Destiny 2 penalizes players who leave certain competitive modes. Duck out of a Crucible match in a Competitive playlist, or a round of Gambit, and you’ll get a stern warning. Keep doing it, and eventually you’ll get a time-out. But there’s one PVP mode where you can quit with total impunity, and players often do: Quickplay.
The Quickplay Control and Featured playlists in Destiny 2 have a lot of problems. First of all, the lack of skill-based matchmaking or solo queues mean that solo players are frequently matched up against impossible odds. There are arguments to be made for this state of affairs, chiefly that enabling SBMM in a player-to-player game leads to matches with high latency and long wait times. But the alternative, current scenario mainly benefits highly-skilled players, and especially content creators who want to show off for their audiences.
Perhaps that’s why there’s such a big quitting problem in Destiny 2‘s Crucible. My anecdotal experience says that most games feature at least one drop from each team. Players leave on their first deaths, if the other team gets a little bit ahead, or if they just don’t like the feel of the match. And I get it: it’s not that serious, it’s Quickplay, whatever. But players leaving matches left and right makes the Crucible experience worse for everyone, from the players who stick around and deal with unbalanced team numbers to those who are backfilled into losing games.
The simplest way to solve this, I think, would be to experiment with a penalty for players who leave mid-match. Say on your first mid-match quit, you get off with a warning. On your second, you lose your current activity streak and receive a five-minute time-out to cool off. On your third, you’re out for a half-hour. And on your fourth, you’re locked out of Crucible until the next daily reset.
Too harsh? Maybe the numbers could be adjusted a little. But there are already incentives for sticking it out to the end of a Crucible match — gear, experience, and reputation — so I think it’s worth experimenting with the stick. Another possibility would be dumping habitual mid-game leavers into a separate leavers queue, but that seems a whole lot more complicated than just hitting them with a time-out.
What do you think? Have you noticed frequent mid-game quitting in Destiny 2’s Crucible lately? Let me know in the comments below.
If you’re looking for more help with Destiny 2, we have guides covering how to unlock the Solar 3.0 fragments and grenades, how to get the new Jotunn catalyst, how to farm Vestiges of Dread and Opulent Umbral Energy, all Exotics, new weapon Patterns, seasonal mods, and Season of the Haunted triumphs. In addition, we’re covering all patch notes, bugs and top issues, Bound in Sorrow quest steps, and Calus Bobbleheads. We’ve covered how to get Opulent Keys, Bound Presence in Containment, Crown of Sorrow H.E.L.M. upgrades, Iron Banner Seal Triumphs, and the Trespasser Catalyst. And lastly, we’ve written on how to find a Loyalist Commander for Battles Lines Triumph and the Cek’ik Boss.
