The problem

What feels like every game, there is 1 or 2 disconnects in the first 0-5 minutes. These pauses are allegedly MOST OFTEN not because something needs to be dc'd for such as:

• Internet connectivity issues
• Emergencies taking a bit of time (deliveries, someone at door)
• Tending to a quick unplanned phone call

Most often these pauses in the start are caused by:

• Quick smoke break
• Going to the bathroom
• fixing a glass of water or similar

Similar to all of these things, are that they could have been done BEFORE the que.

When you pause to go to the bathroom, you are making 9 other people waste 2 minutes, and when this happens almost every game it starts to add up. The problem is of course these people doing these things, but also the system that enables them.

My suggestions:

We don't want to disable pauses like in League, because it leads to games that are very unfair if someone gets a situation IRL that they can't be at fault for (see first section of bullet points). However, most of the pauses that happens because of the second section of bullet points are in the first 0-5 minutes because someone didn't do something they should've handled before the que.

• Suggestion 1: 1 hour que-penalty if you dc with subsequent pause from the game within the first 5 minutes
  • Pros: Allows for emergencies to happen within first 5 minutes with a slight punishment, enough to deter bathroom and smoke breakers from wasting everyone's time
  • Cons: Doesn't completely ban the issue, and penalizes people who have internet connectivity issues they don't figure out until they are in the game, and have to reconnect to fix
• Suggestion 2: No pauses for the first x (5, 10) minutes of the game
  • Pros: Completely removes the bad type of pauses, as people are much less likely to pause in the middle of the game than in the start of the game for these reasons
  • Cons: could lead to unfair games for people with internet or fair issues such as the 1st set of bullet points.

I assume there are better solutions than these, but I think the first step would be to acknowledge that this is a problem. That dota players are really tired of pauses, and we need to discourage this kind of behavior, because it truly is frustrating that it happens >50% of games, and that it can be prevented by a better system design.

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Thoughts and other suggestions are very much appreciated