yeah, I agree with Kisan. but the idea of rewarding the stayers instead of punishing the leavers is an idea that shouldn't be disregarded. Kind of like Stardock's DRM stance. Reward the customers instead of punish the pirates. sort of?

As for me, I'm banning all rage quitters when the ban list comes out.  Then they will not be able to get into as many games hopefully changing their behavior.

However, it is no fun staying in a game when you are going to lose, but it shows good sportsmanship and class sticking it out.  Maybe a reward would be needed. 

Better option would be to have a public record of games played, won, lost, quit, and disconnected, like in Sins of a Solar Empire.  This would work well in custom as quitters could easily be identified and people nowadays care about their records.

See this is what so many people don't get. The best way to get people doing what you want, is to convince them it's in their benefit. Do it in a nice way and they will follow along happily rather than fight against it (the ban way).

Just put a real ladder in the game and it won't matter.  Play arranged teams and nobody will quit anymore, and when they do quit you'll be glad because it means you won.  I played competatively in WC3 for a long time, and having somebody quit when I was beating them was just as gratifying as winning.

The problem is the lack of competition, or any reason whatsoever to stay in a game where you're losing.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the correct answer.

Giving the losing team extra kudos for losing strikes me as an attempt to swat at symptoms instead of the actual problem.  If me quitting doesn't simply end the game with a victory for my opponent and, instead, wastes his/her time with bots and such, then, well, that's stupid (for lack of a better word).  If someone's not having fun getting ravaged, 30 points instead of 10 isn't going to make them stick around.  Heck, many people probably don't even care about favor. 

The problem is that a quit just creates a hassle for the winners and is meaningless record-wise to the losers and 'that' needs to change.

While I don't really think adjusting favor will be effective, I think the winning bonus for favor could easily go. It's too large by itself to begin with and the winning side usually gets most of the other rewards as well. It would also slow down the favor gain in general, which I consider a good thing personally.