Dota2 has fixed this by removing the penalty for leaving once another player has abandoned. It's a simple fix and I'm surprised LoL hasn't done it.

That only applies to unranked games. Ranked games you'll still lose MMR if a teammate abandons.

That depends, there are two distinct states.

One is triggered if there are network connectivity issues, in which case the game isn't scored for anybody. This is to get around the MMR abusers that would queue bots to leave on the other team so they would get a quick win.

The second state is usually triggered if a player has left after first blood. Even then, there are compensatory mechanisms. You lose less MMR than you would normally, and if a player leaves, your team will receive unreliable gold at a faster rate.

>This is to get around the MMR abusers that would queue bots to leave on the other team so they would get a quick win.

Why would anyone do something like that? Every time you played a legit game you'd lose.

In order to sell a high MMR account. This explains why there is massive amounts of MMR inflation across regions.

Prior to ranked matchmaking, the top 1% was typically around 4.2k hidden MMR. After ranked was introduced, it became closer to 5k. Now you have close to 8-9k MMR, because people are buying 5-6k accounts, and lose until they reach their true skill level (usually somewhere between 2-3k).

The account buyer essentially feeds 3000 MMR to their opponents, which is why a 5k player back when ranked was introduced is now an 8k player.

I still don't get it. Why would you buy an account with an MMR that virtually guaranteed you'd lose nearly every game? Are masochists more numerous than I'd imagined?

I imagine it's a form of Dunning-Kruger: account buyers feel that they are more skilled than the rating they received after calibration.

There are also those who legitimately enjoy griefing dota: their account is probably so deep into low priority stacks that it is effectively banned. Or perhaps they are shadow banned into the bot/multi box pool. So they buy a new account to try and ruin games at high MMR.

How did they do that? You can't choose whom you queue with.

Queue lots of bots at the same time, the ones that pop simultaneously will be in the same game.

Exactly. Also, queue on a low population region at say 4 am when many players from said region are not on.

Riot are testing it for the case where somebody leaves early on. They don't want to allow it for mid-game abandons for fear that it will encourage players to gang up on their team's weakest link and flame him into abandoning so the rest of the team can leave without consequence.

This is a strategy you see in unranked dota pubs, but it doesn't work against a team that's competent enough to rotate the weakest player out, pile into their lane, or use them as bait for counter ganks.

There is no point in this since there is a surrender option.

To which trolls will never vote yes on, and since you need a supermajority it doesn't happen as early as it should a lot of the time.