Fighting games are generally hit and miss. You either make a game that is internationally praised for its revolutionary take on the genre (see Mortal Kombat 2011) or you make just another rip-off. But that’s not always so.
Diamonds in the rough
In the world of fighting games you can find the occasional diamond in the rough (see Killer Instinct, Virtua Fighter, and even Dead or Alive). These games are generally decent bordering on good, and they would become excellent if they would just focus more on the game’s essence instead of breast physics and graphics.
One of the most recent examples of such title is definitely Street Fighter V. When it came out, it was universally considered to be ‘meh’. It could have been better. There were serious problems with the servers, and some characters’ moves were either too simple or too complex to perform.
But as the game went through a couple of patches, most of the issues with it went away, leaving it a possible Game of the Year candidate and leaving wannabe critics with nothing bad to say about it. Then, the real gaming began, as with the server issues fixed, people could now play against each other.
Rage quitters
And here is where today’s topic begins, as despite the fact that Street Fighter has had previous experience with online fighting games, they did not seem to anticipate one thing – rage quitters. As tournaments are underway, people keep quitting the game instead of losing, attempting to avoid dropping in ratings. And so far, it’s working.
But as soon as Capcom was alerted to this, the company promised that rage quitters will be severely punished in Street Fighter V. They did not say what the punishments will be, and neither do they seem to know of a way to track them, as users were asked to submit any footage they have of such behavior.
Videos are easy to capture, especially in online play, so those who abuse the ‘Quit’ button to stay in the leaderboards will most likely be punished by the company. But players aren’t really willing to stop playing, save the video, compose an e-mail to Capcom and send it with the attached video.
Players shouldn’t be responsible for the gaming company making such a big mistake. And this is where the far better option comes in – simply not allowing the players to quit a fight while playing online. Sadly, money is still the number one go-to for Capcom, so they probably won’t be changing the game’s menu anytime soon.
We’ll just have to wait and see how all of this works out.
Image source: YouTube
