What is queue dodging?
Queue dodging is the act of not selecting a hero at the hero selection screen, or intentionally closing the app in the five seconds before the match starts. There are a variety of reasons that people do this:
1) To avoid having two laners
2) To avoid players who instalock heroes
3) You saw AdyEndrus on your team
Whatever the case, queue dodging happens, and in my experience happens frequently at higher Elo.
Is queue dodging bad?
In my opinion, queue dodging wastes everyone’s time. You normally wait between one and three minutes for the queue to find appropriate teams, then you spend 90 seconds picking heroes. If someone doesn’t lock in that means that the last five minutes was a complete waste for five other people. Then, you have to wait another one to three minutes for a new match to pop. I’ve had nights where I’ve had someone on the other team dodge four matches in a row. After almost 20 minutes we didn’t get to play a single match. We gave up and called it a night. Queue dodging can also be toxic. I’ve heard stories from people who get dodged for playing a certain hero (eg: SAW). I’ve heard from someone who changed their IGN because they were getting dodged in solo queue from a poor performance on the developer’s live stream. Seriously?
What is the penalty?
The current penalty for queue dodging is you can’t join a match for 10 minutes (up from 5 minutes pre-1.4). This includes if you’re in a party — your entire party won’t be able to queue. The penalty is currently in line with other MOBAs, League of Legends has a five minute and 30 second cooldown for the first dodge. The second however, is 15 minutes, and subsequent dodges are an hour! I feel like the current penalty is okay, but multiple dodges should incur much longer cooldowns like League of Legends. It would also help if they fixed the queue bug where sometimes after 3 minutes the match doesn’t pop and you get put on cooldown. People
How do the developers feel?
On the official Vainglory forums, the developer doer stated:
“BTW – the likelihood that we change the penalty so the time escalates, it also results in a match loss AND elo loss AND flags you with deserter status are all extremely high. That should give you an idea of how strongly we feel about this”.
I don’t agree with a match loss for not locking in a hero. Yes, I’ve been affected by dodging, and in some scenarios I have dodged myself. However, the match hasn’t even begun yet, and it’s not fair to credit someone with a loss. I think this would deter people from solo queueing, which is the primary mode a vast majority of people play.
From the 1.4 patch notes, SurpriseBirthday said:
“Our stance is clear on this: Dodging ruins the expediency of the public queue and is absolutely not okay. You don’t get to control what other people pick in solo queue; if you want that privilege, form a party.”
What are some suggestions to fix the problem?
I feel like queue dodging has a lot to do with a flaw in the training and hero selection process. The added LANE/JUNGLE/ROAM was a nice addition, but some players don’t even know it exists. The training itself does not prepare you for concepts like Ironguard jungling and team composition. There’s no communication in the hero selection process which leads to less than favorable teams. I also think the lack of ranked / casual modes is another factor leading to queue dodging. Elo / Skill tier is currently the only “achievement” in the game — so people are very protective of that and do NOT want to lose at any cost. These highly competitive people will dodge any composition that is not the current meta or if they don’t get to play a certain hero.
If the training can be revamped to better align with the current compositions and gameplay, if they could add casual and ranked modes, and if there were more achievements in the game, I think these would all lessen queue dodging. I’m all for these possible changes! What do you think? Write in the comments!
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7 Comments
eagleWithAfez
Jul 16, 2015 3:06 pmLet’s think of this as dodged queue vs a full match. Person X used to dodge frequently and liberally. Person X now knows that he can’t dodge, so he has no choice but to lock and load in. He then proceeds to harass Person Y for not giving him his desired role, despite Person Y having called and softlocked the role first before locking. Person Z notices and pings sad faces at each occasion of harassment. Person Y and Z are now pretty much held hostage for 15 minutes with Person X, who they are both hoping will afk. If Person X had dodged, yes 60 seconds would have been wasted on the part of persons Y and Z, but they would likely have found another more co-operative teammate instead.
This isn’t to say dodging should not be penalised, but this is a situation that could arise from doing so…
boeingrules
May 14, 2015 10:17 pmI think queue dodgers should be punished in the exact same way as abandoners are. On the found match screen everyone is given a clear choice: to accept or to decline. By accepting the match, you have committed to it. Breaking that commitment at any point afterwards is abandoning the match, even if it hasn’t actually started yet.
maxgreen1412
May 10, 2015 10:19 pmSo they dont give warning and put you on cooldown right away?
keldegar
May 15, 2015 5:38 pmYes, your first dodge is a 10 minute cooldown.
DrEvil
May 05, 2015 8:14 pmThe problem I have with these increase penalties is the timing. Right now we have one queue where we combine trolls, low skill players, high Elo players, high Elo players who got carried by their team and suck in public q, and a 2:57 timer that means that you could match with anyone of those.
Queue dodging used to be the lesser of two evils for me when I was soloQing. It was a necessary evil in the era of koshka’s and vox’s who simply dominate the meta. And many other reasons.
Before enforcing these heavy penalties, I think SEMC should work on filtering those categories that people tend to avoid out of the general serious ranked mode play. Casual mode, bots, repercussions to repeated unpleasant behavior all need to be in place to reduce the number of players a competitive player would rank up with.
What they have done by doing this is encouraging publicQ smurfs, and discouraging high Elo players from going out in the wild Wild West. So now you’ll have the parties group, and soloQ group.
I don’t want to say that this is going to break the game, but the repercussions of penalizing players too strongly for dodging are beyond the six people in that match. The community as a whole can get hurt by the timing of this change.
With all that said, I do believe harsh punishments are needed, as 5 mins was too low before. But let’s improve the player pool first.
BFDM_MEXI
May 08, 2015 2:11 pmI couldn’t have said it better myself. Your first paragraph was ultimately a HomeRun. If you solo Q any 1 of those things makes playing for fun discouraging. Trolls waste time, Jumping into a game with people lower tier than yourself that haven’t figured out basics like Ironguard (not that there is a training for that, just a Free To Play Ringo every week with his own training course) solo Q ing into a team of 3 – 2 tiers higher than you because theres no one else for them to play at 2:57 timer. A better solution would be for them to force to split the team up to find better matches in Q instead of a guaranteed game against lower skilled opponents. If theres no one to play then congrats, you’ve won apparently. lol.
keldegar
May 15, 2015 5:40 pmYeah the only problem with the split queues is that there won’t be anyone to play with at the very high tiers. You could end up waiting 30 minutes for a match.