Rage Quits and v1.1 of Demigod talk

By Frogboy on June 3, 2009 4:15:22 PM from

Developer Gas Powered Games and publisher Stardock are working on version 1.1 of Demigod which we hope to be out in the next few weeks.

Next week we’ll have a more formal preview of v1.1 but one of the things we’re going to be focusing on is the issue of rage quits.

Here is how we plan to handle them:

Team Concede

A team can concede the game. If the majority of a team chooses to concede, the game ends. No harm no foul.

Rage Quits

If a person quits the game without the team concede and the game lasts more than 10 minutes longer, that person gets a rage quit. In the connection dialog, that person’s rage quitting percentage will be displayed as “Disconnect %”. Players with a high Disconnect % will likely get booted in lobbies and will be put further back in line for skirmish and pantheon games.

Early Quits

Games that last less than 3 minutes aren’t counted. If you get into a game where it’s lagging or you have an obnoxious partner or opponent or someone has a very slow sim speed, you can quit in those first few minutes, no harm, no foul.

+912 Karma | 192 Replies

Why we are even arguing about it is beyond me.

Disconnect = disconnect.

Leave/Quit = loss

Ragequitters will be punished simply because noone wants to play with someone who's got 47 losses for 4 wins. He'll basically be stuck in Noob games for a while in custom mode and in Pantheon, well, he lost points or whatever.

This thread is insane. It seems that there is a ridiculous amount of controversy on whether or not these ideas will help improve the game. I read in a few posts that people think a ranking system would be more efficient, and I think I might actually have to agree. Maybe something can be implemented where if you get disconnected, nothing affects your rank. However if you quit, your rank automatically gets lowered or you lose favor points or something (I am aware that favor is broken for some people, but maybe this could be used in the future). I suppose the 3 minute rule can still be used here. Ranking just seems to be the easiest solution to me because rage quitters will quit no matter what, but lowering people's chances of actually being able to play Demigod online when the game is bought to be played solely online seems unreasonable to me.

Ranking also seems to be a better incentive for players to stick around in a match that is basically a guaranteed loss. For instance, this past week I was placed into two pantheon games in which I had absolutely no chance in winning. The first game consisted of my teammate getting disconnected as soon as the game started, leaving me with an AI player for a teammate. The second game consisted of myself playing against two other players with no teammate whatsoever. I stuck around for both games knowing I would lose while only gaining at most a small amount of favor points. I guess the reason I played both matches through were to gain a little bit more of online play experience since I am still fairly new, but I can understand the reason why experienced players would quit the instance this happened to them.

Great job, guys. Great changes.

Would it be possible to make it 5 minutes of "free quitting"?

Also, it would be great if the quit button has a timer during the free quitting part to let you know how much time you have.

These aren't original ideas - I'm basically quoting starcraft.

Great job, guys. Great changes.

Would it be possible to make it 5 minutes of "free quitting"?

Also, it would be great if the quit button has a timer during the free quitting part to let you know how much time you have.

These aren't original ideas - I'm basically quoting starcraft.

Why we are even arguing about it is beyond me.

Disconnect = disconnect.

Leave/Quit = loss

Well, not exactly.

Disconnect/Leave/Quit = disconnect

Concede = Concede

Both also count as losses. You can't split actual disconnects from leaving because if you do anyone who leaves will just plug pull instead of leaving normally. They have to be counted as the same thing.

I agree Infinite. Quiters will quit using a button or pulling the plug. Conceding at least gives them a sportsman like way of leaving. Besides, it's easy (over time) to see who the rage-quitters are, and who the guys who get the DCs are. Usually, the RQs will be raging or complaining on the chat before they "disapear", DCs are usually quiet, or just playing along (or even good players on a winning team) and then "disapear".

After the second time you see someone happens to "DC" right after getting upset in the chat, you pretty much have the guy pegged. . .

wow this is the number 1 issue that dota community cannot solve, "LEAVERS"!

Well, the bad news is many leavers may become griefers with the upcomming improvements. I remember my thrid game ever of Demigod, this one guy on our team starts typing in chat "omg, they are 3 kills ahead of us, it's over!". And he just kept it up for half the game, driving us all crazy. He finally did RQ, THEN we started losing. I'm worried that with the upcomming "vote to concede" option, players like the above will click on the "VtC" button every 30 secs.

Quoting PurplePaladin,

reply 8

Well, the bad news is many leavers may become griefers

This. I would wager people who are angry that they have to stay but don't want to quit because the game will stop pairing them up in skirmishes and pantheon (and who won't be able to get into custom games) will either afk or just right click the opposite end of the map every time they ressurect. If you think comps are bad feeders, picture griefers.

Conversely there will be people who simply refuse to concede. For example if you're in a 3v3, someone gets killed three times in a row, leaves, and then you're stuck with an AI that's several levels behind and going to stay that way and feed the other team all game and you just want to move on, you can bet a ton of people will absoultely refuse to concede for 10 minutes because they want to make sure that person gets a blemish on their record.

It's going to be annoying.

The solution is to help the team with the AI, not punish the leavers. Would leaving be a problem if the team was properly consoled?

playing for another 10 mins after ragequit is not a good idea.. lower it to 5 or so.. some ppl "ragequit" just before the game ends.. this way the game is not going to even last another 10 mins and they get away free..

or just add.. quit = -1 to your stats.. no matter what.. you lost that game.. if you leave after 3 mins and leave you have lost that game.. and it gets counted.. why should the team have to play for another 10 mins just so get a quit marked in your stats..

another thing would be usefull.. some kinde of representation in the lobby about your rank/stats.. like a RED name would be a rage quitter or something in that direction

This rage quit thing is bullshit. If you're losing a game, you should be able to leave; you shouldn't have to stick around and wait to lose just so the egotistical people you're playing against can trash talk you and whatever else. Just mark the early quit as a loss, and move along. Every other RTS in the world does that, so why do we need some convoluted system that discredits people for not wanting to sit around when the game has already ended for them.

This is the exact issue I had with DotA. The map was fun if you played with friends, but if you died, messed up, or anything else in the course of a game with pubbies, they'd tear you a new one by flaming you and harassing you until you really had no choice but to quit. But if you quit early, they add you to the banlist like you maliciously intended to ruin their game, after they had pretty much forced you out of the game themselves.

I swear to god if you implement this ragequit thing by pandering to the HARDCORE players, I'm done with this game. I paid for it, and I just want to play. If I'm not having fun, I shouldn't be playing. And I shouldn't be prevented from playing the game because a noisy minority of old DotA players want to make sure anyone who doesn't stay the full length to get hosed can't play at all. If they want that, they can go play League of Legends where you can be permanently banned from the game because you left early, after paying for the game.

I agree that a concede button is basically just going to turn "ragequitters" into "griefers" instead.

It is my understanding, though I haven't played in some years, that DOTA was constantly having trouble with leavers as well.

I did play quite a bit of WC3 ladder. And you know what "fixed" the leavers problem for me? ARRANGED TEAMS. Obviously, with arranged teams it was never my teammates that would leave, and if an opponent left, then we got the win, they got the loss (assuming their teammate left too afterwards), and we moved on to the next game. Solved.

Still can't believe this game shipped without arranged team ladder matches. /boggle

League of Legends where you can be permanently banned from the game because you left early, after paying for the game.

Geeze! League of legends will have that?

Looks like I'll never touch that game.

PS. I completely agreed with your points on rage quitting. It's not that big of a deal and often people are forced to do it anyways. Plus, if they're not having fun, they're probably not going to let you have much fun either.

Ok, so what happens if you do DC heaps and it shows up on your stats? Do you get in trouble or anything or does it only affect stats? If it does only affect stats who cares? It's a game

Well, I strongly suspect that this will fall on deaf ears, but on the off chance that there is even one person who actually is trying to understand where others are coming from here goes. The whole idea of sportsmanship is that you have a responsibility to the other players in a game. At the end of the day all you have is a small group of people putting time and effort into trying to have a mutually fun time. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you have more fun than others. Most people have more fun when they win, the whole point of sportsmanship is to be a good enough person to help others have a good time even when it's not the most fun you've ever had. To the multitude of posts that ask "Why should I bother to keep playing when...<whatever>?" the answer is because you have a responsibility to all the other players who are there trying to give you a game to play. It boggles my mind how somebody could suggest they'll AFK and watch TV while asserting that they have no idea how anyone could think there was anything wrong with it because they don't have any reason to keep playing in their own completely self centered world. Sure, you could do it, but realize that you're actively sabotaging the community of the game and discouraging people from giving you a good game in the future. Why stick around? Because ruining games is pissing in the pool we all swim in. Even if you're a completley selfish a-hole you have to realize that you're sabotaging yourself long term as well assuming you enjoy playing this game. If you (heaven forbid) end up with a noob on your team realize that you're teaching them how to behave in this community and if you're very lucky it's them who will be this community of the future. I've lost count of the number of times my ally has (most annoyingly) been whining that the game was "over" loooong before it was. Often a loss does follow, sometimes a win, but usually plenty more fun game unless they ragequit, or pout, or do something else to ruin the game. Realizing how frustrating it is when somebody else ruins a fun game you were enjoying and just think about the fact that the community is the one you build. AFK and watch TV and you're gonna have less enjoyable games in the future. It's not some abstract karma thing, it's the simple fact that a community like this is small enough that your actions mold it.

The whole idea of sportsmanship is that you have a responsibility to the other players in a game.

When you mention sportsmanship I think of real sports, with which this game has very little in common. Take baseball, you could, at any given moment, turn a game around, however unlikely. I certainly played a lot of games where a missed catch or an amazing hit turned the game around, and more importantly if our team left because we were losing that would be it, we wouldn't play have a dozen more games that night. The other team is far more dependant on us for competition in that sport than anyone ever is in Demigod. Just win and move on to the next game, end of story.

It boggles my mind how somebody could suggest they'll AFK and watch TV while asserting that they have no idea how anyone could think there was anything wrong with it because they don't have any reason to keep playing in their own completely self centered world.

No one thinks that. No one here is saying they don't understand other people will be offended by it, what they're saying is they're done. The admitted defeat and they want to move on and they're being backed into a corner by a system which won't let them do that.

I just don't understand you guys. You're so quick to put the blame on the players and not the crummy AI that's the root of the problem. The AI sucks and feeds the other team, that's the real problem. I don't expect the AI to be a master (even though an AI can be made to defeat chess grand masters), I just expect for it not to be a massive detriment to the team, and as long as it is, it'll be a huge thorn in every player's side no matter how you try to punish people.

Hell, even make it cheat. Make it level up faster when it falls behind the average level of the other team, make it give less gold/xp when killed, do anything at all other than pretend it's the players' fault that it mucks up the game.

Don't punish Rage Quitting. It is complete and utter BS to track this because it leads to nothing but the alienation of newbie players before they can even get to learn the game. Since creating many accounts in DG is difficult (or has to go through support every time to link accounts to serial keys, etc.) new players cant cycle through accounts and rage quitting till they get good.

1) Conceed will eliminate 80% rage quitting.

2) Sometimes people need to go. Wife calls. Baby calls. Toilet calls. Friends just logged on so I dump these losers and play with my friends. House is on fire! Whatever.

3) Don't count disconnects or game crashes as rage quitting. Can you imagine me getting game crashes often and being seen as a rage quitter due to STARDOCK/GPG bugs (please don't say that DG does not crash taht much, it crashes more than any other game I played to a point of not plaining in windowed mode = a problem).

So summary:

Conceed is enough.

Don't alienate people. Let em quit its fine. It happens. Deal with it.

Don't even support "ban lists". Remember you want people to have fun. All people. Not just the one or two hardcore assholes that will complain till your ears bleed about rage quitters.

I just had to log from a game midway through.

Reason being, I teleported to a tower, and materialsied in-between the tower wall and edge of the walkway.. effectively becoming trapped.

'Teammates' were unable/unwilling to help by getting me a teleport, so I had to quit the game or spend the remaining time on a 5v5 game as an observer.

That isn't fun tbfh.

I still believe the game needs some more proofing, most of the time has been spent on network optimising, but the 'game' itself clearly has some niggles that need sorting.

Does this now mean that under the new proposed system, 'I would be shit out of luck?'

It's still too early imho to instigate a ragequit rating.

Dont implement a rage quitting tracker. Let go of the negativity and see the big picture.

Frogboy, as CEO of stardock your goal should be to maximize sales. Well I guarantee you. 100%. That ragequitting tracking WILL result in demands for refund. A month after purchase yes, but you will get those demands and potentially clients who never deal with SD again.

When training cats, you can't yell at them. They do something bad... let it go. You train them by only doing positive reinforcements where you want them to succeed, and make them fail in other places, not get yelled at.

Allow for "draw" option. Someone rage quits, the other team can offer a "truce". The winning team gets a win, the losers don't get a loss due to a rage quitter. This is not conceed. everyone goes home happy.

The posters with the WoW comparison had it about right I think.

Instead of punishing the malfeasant, reward the sportsman. (Give points for winning, less points for losing, possibly scaled by ranking difference between teams, and give no points for disc/quitting)

To prevent /afk a simple ready check is enough (I think no one can be playing the game for more than 2 minutes without pressing buttons...)

And to prevent afk bots (a tool that pushes buttons automatically to simulate activity) ahm, well, add an option to dispatch some thugs?

didn't see if this was asked not going to read all the posts.

What stops them from just going afk or rage suicide by demigod?

If i want out but cant, then i'll take it out on the team I have learned to hate. Give the other team and endless supply of gold or being AFK.

I dont think rage quitting can be effectivley policed.

bad idea. will lead to players afking or worse i promise you.

im going to laugh when someone wanting to exit threatens to suicide to get the team to concede.

you cant punish people for not wanting to play with you.

We dont want to punish them, its just we dont want to play with them either.

Quoting angryandroid,

reply 24

you cant punish people for not wanting to play with you.
We dont want to punish them, its just we dont want to play with them either.

Are you being facetious or what?

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Rage Quits and v1.1 of Demigod talk