Killer Instinct Update To Curb Rage Quits Via Jail Mode

[fix-the-spade]

Nothing personal, but if you are not finishing 20% of games maybe the problem is that you just don't have enough time for multiplayer games anymore.

I think you should step into the real world for a second, according to ESRB nearly seventy percent of all gamers are over eighteen, almost twenty percent are over fifty. That means a lot of people of with commitments like work, kids and everything else in their life, hobbies get fitted in when there's time.

Also, twenty percent is roughly the average, do some looking in the games you play, if the stat is visible from the client end see what it is.

Also take into account how it's measured, the window for leaving a game 'not' in progress may be very narrow, so even if you play five complete rounds of a game (and check how rounds are measured too) leaving at the end of number five can still result in you being measured as having left a game in progress, which puts you at twenty percent. Taking Killer Instinct as an example a complete round can be close to ten minutes (best of three) so after five you're close to an hour of play, but still not enough to satisfy the auto admin and stay out of JAIL.

It's a typically reasonable move by Microsoft...

 

[llubtoille]

If find it kinda odd that 'rage quitting' even cancels the match.
A more satisfying alternative seems to be - if someone dc's, their character just stands still (like throwing down your control pad) and thus gives an easy win for the opponent.

 

[FalloutJack]

I predict that there will be ALOT of people stuck in jail. My brainmeats tell me so.

 

[major_chaos]

hobbies get fitted in when there's time.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. When school is at its most intense my hobbies all tend to fall to the wayside, but if I'm not sure I have the time to finish an MP game I just don't start one.

Also, twenty percent is roughly the average, do some looking in the games you play, if the stat is visible from the client end see what it is.

in League of Legends I'm almost certain its 0 because anyone who leaves in that game needs to stop playing. I sold my Xbox around mid last year so I don't have my CoD or Gears stats on hand, but I don't remember ever leaving a GoW game intentionally and if I left a CoD game it was normally rage, not a time issue. I have never left an in progress dungeon/raid in The Secret World unless the whole group was giving up. My Quit rate in Warframe is 4% and most of that comes from going solo and restarting nightmare mode missions until the handicaps it gives me are survivable. Like I said, I view MP as a commitment and I don't start things I don't expect to finish.

 

[Username Redacted]

I think you should step into the real world for a second, according to ESRB nearly seventy percent of all gamers are over eighteen, almost twenty percent are over fifty. That means a lot of people of with commitments like work, kids and everything else in their life, hobbies get fitted in when there's time.

You're correct about the demographics. That said 'hobbies get fitted in when there's time' should imply that you have enough time to finish out the 2-5 minute experience of a single online match. A single match for a fighting game is (especially when compared to other online multi-player genres) so incredibly short that I don't for a second buy the "I don't have enough time" excuse. That is weak.

Also, twenty percent is roughly the average, do some looking in the games you play, if the stat is visible from the client end see what it is.

Actually in my extensive experience a 20% disconnect rate is incredibly high and incredibly rare. 1-2% disconnect rate is more in line with what you're likely to encounter. At ~5% you're looking at either a shitty connection (fun times ahead) or an occasional rager. At 10% or higher and you're almost certainly looking at a serial ragequitter. I regularly play 'Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition ver. 2012', 'Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate' and 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' and within those only 'Injustice' is even close to approaching that level of ragers consistently and even then it's maybe once or twice a week that I encounter such a player (something like W150, L70 DC40).

Also take into account how it's measured, the window for leaving a game 'not' in progress may be very narrow, so even if you play five complete rounds of a game (and check how rounds are measured too) leaving at the end of number five can still result in you being measured as having left a game in progress, which puts you at twenty percent. Taking Killer Instinct as an example a complete round can be close to ten minutes (best of three) so after five you're close to an hour of play, but still not enough to satisfy the auto admin and stay out of JAIL.

It's a typically reasonable move by Microsoft...

From what I remember of having watched friends play Killer Instinct I'm pretty sure that you're completely wrong about how the games round structure works. It is not even close to a ten minute time investment on a per match basis. Again most fighting games are going to be 2-5 minutes per online match. If a person can't commit to that minuscule amount of time or soothe the unbridled rage inferno that boils within them then I have no issue with a company removing those players from the player pool for the betterment of the rest of the community. Hell, I am a bit disappointed that the 'Jail' is timed. I would have set it so that a person is released only when their disconnect percentage naturally falls below the threshold.

 

[AlwaysPractical]

I regularly play DotA 2 and find that the new "low priority" system, which is similar to this but goes into effect after one abandon, has really decreased the number of players rage quitting. The system works and is definitely fair.

You're not stopped from playing, you're just matched with other people like you, so you don't ruin the fun of the people that never rq. It isn't even a straight up punishment, it's just containment of the few bad apples. Good system IMO.

 

[Strazdas]

This works. I play a bunch of CS:GO and enjoy that system. And CS:GO gives you a ban after just 1 abandon! I personally feel this is a good thing and if you are going to get bent out of shape because you are getting stomped, then don't play. There will always be players better, the point is to keep playing and rank where your skill level is.

they ban you after 1 disconnect? what if my PC crashed? im not perma banned from the server? because shit happens. electricity gets cut off, internet dissapears (admittedly i havent seen either of those in over 1.5 years here but im lucky this way). i understand the "diconnect 5 times in a week" stuff and the like but 1 disconenct and ban?

What in the fucking christ kind of solution is that, you plonk people in random matches they don't want to be in and then punish them if they leave? Are you completely and utterly brain dead...

i dont play this game so can you explain how do they plunk you into random matches?

I think you should step into the real world for a second, according to ESRB nearly seventy percent of all gamers are over eighteen, almost twenty percent are over fifty. That means a lot of people of with commitments like work, kids and everything else in their life, hobbies get fitted in when there's time.

Also, twenty percent is roughly the average, do some looking in the games you play, if the stat is visible from the client end see what it is.

Also take into account how it's measured, the window for leaving a game 'not' in progress may be very narrow, so even if you play five complete rounds of a game (and check how rounds are measured too) leaving at the end of number five can still result in you being measured as having left a game in progress, which puts you at twenty percent. Taking Killer Instinct as an example a complete round can be close to ten minutes (best of three) so after five you're close to an hour of play, but still not enough to satisfy the auto admin and stay out of JAIL.

and those gamers being over eithteen should be capable of logical thought and a skill called time planning. i mean, if you know you cant finish a match - dont start one. your just being an ass to everyone.
im not sure how bad at time planning you must be to not finish 20% of matches but if thats the average no wonder people have little time management skills.
now the window it counts as "allowed for leaving" definitely can be an impact on the statistics, however consdering this system counts 15% of rounds, playing for 10 rounds and leaving afterwards would be only 9% to begin with. as was said in the thread, once your round nubmers hit 3 digits this is definatelly a non issue for every legit player. You can finish your round and then quit a game, cant you? if you got a round every 10 minutes, surely you can plan your time for the next 10 minutes, no?

 

[XenoScifi]

you get a 30 minute ban for a disconnect in CS:GO for the 1st offense. You have (I believe) 2 minutes to rejoin the match. I have ran into an issue where I would get "pak errors" and get disconnected from the server. So I get a 30 minute ban. Not a long time considering a CS:GO match can last up to 90 minutes anyways. I have almost 200 hours into just CS:GO since I picked it up during the Thanksgiving sale. During that time I have never left a match due to rage quit and have been disconnected due to errors 3 times. During that time thats over 200 matches easy. So the % of being banned is pretty low.

Now if you get thrown into a bunch of randoms that suck horribly (which does happen) best suggestion is be constructive and do your best and bite the bullet. Most players with high ranks play in clans and prequeue together. Don't think you are going to get matched up with elites every round because that doesn't happen. Matches are set up based on ranks. They TRY to match according to those ranked near you. Sometime you may get ranked outside your play level, but it's rare.

Over-all it's not a bad system. There are flaws, but it does what it's supposed to do and does it well enough. Nothing is perfect and people will hate or love this system no matter what.

 

[Username Redacted]

So if you DC from two fights in your first ten, you're sent to jail. That could easily happen with a single night of bad connectivity (which I get from Comcast every once in a while). Given how bad some people's connections tend to be, even in the continental US, that's far too low of a percentage.

I agree that connectivity issues are potentially a problem. On the one hand I would definitely support a higher threshold before jailing someone (i.e. check DC rate after 100 matches rather than 10). On the other hand I don't differentiate much from those who DC due to rage and those who DC due to shit connections. If someone insists on playing a lot on a dodgy connection they could be Mother Teresa for all I care, I still don't want to get matched up with them.

This is an insanely stupid idea when the more obvious solution is simply to count their DC as a loss. Then it only affects the people who actually care what their win/loss ratio is (which is a pretty large majority of these intentional DCers), and forces them to finish out the match.

In my experience this doesn't work. At all. In 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' it is not unheard of to run into someone with more disconnects than either wins or losses. This is someone who, as best as I can tell, just disconnects immediately against certain tactics or characters. This is a player who is wasting my time and I am in favor of anything that results in me not playing against this sort of player.

When you need to tap a piece of wood into line, you don't always have to resort to using the giant hammer for the job.

If there where a finesse way of solving rage quitting I would totally support it. I have yet to see anything resembling finesse in terms of solutions that did anything to dissuade this sort of behavior. Therefore until such time as a more measured solution presents itself I have no problems with a developers go at the issue with extreme prejudice.

 

[Username Redacted]

-snip-

None of this actually answers why this "jail" mechanic is so much better than just handing the DCer a loss for that fight.

I'm pretty sure it did. I pointed out that in a game that has basically implemented your proposal that said proposal has done nothing to curtail this sort of behavior.

Your time is not "wasted" if the person who DCed is given an instant loss, and you are given an instant win. In fact, your time is actually saved from the hassle of the DC (which otherwise costs you the time of the match and yields nothing), and if you kept running into DCers, you'd gain wins at a faster rate than you would from people who actually play the game.

My time is wasted. However much time elapsed looking for a match only to get stuck playing a rager was wasted and however much time elapsed during the match was wasted. That is all time that could have been better spent playing a legitimate non-disconnecting opponent. This becomes especially obnoxious when the game repeatedly matches me up with someone who has already quit on me. The cumulative time spent not playing people who are just going to quit adds up quickly.

Not to mention the points I made earlier, showing how just giving the DCer a loss is more fair to them if in fact they are DCing due to a legitimate reason (i.e. shitty connection). Those sorts of people will be used to taking losses and won't mind. The only people who are negatively affected are the chronic DCers who DC from a match to avoid a loss....who would now forced to play the entire match or risk losing by default anyways.

No they wouldn't, because they don't care. 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' has this system and it doesn't work. You see people with hundreds and hundreds of disconnects. People seem to value not playing against specific characters or specific play-styles far more than they value their w/l record.

In other words, it deals with the problem areas, doesn't punish the legitimate cases, and adequately rewards the people who end up fighting a DCer for their time.

Sorry, but IMO there are no "legitimate" cases. If someone is playing on such a shitty and unstable connection that they're disconnecting constantly they should be isolated because they're resulting in a worse experience for the users who have either payed for and/or have access to decent internet. I'm sorry if that's a casualty but playing matches that feel like you're stuck underwater because your opponent cheaped out on their internet is something I can certainly do without.

So, sorry, but I don't see your "plight" here. It looks to me like if you care at all about your win/loss ratio, the model I've suggested is the superior one, hands down. And if you don't, then why would you care about how DCers are handled to begin with?

Some people certainly care about their w/l ratio. I don't. I look at online matches as an extension of training mode in that I view the people I'm playing as randomly behaving training dummies that play a greater variety of characters than I could hope to replicate offline. If you're interfering with my attempts to improve at the game I am not going to appreciate it. I also understand that we disagree on this issue but you can also stop speaking in absolutes or we're going to be done with this discussion.

 

[Username Redacted]

No, your time is not "wasted". You got your win and you got it faster than you would otherwise have gotten it by playing through the match. If W/L matters at all to you, then you have no real reason to complain.

I think I have a better idea of when my time has been wasted than you do. Wins and losses don't matter at all to me. If I have time to play ten matches in a given session and two of those people quit partway through the matches then 20% of my time has been wasted. I'm not getting it back. I play online to get experience. There isn't any positive experience to be had when someone quits.

No, you assert that it doesn't work based on your personal experience, but you don't have metrics to prove that it doesn't work. Yes, there is a difference between anecdotes and data.

Ok, fine. Anecdotally Netherrealm Studios' attempts to curtail ragequitting (via a method similar to what you suggested) was a colossal failure. From a data perspective I'm not sure what you're looking for here. A cursory glance at the leader boards would indicate that even the games most prolific players disconnect an awful lot. Also if we're going to go this route do you have any evidence (data) to suggest that merely sticking people with losses that where most likely coming anyway does anything to reduce dickish behavior?

Good to know that the roughly 100 million people who have below-broadband levels of quality on their internet connections don't deserve the same "right" to enjoy their game as you do. Yes, they should absolutely be punished for the poor decisions of the ISPs that provide their services.

Or did you actually think that the entire continental US really has access to high-speed internet and just chooses to deal with shitty connections?

I don't think that they chose to deal with shitty internet voluntarily. I also don't think that it should be my problem. That becomes an issue of the developer created netcode and matchmaking that can compensate for those sorts of issues (it is doable). That isn't what we're discussing. I'm saying that people with highly unstable connections are acceptable collateral damage for isolating a games less savory players. Note that I said highly unstable. While it certainly helps broaden your matchmaking a top tier connection is not a pre-requisite for fighting games. Stability is key. I have no sympathy, for example, for someone trying to play a fighting game over a wireless connection or while a roommate torrents porn (or, god forbid, both). Even ignoring the previous extreme (but not, sadly, terribly uncommon) examples if you've got a dedicated connection you can play fighting games on pretty much any connection that isn't dial-up or satellite.

Don't you worry, this discussion's done as far as I'm concerned. I can't stand it when people are dismissive of the significant portion of the world's population that lacks access to high-speed internet and treats it like it's their fault that their connections are bad. I didn't like it back when Diablo 3's white knights paraded that argument around (or any of the other Always-On games), and I don't like it being used here, either.

I like how you bring a completely unrelated topic that was (apparently) a sore subject for you in the past up here. Another game having stupid requirements has nothing to with this discussion. This is about how to best deal with those who would make the experience worse for other players.

Those players have every right to an equal level of enjoyment as you, and do not deserve punishment because the connection choices provided to them are poor. This system unfairly punishes those players because the rate of DCs is far, far too low. That sort of threshold is easy to cross with a bad connection. And I suspect this is going to result in a lot of people eventually giving up on the game because they are being discredited as "malicious" when they may just be unfortunate.

I already said that I think that the number of matches for when Jail becomes an option is too low. That said the threshold for jailing someone (15% DC rate) might actually be too low. Everyone has the right to try and get equal enjoyment out of a product, but when someone's attempts at meeting that criteria are making the experience actively worse for everyone they encounter, then, whether it's their fault or not, something needs to be done about it.