People leave battle for many reasons. A fine for leaving does not fix the reasons for why people leave battle.

My strategy for the "leaving battle" issue would be to *FIX ALL THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS THAT CAUSE PEOPLE TO FREQUENTLY LEAVE BATTLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I'd list them off, but I'm lazy, so...

*CAPS because I imma bust a cap in yo ass, and my aim sucks.

fucks

Always the naughty one

This will affect people who are broke

How about we penalize the people who proto stomp? How about we penalize people that like to stomp on new players?

No?

Because it is an equally stupid idea.

RL penalties carry more weight because they are real. This is a f*cking game. Its not real. Its money isn't real. The only thing real about it is the fun or frustration people have playing it, and the time they spend playing it.

If you impose a ridiculous penalty, people will NOT STICK AROUND AND PLAY!!!

Get it through your thick skulls.

They are leaving because they are not having fun (or having technical problems), both of which have more REAL meaning than the penalties you want to create.

Penalties will be inneffective for anything other than driving people away from the game. Rewards for staying and playing despite being on a losing team, and despite entering the battle partway through are your best and most effective options.

And even that is not a silver bullet.

Well maybe if they didn't give up all the time and learned how to fight they wouldn't be broke.

People in RL have to pay a penalty for violating the terms of a contract, why not in Dust? The only issue I see with this is if you are DC'd or have a fatal error and have to quit the game. Noone should be penalised for having to quit the game, unless there's a way to rejoin the game you were in.

But generally, I like the idea of people having to pay penalties or getting the rewards from other paying penalties. This would vastly improve the game.

Penalties will be ineffective for anything other than driving people away from the game. Rewards for staying and playing despite being on a losing team, and despite entering the battle partway through are your best and most effective options..

I'm going to say I agree with you for the most part. Rewarding players for staying in battle would do more good, yes, but there still needs to be a penalty for leaving battles repeatedly.

Perhaps you get X "freebies" each day that you are not penalized for. This could help account for issues beyond the player's control like power or PSN outages. Beyond that you have some kind of penalty; temporary ISK reduction from public contracts or something similar.

Usually solutions to problems like this are one part carrot and one part stick, is all I'm saying.

I once suggested a "battles completed per battles deployed" metric. I think it would be useful to not only see how big the problem is, but to identify certain issues where people aren't choosing to leave.

You could also then reward those at the highest rates more significantly, while also varying the penalty so only the mercs most abusing the system are greatly penalized.

That being said, I think we are beyond more complex and nuanced solutions at this point in Dusts life cycle, as we can't even get much other than silence at this point.

I believe an over simplified reward system would be more effective than an over simplified penalty system.

Most people play a game for fun. If they perceive that a match won't be fun (i.e. They will be stomped), then they won't play (they leave battle).

Impose a fine as suggested and, given the model of this particular game, many may stop playing altogether. Is an even smaller playerbase what you seek?

Uneven matches are frustrating but fines for leaving battle won't fix that. Consider basic human nature; therein lies the key to success of incentives or disincentives to remain in battle.

Ya know, the people I see leaving battle the most are usually squads of people who have been playing for 1-2 years - mainly polish - they prefer stomping noobs who can't fight back.

Constantly stomping players does not help'em improve. If you want us to stop leaving battles stop using pro dropships, tanks officer/peoto in pubs vs randoms. I suggest we help proto stompers find other game modes, like fw and pc. Also, i wonder how proto stompers have so much isk to constantly go negative in pubs . Proto stompers may gets lots of kills like 25/5, but where did you get all that isk to lose 5 proto suits in a game mode that will pay roughly 300k isk

This is getting ridiculous. You [dumb redberries won't stick around for me to proto stomp you!]

I don't believe in imposing fines on those who leave the battle as all it will encourage is just AFKing in the MCC or somewhere on the ground with a rubber band on their controller so that the server won't be able to sense inactivity.

To me, the better option has, and always will be, incentives for completing a match as well as winning.

Jadek Menaheim had an idea in place that utilized the personal warbarge for creating cumulative rewards that stacked more and more with every consecutive match you completed up to a maximum. The more consecutive matches you finished, the bigger the ISK and SP earnings and maybe better chances to getting good salvage. And if you win consecutively, your ISK and SP earnings go up even more. However, your earnings multiplier resets back to normal as soon as you leave a match before it finishes and you will only earn the base amount of ISK you earned for the time spent on that match you left. Jadek's idea takes full advantage of the upgrade features of the personal warbarge.

Another alternative is to introduce a permanent Daily Mission (just like the daily key) that rewards you with a lot of ISK and SP for completing a set number of matches in a row for that day without leaving. Win a set number of matches in a row to maybe earn a key or booster. PC battles would not count towards these particular daily missions but they would count toward pubs and FW.

Make the rewards worth it and you will see players get motivated to finish the fight. Punishment will only encourage them to leave more.

PS: If by any chance someone gets disconnected or gets scottied, a feature should be implemented that allows you to rejoin the last match as long as it is still in progress and as long as you get back in within the next 3 minutes. If you wait longer than that to rejoin, your consecutive multiplier resets to zero and your spot in the roster gets opened up for the next player to join in mid-match. This is so that anyone who gets momentarily disconnected by accident or gets scottied gets a brief chance to get back in without having to get the rest of the squad to leave the battle (if they are in a squad).

But you can only join that last match in progress during those 3 minutes. You can't simply join another match.

^