Mortal Kombat’s Way Of Dealing With Rage Quitters Is Just What Tekken 8 Needs

Like most fighting games, Tekken 8 is home to many rage quitters known as “pluggers.” This issue has been around for a decade because even during the Tekken 7 era, rage quitters were rampant in online matches. Even though it has been going on for quite some time, Bandai Namco fails to see how easy it can be to deal with pluggers without banning anyone from the game.

In Tekken 8, many players rage quit when they are about to lose in ranked matches to save rank points. Doing so invalidates the match, and no player gains or loses these rank points. Ever since Tekken 8 came out, these pluggers have been going on a rampage as they rage quit at the slightest hint of losing the game.

Bandai Namco’s Efforts To Deal With Pluggers

Bandai Namco hasn’t put any penalty on quitting the game, except for a message showing the opponent’s disconnection rate right before you accept a match. Note that this feature wasn’t working due to a bug, but it has recently been fixed about two months after the game’s launch. This wasn’t a PC-only issue, as players on consoles have also been rage-quitting at the slightest inconvenience.

Tekken’s director, Katsuhiro Harada, and Tekken Producer, Michael Murray, revealed during one of the TekkenTalk sessions (timestamp: 1:01:00) in the past that they are aware of the pluggers and are planning to ban them completely after they’ve taken care of legal complications that might arise if the player decides to sue them back for the ban. Soon afterward, we saw many pluggers banned for life from the game.

FYI #TEKKEN8

We have taken the following actions to suspend accounts, up to and including indefinitely, of users who have engaged in the following malicious and unauthorized play (Two types of ban were implemented: permanent ban and time-limited ban.)

Intentional disconnection…

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) March 15, 2024

That certainly has slightly reduced the amount of rage quitting that you see during online matches. However, what about the player who was about to win the match before the opponent decided to rage quit? You don’t get anything for being an honest player in this game. Even the players that get banned once will create another account and continue to play the same way they’ve been playing, just to ruin the experience of other players.

The Very Obvious Solution

The easiest way to handle it could’ve been to let the rage quitter save the points that they so desperately wanted while also giving the win to the other player instead of invalidating the match. The Mortal Kombat franchise is an excellent example of this because of its “Quitality” feature. In Mortal Kombat, whenever a player disconnects before the end, they will end up dying in a funny way, and their opponent will automatically get the win.

Was a feature like this really impossible for Bandai Namco to put into the game? I am all for banning the pluggers, but that doesn’t end the problem. There are like 5 out of 100 pluggers that rage quit every single game and get enough reports to get a permanent ban, but what about the other 95 players that only rage quit occasionally when they’re about to lose a promotion match?

Tekken 7 had the same problem, and many hoped that Tekken 8 would change things and make the online scene a little bit better with fewer rage quitters. But that wasn’t meant to happen. We’ll likely be spending the next 5-6 years with the same messed up online system that doesn’t punish the players for being dishonest. But, if by any chance, Bandai Namco does implement a similar feature to Mortal Kombat’s Quitality, we might see more people focusing on online ranked instead of just playing friendly sessions.

Takeaway

Tekken 8 hasn’t been out for very long, but the online scene is riddled with rage quitters who would quit the game at the slightest indication of losing their rank points. Bandai Namco does ban quitters for life, but only those ones that have received a massive number of reports or the players that quit like 100 games a day.

There’s next to no penalty for players who quit occasionally and no rewards for players who play honestly and refuse to rage quit despite losing. Mortal Kombat’s Quitality is an excellent feature that I think Bandai Namco should take a lesson from and implement a similar feature in Tekken 8.