I will attempt to make this concise. There are currently multiple different systems in the game that encourage players to leave games, and optionally rejoin them. I will outline them and potential solutions.
A) When you’re downed/trapped/dogged, disconnecting and rejoining will not save the down/disabled state. This means you can “save yourself” by disconnecting.
Fairly obviously this is an issue because it circumvents the co-op spirit of the game. It’s simply speaking an exploit. As there is no reliable way to detect if a player quit out intentionally or he crashed against his will, a decent solution to this would involve saving a players state when leaving so long as he has the option to reconnect. In other words, if you disconnect then reconnect while downed or trapped, you will spawn back in downed or trapped. It might also be a good idea to have the bot carry over the players state, and then having the player take over the bots state when he comes back. This might be slightly unfair towards crashing players though since the bots frankly suck.
B) The Auric Storm Survivor achievement and similar ones allow you to quit out before death so your death doesn’t count
Slightly more minor but also disruptive, this is the other thing that causes players to leave missions very often. As for how this could be fixed there are a variety of ways, but the design should change to stop encouraging this. I think in a game that notoriously crashes often, obviously such a penance can’t be designed in such a way that crashing destroys progress. I think it should just not count “in a row” and instead have a higher number to work towards. That way there’s less at stake to encourage individual disconnects.
C) The upcoming Havoc Missions will deduct Rank on failure but given all precedent, leaving them probably won’t. It should
Pure speculation but if leaving Havoc missions doesn’t fail them then the rank system is instantly totally worthless and not caring about. Please, count leaving as failure. Crashing happens, but rejoining after a crash is possible. If someone leaves and doesn’t rejoin, count it as a failure. Otherwise it’s obvious that everyone will have their rank maxed despite not being able to complete even a fraction of their missions, which totally circumvents the point of the system.
Quitting out on missions is an epidemic, but I think it’s also been a hard problem to tackle in any meaningful way other than remembering player state on drop (which really should be a top priority imo).
I agree that ASS contributes in some way, but there are just as many quitters outside of Auric games. People often just don’t want to wait around. And it’s hard for me to imagine punishing players with something like a timeout over that choice, as much as it might suck for the team.
Havoc seems like the first opportunity FS really has to actually address the issue and hopefully improve the habits of the player base. I do hope they’ll add some mechanism to punish quitting out of Havoc missions. Could be as simple as seeing if the previous Havoc match was incomplete (and keeping a tally of those incomplete matches for each player, to be used to perform some adjustments as they see fit). That’s basically what I do with Hardtide.
I agree very much with this part in particular, I think punishing isn’t the right choice. It would maybe be a good idea to reward people for not leaving games though. Something fairly inconsequential, so you don’t get mad when you crash, but also real, so you are encouraged to not leave. E.g. maybe a bravery bonus that stacks up to 1.2x bonus materials and dockets from missions, so long as you’re not abandoning any assignment, win or lose. Could use Dukane to theme that one, given what Commissars are known for.
saving the game state at the moment of disconnect should solve the alt-f4 + rejoin death cheaters.
ASS should simply be reworked into something more sensible without the “in a row” requirement which makes people bail the moment they’re down. for example 100 successful auric missions still show a degree of experience.
havoc sounds interesting. except for the gas modifier which i don’t like.
as for those patient enough to wait to be rescued, it often depends on where the next spawn point is and how the rescue party is behaving. many don’t know that if one player goes down, the whole party should run back immediately to force a nearer spawn. at least in pubs it’s very unlikely. and at times you can watch great gameplay while waiting to be rescued, and then another time you have better things to do than watch them stumbling around, so you just leave because joining another team will be more fun.
I dont understand why this isnt done now, the server tracks and verifies most of our actions afaik, one of the reasons why you often end up with “ghost” hits or the server denying you a dodge.