During an Overwatch competitive season match, if a player quits mid-match, my team will have to finish the match with one less player, which generally leads to a defeat.
I've never seen a new player added to replace one who quits.
Does Blizzard intentionally not replace a player that quits or is the search algorithm just never able to find a replacement?
Best Answer
Replacements are not allowed in competitive matches. There are several reasons why doing so is a bad idea:
The player who left might be able to return, if they just had a temporary internet problem or something. You don't want to have someone who is just about to get back in, but is blocked by a newcomer and is now unfairly saddled with the disconnection penalty.
Whoever replaces in will probably have a different rank than whoever left. How do you calculate the end-of-match rank changes? You can't use the old player because they're no longer a factor. You can't use the new player because that opens up ways for groups to grief the other team (such as having their highest-ranked guy leave and make way for hopefully a lower-ranked guy, so the other team wins less or loses more rank).
Chances are that the team with a missing player will be losing. Anyone who replaces in would be more likely to lose than win, through no fault of their own. Replacing would have a very negative stigma.
Akin to #2, whoever replaces in will probably not have the same skill level as whoever left. If replacements were allowed, this would result in teams bullying their worst teammate to leave in an attempt to get them replaced by a better player. Similar negative behaviour would occur if any sort of compensation were made for teams that have a leaver (e.g. a bot stands in, or the remaining players get a statistical boost to even things up).