Since I began playing League of Legends a few weeks back when I reviewed it, I’ve noticed that a pretty high percentage of games end up where at least one person quits or goes AFK. This creates a one sided match that for the most part is unwinnable for the team who lost a player and is completely frustrating for the remaining players.
I understand from time to time players need to leave because something comes up or perhaps nature is calling, but for League of Legends I feel that players leaving or going AFK is way too common. Even in the short period of time that I’ve been playing it’s glaringly obvious that there’s a problem and if I had to guess I’d say around 1 in 4 or 5 of my matches fall victim to someone leaving or going AKF. Being the type of gamer that I am, I fight tooth and nail until the very end, so this type of thing is beyond frustrating for me.
In the last 3 days, I’ve had two matches were both my teammates left during a very intense, evenly matched game. In one of those games, only player went AFK from the start, the second left in frustration about half way through. But since I was about 4 levels higher than anyone on the other team, I managed to hold them off for about 8-10 mins before losing. After the match all three of my opponents congratulated me for putting up a worthy fight and they’re all now on my friends list.
What’s more is that not only is LoL plagued by AFKers or players that flat out leave, many players constantly want to surrender the second a match isn’t going their way. I’ve been in a few matches where within the first 5 mins someone on my team is already putting up a surrender vote even though we haven’t lost a single turret. (I’ve been told the min timer is 20 mins to surrender, so it must of been a teammate in chat saying they wanted to surrender). The funny thing is a lot of the times we still win.
It’s also notable that depending on your champion, your build and the items you buy, your champion might not be very good at certain stages of the match. Some champions dominate early, in the middle or at the end, so if you’re using one that doesn’t hit it’s stride until the end levels and your team wants to quit in the middle of a match, that becomes another point of frustration.
I don’t know if a lot of players that do this are just quitters, can’t take losing and rather quit than rally, or are just trying to gain XP without playing, but it’s clear that something needs to be done to fix this issue. It sort of reminds me when BattleNet first came out with Starcraft and players were constantly disconnecting from games so they wouldn’t get a loss on their record. Blizzard eventually added a ‘Disconnect’ counter so that you can avoid those players.
RiotGames needs to do the same. Since there is no loss counter, players don’t care if they go AFK and their team loses because they’ll still get the XP in the end. Players that are AKF for more than x mins should get disconnected from the game adding it to their counter. Then before each match a disconnect percentage would be displayed for each player. I know for me if anyone had over 5% I could just leave the lobby and not waste my time with them.
While I’ve been really enjoying League of Legends, between AFKers and quitters I don’t know if I can see myself continuing to play this in the long run. Hopefully RiotGames will acknowledge the problem and take some steps towards punishing those who quit or go AFK.
People ARE disconnected after 5 minutes of not moving (AFK), leaves/disconnects ARE tallied and people can be banned for doing it often. People can also be reported for such behavior to potentially speed up the process.
There’s a lot of quitters because that’s often what casual games allow (think CoD, one can leave at any time and the match will go on without notice.) It gets better later on when people are more try-hard but there’s not a reliable way to put an end to those kind of players while keeping the game as open and available as it is.
Also, you can’t surrender until the 20 minute mark so how exactly do you see surrender votes at 5?
September 10th, 2011 at 12:19 pmQuote
I might have been mistaken about the 5 mins surrender thing if it is 20 mins minimum. It just seems like it was really early in the match when the surrender vote came up, but maybe it was just someone on my team saying they wanted to quit in the chat.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:26 pmQuote
Actually it was on a 3v3 map that lasts 20-30 mins, so the minimum time must of been less than 20 mins.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:35 pmQuote
The surrender timer is 20 minutes for first vote.
Riot put their LeaverBuster system live about, what, half a year ago or so? In any case, it automatically tracks leaves and AFKs and dispenses punishments. More recently, they rolled out the Tribunal to enlish the playerbase in helping Riot sort through all the reports of bad behavior that people file. Based on the wails of banned ragers on the Tribunal forum, I think it’s working.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:40 pmQuote
Well it seems they do have some systems in place to fight this, perhaps the high ratio of quitters is due to the fact Im at a low level, 10, and most new players don’t care about quitting mid game. But it would still be nice to see a disconnect counter.
Hopefully it’ll get better as I continue to level up.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:44 pmQuote
It’s not untrue that LoL’s player community can be pretty wretched. But lvl 10 is moreso. Fewer people with a real investment, emotional or otherwise, in the game, and so with less incentive to resist the urge to act like a five year old with poor impulse control.
September 10th, 2011 at 1:07 pmQuote
I believe this will hopefully improve with the release of dominion which should generate more action packed SHORTER games which hopefully will cause fewer people to get bored/run into unexpected issues and quit/afk.
September 10th, 2011 at 2:06 pmQuote
The disconnect counter you are after exists :P Its called Leaves. Players will high number of leave percentage (like .5% I think) will have their leaves visible.
September 10th, 2011 at 4:19 pmQuote
I think people are more likely to leave during an intense beating, yes, but being a level 30 I know the Tribunal is working to fix constant leavers. Players review the match and complaints and if we see fit that they were ruining the game experience then we as a community decide to punish them through bans, etc
September 10th, 2011 at 6:51 pmQuote
Try HON, think that game isn’t full of babies with low impulse control…(-v-)
September 10th, 2011 at 8:30 pmQuote
I think the problem is that you’re a low level player. In early levels it’s true that theres a lot of quitters. On mid levels (from 10 to 29) you’ll get a lot of ragers. And finally from lvl 30 you will get some really good matches. Also you should be good at the game too so more fun for everyone.
I recomend to stay tuned and keep playing. It gets better with the time.
September 10th, 2011 at 8:44 pmQuote
Wow Clone
September 11th, 2011 at 5:46 amQuote
I have 1080+ wins and 1000+ losses. I’ve probably encounted 1000 leavers too.
Even one a 3v5 once in 2010.
This game has some serious flaws that need to more addressed that currently and the afking/leaving is one of if not the biggest complaint.
September 11th, 2011 at 3:35 pmQuote