GamerSushi Asks: The Quitting Game

VegetaOne thing that can put a damper on a good night of fun in the online world of gaming would have to be the advent of rage quitting, something that plagues even the most congenial of multiplayer matches. It’s hard to escape, really. As long as there are people playing games, there will be people that grief and people that quit.

And this is something that Bungie hopes to put a stop to. In a recent chat with Xbox360 Achievements, Bungie community director Brian Jarrard had a few things to say about a new system they’re implementing into Halo: Reach to help weed out the rage quitters from the rest of the population. The idea is that these people will be penalized in order to keep the overall experience more enjoyable.

We’ve talked about the idea of when to quit online matches, but I still thought I’d bring this up. What do you guys think of punishing people that habitually quit games? Personally, I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, I think it does indeed ruin the experience for other people in some ways. But on the other, if I pay 60 bucks for a game, I feel like it’s almost my right to enjoy it how I please, and that doesn’t include letting someone grief me for an entire match or playing a really hated gametype. Obviously, it’s a tricky ground to navigate, but my advice would be to find better ways to penalize griefers before penalizing quitters, but that’s just me.

So what do you guys think about quitting online games? Do you agree with Bungie’s new proposed tactic? Go!

Source- X360A

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

16 thoughts on “GamerSushi Asks: The Quitting Game”

  1. Most online gaming I do is in Counter-Strike and rage quitting is pretty common place, but I’ve never felt that it hurt that kind of gameplay. Maybe it’s more of a problem in Halo?

    The company that built the game should work harder at making rage quitting a non-issue rather than penalizing the people who actually gave their hard earned cash to buy the game.

    In picking one side or the other, I agree with Eddy’s final thought that the griefers should be penalized, not the quitters.

    If I wanted to spend money on something that would punish me I’d invest in an membership to an S&M club.

  2. Well Bungie is going to make sure it is only the habitual quitters, so if you quit because you got in a room full of griefers you won’t be penalized. They’re aiming for the people that quit if their kill/death starts to go negative.

  3. @Apollo733 No game company has the power to make rage quitting not an issue, because there will always be people who get frustrated or mad at a game. Also on Eddy’s thought, it would be near impossible to weed out griefers, as it is not something they can track like quitting. Quitting is just something that they can easily track so they decided to take action against that problem.

  4. I dont like ragequitting systems >;(

    It’ll most likely be similar to MW2 where you’ll be penalized for leaving halfway through the game.

    The game can’t tell when you can go and when you can’t. What if you need to go out? If something arose and you had to leave your dear 360? If you only had an extra 5 minutes and you decided to spend it on Halo?

    The case is, there’ll always be situations where people leave midway through the game, and not just because of ragequitting. Games can’t expect us to stay in a whole game for every game we join.

  5. Wargeragon stole my thoughts. What if you live in an area with crappy internet, but you really want to play Halo? Your connection would cut out and you’d be penalized for something that you couldn’t control.

    I’m sure Bungie has contingencies in place, but this will be tricky to manage without pissing a lot of people off.

  6. People Rage for a reason – typically being that they are stuck in a rut and can’t get out of it – and some games invite raging more than others (L4D2, anyone?). Punishing the rager is not the right idea since gamers should always be allowed to vote with their feet – why spend your time playing on a sever or a game mode that is really not working for you?

    Games should focus on what makes people rage and address that so that everyone has a better experience instead of punishing ragers.

  7. to build upon what wargeragon and Mitch said, You are in the middle of a game and you really really have to pee.

    you can,

    A) quit the game to go to the bathroom/washroom earning yourself a penalty for quitting the game that affects the quality of person you will spend the rest of your life playing the game with

    B) keep playing, resulting in your bladder bursting into a gazillion pieces

    I can think of many other situations (you are out of beer, your hot pocket is burning in the oven, you ran out of Mountain Dew…) However I believe that we can give Bungie the benefit of the doubt on this one as I am sure they are intelligent enough to have already considered these scenarios…I hope.

  8. Not only play 60 bucks, but pay Xbox Live the right to play the game online.

    I see both sides here. Sometime you start a match and you gotta run. It’s life.

  9. I was really confused about what you meant at first, but now I remembered that Halo has matchmaking shit.

    Private servers allow you to join and disconnect whenever you want, and that’s the way it should be (obviously). What if it’s not a rage quit? Maybe it’s bed time, maybe your friend finally showed up, maybe you spilled your beer on your crotch.

    I don’t like this.

  10. [quote comment=”12405″]why is vegeta the picture?[/quote]

    I second that. GoW2 Had a penalization system where if you quit a game, the next game you played, after you finished, a set amount of EXP would be subtracted from your total score. It was pretty effective at the lower levels, as you lost a good chunk, and everytime you left a game without completing a match, that chunk of EXP would compound on itself, to the point that it was better to eventually complete a game, even if you had a horrible score, as you’d lose a great amount of EXP anyway. What made it even worse was that you could de-level if you lost too much EXP, making it known to all that you’ve been quitting games. At the higher levels, it doesn’t affect players much, but by then, most people don’t leave games.

    I think that the whole Ranked Vs. Social system is great for this exact purpose. If you play social games, you can leave whenever you want, no penalty. If you play ranked games, you get a penalty.

  11. I think that people should stay in the game and if they have to leave, simply accept the penalty. The penalty can’t be too harsh, of course. Something that affects your gaming record, like MW2’s “add-a-loss” is unnecessary. Exp subtractions can be made up and don’t affect a gaming record. There may not be much more that can be done, because it’s either have a professional gaming system that’s open to the public, or have every professional game be a private match that only people who know each other/set up games previously will join. Also, developers can’t worry about internet disconnections and your beer spilling. What they should be concerned about is people leaving games, and then possibly returning, to reset their kill score.

  12. How big of a problem is this, anyway? I don’t play a lot of games online so I don’t really have much experience with “rage quitters.” Is this really a big problem in a deathmatch situation or is it more of a problem in alternative game modes where people are on teams and such?

    I can see how the latter would be an issue since it would throw off the competitive balance of the game. Perhaps they could impose some minor penalty only on certain multiplayer game modes where someone dropping really affects the other players?

    A few people have mentioned that some players drop to preserve their kill numbers. Can’t developers just set that stuff to save when you exit the game, or are people so obsessed with their scores that they turn off their system before it saves this data? Can you even do that or is all the info saved offsite?

  13. When you buy a $60 game, you should have a basic idea about the fanbase behind that game. If you buy Halo, you should know that most of the fans are whiny kids that rage-quit.
    Rage quitting is a part of gaming, like trolling & Internet: inseperable.

  14. [quote comment=”12411″]How big of a problem is this, anyway? I don’t play a lot of games online so I don’t really have much experience with “rage quitters.” Is this really a big problem in a deathmatch situation or is it more of a problem in alternative game modes where people are on teams and such?

    I can see how the latter would be an issue since it would throw off the competitive balance of the game. Perhaps they could impose some minor penalty only on certain multiplayer game modes where someone dropping really affects the other players?

    A few people have mentioned that some players drop to preserve their kill numbers. Can’t developers just set that stuff to save when you exit the game, or are people so obsessed with their scores that they turn off their system before it saves this data? Can you even do that or is all the info saved offsite?[/quote]

    I believe that some developers have it saved as it occurs. Rage quitting is an issue in games where you don’t get bots to help you out, and you’ve got a say 5 vs 2 going on. It’s difficult to win that kind of match, even if you get a point boost especially if your team mate has no mic or refuses to talk/listen to you, as is often the case in public matches. It’s an issue in any game type where people don’t replace the people who leave. It can also be an issue depending on how the game handles host connection. Finally, it’s an issue when you’re having a good game and someone has to leave, and is replaced by a twat (negative connotation) who either doesn’t know how to play, wants to sit there, or wants to mess around because it’s the last few rounds/kills before the game is over. This happens at the outsets of matches, of course, but eventually, in most cases, these people leave themselves, you just don’t want to get someone like that after you’ve got a close lead on the opposing team. There may be more issues, but those are off the top of my head.

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