Stats and Rage Quitting

By T-Man on May 15, 2009 5:03:18 PM from

Frogboy seems to be about the only one making posts in the development journals so I figured I'd put my two cents in for once.

Most of you are well aware that there are errors and bugs in the stats on the Pantheon website. So I will start out by saying that we are working on fixing the problems. However it has been a slow procress. As mentioned in other posts, the stat side of things sometimes takes awhile to get addressed because some of the developers required to fix a problem have also been working on the much higher issue of network connectivity.

So we have slowly been getting items fixed here and there but one thing we are not doing right now is going back and fixing data that has already been submitted. But as new data comes it is more accurate and up to date. Once we feel comfortable that we have the stats working where we want it to be we do plan on Resetting most or all of the data. This way everyone will start with a clean slate and will be on equal footing.

One particular area that was worked on this week was how to deal with Rage Quitting. In an effort to help give people an incentive not to rage quit we have made some adjustments to their stats for that game. So what we have done is set up a rule that if a player rage quits that he will automatically get marked as a loss and lose all favor points and achievements earned in that game. Most cases a person is rage quitting because they are losing anyway, so the loss wont be that big of a deal. But any additional favor points they may have earned will be tossed out.

That's all I have for you now. I know there was a couple other items I wanted to report on but seem to have forgotton what they are. If I remember I will be sure to update this thread or post a new journal entry.

+50 Karma | 74 Replies

Good news. Legitimate players should have no issue with this.

If you leave the game early it should be a loss and you shouldn't get favor unless you've played for at least 15 minutes. This is reasonable time period for players to determine that the game is unwinnable. It's one thing to quit when the game's just started, it's another to quit when there's no possible way for your team to win. The disconnect stat should be reserved for when the connection is lost entirely.

The more important issue is if all players on one side drop, the game should end.

You need to track disconnects.

As soon as people start hearing about tracking "Menu->End Game", people will just switch to "Alt-tab, CTRL-ALT-DEL, End Process".

The important stat is how many times has a person left a game (unintentionally, or intentaionally doesn't matter) before the game has finished.

Possibly, but that doesn't account for people who crash or are dc'ed because of the netcode, or people who dc because the game is unplayable due to someones sim speed .

There will always be a way around getting logged as a disconnect because there are always going to be sore losers and bad winners.

I'll have so much fun with making my machine run as slowly as possible once I start losing to make everyone in the game ragequit.

This doesnt matter as long as favor calculation is as badly designed as it is.

The winning team almost always takes 90%+ of the favor so there is no reason to stay in the game for the loosers.

Quoting Apokus,

reply 19

Put in a "Surrender" Option at the Citadel or within the Menu.. if the hole Team thinks "ok weve lost the game so lets surrender" its ok... game stops like the citadel is destroyed for example. That could stop ragequiting too because right now a lot of ppl just stand behind their citadel watching the enemy how they destroy their base without any problems.. but that takes up to 10 minutes till it happen... with the surrender option the team can "quit" while telling the enemy "gg you have defeated us and we surrender" without this 30 seconds crap for 2-3-4 times in 1 game.. ^^

*just my 2 cent*

Yes I think this is a good idea as well.

This sounds like a good solution to quiters or disconnects. You don't finish the game so you lose it and you gain no favour points. In the end that makes no huge difference to you, unless you care about your win/lose ratio. In which case, you will likely resolve any issues and keep playing regardless.

Also want to agree with people who say there should be a surrender option. All players should have to agree to this though.

The game is not stable enough to even address this issue yet. Maybe once getting a 1v2 is rare or bots are not filling a players spot. Favor points and stats are so borked it does not even matter.

Well lets say you play a 3v3 with 2 friends and you agree that you have lost, if you gg and leave the game the other team stil has to finish the map against 3 AIs which can take a while... honestly include an option that makes it instant win if you fight vs AI only... or a button like " you have won, do you want to keep playing" anything really....

And if somebody drops out of the game early, lets say after 5 minutes, and the game is a 2vs3 match whats with the 2 people? They have to accept a loss because an idiot quit the game?

I believe there will have to be more draconic changes to deal with rage quitting dolls. On the losing team one usually gets aroung 20-30 favor at most.

I don't care about favour points... i care about my Stats!

My two cents:

There needs to be a surrender mode, that allows a team to admit defeat.
1. If all Humans on one side agree to surrender - its over
2. Losers get a loss but no disconect
3. Other team doesn't get a say, but get given a win
4. Favor is given to both team's
5. Game end
  - Don't drag out a boring fight vs ai
If all Human players have left a game (disconect/rage) - its over
1. Doesn't Reward Favor to Losing Team
2. should be counted as both a loss and a disconect to the losers
  - As much as it sucks when it is a technical difficulty, to many people can abuse it -> C&C3 release for example
3. End any wining streak for the losers
4. Game ends, winning team gets favor
  - Don't drag out a boring fight vs ai

This will let;

a losing game end and reward people for surrendering
people who rage get penalised (no favor)
not force people to play against AI after wining
allow you to identify ragers (high disconect to game ratio)

Not earning favor points isn't really going to keep someone from rage quitting. The losing team already only earns like 20 favor points anyways and it isn't very difficult to accumulate favor points to begin with.

Here is the thought process people will have:

Person A could stay and get 20 favor points for the entirety of the game, however long it ends up going on... or they could leave and join another game and possibly win earning 5-8 times the favor points they could have had staying throughout the entirety of the losing game. So basically what it comes down to is people will make the comprehension that leaving and not wasting their time earning 20 favor points is more productive.

Real penalties that should occur for rage quitting (keep in mind I have rage quit before):

1. Bar the player from entering another game for at least another 20 minutes. Even if the disconnect is legit I think it is fair because it will give people with a crappy connection a chance to let it settle.

2. Add a disconnect column to player stats so other players know this person is a rage quitter. I also think a persons Win-Loss-Disconnects should display when they join a lobby. This obviously would work different in Pantheon but no one can play that now anyways, and there is no prearranged team Pantheon so it really isn't important either.

However, I feel that only the first person to leave a game should get this penalty. Anyone that leaves afterwards should be given grace because the game is now unbalanced / unfair, especially when the remaining players have to deal with a terrible, always feeding AI team mate from that point on.

Quoting Bluegobln,

reply 18

Why not give an option to "concede" a loss? The opposing team would then have to accept (most would). If you want to make it interesting, only allow a game to be conceded if there is a disconnect or unbalance of players on each side (2 players vs 1 and an AI for example). Also an option to do something similar, perhaps end a game with no pentalties or rewards if one whole team is AI players, though I have no idea if those will even matter.

This is extremely important. In my latest Pantheon game my team mate fell off the game during loading. Unfortunately he played a Rook who is the very worst of AIs. The dumb thing lumbered to a flag and was instantly killed by an opposing UB. It was surreally fast. To make matters worse, my opponents apparently couldn't speak English but rather only wrote to me in Croatian or something. I have zero idea what they were trying to tell me. So me continuing that game seemed like a very bad idea and getting punished for that seems like a bad idea. AIs shouldn't give out gold when killed in multiplayer.

So yeah, what I'm trying to say here, is that when someone has already left, further quitters shouldn't get any negatives.

You could limit the # of games joined an hour. 5 games an hour limit could prevent someone from rage quiting simply because the first 10-15 min doesn't do him/her any favors.

But that could end up punishing players who win quickly or win because someone rage quited on them.

Then again rage quiting is something I belive we are all quilty of at one time or another. But with online communities (like this one) players who do crap out or have constant "connection" issues wind up infamous because of it.

Win/loss stats are important for sense of accomplishment and unless your in the same room with whoever your playing you can never fully know.

But why not host a tournament? Wins/loss ratios can be disputed but a tournament win cannot.

Yeah you run into all the problems with organizing players from diffrent parts of the country/world. But you can start a thread announcing one with anyone intrested to sign up. The moderator can then pair off players and the outcomes of games played (screenshots) can then be posted to provide progression. Could take weeks to play out tho.

maybe increase the participants favor points to 35? much better incentive than a small 10 favor points.

What about if you're playing with AI against all humans?

Not worth it still, the favor for losing is so small I don't think anyone cares.

if someone on 1 of the teams quits there should be an option to surrender without it counting against that team. Just wash it, no win no lose. Or surrender with a winner but no loser.

Punishing the rage quitters is cool but I think its best to focus on the rest of the players. Sucks having to play with AI on your team, and really equally sucks to have to play against AI, its just a waste of time but you have to keep going to get your "win". So best solution is set it up so there is no need for rage quitting, either surrender or whatever.

Should also be a way to view a players mini profile in lobby where you can see disconnect stats. These could be reset so often or whatever to help players with legit connection issues that get solved.

I don't think there should be a distinguishment from rage quit or "legit" disconnect because to be honest whether someone rage quits or drops it still ruins MY fun and I should be able to pick and choose to some extent if I want to play with someone "risky" who either has connection issues or rage quits. May sound selfish but if the game doesn't continue to be fun, I play something else.

Favor points should be redone as well so the losing team actually gets some. Perhaps instead of the favor being based on the top scores it could just be based on the scores. X amount of kills gets you X amount of favor. X amount of gold spent on citadel upgrades gets you X amount of favor. Plus a reasonable bonus to the winner team and/or the people winning the accomplishments. Of course I'm not suggesting handing out 300 favor points to one person in a game, just move around the way the current total # of points are handed out.

cha ching, my 2 cents

I have never rage quit. I have played many 1v2's, I've seen victory turn to defeat and I've pulled horrid losses into epic wins. Every rage quit I've been partnered with has been because either we were not doing well or because the other team was a member short.

For those rage quitters, you may as well play it out. If that fails, you can just suicide feed your opponents. Seriously though, play it out. Win or lose, it's a game, no one wins all the time.

you (SD & GPG) want a competitive game, so you should take hints from the successes and failures of those before you (guild wars, wc3, dow2, even wow arena). in WC3's glory days of ladder play, people didn't get upset as much when the opposing player or player team left, because people often left in the spirit of concession. professional WC3 players will say "gg" and leave before the very final units and structures are destroyed, because it's wasting time to stay. it was actually bad manners in some cases to stay while clearly losing. why did this happen in WC3? players were organized, sometimes familiar with each other, and generally trying to win to improve their rank and record. players were given incentives (records, rank, etc) to use their good judgment when deciding whether to leave or stay, rather than letting their emotions get the better of them and exiting the game.

the random teaming and custom gaming of WC3, on the other hand, could be just as bad as DotA's or what demigod's is shaping up to be. ragequitting became a symptom of playing in PUBs constantly. a clear lack of organization + a lack of a preexisting relationship = frustration when trying to win.

give good incentives to TRY and WIN games consistently. let players get organized for teams fights against other organized teams. then put in penalizations if needed.

quoting post

Frogboy seems to be about the only one making posts in the development journals so I figured I'd put my two cents in for once.

Most of you are well aware that there are errors and bugs in the stats on the Pantheon website. So I will start out by saying that we are working on fixing the problems. However it has been a slow procress. As mentioned in other posts, the stat side of things sometimes takes awhile to get addressed because some of the developers required to fix a problem have also been working on the much higher issue of network connectivity.

So we have slowly been getting items fixed here and there but one thing we are not doing right now is going back and fixing data that has already been submitted. But as new data comes it is more accurate and up to date. Once we feel comfortable that we have the stats working where we want it to be we do plan on Resetting most or all of the data. This way everyone will start with a clean slate and will be on equal footing.

One particular area that was worked on this week was how to deal with Rage Quitting. In an effort to help give people an incentive not to rage quit we have made some adjustments to their stats for that game. So what we have done is set up a rule that if a player rage quits that he will automatically get marked as a loss and lose all favor points and achievements earned in that game. Most cases a person is rage quitting because they are losing anyway, so the loss wont be that big of a deal. But any additional favor points they may have earned will be tossed out.

That's all I have for you now. I know there was a couple other items I wanted to report on but seem to have forgotton what they are. If I remember I will be sure to update this thread or post a new journal entry.

The loss of 10 favor points means nothing and the acheivments also they just go spam 1 minute games and get that back so rage quitting will be at a all-time high unless you can come up with something better

How about balancing the game properly instead, so people won't have to rage quit?

Quoting taintofven,

reply 22

a great solution for ragequititng is (1) giving players incentive to win (like a well-developed ladder) in order to achieve a legitimate record, (2) have a matchmaking system that matches up based on equal skill levels (as best as possible), (3) letting players get organized as best as possible within your game

you (SD & GPG) want a competitive game, so you should take hints from the successes and failures of those before you (guild wars, wc3, dow2, even wow arena). in WC3's glory days of ladder play, people didn't get upset as much when the opposing player or player team left, because people often left in the spirit of concession. professional WC3 players will say "gg" and leave before the very final units and structures are destroyed, because it's wasting time to stay. it was actually bad manners in some cases to stay while clearly losing. why did this happen in WC3? players were organized, sometimes familiar with each other, and generally trying to win to improve their rank and record. players were given incentives (records, rank, etc) to use their good judgment when deciding whether to leave or stay, rather than letting their emotions get the better of them and exiting the game.

the random teaming and custom gaming of WC3, on the other hand, could be just as bad as DotA's or what demigod's is shaping up to be. ragequitting became a symptom of playing in PUBs constantly. a clear lack of organization + a lack of a preexisting relationship = frustration when trying to win.

give good incentives to TRY and WIN games consistently. let players get organized for teams fights against other organized teams. then put in penalizations if needed.

+1 - this is the truth and the reason many are calling for arranged teams and stats fixed sooner than later. You're seeing just as many stats posts on connectivity and that's because people want to show off their record. Multiplayer games are always about competitive play - this isn't an mmorpg, I'm not going in to RP about how big my rooks towers are and how as QoT my nipples are getting hard over eminent victory. Just show people quitting as a loss (and please get rid of the 30 second timer for each player).

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Stats and Rage Quitting