Suggestion: Punish those who quit the game.

[dry warren]

Ive been playing Risk for 3+ years and been a part of this discord server for just as long. I play this game for fun and the games are usually fun. But ive noticed an incline in people leaving or quitting games early on or just throughout the match. I think this ruins the fun in multiple ways.

1. It is more fun playing against real opponents than bots.
2. You expext to fight real opponents. When you load into a match, you can see how many players are in the lobby and you have an expectation to fight that many people. I prefer 6 player games, so i always create 6 player games. I don't want to fight 3 players and 2 bots, i want to play against 5 humans.
3. Botting out ruins the balance of the game.
4. Botting out because someone did something to you that you didn't like, means they'll get away with it unpunished. This can also ruin the balance. People who make dumb type of plays and succeed because the opponent botted out, will continue to make dumb plays because they get away with it.
5. Bots are broken, bots don't know about the balance of the game and even though bots are somewhat predictable you never know for certain if they will sue into you.

I am sure i am not the only one to have similar thoughts. My idea is to look at other "competitive" games and learn from their ranking systems. What do they do about people who quit ranked games that they have accepted to play. They temporarily timeout people, the timeout increases the more you quit a game. Fx. first time is a 2 hour time out, then 6 hours etc. etc. Obviously there should be a limit and a reset, so that if one is having connection problems doesnt get timeouted forever.

This match made me make this post. 6 players, fog of war, fixed caps with blizzards, and at the start of turn 5 i was the only human player left in the game. Its boring and i feel like im wasting my time, yes i get the points but i would much rather gain the points by defeating real opponents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Z6eVbrwPQ

[main walrus]

You can't punish someone who has to leave abrubtly. For example they could be playing a game and they get a call that one of their family members got into a car accident and they have to leave their ongoing Risk game.

In that case wouldn't it be unfair to punish them for leaving?

[dry warren]

That is how it works in almost every competitive pvp game. If that x-scenario happens and you have to leave, you get a timeout of 2 hours maybe, if its your first time quitting a game in a while. I would be more worried about the car accident than a short timeout from ranked Risk.
If you cant commit to a ranked game, play casual instead.

[main walrus]

In my opinion there is already a punishment for leaving a ranked game. And that is losing the rank points.

[dry warren]

Yeah, that is a valid point. But not everyone neccesarily cares that much about 1k points. With automated bots you still have a chance of getting a somewhat decent placement. Its not about punishing people hard for leaving games, its more about creating an incentitive to play till youre defeated or won, so that the games are generally more fun for everyone.
But maybe i am the only one who thinks like this, idk. 🤷‍♂️

[stoic helm]

Some players don't care about having some sort of "timeout" because they're only playing casually anyway too..

I think it'd be better to have requirements to enter ranked queues (with later queues being higher requirements in lower queues) - and a fixed # of games you can play in a ranked queue per day or week, if leaving you get X restriction & it'll impact available time to play ranked (and not being able to play up to the X games per day or week) - just for that queue

[trail viper]

Two things I think would really with this:

1. Lock your bot's place at the time you left - right now you can bot early, humans attack each other, and your bot can get 2nd or 3rd
2. Some kind of "karma" algorithm to prevent re-joining another lobby after repeated botting but you can regain your karma by finishing out games

[unique cape]

In that case I wouldn't care if I get punished in a game. But I don't feel there is a need to punish ppl for leaving. They can still suicide out. Is that better in your opninion?
Just play with neutral bot.

[echo stump]

The example vid just matches my experience that the new maps somehow attract the noobiest noobs

[thin tundra]

I'm against this until they fix the problem with the app crashing

[floral ether]

I literally made a post like three posts above this detailing this exact thing. Ranked honestly unplayable

[plain horizon]

Most of my ranked games this weekend have seen a turn 1 quit

[tardy siren]

How about adding an option under "Inactivity Behavior:" Neutral plus 48 hour cool down time. Players leaving would need to wait 48 hours before being allowed to join a ranked game while they take care of their family emergency or fix their wifi.

[dry warren]

Yeah, it sucks

[somber venture]

I think part of the issue is that the game is getting more popular, but that doesnt mean the new players to the game have a mindset of long term strategy, or even an ounce of skill. So when you pair all these new players, it's just chaos. So many of the newbies think they are Pete no offense. You gotta master the game and know how to be diplomatic as well. You can't teach that.

[thorny junco]

That would suck because I like to grind ranked games and try to get to top 10. If I can only play a certain amount of games that kinda defeats the purpose of playing the game cuz casual games are no fun to me. There should be some kind of punishment system like csgo (what op said). I think this would definitely remove a lot of the trolls because they won’t bother to play ranked then. If you bot out in the first 2-3 turns you get atleast a 60 minute timeout no matter what. (Some players just leave cuz they don’t like their spawn) if you bot out later on it won’t really affect you that much unless you do this again in a time period. For example: After 3 times get 2 hour timeout. Fourth offence is 6 hours. Fifth offence is 12 hours. And if you go 3 games without botting out you reset the offences. I think this would def help out the botting issue

[stoic helm]

The idea is you'd have say 5 or 10 ranked games you can queue for that specific queue, once you've done those you still have the other 5 or so queues with 5-10 ranked games (basically more than you can reasonably complete in a given day anyway) - so you'd pick and choose the ones that matter to you and focus on those

It'd also mean that leaderboards are less I can play more than you and more I can play at a higher level - it's a better comparison of ability than just unlimited queues do

Another benefit to it as well would be if cheating occurred in a game, simply invalidate it & grant the player +1 game available to use within 24h - though much less likely to even encounter because it's queued (system them does some magic in the background to heavily reduce likelihood of two players who know one another ever knowingly playing vs one another)