Anesthesiac

Join Date 02/2008

Planned anti-ragequit measures address the wrong things

I think the current plans to address rage-quits will only lead to new problems. If the planned v1.1 changes go ahead, we will see concede button spamming, deliberate feeding, and AFKs sitting by their own citadel. If someone wants to quit a match, they are going to do it. And here's the thing: THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE. The fixes are addressing the wrong things.

For my purposes, I'm defining rage-quitting as someone leaving before the winner of the game could reasonably be decided (generally in the first 1/3 of a game).

Why do we hate rage-quitting?

-It is "unsportsmanlike." Or, "if you never finish losing games you don't learn / get better."

There isn't much to say about this. They are very subjective points, and not something that can or should be enforced. If someone didn't learn good sportsmanship on the playground/field as a kid, believe me, they aren't going to learn it playing Demigod. Nor should we be trying to force people to improve their play via experience. This is a game, it is at their own discretion.

-It badly stacks the odds against the rage-quitter's teammates.

Leaving will always ruin the game for your teammates (assuming they wanted to stay). However, providing incentives for someone to sit around afk or feed their oponents, thereby deliberately griefing their own team is strictly WORSE.

-It makes the game boring (unchallenging) for the opponents of the rage-quitter.

Especially true when someone leaves very early (first 5 minutes). If you want to get your deserved favor and a win on your record you have to stick around and finish a (possibly 20+ minute) comp-stomp. This frustration multiplies when one rage-quitter creates (an understandable) chain reaction of leavers on one team.

These are the most basic issues as I see it. Only the 2nd and 3rd points are within the power of devs to improve. Punishing rage quitters is not going to solve your problems for reasons already touched on here and discussed at length elsewhere. Nor is a concede button the answer if there can be no agreement on a team as to when is the right time to concede.

What should be done, is attempt to MINIMIZE the impact of 2nd and 3rd points. The best thing you can do for the remaining allies on the rage-quitter's team is to give them control over the demigod that left the game. (Exactly the way WC3 handles it when a player leaves.) If this is impossible, the next best thing you can do is minimize the stigma / responsibility the remaining player(s) feels to actually remain in that game if they (understandably) do not want to play with a bot. Don't tag them with a scarlet letter for leaving the game at this point.

To minimize the impact to the opponents of the rage-quitter I see two good options. First, granting control of the leaver's toon to his remaining teammates makes the game better for their opponents too. Again, if this is not a viable solution, then as soon as the last player leaves on one team, the game should immediately end, with all players on the other team earning the win in the pantheon and the corresponding favor.

Lastly, fix the matchmaking to record all games and improve its ability to match players based on skill. Fix the networking code (obv.) so that the time required to get into your next game is not so daunting. If people thought they could jump right into another game, they wouldn't care so much that their current game just turned into a bust.

I'm sure someone else will have more (better) ideas, but I really think the plans for v1.1 address the problem all wrong.

demigod

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woppin

the object of a good system is to inform other players, before a game starts, what your habits are like.

alot of games keep track of things like a player's disconnect rate so the rest of us can get an idea of what kind of issues they might have. will help clue other players in to that player either have a bad internet connection or being a bad sport.

once a game starts there's nothing that can be done. the system should be geared entirely to providing information to play partners before a game ever starts.

the biggest issue is that while this will entirely work for Custom Games it does nothing for Pantheon/Skirmish games. i think they honestly just screwed up when they decided to launch Pantheon games without lobbies. the rage quitting thing is just a symptom of that larger problem. without lobbies the players cannot discriminate amongst the games they actually WANT to play and the ones they don't.

Pantheon needs lobbies. players need a disconnect rate tracked and made public for everyone to see. that fixes the problem as well as is possible.

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What should be done, is attempt to MINIMIZE the impact of 2nd and 3rd points.

prevention before cure

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Ragequitting is a fact of life.

That said, what is the solution for it? When ragequitting happens, which it will, and indeed ragequitters deserve some mild penalty for it but it's still going to happen--what should the game do?

How about: bring in another person who is que'd for pantheon, and give him the level and gold of the quitter, whether it is by rage or accidental disconnect? The downside is, this could lead to people being brought in for the last few seconds of the game, so maybe if the citadel is below 50% or by some calculable measure the game is so lopsided that it is in effect lost, then you don't bring anybody in. But if it's midway through or before I think that might work.

For custom games, there could be a pause feature to replace the member who quit. Somehow, the different teams would have to agree on it.

This is not the final solution but some thoughts. Ragequitting is inevitable. If ragequitting breaks the game, and the game cannot work around the occasional rage quitter, then the game is broken.

Well clearly some things need fixing up but I think it's all going to work out, even if it takes a couple more months.

(...oh and P.S. I like the idea of handing control of the Demigod to a remaining teammate. This is a better solution for later in the game. Bringing in a new player I think is better for earlier on.)

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Good post.

comp-stomps shouldnt be happening since the game is over once all human opponents leave.

If someone is sitting afk to avoid disconnect penalties, maybe a replay system combined with a centralised group of moderators could combat this? Submit a replay of the game in question, mods review it, player is penalised. This would need to be done by Stardock though, or it would be open to abuse. Frogboy did mention something about having moderators play with us to remove the bad eggs, though that was a while ago and the community response was underwhelming iirc.

If one member of your team leaves, surely the other two can just click the concede button.

And I agree with trans about Pantheon needing lobbies. Matching people together who are in different regions is a bit useless and this would help that problem as well.

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This all doesn't make much sense until the stats work like they should.

Right now I think 20% of my games aren't counted in my stats at all.

I got many disconnects on my stats for no reason.

I even got a lose for game yesterday that I didn't even play, and in exchange a game I won wasn't counted.

So as long as the stats don't work right it makes no sense to have any % of whatever.

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I did, but if the planned changes do go ahead, what I suggested would be an attempt to improve the situation. If they are going to track disconnects in general, having an appeal process whereby replays can be submitted would alleviate a lot of the false positives and also remove the problem of people sitting afk.

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WC3 supports the direct controlling of multiple units on a much more fundamental level than Demigod. Giving the control of a quitter's DG to others in the team would take a lot of coding, I believe. An easy solution would be to award no Gold/XP for killing a bot in multiplayer. That way they wouldn't feed the enemy but wouldn't still be overpowering in any shape or form.

The idea of a game ending in victory once all opponents have turned into bots is pure gold, though. Might be worth it to give an option of staying for each victor if they so wanted, but also offer the chance at victory and favor gain right off the bat.

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What about fixing the issues that makes a ragequitter rage?

Like the BLACK SCREEN OF PURE PUNISHMENT for 30 seconds when you die?
Make adjustments to the small things. For instance, let players be able to shop while they are dead. Or anything that requires some thinking instead of raging.

Sure, a good player review system would probably help (make people feel they have a reputation that could get ruined, get people involved), but it's still the gameplay issues that makes people rage. When you have to remove the "LEAVE GAME" button to stop people leaving (did I laugh at that change or what), maybe you should start thinking about WHY people are leaving instead.

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Quoting ippi,

reply 10

What about fixing the issues that makes a ragequitter rage?

This.

Demigod has one of the steepest slippery slope effects I've seen in games for quite a while and the fact that you are punished while your opponent is simultaneously rewarded for player deaths most certainly does not help matters. A lot of games are effectively ended in 5-10 minutes however you are still forced to sit around for at least another 5-10 minutes to actually end the game and that sucks balls, for both teams involved.

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So instead of punishing rage quiters...why don't you award players who stay to the end of the game even if they lose with a little more favor points then the 10-20 you usually get?

IE:

Winning nets you 100-200 points depending on how well you do, while losing nets you 50-100 instead of 0-30. That way you can lose a few games and still get some decent points as long as you stay till the very end.

Leaving should always give you no favor points. In fact, leaving should make you LOSE 10 favor points or something to that effect.

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Quoting ippi,

reply 10

What about fixing the issues that makes a ragequitter rage?

Like the BLACK SCREEN OF PURE PUNISHMENT for 30 seconds when you die?
Make adjustments to the small things. For instance, let players be able to shop while they are dead. Or anything that requires some thinking instead of raging.

Sure, a good player review system would probably help (make people feel they have a reputation that could get ruined, get people involved), but it's still the gameplay issues that makes people rage. When you have to remove the "LEAVE GAME" button to stop people leaving (did I laugh at that change or what), maybe you should start thinking about WHY people are leaving instead.

I like this idea as well. Sure, we shouldn't be able to do anything while we are dead to help our teamates, but I'd like to at least see my ability tree so I can plan how to not get killed again.

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So instead of punishing rage quiters...why don't you award players who stay to the end of the game even if they lose with a little more favor points then the 10-20 you usually get?

I think this was the problem being discussed in point #2. Awarding points to people who stick around is likely just going to make John Q. Ragequitter consider going AFK and getting a drink instead of actually playing out the game.

That's assuming a paltry 20 points has any effect at all on his behavior (assuming, further, that our subject even cares about favor in the first place).

Personally, I still think that the best general effect we can have is to simply stop punishing the winning players with comp-stomps when the losing players take off which is already happening as I understand it. If it's possible to give control of a leaver's DG to the team, then I'd be all for it but as was said, I imagine that's much easier said than done. Working stats (which include disconnects) are also a must and I wouldn't argue with support for 'personal' (as opposed to general) banlists as well.

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a bit offtopic: i'm not sure if i'm right here to post this question but i wonder what is if i quit if all members of the opposing team (not my own) have allready quit. does it count as loss, win oder depends it on the ending it will have with rest of my teammates?

i would find it correct to count it as win as soon everybody of the opposing team has left, thus not forcing the other to continue playing against ais.

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I for one don't even care about the favor points when I'm winning. I have far more than enough in a month of playing to buy every favored item I could ever want, and I really only want one anyway.

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You guys are right there is a high slippery slope in this game, and the death screen does give players a lot of time to think about whether they want to keep playing or not. The death penalty is excessive. Giving the team that killed you some gold and putting you back at the citadel, and black screen of death for 10 seconds should be enough.

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If someone wants to quit a match, they are going to do it. And here's the thing: THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE

I'm not sure where you've gotten the notion that the new changes will make people UNABLE to leave games.

Go ahead and leave and eat your disconnect. I'm not sure why you care so much about it given your lack of concern for the rest of the players in the game.

What about fixing the issues that makes a ragequitter rage?

Like the BLACK SCREEN OF PURE PUNISHMENT for 30 seconds when you die?

I agree the death screen is crap. You need to be able to do SOMETHING while dead - you can't even watch the action because they threw a stupid blur filter over everything. Remove the blur, and let people watch what your team is up to.

In a FPS like Counterstrike when you die you're dead for a while - but you get to watch everyone else while you wait.

In Demigod a death = quick bathroom break because you can't do a thing.

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Quoting InfiniteVengeance,

reply 18

Go ahead and leave and eat your disconnect. I'm not sure why you care so much about it given your lack of concern for the rest of the players in the game.

If you are directly addressing me, then you should know that I stick around to the end of the game, even when I'm losing, unless for some reason I'm being verbally abused (which is yet to happen in ~40 games). If that was a more general "you," then I think you have simply misread my point. I didn't say anything anywhere about tracking the disconnect % (although asking this game to accurately track stats is a joke at the moment). The point of my statement was that punishing the rage quitters is not going to solve your problem.

Removing the things that cause rage quitting, and minimizing the effects of a rage-quit on everyone else in the match are the solutions. Anything else is a waste of energy.

Like the BLACK SCREEN OF PURE PUNISHMENT for 30 seconds when you die?
In a FPS like Counterstrike when you die you're dead for a while - but you get to watch everyone else while you wait.

This is an easy fix that I had entirely overlooked, good suggestion Ippi. My personal opinion is that the time out of the game is about right, maybe 20-25 seconds would be enough though. At a bare minimum, let people watch the action unfiltered.

Regarding my suggestion of letting people take control of a leaver's toon -- I too suspect this is more coding than GPG will be willing to do, but I don't KNOW it. That's why I offered it with the caveat of "if possible." As for the match ending as soon as the last human on one team leaves the game, it wouldn't have to automatically end, but SHOULD throw up a screen notifying the remaining team that they have won, favor and the win have been granted, and they can either click "leave game" or "continue playing" if they actually want the comp-stomp.

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Quoting transitive,

reply 1

i think they honestly just screwed up when they decided to launch Pantheon games without lobbies. the rage quitting thing is just a symptom of that larger problem. without lobbies the players cannot discriminate amongst the games they actually WANT to play and the ones they don't.

Pantheon needs lobbies. players need a disconnect rate tracked and made public for everyone to see. that fixes the problem as well as is possible.

I appreciate your input, but I have to disagree here. The lobby for Pantheon/Skirmish (aka ladder) games defeats the purpose. You are playing in the ladder, the system must be able to match you appropriately. Otherwise, picking and choosing your opponents makes for a pretty worthless ranking system.

In order for Pantheon/Skirmish to work, stats must track correctly. And the match making system needs to be improved for matching players of similar skill. Of course, improving matchmaking is impossible until wins/losses are recorded correctly and recorded every match.

Arranged teams would also go a long way towards fixing the issue in pantheon/skirmish modes, as your buddy is not likely to bail on you, nor is the other team, since arranged teams are only matched against other arranged teams (amiright?). If the other team does bail, it won't just be one rage-quitter, it will be the whole team leaving. At that point, the game now informs you that you have won (congratulations!), and asks you if you would like to leave or continue playing in a comp-stomp.

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I think the REAL problem with Pantheon and skirmish is the ability to see who you're going to play BEFORE the game starts. In Warcraft 3 once you search for a game the game starts immediately once it finds people. No chance to watch the stupid connection window and bail if you don't like what you see. Frogboy has said many of the Pantheon/Skirmish problems and bugs are because people are quitting before the game starts and the engine doesn't know what to do. I know what to do - don't let people quit before they know a game is starting - do the connections behind the scenes transparently and start the game once everyone connects without notifying the player who they are connecting to.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

People who abandon their teams at the first sign of losing are not necessarily the kind of people others may want to play with.

The more information people have, the better.

v1.1 will have a team concede option. If the team thinks it's doomed, they can vote to concede.

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People who abandon their teams at the first sign of losing are not necessarily the kind of people others may want to play with.

While true, not all rage-quitters fall into this category. I don't have any data about it, but from my experience, quitting games seems to happen alot more frequently half-way in than very early-on. In either case, it seems like both could be dealt with through team-balancing.

v1.1 will have a team concede option. If the team thinks it's doomed, they can vote to concede.

I don't quite see what this solves. I would think the goal would be to maximize the fun parts of the game for both sides, rather than institutionalizing rage-quitting.

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I don't quite see what this solves. I would think the goal would be to maximize the fun parts of the game for both sides, rather than institutionalizing rage-quitting.

It may not be ideal but at least now, the game will simply end in a victory for the winning team when people quit rather than forcing the winners to sit through a boring comp-stomp first.

It's a quick step in the right direction while other issues that take a bit more time (like rebalancing other factors of gameplay) are worked on.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 22

People who abandon their teams at the first sign of losing are not necessarily the kind of people others may want to play with.

The more information people have, the better.

v1.1 will have a team concede option. If the team thinks it's doomed, they can vote to concede.

I appreciate that you stopped in to respond, but you really didn't address any of the points/suggestions being made by me or others. You only reiterated what is already known and several people have already offered arguments as to why the concede option doesn't actually help the problem in any meaningful way. If you have offered rebuttals to those arguments elsewhere, then I apologize because I have clearly missed them.

100% agree with you on this. However this has nothing to do with rage-quitting.

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Well constructed argument. It's amazing to see the players giving these issues more thought than the devs. A punishment system is BAD BAD BAD on so many levels it could well kill this game. gg GPG

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It may not be ideal but at least now, the game will simply end in a victory for the winning team when people quit rather than forcing the winners to sit through a boring comp-stomp first.

Well, I see the value in this, definitely. My complaint is that the Concede thing is mentioned as a solution, rather than triage like you describe it.

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