Deserter status

[RedtheCrimson]

So, i didn't lock in a god and the game kicked me. Cool, got that part. had a earphone problem and didnt lock in, all on me.

The problem i have now is this 'deserter' status. I've never afked/left a match/didn't ready up/ whatever you wanna call it, I've never done that before. Yet, I get this "deserter" status that bars me from playing for 30 minutes? That seems a bit extreme, and now I am dissuaded from putting real money into this game for gems. Life happens, but I shouldn't be so thoroughly punished for it (especially for a first time offense). What's going to happen if i don't lock in a 2nd time? A day ban?

Can this please be changed?

[Lumix]

The punishment doesn't increase as far has i know, if you dont hit accept when your in a que youll get 2 min deserter, if you dont lock a god its always 30 mins, and i believe if you leave the game and dont come back before it ends its 30 - an hour, somewhere around there.

[EmethSAS]

The penalty increases for consecutive misses, but resets each 24 hour period. So if you skip queue twice in the same day, the second penalty is 5 minutes rather than 2 minutes. If you don't make a god selection twice in the same day, you'll get a 1 hour deserter penalty rather than the intial 30 minute penalty. Longer (on the scale of days) bans are issued only in response to reports made by other players in the game, but queue skipping and god-select skipping don't qualify for that because a game hasn't actually loaded and started up. Google Smite Penalties for details on how all of that works and the incremental penalties associated with different issues.

The reason for the penalty when you don't select a god is because some people put a lot of effort into arranging a team and when someone skips out on the team, it just put 9 other people out of that effort. Not to mention people will routinely abuse not selecting a god to get out of games where they don't get to play the one or two gods they insist on playing with complete disregard for the rest of their team. Because of these reasons, the deserter penalty for dodging during god select is needed.

Does it seem harsh to newer players? Yes. Does "life happen"? Sure. But actually paying attention for 1-2 minutes during god select is not really a big deal after you already clicked "Accept" when the game just gave you a heads up that you were going to have to select a god in order to actually start to play the game, especially when you have up to 9 other people waiting on you to be able to play the game themselves.

Your earphones don't work? Get out of queue or don't hit accept or try to fix it after taking a second to click on a god or once the loading screen is up. Then once your earphones are fixed you only have to requeue or wait the 2 minute "didn't-hit-accept" penalty or you've gotten it fixed while the game is loading up.

If you don't select a god, guess what? You've got 30 minutes to fix your earphones. Play a vs. AI bots game on Smite or play a round of Hearthstone or slither.io or whatever with your extra time... Then come back once you're actually ready to click on a god so you can play some PVP Smite with other people.

But if you understand all this now, you don't need to worry about getting extended bans for missing queues or god selects, because HiRez understands "life happens". Stuff still happens to me too (PC crashes, your kids or parents or roommate or whoever starts screaming at you, your suicidal cat is trying to drown itself again, etc.), in which case you accept you'll have a 30 minute penalty and you get on with your life (and your Smite gaming).

Just don't make it a habit and you'll be fine.