How to deal with players that drop out of matches?
As before, this has been discussed in general threads, but it really deserves its own topic, IMO. How should drop outs be dealt with? They can dramatically alter the outcome of a match. Some players drop out for legitimate reasons, such as losing connection, phone dying, etc... but others leave out of spite, because they're losing, to deliberately throw a match, etc... So, how can they be dealt with in a way that doesn't penalize players that drop for legitimate reasons or teams who suffer because of their loss?
I'd like to see penalties applied to players who drop matches "frequently", meaning those players who've accumulated a count that exceeds some predetermined threshold for having dropped matches previously. Players with frequent genuine connectivity issues should realize at some point that PvP may not be for them if they can't stay connected, but players that continue to abuse the system will be rightly penalized. That penalty might be negative energy, for example, but it would have to be banked so it could be applied if the player was already at 0 energy when entering the match (as many of us do).
Something else that could be done is to modify the "leave this mission" screen to include something along the lines of "if you leave this match, you won't be able to perform any other activities until the match is over", which would stop players from leaving to do other game tasks. It won't stop players logging, though, so their needs to be a second option, such as "leaving this match will cost you X <insert gold or experience or a penalty to earning gold/experience for a duration equaling the continued duration of this match...>". Why gold or experience? Because energy can be replaced by logging for a few hours, but gold and experience can't be... Likewise, if a player drops a match that continues for another 20 minutes after they leave then slap that player with a in-game penalty (meaning it doesn't go away while logged out) that limits or prevents them from earning gold/experience for that same duration. Please note, once again, this is only for the most egregious offenders who've passed some predetermined threshold for dropping matches. We don't want to unnecessarily penalize players with legitimate connectivity issues or newbies who log out after being one-shot by somebody more experienced.
Thoughts?
