đź’ˇ Leaver? Then Freeze a Player ?

Competitive Discussion
1

All of us have gotten into unfair matches in Competitive whereby one person leaves and the games a 5 v 6.

There was an earlier post made here, https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/leaver-then-place-a-bot/2745
that suggested replacing it with a BOT, however I was wondering why not freeze 1 player on the team with more players until the leaver gets back ? Thereby making it a fair 5 v 5 until the leaver is back.

Therefore you wouldn’t ever get into a game mode with a 5 v 6 disadvantage.
It could be 3 v 3 if 3 players left. The question now being how would the game decide whom to freeze until the leaver gets back ? And more importantly what to do with the frozen player , how long do we keep him frozen ?

Maybe you guys could brain storm some possibilities ?

The Best Ideas, summarizing the discussion..

Proposal 1 (What to do with the frozen / benched player)

1 Like
2

That’s a great idea!

I personally would love to ask my team if it’s ok to stay passive when the enemy team has a leaver. While many players would like to abuse their advantage, I prefer to keep the game fair.

However, there is one problem with that idea: who do you freeze?
There has to be some sort of system that doesn’t feel unfair.

The system could pick one at random yet if, for example, picks the only healer in the team, the team might be screwed. That could be solved by choosing a player who plays the same hero class as the leaver.

Maybe some sort of voting system might be implemented but that might cause “unfair” votings against players who, for example, plays off-meta.

Another problem would be the question: How do you freeze a player?

Huge criteria should be that the frozen player can’t have an impact on the game in any way and that the player has no unfair advantage when being frozen.

Making the player into a ghost or putting them into general spectator mode would allow them to abuse it by ghosting.

The only 2 ways that came to my mind would be to either lock the player in spawn or move them in team spectator. Those seem to have the lowest risk to be abused or to have an influence on the game.

:dragon:

3

I don’t think that sounds good at all, then you punish other players for someone elses toxicity / Bad internet connection.

I don’t know what a good solution would be, but I think they should be much harder on people leaving competative, banning competative play etc. If you have a bad connection and can’t play the game properly you shouldn’t ruin it for everyone else.

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4

You can put the frozen player in Spectate mode until the leaver comes back ?
Perhaps they can’t even communicate with the rest of the team ?
Like disable there voice / text while in spectate mode.

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5

Actually, I mentioned that :sweat_smile:
The frozen player mustn’t be put into general spectator mode. Otherwise he knows the location of the enemy team, giving the frozen player and their team an unfair advantage.

Disabling chat or communication would only help a little bit. If you play in a group, you might as well communicate with 3rd party programs like discord.

The only spectator mode which would be OK would be the team spectator mode. It’s the one you see when you are dead and waiting to respawn.

6

Yeah team spectate mode works, but how would the game decide whom to freeze ?

The other question being imagine, if there was some kind of mechanism to decide whom to freeze, does the frozen player gain or lose SR based on the outcome of the game ?

Hard problems :stuck_out_tongue: !

7

That’s a hard question.
Letting the frozen player lose/gain full SR seem unfair because the frozen player didn’t have an impact on the game, the SR gain/loss either an unearned reward or punishment.

You could reduce the SR gain/loss based on the frozen-time:match-time ratio. That would give the frozen player the “deserved amount of SR gain/loss”. However, since giving the leaver’s team a compensation could be exploitable, a compensation for the frozen player might be exploitable as well, I guess…

Either the players or the system could choose the player.

If the players choose, then a voting system will be added. The one with the most votes will be frozen. If there’s a tie, one of the tied players will be chosen at random.

The only problem that might occur is that biases or power differences have an impact on the votes. Maybe a Symmetra player will be voted or the solo-queuing player gets voted by the 5-player group.

If the system chooses, it would do it randomly. However, there could be some configuration.

One would be to apply “prefer same class”. If the leaver played an offensive hero, then a player playing an offensive hero will be picked.

Another one could be based on the “yeti hunt” arcade game when choosing to be yeti or hunter: Players can choose to “prefer frozen”. If the system has to choose a player, those who chose “prefer frozen” will be picked. If there is a tie, one of the tied players will be chosen at random.

1 Like
8

Yeah the problem with that is it can be abused. So if a Leaver picked a Mercy and left on purpose, the system would freeze up a mercy on the other team. The leaver was just looking for a way to abuse the system, and target the mercy player.

I think it has to come down to a team vote, that the players (on the side that needs to freeze a player) would have to vote on.

9

Yeah, that would happen. What if the system checks which hero class have the leaver played the longest.

That way, the leaver couldn’t quickly pick another hero class (offensive/defensive/tank/healer) for a few seconds before leaving and manipulate the system.

If a leaver wants’s to abuse the system, he would have to plan to leave beforehand.

That might have its own problems. Such a voting system might cause things like…

Players who play in solo queue or with controversial heroes might have a bad time in comp because they would get voted most of the time.

What if we made a hybrid of both voting system and random picks?
I’ve mentioned before the idea of “prefer frozen”…

Let’s say, once a team has a leaver, the other team will get an alert that a player will be frozen in 30 seconds. During that timeframe, players can choose to “prefer frozen”. The team could brainstorm about who should be frozen and the player volunteers to be frozen.

If multiple players choose “prefer frozen”, the system will pick one of them at random. If nobody volunteers, then the system will choose any of them at random.

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10

I have mentioned this as an option many times I personally believe that the game should pause the moment there is a leaver then the team with out a leaver gets to vote or volunteer to bench one team mate that team mate will then lose half sr if its a lose for their team or gain 5 more sr if win. if the other player comes back then game pauses then everyone comes back in.

11

Agree, unless there would be a vote system… For who wants to get the freeze…

Quick toilet break or so could be nice haha i dont know how that should work, but IF they would freeze, then a vote option is the only way to NOT punish someone… if no one votes, then well i dont know lol

12

If No one votes, then it’s a Roulette, that spins and randomly benches / freezes a team mate.

13

Just my opinion, this sounds like a bad idea. Of course it is a disadvantage for the team to have a leaver, but we all get that from time to time and to punish a player for someones else faults is not the way, also I highly doubt Blizzard would implement this.

Having a bot fighting for the team sounds much better, at least you dont punish other people for something they dont deserve to be punished for.

14

kelvin, I wouldnt say its punishing the team getting a frozen player. Its just making it a fair fight which would have happened if there wasnt a leaver in the first place. And its not giving them an guaranteed win when they mightve lost if it wasnt 5v6

15

Well if that’s true, that you don’t punish other people for 1 leavers mistake… What would you rather do punish 5 other people for 1 leaver or partially punish 1 person ?
That 1 person would be part of the SR gain / loss in the end, so it’s not a full loss for him/her.

It’s only a question of punishing a smaller audience for the good of the larger audience in case of a leaver.

16

When leavers go , as a team , we are 1 less , more easier for other team to win , so often they do that , and we loose points in compative , Blizzard do something there , its not right. BLIZZARD you must understand.

17

So you say : Punish the enemy Team because u have a leaver?

Hell no thats the worst idea i have ever heard of.

2 Likes
18

I have a simple solution for this. You need to freeze a player but who would be the fair pick? I think it’s the one who died last and respawns. When another player dies, they will get stuck at spawn and the previous player can leave spawn. It will circle all the players if they keep dying, so no one will be permanently left out. That way everyone gets to play and it’s still 5v5.

1 Like
19

Why is it a bad idea ? It’s just balancing the playing field and giving both teams a fair enough chance. For the team that lost the player it’s fair because they know it’s worth fighting, for the team that has more players, it’s no longer an easy game win because of a leaver on the other side.

In all this solution could balance out wins / losses caused by leavers.

The point, being we want to get to a state whereby Leavers don’t impact the outcome of a game, that so many people spend the last 15 mins on. It’s a value proposition, and if done right Overwatch would become the first game in the history of games to ever have such a feature.

Thats a good idea about rotating the frozen player but then there is a problem.
You would have inconsistent pushes going in for a fight, making it such that you don’t have your main tank for one push, or your main heal for another one.

It also leaves the mechanism open for abuse, whereby the enemy team can just keep killing the healer or tank to keep them frozen for the next fight.

Which is why it won’t work. The most fairest idea would be to allow a unanymous vote or if someone opted to stay frozen. The frozen player would be bored just having to watch the game. The frozen player would be allowed to leave the game after few minutes (without a ban, or an SR loss immediately), and he’ll be notified about the SR gain / loss when the current game comes to an end. That way the frozen player doesn’t really have to spectate the entire game. Stay in frozen state, for the first few minutes and if he thinks the other guy isn’t coming back he can move on to the next game. This makes the game balanced instead of having to play the 4 v 6 games. That gives Hope !

20

This isn’t as easy as it might sound like at first. In order to keep a player at spawn, you would actively have to NOT kill anyone else so they couldn’t leave spawn right after. That means the rest of the team becomes untouchable rambos who can take risks, knowing they won’t be the one to be killed. If a player can leave the spawn when another player enters, they’ll only stay there as long as no one dies. If the enemy team tries to keep the tank there and rest of the players are safe, then the tank is STILL doing a good job saving everyone even without leaving the spawn.