Originally Posted by
Tziva
I feel like you didn't read any of the examples and situations in my post or the subsequent ones by others. Comparing a handbuilt-group situation in pve content like wow keystones with something like League is apples and oranges. Entirely different systems with different implementation, impact, and repercussions.
I highly disagree this would work effectively, much less punish the offenders in appropriate proportions. The leaver is only one of five people in the group. You implement this in WoW, the would-be leaver just trolls the dungeon group instead (or goes offline or afk) to avoid the debuff and then one of the four innocent people has to take the debuff or else all of them are held hostage for 45+ minutes. This is a "solution" that causes more negative impact to the innocent people than just dealing with a leaver would where the absolute worst impact is the time already wasted on the key.
This also negatively impacts people who have entirely reasonable reasons for leaving. I PuGed a key last week where we ran out of time right after the first boss. Based on the current pacing, it would have taken several more hours to finish the key, for which we'd be rewarded a single piece of loot to share. I wasn't the first person to leave, but the person that did sure was fucking justified and should not be punished for it.
And as far as basing it on frequency, this is just going to punish the people who pug a lot (and are therefore more likely to encounter these situation) over people that run a key a week or play with friends, rather than leavers vs. not leavers.
And that's not even really considering the logistics of a deserter debuff. In a situation where groups are manually made, how would that even work? Prevent use of the group tool? What about groups made via trade/discord/social communities? Block you from joining groups? What about other group content? Prevent keys from being activated? That also just wastes more time from teams building groups when they have to suddenly replace someone right when they're about to start.
I understand the desire to have leavers punished, but you have to be pragmatic about what it actually looks like when implemented and whether it actually improves the problem. I maintain that with WoW's keystone system, the best way to handle leavers is a human manually reviewing the situation and manually applying a punishment (such as a short suspension) to the person who is causing the disruptive gameplay, whether they were the first person to actually leave or not. If we really want Blizzard to do something about the problem, that is what we need to be pushing them to do, not roll out some shitty automation.