So blizzard recently laid out the details on their plan to punish quitters. Its a common thing to do now, as per one of the responses to the increase of team based games, and progression systems. However much like other issues regarding the progression system, I always took a problem with their implementation. Blizzard is certainly among those devs that have screwed up their progression system, but I've already discussed that and here I'm actually going to talk about what they did so right. They went above and beyond the typical route of quitter penalty, and instead of just sloppily lumping every guy that ever quits or drops by other means from the game into the "bad kid" corner and steals their stuff, these guys actually did something around their stat system to single out the truly problematic individuals. Not only that, but in kindness they also addressed specifically where and when their system even bothers to track that information. It seems like common sense that this stuff counts when a match says "go" and stops at the leaderboard screen, but honestly its hard to know for sure in most games. Plus most quit screens threaten you with the automatic loss of XP as just a stock response of pressing the quit screen, so even if you decided that this was your last match in something like COD, you're encouraged to wait for the next match to start just to quit and make sure everything you did the last 10+ minutes had some effect in the game's established system. Here everything feels... fixed and completely established. Its a great change of pace.
Here's the thing the previous trend has failed to realize: we have lives! Its the same problem I have with the souls games still going pause-less (including offline mode, and then there's the fact that even online stuff has things to alter and throw you off the grid). However I suppose that'd be digressing on another subject, but still its the same basic idea. As much as we'd like to be immersed in our games, life happens. There are pets, family members, friends, visitors, sudden phone calls, internet drops, even power outages, and more to consider. Whether its sudden things that come up demanding your attention more, or things that happen entirely right in the moment without any warning, things happen to separate you from the game. Now since we can't exactly pause direct online play for good reasons, we should be allowed to quit. Its honestly punishing enough in that moment, when you realize you might let your team down, or you have to leave your friends, or just the mere fact that you're separated from what was entertaining you. Then you want to tell us we're also smacked around by the artificial reward system? You choose to force us to grind out chores in our games, and then also tell us we're not worthy because real life happens? Meanwhile the fact is, people out there are still salty and have emotional problems that they'll still quit the game even in the face of these system penalties. To them, the team or match is already lost enough that the points they lose were never significant to them anyway. So... honestly you're just slapping normal people on the wrist because they were smart enough to see that other lives matter more than some virtual combat arena. Why is that penalized?
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| Crazy things in life don't just pause while you play your games |
So what Blizzard did here is genius. They tapped into their stat-tracking and basically set a special system up that takes all the games you've played, and tells you that once you quit a certain amount within the latest matches, you become at risk of losing big on your XP. Admittedly the penalty is also greater (lasting multiple matches), but at least this essentially stamps out the risk of you losing out just because of that one time someone tripped over the router cord. Meanwhile if someone has such issues with just playing the damn game that they quit every single match they're in, well.. they'll get caught.
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| For those people who have this on hand... |
I really hope more people adopt this system, or at the very least have their equivalent system explained with such care and detail. For all the idiotic reasons progressives get on their high horse and talk down about gaming and how it "alienates" mature audiences, they rarely cover legit problems like this. No matter who you are, be it an adult with a busy family life, or a kid who is simply being called from another room by their parents who don't understand he can't pause, you deserve a game that respects your time. I truly believe in the common sense business act in which the product you're buying is made for the consumer, and that means respecting their time and life to the best extent possible. That means being allowed to walk away when life calls, even if you cannot pause, and not being punished for it. That shouldn't be a radical idea, or something new, that should be the standard of the industry. However, I'm glad someone at least gets it, and has made an accessible experience while still satisfying those people who think the rage quitting needs some penalty. Personally I think rage quitters are just hurting themselves enough that I really don't care if they get a game-given punishment or not. But in general, just don't do it please. However because that's not going to happen on a universal level, I'm glad Blizzard at least set a good system in place to fix things up. I hope it catches on.
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| Don't rage quit |
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