Feature Request: new way to handle timing out

[yebellz]

A long time ago (around mid 2014 and earlier), the ladders did not punish time outs at all. They simply counted as a loss and players would stay on the ladder. This had the drawback of inactive players cluttering up the ladder and giving people an easy way to climb up the ladder (just by challenging them and waiting for them to time out).

When the system changed to the current implementation (where a time out drops the player from the ladder, unless a rare bug occurs), I made a proposal regarding that situation:

[suggestion] "Limbo" State for Ladder Exits

Current implementation and issues: When a player withdraws from a ladder, they automatically resign all of their ongoing games in that ladder, which is usually undesirable. The workaround is to play out those games, while canceling any new challenges. However, this has the drawback of potentially giving a bunch of people free climbs up the ladder. When a player times out in a ladder game, they are removed from the ladder ranking, however their other games in that ladder are kept ongoing but ar…

Note: my initial post is not advocating for any sort of grace period for the player that timed out, although that did come up in the further discussion.

Another note: my first concern seems to have been addressed in a later patch:

Question about Withdrawing from Ladder

Fyi… in the next patch release we will allow resigning the ladder without resigning all of your games. Those games will still be played but will not count towards ladder placement.