Rage-quitting. We’ve all experienced it. Heck, we’ve all done it. Don’t lie. Everyone’s had that time when they were losing so hard they scream, close the game, throw their monitor through the window, light their house on fire, collect the insurance money, and move to Mexico. It’s a sad certainty of online gaming and, let’s face it, it sucks. When your opponent rage-quits you might get a win, but it’s profoundly unsatisfying to have a match cut short only a few minutes in. When a teammate rage-quits it’s even worse. Now your team is down a member and, in most online games, that’s a recipe for insta-loss.

Overwatch attempts to fix this problem the old fashioned way: PUNISHMENT! Leave enough games early and you’ll get a penalty, cutting your EXP by a pretty hefty 75%. The penalty kicks in once you have left 4 out of your last 20 games and doesn’t go away until that ratio drops. This means the amount of time you spend penalized will largely depend on how often you rage-quit. Spread your rage-quits out and you might only have to play one or two games to completion to be back in good standing. Rage-quit four times in a row and you are looking at 17 games before you get your XP penalty removed.

On paper this sounds great. The threat of losing XP will make rage-quitters bite their collective lips and play like everyone else right? Well, as is the case with most things that sound good on paper, it astronomically fails in practice. In fact, I’d say that the leaver penalty is making the Overwatch experience worse than if there was no penalty at all.

Problem #1: Lack of Transparency

The first issue with this incredibly flawed system is that all of the info I just gave you about the leaver penalty isn’t available anywhere in game. Fans had to rigorously experiment with the system just to figure out how it worked. The most you get is a “warning” after reaching three quit games. This warning only says that if you continue to leave games you will receive a penalty. It doesn’t tell you how many games you have to leave, nor does it tell you what the penalty will be. It also doesn’t tell you what you need to do to remove the penalty.

Since players aren’t adequately warned about what triggers the penalty, they don’t stick around for games to avoid it. In a sense, the penalty only serves to punish people after they rage-quit, but does nothing to deter them before hand. But a deterrent is what we want! There’s no use in punishment if the rest of the Overwatch public is going to have to deal with rage-quits out of ignorance anyway.

It’s also not clear when leaving a game counts as a quit. If you stick around past the match results screen and a new match starts, even if it’s just a few seconds in, you will get a strike toward the leaver penalty if you quit. This is pretty common behavior in other shooters, especially when you aren’t sure whether you want to play a new match or not. In any other game, you would simply disconnect and a new player would take your place before much progress had been lost. In Overwatch, you are one step closer to punishment.

Problem #2: False Positives

Overwatch also has a no tolerance policy when it comes to deciding what counts as a “quit.” If you leave a game through the menu, that’s a quit. However, if you get disconnected while trying to join a match, that’s also a quit. If your internet hiccups in the middle of a game, that’s a quit. If you time-out due to inactivity, that’s a quit. If you leave the match for any reason at any time other than the “match results” screen, that’s a quit.

This system is practically designed to rake in false positives. Blizzard is still having latency issues with some of their servers. Some players are getting the leaver penalty just for repeatedly trying to connect to an unresponsive server. Others who live in areas with less stable internet are getting the leaver penalty when their service drops them. Similarly, there are many gamers who are currently gaming using “jetpacks”, which convert 4G signals into wi-fi hotspots. Verizon gave these out to customers who could not receive service during their employee strike. These, too, could randomly drop your connection and leave you with the leaver penalty. Heck, some players have reported dropping their connections, joining back up as quick as they could, and dropping again, and getting two strikes toward the leaver penalty in the same game!

And the time-out system is just as broken. In the beta, people would avoid the leaver penalty simply by idling, so Blizzard made the game kick you if you didn’t participate. However, you get kicked only after a very short period of time (gamers are reporting 15-20 seconds.) I couldn’t tell you the time exactly, but I can say I wasn’t able to get up and go to the bathroom quick enough to avoid a boot. This means that if you want to avoid the leaver penalty in Overwatch, you have to dedicate your entire life to Overwatch in that very minute. If the door rings, ignore it. If your phone rings, let it. If your dog needs to get outside to pee, sorry Fido, there’s XP to earn. It’s completely unreasonable to expect gamers to not even take the time to get themselves a drink of water in the middle of a game. That’s cruel and unusual punishment!

Problem #3: Reduced Game Quality

What about the players who are aware of the penalty and want to rage-quit anyway? You’d assume under this system they would sigh, give up their rage-quitting ways, and just play, right?

Wrong! Couldn’t be more wrong.

Having a penalty system doesn’t make you want to play the game any more. It just makes you want to do anything you can to avoid consequences and still stop playing. The combined ingenuity of the internet is always more powerful than an algorithm, and it’s not that hard to make your character seem like they are active when you aren’t at the controls. Not to mention, the Overwatch crowd is filled with former TF2 players, and TF2 players know how to idle. How else are you going to get hats?

So now, instead of straight-up rage-quitting, players rage-idle. They either use programs or, for the console version, rubber bands and tape to keep their character moving and acting without actually playing the game. This might seem silly to you. After all, why spend so much effort to spoof activity when you could just play the game. But you are missing the point. Rage-quitters rage-quit because they don’t WANT to be playing the game. They will happily go get a sandwich while their character runs in circles just to run out the game clock.

This causes yet ANOTHER problem in that it reduces rage-quitter turnover. In a game without a penalty system it sucks when a teammate rage-quits, but there’s always a chance that a new player will take their place and then you’ll be back in the game. With the leaver penalty in place, it incentivizes rage-quitters to stick around and do nothing. This increases the chance that your team will be down a player and will be stuck that way!

But let’s say that a rage-quitter doesn’t have access to the technology needed to make their character idle without getting kicked. Maybe there’s a horrible rubber band shortage after the great rubber band war of 2016. Even if a rage-quitter is still at the controls it doesn’t behoove them to play well. Rather, it behooves them to play as poorly as possible, even to work against their team if they can. Why? Because that makes the game end quicker, which makes them free of the threat of penalty quicker, which allows them to quit quicker, which is what they wanted to do in the first place.

In short, game quality is being affected negatively by this penalty system, because it only requires you to play to avoid the penalty. It doesn’t require you to play well.

Problem #4: Lack of Consequence

Finally, we have the simplest problem with the leaver penalty: it doesn’t do anything to a good portion of the rage-quitting populace. You see, the rewards you get for leveling up are purely aesthetic. You can get new costumes, new voice clips, new win-poses, and new sprays, but none of this affects the gameplay. There are plenty of gamers who simply don’t care about aesthetics, and for them the leaver penalty isn’t a threat at all.

Granted, the leaver penalty will keep them at a lower level, which might mean that they will get matched up with people who are below their skill level frequently. But to some this would be a good thing! Their “punishment” for rage-quitting is being put into games that they are more likely to win. That’s barely a punishment at all.

A Better Solution

So if the current leaver penalty is negatively affecting gameplay, what can be done to fix it? Obviously removing it would just bring us back to rage-quitting hell, so we need a solution with more finesse.

Well, first we need to think about what our goal is, which should be to keep players around and playing as hard as they can.

So the first thing we should do is tie winning to the leaver penalty. In this new system, the leaver penalty would be instantly lifted if you win a game. This will keep people playing and playing hard.

The penalty could also kick in sooner, but with less severity. After one rage-quit you’ll get a penalty of 10% XP. Then 25%, then 50%, then 75% for each consecutive rage-quit. Each time you finish your penalty lessens a grade and, once again, if you win once it gets removed completely.

But XP alone won’t motivate everyone. So for repeat offenders we need a more concrete punishment. Many have suggested a sort of “rage-quitter hell” such as the one that Heroes of the Storm implements, where repeat rage-quitters can only be put into games with other rage-quitters. That’s a decent solution, but I have something even more sadistic in mind. If you have rage-quit enough times that your penalty is maxed out, and you rage-quit again, not only will your next game award you 0 XP, but the servers will purposefully kick you right at the end. That way you don’t get to reap the awards of your victory. In short, the game rage-quits you.

Finally, I’d institute one other, possibly convoluted system. Basically, every player would have one BRB and one GTG token. During a match they can use their BRB token to disable the timed kick system, and they can use their GTG token to leave once without incurring the rage-quit penalty. Using either, however, disables the token until you win a game (not just complete a game). One again, this will give leeway to players who have real life issues to attend to, and will keep players playing as hard as they can so that they get that leeway once again.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there is any good way to handle disconnects unless the client can tell the difference between a connection drop and a force close of the program. What do you think? How would you solve the rage-quitting problem? Let us know in the comments.