I don’t play competitive multiplayer games very much, because I just don’t have the dedication to hone my skills to even the median average of the online pack, at least beyond about week 2 of a game’s release, but one thing that’s constantly annoying when I do is people who disconnect because they’re losing. Given that I don’t win online very much, I don’t encounter this that often, but on the few occasions where I’m getting the upper hand, there’s nothing more annoying than having people quit out on you mid-game.
I generally get my arse kicked in SFIV online (but I always stay to the end of the match even if my cause is hopeless – which in fairness it usually is), but I was glad to hear that they will be introducing penalties for quitters, in the form of ranking penalties and a publicly visible, prominent disconnect percentage. I applaud that – of course occasionally you’ll get an accidental or unavoidable disconnect, like an internet connection going down, or a fully laden tour bus crashing through your front room into your TV (it happens, so I’ve heard), but on the whole I think it’ll be representative and a good thing. When you choose to play online, you should be prepared to lose gracefully; I know I am, but then I’ve had practice at it, and I’m also British where being magnanimous in defeat is generally ingrained into your psyche from a young age if your upbringing was halfway decent. Good game old chap, good game. Tea? 
I actually had someone rage quit on me in a Peggle game a couple of weeks ago. Peggle. How do you get worked up enough about that to storm off in a huff? Kids today…
April 17th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Maybe its not getting angry, maybe its just not wanting to waste your time and there time playing a game which they can’t win. There should be a way to bow out early if you know the game is hopeless. That way your opponent gets the win, you don’t have to worry about disconnects, and nobodies time is wasted.
April 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Nice move! I applaud them for doing this. I don’t think it’s actually rage but more a ranking thingie. My previous experience with these quitters was in Starcraft (yes, almost 11 years ago!) when people quitted to avoid increasing the defeat-count in Ladder. If they add a “quitting rate” statistic to each player’s profile, then you’ll be able to see what kind of player is some who has a high victory rate, low defeat rate and huge quitting rate
April 17th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Some of the most amazing gaming sessions I’ve been a part of or have seen involve triumph in the face of seemingly inevitable defeat. These pansies who quit early will never experience that joy. In game penalties for early quitters is just fine with me.
Bluto: Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I definately understand you, Sinbad. Its really annoying when players don’t stay till the end, or even close to the end. Having some sort of visible information describing the amount of times players have left a game prematurely is a very big plus in my book.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I don’t think there needs to be a penalty as such. Personally I always laugh whenever someone rage-quits on me, and count it as a win. I never cared much for scoreboards, but for those who do, there’s a simple solution: To disconnect should be the same as to forfeit, and as such count towards losses.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I completely agree.
When I first got my 360 within about a month I remember someone smack talking in uno. That was the exception rather than the rule coming across people like that, but some people do just suck. Like the person who came in to my wife’s game of Keflings and started destroying all the avatar towers.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:51 am
If it’s not rage, then it’s just extremely poor manners and sportsmanship. Saving time? Come on – if it’s truly ‘impossible’ to win then that means there can’t be much time left, how much time would it take to just finish the game? It’s not about time, it’s about saving face – they just don’t want to see the final scoreboard, and as well as saving face they *know* it’s less satisfying to the winner that way. And I agree with Eric – snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is easily the best feeling, and most good games are set up to try to make foregone conclusions rare.
People who quit out early because they don’t think they can win are just poor losers who don’t want to admit they were bested: “You can’t beat me, I quit! [pout and stalk off]“. It’s just childish. Take it like a man.
How would it look if a football team left the field 5 minutes before the end because they thought they couldn’t win? You’d call them a bunch of sulky tossers, and rightly so. A good sport takes the defeat on the chin, shakes the hand of the opponent at the end and admits they were the better player that day. Any other behaviour is poor form. If you’re not prepared to lose, you shouldn’t play (which is why I don’t play competitively much of course since I do generally lose most of the time! But when I do play I stick it out to the end).
April 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Command and Conquer: Zero Hour is about the only game I know that has a disconnect % in player profiles. You can just kick people out of your game’s lobby if they have a quit rate higher than 5/100, this works really well.
Warcraft 3’s custom map (mod) DotA is the worst when it comes to ragequitters. It’s a 5v5 game and every 1 in 2 public games you have to restart 10 minutes into the game because 2-3 people left and unbalanaced the teams. It now even has a feature to allow players to switch teams during the game to balance teams. The community ’solved’ this with a 3rd party app which allows hosts to ban players, other hosts can then see when a banned player joins the game. Problem is that this is nickname based, and battlenet lets you create an infinite number of accounts on 1 cd key.
If you want to play a serious DotA game you can now join a sort of ladder/league website which registers all games played (and bans leavers etc.).
April 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I agree that these are very poor manners between gamer buddies. I hated as children when playing in person, now online also it feels bad.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Awesome, some fellow dota players posting. ^_^ If only dota were ranked like normal wc3 games are..
October 13th, 2009 at 12:47 am
How the heck do you kick people from peggle gaming sessions, this girl keeps on doing it cos i kick her butt, she has even threatened people with the boot on her bio. i just cant see how its done?