Leavers and how to deal with them

Wouldn't it be easier to just make the hero drop the leaver's items and remove them from the game entirely? Doing this would make the switch code less troublesome to deal with.
Most of the time leavers are just fed to the other team buy newbies who don't know how to micro more than one hero. Imo, there isn't really a reason for them to be there.

Also, I got another idea about making the game less uneven after a player quits. Basically, if a team is down by one player or they don't switch (because their dumb ,think they're too good for it, or just don't want to) a number of generic hero creeps = to the number of missing players would be spawned in random lanes for the team who is missing players. Obviously these hero creeps wouldn't give the same bounty that a hero does. I'm thinking they could give a little more than a dreadnaught does. Also, the spawned heroes would match the race of the team, for example, a force commander for the space marines and a warboss for the ork team. To make it more interesting you could throw in a little ai to make them target heroes and buildings over standard creeps and possibly do other intelligent things.

That hero drop idea would be nice but is the switch command really that hard?

However, I rly think that the spawned hero creep would ruin the game. They would be targetting and fed or they would target heros + buildings...and die. Good thinking but simply the way to deal with leavers is to ban them...and slowly have an impressive list. thats what i think anyways

That hero drop idea would be nice but is the switch command really that hard?

The switch command is made up of about over 10 pages of code, and it has been causing problems since it was added. Grasshopper and I have been working on coding that and fixing the bugs in it for the past few weeks. I'm beginning to wonder if it should just be removed entirely until we actually have it working. So, to answer your question, yes it is.

However, I rly think that the spawned hero creep would ruin the game. They would be targetting and fed or they would target heroes + buildings...and die. Good thinking but simply the way to deal with leavers is to ban them...and slowly have an impressive list. Smile thats what i think anyways

You didn't read what I wrote carefully enough. However, I did forget to mention that they would only give a little bit more xp than a dread naught and killa-can.

DarkWanderer wrote:Obviously these hero creeps wouldn't give the same bounty that a hero does. I'm thinking they could give a little more than a dreadnaught does.

They would not feed at all because they wouldn't give much more xp or gold than the dreadnaught and killa-cans do. It would be better to think of them as more powerful versions of the dreadnaught and killa-can that have some ai.

Also, I don't think banning all leavers is a good idea. First, you can't assume everyone quits the game out of spite or rage. A lot of the time people have to leave the game for legitimate reasons such as going to work or school. Secondly, We have a small player base already; if we just ban everyone who leaves a game, we'd eventually have almost no one left to even play the game.

With something like this and a working switch system implemented, leavers would have almost no ill effect on the game and the game would still be fun with fewer players than usual.
Imo, this still looks like a win win.

Also, I don't think banning all leavers is a good idea. First, you can't assume everyone quits the game out of spite or rage. A lot of the time people have to leave the game for legitimate reasons such as going to work or school. Secondly, We have a small player base already; if we just ban everyone who leaves a game, we'd eventually have almost no one left to even play the game.

This is exactly why I dislike ban-lists. I mean, sure, some people rage quit, but many don't. On top of that, I have known some of the people that rage quit, and more often than not, it's just been a combination of external factors mixed with losing in their fantasy escape that pisses them off, and on a better day, losing won't affect them as much.

yeah, well, right now the switch command... works... for the most part. theres no reason to remove it untill it works, cause if we do that, then its prolly never comming back, cause we really need real tests to figure out whats wrong, cause tests with just 2-3 ppl dont work (as we've discoved 7 tiems already XD)

so we'll leave it in and slowly get it fully fixed...

however, i do need something to deal with leavers.
howabout: make them invince, and reduce their damage to 0... and apply a perma silence buff on them
so they cant be killed, cant do anything, but are still usefull for holding items XD and scouting

Your,re right; we shouldn't take the switch out but do whatever is necessary to fix it, and like I said before I'll be glad to help you this weekend.

Hopper, I think that could be abused too much. And it doesn't seem fair to have an invincible scout to track a players and sit in their base watching everything they do. If they can hold items, then they can also be used to steal the other team's items. I know that could be prevented with a simple on enter script, but it would still be incredibly distracting to have them running all over the map.

It would be so much easier if you just removed them from the game entirely. The switch code would give us a lot less trouble because we would no longer have to worry about swapping leavers and having leavers in the correct forces all the time. Aren't you going to add squig item carriers for players anyway? Like I said before, I think keeping the leaver's heroes in the game is pointless. I strongly feel that they do nothing but feed (when newbies try to use them) and get in the way. Why are you so opposed to removing them?

I think between a working switch system and my previous suggestion about hero creeps we'd have almost no problem with leavers.

To expand a little on the hero creeps idea here are a few things I didn't have time to mention before.

- The level and power of them would depend on the average levels of the players' heroes.
- They would respawn just as normal heroes do; so, players could give them items to make them more powerful.
- There could be a gamemode switch that spawns them for leavers even if the teams are even
- Other ai features could be added gradually to make them more interesting

This wouldn't only solve the leaver problem, but it could also make the game a lot less boring when there are fewer players.
If you think the coding for it would take too long I could do it all rather quickly.

Anyway, I know fixing switch is the higher priority and removing leaver heroes entirely would most likely help with that.

O, and when we finally manage to get the map to 6vs6, leavers will be even less of a problem.

cause leavers can still be used effectivly. yes noosb can feed with the leavers, but noobs can feed with their own heroes, so should we remove those heroes from the game too? dont make changes based around how noobs act, cause they'll always find a way to mess up a good game

I still don't see what use they could possibly have, especially after hireables are added, but o well. I can see nothing will change your mind about this. Are you still going to use them for item couriers instead of critters?

And it's definitely going to make redoing the switching code more of a pain than it has to be.

nah, the only extra things that leavers affect in the switch code, is making sure there are leavers on you team (easy, not a problem) and calling the same functions on the switched player as the switchee (also not a problem)
edit: and people will find a use. im still gona add carier squigs, but its just one of the uses for leavers

Meh, Dark, I have to half agree with Grass on this, and half with you.

Making them invic scouts is a bad idea. However, I don't like the idea of removing them entirely, for, depending on the leaver's hero and their level, pretty often, I will set them to a hotkey (Cntl 1 or 2) and use them along with my own hero. I mean, some heroes compliment each other well, and why waste that (Especially when that hero is LoC).

Well, on the flip side, leaver heroes means more gold and xp for me

There are two main problems with making sure leavers are on your team before a switch is allowed.

1. What if the game starts with uneven teams because someone leaves at the countdown or load?
2. Checking for leavers has been proven to cause problem after a switch has already happened.

which are bugs to work out

i dont see whats going wrong with players leaving before the game starts... cause then itll still end up reading as the team being down one player...

and the error with checking leavers once switch has happened, thats been fixed, and was due to poor coding on my part

Oh, also, another thing I have seen is when the teams switched, that a switched player can get gold/exp from killing his new teammates (I think. The text saying he killed a hero and got gold came up after my opponent denied me his teammate, but I wasn't able to ask him about it due to the 6 minute silence on someone's bot...). I think I forgot to save the replay though.

lol XD yeah, i could fix that

What exactly does the switch code actually do? I've never played when it was used, so I'm not sure what it does, but it seems to me like a simple enough task. Why does it take up so much code space? I wouldn't think it'd need more than 100-150 lines maximum.

it needs two posts here
if u want, check out this thread for actual code

I see.

So why do want to move leaver's heroes to one side or the other? I mean, if you can multitask with two heroes, what's the point of even having a switch code?

I suppose I think that the simplest solution is best, which is to simply remove leavers' units from the game. Possibly in addition, if one team has more players than the other, the team with the fewest players could receive any number of global buffs, such as increased experience gain, bonus hitpoints, stronger creeps, increased gold gain, and the list goes on.

That way, the switch code only has to find the team with the fewest number of players and move the necessary heroes over to keep things as close as possible.

thats exactly what it does now, players that have already left arent included in the calculation
they arent even really a problem anymore.

and: having a living thinking player on you side beats any sort of buff you might recive...

...unless the Buff is turning into Typhus...

lmao shh hes getting nerfed XD