Dealing With Quitters

[H0RSE]

Some console games do have dedicated servers. I know Bad Company and UT have them, but they are provided by the game company. You still won’t find huge server lists with player hosted servers. I know Bad Company is auto connect…you don’t even get to choose which game you join.

[Szakalot]

[QUOTE=3Suns;213387]
I join public matchmaking. It takes between 1 and 5 minutes to “find other players”. Teams are created, the map is loaded, and the game starts. Within 60 seconds of the game starting, 3 of the 8 players on the other team quit (for whatever reason). Within another 30 seconds, more players, knowing they don’t stand a chance of winning, quit. The remaining player(s) either stay, in which case, if it is deathmatch, takes forever to finish because there is now only one or two targets, or they quit, in which case, a minimum of 7 minutes of my gaming time was wasted. That is fine, if it doesn’t happen four+ times in a row! Like I said above, I have literally spent a full hour trying to start and finish a single game! That is bullsh!t.[/QUOTE]

this looks more like a symptom of a dead game than a massive amount of quitters. So I consider the whole argument flawed.

It would be like pointing out the bad health care system in an Anarchy.

Or blaming soldiers for not hitting their target, when they are out of ammo.

[DoubleDigit]

If anyone here played on lulu, then he knows that it’s a nazi server and that it’s not recommended to play on it.

Excuse you? Pfff. I guess you’re one of those that still checks who’s under the bed before going to sleep.

[ap4thy]

You can also leave whenever you want tol…Just because I bought a ticket, doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to show up, or stay for the entire game, and the same thing goes for online gaming…life happens, things come up. It’s a game, not an obligation. I think if people want some sort of penalty for quitting, it should be a server option, like FF.

Ok, look at it this way: If you leave the game, you probably won’t ruin the game for a lot of people. But if a lot of people leave the match, it might ruin the game for the home team (at least some players are very in need of support from the fans).

But a much better example would be if you were actually playing the match yourself. If you’re playing the match, you will definitely get some sort of punishment if you leave without permission. The referee decides when you can and when you can’t leave the pitch (until the match is over of course), so maybe the server host should get to do so too. In other words: server option.

[Szakalot]

[QUOTE=ap4thy;213428]Ok, look at it this way: If you leave the game, you probably won’t ruin the game for a lot of people. But if a lot of people leave the match, it might ruin the game for the home team (at least some players are very in need of support from the fans).

But a much better example would be if you were actually playing the match yourself. If you’re playing the match, you will definitely get some sort of punishment if you leave without permission. The referee decides when you can and when you can’t leave the pitch (until the match is over of course), so maybe the server host should get to do so too. In other words: server option.[/QUOTE]

except that this is FREE FOR ALL, its like a pitch in a highschool, you come and go as you please.

Even less so, because the contact is not personal so there is no peer pressure to stay.

The referee example you speak of looks more like a comp setting, and in that case - indeed - you are punished for leaving the game.

[ap4thy]

The referee example you speak of looks more like a comp setting, and in that case - indeed - you are punished for leaving the game.

You know what? I agree. People take public gaming too serious because they want their stats so badly. If they want everything to be so serious, they should play competitively, public games should be open to leave and join anytime without all those strings attached, that’s one of the main things that differentiates it.

[tokamak]

[QUOTE=Senethro;213363]But the quitters aren’t in a public space, or at least a conventional one. They’re at once in their home and on a shared space with other people in their home. This leads to both people feeling entitled to do what they like and to expect acceptance of this.

Basically I don’t think theres any rules you can construct which would fairly address this without getting in the way for many more people. Its best left up to admin discretion.[/QUOTE]

They’re operating within a game, so I really don’t see why the exact location of gives them immunity to in-game penalties. Same thing with forums, chat rooms or even sport clubs. By joining them you agreed to live by their rules.

That said, an incentive to stay for a while is far more effective and pleasurable than ‘the stick’.

You know what? I agree. People take public gaming too serious because they want their stats so badly. If they want everything to be so serious, they should play competitively, public games should be open to leave and join anytime without all those strings attached, that’s one of the main things that differentiates it.

You don’t think that players who enhance the experience of others by staying longer in the game should be rewarded for doing so?

[ap4thy]

You don’t think that players who enhance the experience of others by staying longer in the game should be rewarded for doing so?

Depends on how the matchmaking is. If the game finds a server for you (a solution I don’t like) then maybe, but if you browse servers yourself, then it doesn’t really matter since someone new can just join and take the place of the one who left.

[signofzeta]

Also the reason people leave is maybe the other people in the server are being a-holes. If people there who are a-holes form of a positive punishment to the players, and therefore, they don’t have fun, and they leave. So if the OP’s idea was in effect? Who gets the blame? The leavers or the a-holes?

If people have the time, they for sure will stay as long as it is fun in the server.

[tokamak]

Asshole players are only a part of the problem, which already other measures are being taken for. For a statwhore it doesn’t matter whether or not the server is pleasurable, as long as it gains his own statistic interests. That’s not a bad thing because statwhores are still players contributing to bigger playerbase. The trick is to make the incentives s so that the statwhores will always be guided into the right kind of behaviour.

[SockDog]

Ahh, the old Jedi defense, “No problem here, move along, move along”.

Minimum, give me an “Arsehole” flag so I can just tag people I don’t want to be matched with or at least know when they’re on the same server as me.

Spend more time working on ways to balance teams so games are challenging for both sides. Think L4D AI director for both sides.

Scrub the reliance on XP as a reward, a necessary evil has taken over the whole core of the game and I doubt any level of rule upon rule tweaking is going to make it a fair system.

Don’t focus at all on Win/Lose stats, don’t even have them. Think of something else, maybe games finished with no AFK.

[Nail]

just have one stat, games won, must have been on winning team 50% of time in

[PSG_Mud]

k/d ratios ruin any kind of teamplay too, it is a highly valued individual stat. TF2 did a good job with it, people arn’t afraid to die.

[Nail]

there will always be ways to track individual stats by third parties, hell, they do a great job with it. That’s great, and a real boost for places like Splatter Ladder. Just have the one “Official” stat, games won

[edit] I’d also like to see time played, time played per class/weapon, maybe per map and side as well

but just games won, time played (with subs)

ok, that’s two stats

[brbrbr]

More like plain stupid actually.

“plain stupid” is join a game which you unable/can’t finish.
you you wanna play - play. if not - leave. BEFORE warmups end.
thats all.
im understand what you mean so this should be divided/tweaked on per-server basis, so we can have more “hardcore” servers, which penalizes somewhat chronical quitters or other gameplay abusers and some "simple and fast"servers for beginners, whose don’t care about gameplay/teamplay too much.

[3Suns]

k/d ratios ruin any kind of teamplay too, it is a highly valued individual stat. TF2 did a good job with it, people arn’t afraid to die.

Yes, and it really is important to eliminate stats that encourage lone wolf play if your game is supposed to be team-oriented. For developers, I think they really have to decide on that one and put their code where their mouth is. Can’t play both sides of the fence. Put a K/D ratio into the mix and this is what happens (from a great WIRED article):

“Most younger players,” he says, “are so obsessed with keeping their kill/death ratio high that they rarely play correctly in tactical games.”

Young players’ superior twitch reflexes might help them keep their kill counts high and their deaths low, but that’s not teamwork. Thompson’s teammate Dave Hill, 32, says cooperation is the secret to their success in modern war games: “We communicate well, play as a team, help each other out and usually stick to a predetermined plan.”

Some oldsters don’t even bother trying to outwit the kids with age and experience. “As you get older, your want to be schooled by a 15-year-old supergamer disappears,” says game writer Chet Faliszek, who works for Valve and worked on Left 4 Dead. “You know you can’t beat him.”

Also, I agree with SockDog about tags or markers or something. Some indication as to how much a player plays (is AFK or quits). That is fair enough.

And THANK YOU brbrbr! Well put!

[Lequis]

I only read sun’s post so forgive me if this has already been said, but you can just give each player a reputation with respect to dropping games (ie rage quitting). Players above a certain percent can only play with each other. As you start out you can have a few, but it levels off at around 8% of your games after about 100 (like Heroes of Newerth if anyone has played it). If you are among rage quitters don’t man-up they screw themselves. XP bonuses at the end help to a small extent, but not always large enough personally I think you should put an end game multiplier in (1.5X for losers 2.0-2.5X per winner). This helps PC as well because there would be servers for those above said 8%, and those that simply do not distinguish.

If you immediately disregard this comment saying “what if you quit your first match?,” 1 of your first ten, 2 out of 15, or 4 out of 25, know that the limit is 8% by 100 games, the lower stages accommodate for chance.

Best of all it’s fairly easy to implement because it has 2 catagories based on a mathematical formula.

[Lequis]

Yes, and it really is important to eliminate stats that encourage lone wolf play if your game is supposed to be team-oriented.

I would say lone wolf play is how it’s supposed to be done. Sorry if I am being a little self-centric, but I think that if 4 players keeping the frontline while 4 others flank from 4 separate directions, your team will be more likely to win than putting all you eggs in one basket and relying on a super rush through a death-funnel.

Of course coordinated rushes (ie with medic and all your guys) can work well when the teams have set up defined perimeters in TF2 and are camping it out (simply because the opposing team was not expecting a large change in the pace of battle), but the flanking aspect (with spy) seems to work even better because it divides both forces and attention and puts the enemy ranks in chaos.

[edit:] sorry I made a TF2 analogy because I read a TF2 reference in your quote.

[Cankor]

k/d ratios ruin any kind of teamplay too, it is a highly valued individual stat. TF2 did a good job with it, people arn’t afraid to die.

how do they do it in TF2?

[Lequis]

there is no leaderboard, your K : D is only shown in a server if you type “rank” into chat, and since server owners can mod the stats of everything in game, mod vision, increase the rate at which trains come by, etc, you can’t ever have a accurate universal leaderboard in the first place (which isn’t to say the top few on MW2 aren’t hacked anyway).