The game needs to compensate for leavers differently

[Raventhefuhrer]

I know we all hate people leaving the game - given how much you have to depend on your teammates in Steel Division, a leaver is the bane of any team. However, for a long time I believe that Wargame (and now Steel Division) hasn't had the correct system for compensating a team for their departed player.

Right now when a player leaves, his units are assigned to another member of his team, and all of the remaining team members get an income and availability boost to units to attempt to compensate for the departed player. I appreciate what the system was trying to do, but it's terribly flawed for a lot of reasons which I'll go into now. If you're a Wargame veteran these are probably arguments you've heard before.

• The leaver's units are assigned to a single player, with no regard to convenience or player. A most egregious example is that, in a 10v10 you might be playing on the extreme right flank of your team. Someone on the extreme left flank leaves. Rather than intelligently assigning those units to whichever player is closest, the game may give those units to someone on the completely opposite side of the map

• It breaks game balance. The intricacies of balance go out the window when all of the sudden you have double the amount of units you're supposed to have, and the income to use it. Suddenly the skies become uncontestable because now one player has eight or nine air superiority fighters, and the ability to call them all out and coordinate them better than three players with three planes each. Likewise with artillery - one player now has an unreasonable amount of shells that he can rain down wherever he'd like. What the boosted player loses in his inability to coordinate two fronts he gains in the ability to concentrate air and artillery power to make the game miserable for whoever has the misfortune of being in front of him.

• It's not fun. More often than not as soon as people start leaving the game is ruined. Let's say a 'Tom and John' are in a game against 'Fritz and Erich'. Fritz is against Tom, and Erich is against John. Tom leaves. Now John is concentrating all of his income on making Erich's life a living hell, while Fritz has no opponent and can advance basically as far as he wants. Effectively the game is now over, it's just a matter of dealing with poorly coordinated unit spam, artillery, and airpower. John is having to manage to many things at once. Erich is getting bombed and overrun with not much he can do about it. And Fritz no longer has any challenge. No one is having fun.

In my mind simply assigning a leaver's units and some bonuses to his allies is not a great system and doesn't work very well. In smaller games it works -okay- but in 10v10s where you'll regularly have five or six players leave over the course of a game, it's absolutely broken. Inevitably as soon as people start leaving there are gaps in the map where players are missing, the average team isn't self-aware enough to notice, and the few remaining players are supercharged with ungodly amounts of points, airpower, and artillery to absolutely take a steaming dump on whoever is in front of them.

So what's the solution? Well, I think it's a rather simple one on account of Steel Division's very workable AI. As of now the AI can identify 'areas' it should be going to (and pings them accordingly), and maintains a front line. While its actual unit control isn't great, the nature of the game (wide fronts, where pushing anywhere can make progress) enables the AI to contribute by advancing on a broad front rather than in Wargame where it could be funneled into a killzone as it tried to contest one of the two or three neutral points on a map. On top of that, many players (thankfully) actually consider the AI to be somewhat challenging.

So I submit that the ideal solution to compensating for leavers is simply allowing the AI to take over their units and their deck, and their team functions with an (preferably 'Hard') AI player for the rest of the match. It's not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as we can get - the current system just does not work well, and I think we should push for the inclusion of AI take-over of a leaver's units.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Yeah. This was annoying in wargame, but it is killer in SD. Noone can be bothered to control someone elses old units.

 

[Lumpy3]

The current system worked ok for wargame, But as raven said it breaks the game completely in steel division. If adding a.i isn't an option, perhaps adding a "vote to surrender" mechanic like MOBAs have. That way teams can decide when enough is enough, and also allow Eugen to punish habitual rage quitters with penalties for alt-f4ing etc.

 

[Dongs Galore]

When you say Hard AI, do you mean giving the AI the availability bonus it normally gets?

 

[Raventhefuhrer]

When you say Hard AI, do you mean giving the AI the availability bonus it normally gets?

Possibly? Some tweaking would be required to figure out how to best set up an AI that is reasonably challenging to a broad section of the gaming community, while not being a total pushover for veteran players. Ideally you don't want someone to say 'dang it we lost because we had an AI' but on the other hand you don't want teams saying 'dang it we lost because they got an AI'. It'll be hard to thread that needle but I think it's more or less possible.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Hard AI should not get the availability bonus. I think medium would be fine tbf. I can see a lot of players online getting rolled by hard AI and I don't think any of us want an MP system where the AI actually has the ability to win the game. We should want something that sort of just holds ground and is moderately competent at defending.

But for sure, I'm still baffled that this is still a thing as the community has been complaining about this feature for years. This isn't a petty balance complaint or something that comes down to subjective stances. I have yet to read anything from any players that don't see this as a problem and don't want it fixed.

I would even put it higher on the totem pole to the matchmaker tbf. Leavers and the system of handing units off to people that don't want them is the worst part of MP. It would also help with the stupid join-leave-join thing people do, especially in 10v10 to avoid getting stuck at the top because no one wants to get screwed.

 

[Arctander]

Definitely AI subs. But not hard, most folks can't beat medium yet...

Also, I would like to also see a % of times that people leave on their stats. Had a guy today who whined about how he wished more players played destruction instead, and then quit right at moment the match started. Silly kids...

Yeah, I know it is beta, and some folks crash (hasn't happened to me in my last 20 games, but it did happen maybe 10% of the time in the first two weeks...)

However, some people are clearly quitting on purpose. Either b/c their opening failed, or whatever... and if they do that a lot, that is an issue.

 

[1776ZOOMSNIPE1911]

I know we all hate people leaving the game - given how much you have to depend on your teammates in Steel Division, a leaver is the bane of any team. However, for a long time I believe that Wargame (and now Steel Division) hasn't had the correct system for compensating a team for their departed player.

Right now when a player leaves, his units are assigned to another member of his team, and all of the remaining team members get an income and availability boost to units to attempt to compensate for the departed player. I appreciate what the system was trying to do, but it's terribly flawed for a lot of reasons which I'll go into now. If you're a Wargame veteran these are probably arguments you've heard before.

• The leaver's units are assigned to a single player, with no regard to convenience or player. A most egregious example is that, in a 10v10 you might be playing on the extreme right flank of your team. Someone on the extreme left flank leaves. Rather than intelligently assigning those units to whichever player is closest, the game may give those units to someone on the completely opposite side of the map

• It breaks game balance. The intricacies of balance go out the window when all of the sudden you have double the amount of units you're supposed to have, and the income to use it. Suddenly the skies become uncontestable because now one player has eight or nine air superiority fighters, and the ability to call them all out and coordinate them better than three players with three planes each. Likewise with artillery - one player now has an unreasonable amount of shells that he can rain down wherever he'd like. What the boosted player loses in his inability to coordinate two fronts he gains in the ability to concentrate air and artillery power to make the game miserable for whoever has the misfortune of being in front of him.

• It's not fun. More often than not as soon as people start leaving the game is ruined. Let's say a 'Tom and John' are in a game against 'Fritz and Erich'. Fritz is against Tom, and Erich is against John. Tom leaves. Now John is concentrating all of his income on making Erich's life a living hell, while Fritz has no opponent and can advance basically as far as he wants. Effectively the game is now over, it's just a matter of dealing with poorly coordinated unit spam, artillery, and airpower. John is having to manage to many things at once. Erich is getting bombed and overrun with not much he can do about it. And Fritz no longer has any challenge. No one is having fun.

In my mind simply assigning a leaver's units and some bonuses to his allies is not a great system and doesn't work very well. In smaller games it works -okay- but in 10v10s where you'll regularly have five or six players leave over the course of a game, it's absolutely broken. Inevitably as soon as people start leaving there are gaps in the map where players are missing, the average team isn't self-aware enough to notice, and the few remaining players are supercharged with ungodly amounts of points, airpower, and artillery to absolutely take a steaming dump on whoever is in front of them.

So what's the solution? Well, I think it's a rather simple one on account of Steel Division's very workable AI. As of now the AI can identify 'areas' it should be going to (and pings them accordingly), and maintains a front line. While its actual unit control isn't great, the nature of the game (wide fronts, where pushing anywhere can make progress) enables the AI to contribute by advancing on a broad front rather than in Wargame where it could be funneled into a killzone as it tried to contest one of the two or three neutral points on a map. On top of that, many players (thankfully) actually consider the AI to be somewhat challenging.

So I submit that the ideal solution to compensating for leavers is simply allowing the AI to take over their units and their deck, and their team functions with an (preferably 'Hard') AI player for the rest of the match. It's not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as we can get - the current system just does not work well, and I think we should push for the inclusion of AI take-over of a leaver's units.

The easiest solution is to play either 1v1's or with some friends, that way when they leave, you know it is for a good reason

 

[I WUB PUGS]

The easiest solution is to play either 1v1's or with some friends, that way when they leave, you know it is for a good reason

How does that solve anything for 10v10?

 

[Vyllis]

Sometimes, i think the game should ship the ownership of the units to the closest player with the more numerous & expensive units.
The leaver actual economy should be shared between his whole team.
Then income should be lowered for the opposing team AND the leaver team to match the fact one player is missing.
No bonus cards for spam should be allowed.

Good: No spam, no points creep, no powerful units in too much quantity, a rebalanced game thanks to the overall reduction of income for both side.
Bad: If too much leaves one side will have easier coordination with more points for fewer players. The other side will suffer more players and few points.

sorry my bad English.

The easiest solution is to play either 1v1's or with some friends, that way when they leave, you know it is for a good reason

Following your bullshit solution we should leave any lobby with stranger.

but wait, what about removing multiplayer so we are sure to have 0 leavers problem !?
Genius isn't it?

Even wannabe esport star overwatch players have more clever solutions than you.
You and your post were terrible.