Competitive Play: About coinflip and leaver penalty
We explore recent feedback from Competitive Play within the Public Test Realm as well as the proposed leaver penalty for players during the season.
A few days ago, in the most recent Public Test Realm (PTR) patch, Blizzard released both the PTR to the public and a much anticipated game mode patch for all to test: Competitive Play. Throughout this period, Blizzard collected feedback and analysis over what should be improved, removed, or kept the same. The lists below show both the pros and cons of Competitive Play.
Positive Feedback
- Players like seeing their Skill Rating
- Players like the strong leaver penalty
- Players like the Assault map changes
- Players like that premade groups are called out in the UI.
Negative Feedback
- Players don't like the coin flip system.
- Players don't like Sudden Death.
Some of that feedback is easy to explain and account for. Other parts, such as the leaver penalty, coin flip system, and Sudden Death, need more in-depth explanation; I'll start off with the leaver penalty, followed by the coin flip system and Sudden Death.
Leaver Penalty: How It Works
According to Community Manager Lylirra, here's a bit more information on what the leaver penalty entails for players:
- If you leave too many games and your “games played” vs “games completed” percentage falls below our required threshold, you will receive a warning message (this percentage is calculated based on your 20 most recent games).
- If you continue to leave games after receiving a warning (which will display in the lower left-hand corner of your screen), you will incur a 75% EXP penalty on all future games.
- The penalty isn’t time-based, but instead will be removed once you complete enough games to raise your “games played” vs “games completed” percentage above our required threshold (again, this percentage is calculated based on your 20 most recent games).
- If you disconnect or are removed due to inactivity from a game, it will count the same as if you leave the game intentionally.
If you leave a game before the “Assemble Your Team” phase is over (i.e. before you enter your starting spawn rooms):
- It won’t count as a game played
- You will not be considered a “leaver” in this scenario
If you leave a game after the match ends (i.e. after you see the VICTORY/DEFEAT screen):
- It will count as a game played—and if your team won, it will count as a win
- You will not be considered a “leaver” in this scenario
If you leave a game after the “Assemble Your Team” phase is over, but before the match ends:
- It will count as a game played
- You will not be considered a “leaver” in this scenario
Another penalty, according to the Overwatch development team, is "...you can be suspended from competitive play for increasing periods of time, up to receiving a ban for the entire season." Since seasons last about two and a half months, this is a serious penalty.
Coin Flip and Sudden Death
Coin flip is a new way to reduce the chances of a match resulting in a tie or Sudden Death. The old system saw Sudden Death occur in 35% of matches. With the new system, Sudden Death occurs in 9% of Assault maps, 16-18% of Escort maps, and 20-29% of Hybrid Maps. Based on the numbers, their system could be considered a success. Despite the quantitative success, however, the qualitative arguments call for coin flip's removal. The community perception is one side will always have a clear advantage across the maps. Players--both casual and professional--are against asymmetrical resolutions to maps rather than symmetrical resolutions to maps.
As the qualitative issues overcome the benefits behind the quantitative gain, Blizzard is looking to remove the coin flip and Sudden Death from the game altogether.
Saying yes to change: What's to expect in the future
Right now, Blizzard's goal is releasing Competitive Play in the next content patch and kick-off the Summer season with the current ruleset rather than waiting until Fall. To put the feedback to good use, Blizzard is implementing a few short-term changes for immediate implementation and long-term changes added over time.
Short-term
These are changes which don't require a lot of additional work to the game and will go live with Competitive Play and the Summer season. The adjustments target the length of each match and allow more matches with less time.
- Initial match time for Assault, Escort, and Hybrid maps will be reduced from 5 minutes to 4 minutes
- Sudden Death Timer will be reduced from 2m00s to 1m45s
Long-term
Due to positive feedback on the new Assault Map format and its time bank system, Escort and Hybrid maps will receive a similar system. Time bank on Escort and Hybrid maps means that, if both teams push the payload all the way with time left, another round starts and the time left they had in the first round is transferred over to the second round. The second round considers another factor, payload distance. Push the payload farther than the other team and you win.
With the new time bank system for Escort and Hybrid maps, there are only a few possible ties:
- Neither team pushes the payload at all
- Neither team manages to "capture" the payload (Only Hybrid maps)
- Both teams push their payloads all the way to the end of the map in overtime.
The intended goal for time bank in Escort and Hybrid maps is to get the 16-18% and 20-29% Sudden death rates down to the same levels as Assault maps at 9%. If I had to wager, they want to be less than or equal to 10% across all maps. Afterwards, they'll reduce the 10% to as close to 0 as possible; the lower the number, the better.
To resolve coin flip and Sudden Death, a possible solution may lie in declaring the match a draw where neither team wins or loses. Whatever solution they come with, however, needs to be symmetrical, enjoyable, and worth a player's time investment.
For more competitive Overwatch news, follow us @GosuOverwatch.
