Original Post — Direct link

I've been playing MTG arena for 2 weeks now and the thing I have noticed is how many people just timeout instead of conceding when they're about to lose or just idle to try get free wins. This is especially bad in no-risk matches. I noticed in the post malone event and in alchemy matches many people barely make an effort to even play, I guess with the hope that I will leave since I lose nothing. Then they can get their daily wins. It completely ruins the game for me at times and I often end up conceding because I don't have the time to waste on this. What could be a 10-15 min match ends up being a 45min match where they make a move as a timeout is about to happen.

I understand that in ranked or paid events there should be these long timeout times as something may come up and you don't want to lose due to it. Though in the free stuff like alchemy or the free events there should really be harsher quicker timeouts to get rid of these people who are ruining the game. Even something like a 7 day ban for people who are repeating offenders.

Sorry for the rant, though I played gwent for a bit before and I never really noticed this there as much at all. So I do feel like they should try fix this in MTG arena

External link →
about 2 years ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Originally posted by Filobel

Even something like a 7 day ban for people who are repeating offenders.

People who intentionally rope do get banned, but they have to be reported. As far as I know (I could be wrong), WotC doesn't automatically detect ropers.

We do automatically detect ropers, and we temp-to-perma ban a number of them each month (depending on the depravity of their roping behavior). This is fairly easy to detect in data, and we tend to rely on that more than player reports, which can be subject to abuse & bias (turns out blue players gets disproportionately reported, even when they’re not abusing timers; who could have guessed?)

about 2 years ago - /u/WotC_Jay - Direct link

Originally posted by Rock-swarm

Have there been any discussions regarding the length of the timers? Alternatively, is the team happy with the current timer length and how additional timeouts are granted?

We talk about the timers regularly. They're serving many different goals (keeping play moving, allowing players time to understand unfamiliar cards, allowing reasonable time to reconnect from a dropped connection, etc.). Overall, we think the current system is doing a decent job of balancing these sometimes competing goals, though we're always open to looking for net improvements.