns;213024]This may be a problem of greater significance in the console market than in the PC market. I am unfamiliar with the PC situation.
In a relatively small team game (8v8 and less)[/QUOTE]
That includes the PC.
We’re talking about a pub game? People can leave and other people can join. The only way this can be a problem is if you’re stacking a team and the opp team doesn’t feel like playing ball.
Even in l4d 4v4 this isn’t a ‘problem’ that needs any sort of a ‘solution’ above a matchmaking system. 8v8 doesn’t even need that and finishing a map in a video game should never be a job requiring coercion or the game is broken.
[QUOTE=signofzeta;213203]depends on how smart the bots are lol.
[/QUOTE]
no, its too early[2010 AC] to develop AI, inteligent enough to join game, without humans help.
Thank you everyone for your replies!
@ Voxie (punctuated by namlot), I completely forgot about the automatic bot slot fill. That makes a HUGE difference to the situation. All the games that I have had negative experiences with are bot-less. Bot A.I. is never as good as humans, but it does help.
@ AnthonyDa, 360 L4D (2) and TF2 all support drop-in, drop-out gameplay. You remind me of something important. The “matchmaking” and “hosting” of TF2 for the 360 is very reminiscent of PC games in general, and the frequent quitting and rejoining of players is hardly felt. I have experienced this, and remember being surprised by it. Auto-balance is on, and the game just continues. Unless you are looking for it, you may not even notice the changes in roster. L4D1 and 2 are similar, except that with the smaller numbers and the incredible importance of working together, the game degenerates very rapidly unless someone jumps in very quickly. I am hopeful that whenever the update drops to the 360, the Special Infected bot addition will take care of this.
[QUOTE=light_sh4v0r;213166]In a game like this on pub level play there is no reason to penalize something like this.
Games like League of Legends DO penalise leavers, but only if you leave AND DO NOT RETURN before teh game ends. In this game being 1 man down is an instant loss unless he was shit and the entire other team is. The penalty means you get no xp for that match and a counter next to your name showing your leaves. That is all, and it’s a good system imo. It gives you a bad reputation, but it doesn’t stop you from doing it again.[/QUOTE]
Having an ever-present counter next to your name indicating your leaves (or even your stay:leave ratio) would probably almost satisfy me. If I were hosting the room, I could just immediately boot the quitter before the game even started.
For those of you who don’t play console, I guess I would suggest that you think of the most irritating (i.e., FUN-wrecking) thing that happens to you when playing your PC games. Then, think that you had no power to change it. And, that sometimes you might spend a whole hour trying to play your favorite game, but because of others’ behaviour, you only got to play 5 minutes of the game the way it was intended to be played. That is what I am talking about.
Some pretty good points 3suns and I know the design team are trying hard to make sure this isn’t an issue. Hopefully having hot join in Brink, so players fill gaps others have made, will help keep games flowing well and in the interim, like L4D, an AI will fill that empty slot.
will you implement host migration for p2p games on consoles?
please tell me that won’t be necessery because there will be dedicated servers.
[QUOTE=3Suns;213229]
For those of you who don’t play console, I guess I would suggest that you think of the most irritating (i.e., FUN-wrecking) thing that happens to you when playing your PC games. Then, think that you had no power to change it. And, that sometimes you might spend a whole hour trying to play your favorite game, but because of others’ behaviour, you only got to play 5 minutes of the game the way it was intended to be played. That is what I am talking about.[/QUOTE]
Well, you should also consider that the problem your talking about might be on YOUR end. Similarly to the issue of /kill in firefights, i consider that the problem of the guy that wants to get that kill badly - AND ONLY HIS.
Sometimes changing your approach to other’s behaviour might be more efficient then trying to enforce your standards. I believe the name for that is tolerance.
I am not sarcastic at this time, I have not played console QW, but so far you have failed to convince me that it is such a huge issue there. I know its an issue for you, but I do not really know WHY.
On topic:
making people want to stay longer, through some ‘relentless’ award that is bumped everytime you stay the whole game could be very interesting.
Penalising players for leaving the game when they want seems awfuly bad.
Leavers shouldn’t be punished for obvious reasons, but they shouldn’t be rewarded either. I think we had the discussion in another thread of making players want to stay till the end, like accumulative XP acquired throughout the match that will only be obtained on completion etc, therefore giving them a reason to stay regardless if they are winning or losing. Also not putting emphasis win/loss ratios should detract from it as well. QuakeLive seems rife with players worried about their ratio and quit at the 1st sign of maybe losing.
This is why I say there should be more focus on the reasons why people rage quit (given that people who quit for other RL reasons will go anyway). Ensuring teams are balanced and imbalanced matches are not worth either side playing should encourage some self balancing.
