Ending the match faster has no impact on this. The system will be tweaked further so that any current false positives are resolved and people who continue to exploit loopholes to get challenges done for essentially AFK farming will be subject to more severe punishment. This step was just meant to ensure that the majority stops, because it was A LOT of people that contributed to challenges being farmed and not feasible for bans. As far as sitting goes, I think if 20% of the match is spent sitting it should not be a problem, but an absurd amount like 50% of the match spent sitting should not count toward challenge progression anyway.
Nothing was changed about player limits, and if your friend is sitting nearly the whole game then it wouldn’t count for him yeah, which is expected, if he doesn’t participate in the game then it won’t count. If you wanna be sure during event times wait for the room to be full in v2 until starting or play in larger rooms like 3v3 or 4v4. AFK farming must be dealt with and the volume of abuse did not make it feasible to handle with bans, so there is no way around this. There have been adjustments to the system now which make it much more forgiving and the challenge was extended for a day, but this system will stay in place (even if in a lighter form).
