"Pokkén Tournament" has been off to a strong start so far. There's not much to hate when Bandai Namco and Nintendo team up to bring the Wii U it's first honest-to-goodness fighting game, featuring an assortment of fan-favorite Pokémon who want nothing more than to beat the snot out of their opponent. However, with the good comes the bad and "Pokkén Tournament" is no different.
The consistent gripe Nintendo fans have with "Pokkén Tournament" is that it's rage-quitting penalty is too weak and doesn't do enough to punish them for committing the act, thus failing to dissuade them from doing so again in the future.
It became clear soon after launch that players who are found guilty of rage-quitting would suffer a penalty. In fact, a female NPC tells you as much, saying that "Quitting in the middle of the match is rude to your opponent, and you'll suffer a penalty, so please, PLEASE, refrain from doing so." However what she, and Nintendo by extension, fail to do is disclose what exactly what these penalties are, leaving the policy in a bit of a grey area.
Inquiring minds soon discovered what these penalties entailed: currency deductions. As you may know, the game uses an in-game currency called Poké Gold which players may use to customize their avatar. It turns out that quitting out of a match impedes the player's ability to customize their avatars by docking them some Poké Gold - 200,000 to be exact.
Ignoring the fact that the deduction isn't player rank but currency, the current system has two major flaws. First, 200K seems like a hefty toll at first glance, but it's actually chicken feed. Arcade matches reward tens of thousands of gold depending on player performance and you can earn even more by winning tournaments. What point is there to a punishment when a player can recoup their losses in an hour? In a similar vein is the second flaw: relevancy. As mentioned before, Poké Gold is essentially used for avatar customization and once a player has a look they like, the currency becomes greatly devalued as they pretty much don't need it anymore. What point is there to a punishent that takes away something that isn't deemed a necessity by the player?
Again, if rage-quitting is done to preserve rank, why take money away from players when they do it? Will rank be taken away after all the money is gone? At that point it doesn't even matter as the money can quickly be earned back.
There is a silver lining to all this though. "Pokkén Tournament" is unable to tell the difference between rage-quitting and the far less offensive disconnection, so while players do lose money for disconnecting, the fine isn't that steep. Of course, the problem with this is that people who get disconnected due to hiccups in their connection shouldn't be punished to begin with.
When it comes to punishing players for online misconduct, Nintendo just can't seem to get it right. In "Super Smash Brothers," players get punished by not be able to play online for a little while, however these punishments didn't have long durations, only lasting an average of several minutes. Notably, however, sometimes players would receive humorously disproportionate punishments for their crimes. At one point reports emerged of players getting banned for 136 years due to a glitch.
Nintendo also suffers these problems with "Splatoon," so it begs the question whether Nintendo is simply incapable of incorporating an appropriate rage-quit/disonnect/punishment system or is simply inexperienced in the matter since the Wii U barely has any games that would require it.
