> 2533274920039666;6:
> Though having to deal with quitters on either team is always annoying, I don’t think a “punishment” is the answer. Mostly because with online gaming you can never be 100% sure if it was an actual quit-out or if the individual just lost their internet connection or something. I’ve lagged out of games before because of server issues and it would be very unfair to see my stats take a deliberate hit for something totally out of my control. As other people have said on similar threads, instead of punishing supposed quitters they would do better to reward players who routinely finish their games.
Right. One of those people would be me! Behavioral research shows (I was a behavioral therapist for a number or years… sorry :P) that while punishment changes behavior in the sort term, (ie. the next game) it doesn’t make lasting changes. as soon as the threat of that punishment is removed, the behavior returns. Rewarding good behavior, catching people being “good” rather than “bad”, has better outcomes as it pertains to lasting behavioral change.
That said, there is a place for punishment. While it doesn’t necessarily have a lasting effect, it can have a strong immediate effect. We are dealing with gamers for maybe a couple hours of their day here, not trying to deal with behavioral kids so a strong aspect of punishment would be appropriate as long as it is weighted appropriately with rewards for not quitting.
I had a long post about this during the beta, but here is a snapshot:
1) Punishment should be used for habitual quitters. Not one-off issues. Those who occasionally have a disconnect or irl issue need not worry! Their should be a warning, then immediate follow through on the next instance of quitting within a given time period. If you are AFK for more than 2 minutes, you will get booted from the game and that counts as a quit. For example, everybody gets one quit per hour “for free” no warning, nothing negative, no big deal. Upon the second instance of quitting within that hour, you are presented with a warning that stays on the screen for 10 seconds (that way you are forced to read it) and get put on probation. It would say something like:
> “You have quit for the second time within the past hour. You have been placed on probation for the next hour. If you quit another match within that hour, you will be banned from matchmaking for 15 minutes and lose significant rank points.”
if they don’t quit for the next hour, no harm no foul. They should be alerted when the probation is over. If they do quit again within the hour then they would be alerted with:
> “You have quit another match before your probation period is over. You have now been banned from matchmaking for 15 minutes and will be eligible to search again at [insert time here]. You have also lost an additional x-number of rank points. You will remain on probation for one hour after you start your next game. Remember: every instance of quitting increases your chances of matching up against other habitual quitters.”
If they quit again withing an hour, the last message basically repeats itself. But if they don’t quit for an hour after the next game starts, they will be removed from probation and the entire process resets. They will be alerted that they are off probation and rewarded back half of the additional rank points they lost before. We want to “catch them being good” remember.
2) Rewards should be given to those who start and complete consecutive games. This is important and as much weighting should be given to this as reasonably possible. Ideally this would be happening to players more frequently than the punishments would. Rewards could include things like XP bonuses, avatars, nameplates, armor permutations, achievements, invitations to community events, lotteries, playlist invites to beta test new playlists, early access to DLC, etc etc.