Penalising Quitters

[theAnomie]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums. Apologies if there's already a topic on this or something.

As you all know, it's been stated that with the new patch people that quit matches will be heavily penalised. I've been thinking, what is that supposed to mean? We've been given a few posts about how true skill works and you're supposed to win matches to improve it, but no one really knows how or more specifically when you rank up.

Thing is, if we don't really know how to progress, how can we feel as though we're being punished? So I was losing and I quit, yeah, go ahead, take my stripes away. All that's gonna do is put me in a match with a bunch of people who genuinely can't play Gears and I'm gonna wipe the floor with them, thus improving my KDR. Punishment?

I hate to bring Halo 3 into this but if you quit a match you stand to lose as much as you would have gained winning it. You don't get this sense with Gears. It almost seems standard someone will quit if they lose a round. I actually got 2 stripes after I quit a match that was lagging too much?!

Any suggestions / feedback?

[C R A W L]

Bah, this game has been so bad since its release 98% of the time, you can't help but quit. I've quit numerous times due to the terrible lag as well as poor collision detection, etc. nothing more, nothing less. They shouldn't start penalizing people for this until the game itself is fixed. I guarantee you the majority of quits are lag related whether it be on the culprit's end or the lousy server environment Epic has provided.

[Malicious16]

I'm actually really concerned about this considering the fact that how will they know if people quit or are just kicked out by the lag? I rarely quit. I'm kicked out because the host quits or lags out. The big problem is that it seems the game chooses the host at random rather than choosing the player with the best connection.

I honestly don't mind if it takes as much as an extra minute to find a match... as long as I'm guaranteed to stay in that match!

[wandererx]

I can't see penalizing people for quitting especially if there is notable lag in a game. I have been killed by people using what is termed a lag pedal, which I am guessing is just a pedal hooked to an interruptor to temporarily bog down an internet connection just long enough for a chainsaw kill. These are the people that should be 'banned' from playing this game nevermind heavily penalized. Also there needs to me some sort of minimum internet connection required to play as the lag in some games is just horrible for lack of a better term. The cheating in these cames has become so blatantly obvious that epic is insane if they think I should be buying a gears 3 until they fix the bugs in gears 2 like I hoped they would from gears1. I was stupid for even thinking anyone at epic is even paying attention to some of these abuses in their product. There are also several bugs in the game, the biggest of which is the blast shield which is broken. You can use it to jump through walls and you can make it invisible and useable with any weapon. I walked up behind a guy in the kill the leader match and he blew my head off with a shotgun after I shot him twice and it hit his invisible shield.

[danman8511]

Well said everyone. I registered for this message board the other day not because I'm in love with Gears 2 but because it's online gameplay has annoyed me more than any other online game ever. I almost literally cannot stand it but for some reason I play with the hopes that magically it will be funner or run smoother the next time. Alas, no. I wait 30 minutes for a game that lags and everyone quits and I'm stuck with 5 deaths and no kills because I'm an idiot. Then I do it again because...I'm an idiot. I really hope they fix these issues. I've never played a game that didn't have a leave option. I should NEVER have to go back to dashboard to quit a game that is so ridiculous. If the game ran smoother AND they had a "quit" option I doubt people would over use it. The game is fun enough to stay in, but now its God awful and we can't get out of it. GoW2 is like a $60 virtual prison.

[King Raven 24]

I had the idea of allowing a set number of quits per month (some other people agreed somewhere between 3-5 per month would suffice). People who quit often get penalized. People who quit seldom (cause they ran out of time during a long match and had to leave for work or something) don't get the penalty. It's a simple and probably much more fair system that works for everyone.

Also when a host quits you don't get credited with a quit as well. A host ending the game session is different from quitting. Since you can only quit by shutting off your box or exiting to the dashboard they kinda know specifically when you quit. If they do not then Epic's developers missed an easy application setup process. It's really not hard to tell the difference if you have any experience in coding and reviewing gathered data.

[Chief_Draggin_Beef]

well you dont really have to go all the way to the dashboard danman, if i have to quit i just sign out and sign back in, by the time you sign back in the title screen will probably have just finished loading. and the whole ranking thing is ridiculous i wish they never put it in, people dont play to play now, they just wanna rank up and if they get killed enough times they quit. i could care less about my rank i just wanna be able to play a full decent game for a change

[SUPA AIR]

From what ive seen in this game quitting effects people in different ways. i use to be a 4 rank and when the host of a wingman quit the game i dropped back down to a 3 rank. However my friend who made a new profile played one game of wingman we won and he went straight up to level 2, he then quit about 4 matches in a row after and nothing happend to his rank. we then won a terrotories game and he went up to level 3? tell me how thats possible?

And plus all the level 5 ive played againist or with have never stuck around in a game yet, they either quit after one round of being killed, or quit the game before it gets to the final round, but yet they can still keep there rank :mad: !

I understand quitting a game is down to the lag because 75% of games are really laggy due to the poor selection of host which i thought they was going to take the host advantage out of this game but , there are ways of telling who the host is and thats not by the power of his or her gun , or that he or she takes a million hits to die either.

If you ask me i think they should just reset everybodys ranks to 0! this way people can find out there real trueskill and the badges will represent what skill level they actually are! And if all the rank 4's and 5's that have quit to get their rank would actually have to work for it! :)

[Tomeeboy]

I agree that penalizing quitters could be a double-edged sword. You'll have good players who like cheap, easy matches, quitting repeatedly to reduce their rank so they can be matched with players of a significantly lower skill level.

I also don't think it would be fair to penalize people who quit for legitimate reasons. If I can't even run out of my spawn at the beginning of a match because the lag is throwing me around like a balloon in a wind tunnel, while the host on the other team is running around one-shotting everyone at ease, I'm probably going to leave. If the rest of my team disconnects and I'm getting swarmed by five kill-hungry, chainsawing, corpse-humping retards, I'm probably going to leave. If the other team is exploiting every glitch in the game to ensure that they win, I'm probably going to leave. Right now, there are just too many legitimate reasons for leaving a game.

Perhaps once they fix all of the issues that cause people to leave for legitimate reasons, they can begin penalizing the players who quit for the wrong reasons. How they should penalize them, though, I'm not really sure. For the reasons stated above, a reduction in rank may not be the best solution. Instead, I think it might be a better punishment to implement a mandatory waiting period after somebody quits, before they can access multiplayer again. The more quits they have in a given period of time, the longer the wait. That way, somebody who quits occasionally for a legitimate reason isn't going to be penalized the same way as somebody who quits very regularly.