People rage quitting halfway through a match in fighting games is nothing new, but it sure is annoying. It's an issue that has felt especially prevalent in Tekken 8, a game that has practically zero punishment for anyone who decides their internet is no longer working mid-game. That's hopefully looking to change soon, with director Katsuhiro Harada and other members of the development team addressing the issue around pluggers ('cause, y'know, pulling the plug) in a Tekken Talk livestream.
Translating for Harada, producer Michael Murray told viewers: "There's no perfect solution to this but we're trying to improve it, at least to make it a more accurate disconnect ratio that's displayed on their character's profile." he said. He's referring to the fact that the single deterrent Tekken 8 currently has for pluggers—an opponent's disconnect percentage that's shown to you when you're offered a match—hasn't worked since release.
The plan is to eventually go further than that, though. "You know, obviously we want to ban these people from the game," Murray said. "But there's a lot of legal protections in various countries and different manners around the world. So we're just being very careful that we have all that kind of paperwork and the methodology that's necessary to remove these people from the game before we go through with the bans. It will happen, so please be patient."
For those of you who are worried that your odd internet hiccup, Steam maintenance or game crash will put a blight on your profile, fear not. "We realise sometimes your internet, there's a problem with it, or your hardware," Murray continued. "It's not like you're going to get banned for one time, this is people who are constantly doing it. So if you just have that rare occasion you don't have to worry about it."
Murray admitted that even he himself had faced pluggers while playing online, so it's definitely not as though the team isn't aware of the issues. I do hope Bandai Namco eventually introduces some sort of middle ground between a disconnect rate and straight-up bans. Street Fighter 6 has a yellow-card system which shows up by your player name and, after enough rage quits, will put the offending player on the proverbial naughty step by matchmaking them with other serial pluggers.
Mortal Kombat one goes down a more humiliating path, with 'quitalities' being a feature introduced in Mortal Kombat 11 and carried over to last year's Mortal Kombat 1. It has the offending player's character snapping their own neck in shame, which is suitably brutal for a casually violent fighter.
The most reasonable path seems to be to grant the disconnector a loss and the disconnectee a win, though some argue that it's unfair to those whose connection drops legitimately. Situations like that should hopefully be a fringe case though, and it's frustrating having your wins or rank promotions denied to someone who wasn't willing to see the set out. Fixing the disconnect rate so it's not permanently stuck at 0% will be a swell start though, and should help players weed out the salt soon enough.
