Just yesterday, we reported that EA Sports UFC won’t be an annual title according to the game’s assistant producer, Jazz Brousseau. In another bit from our interview set to go live later this week, we asked Brousseau how EA intends to deal with online quitters and the like, which has plagued online sports games up to this day.
According to Brousseau, EA will temporarily ban people who disconnect too often within a short period of time, or see their profile names taken out of the leaderboards entirely.
So, with disconnects in online, we’ve taken a little bit of a different approach than we had in the past titles. We’re really going to focus on sort of penalizing people who quit. So, it’s not just a matter of giving you a loss and increasing your DNF (Did Not Finish) score. We’re going to use that DNF score in more meaningful ways. So, if you quit too often in a short period of time, you may be temporarily banned from matchmaking. You may see your position in the leaderboards removed entirely. We really want to provide a fun experience in the online space and we take disconnects in online pretty seriously. I definitely hear you loud and clear in terms of it (intentional disconnects) being a problem. We’ll continue to monitor player behavior and work with our customer service team to address players who abuse that.
Brousseau also mentions that “in only extreme cases” will a player permanently be banned, and clears up that even if a player is temporarily suspended from playing online, they won’t be cut out of the game entirely.
In only extreme cases will it be a permanent ban. What we are doing is we’ll be temporarily be suspending accounts from matchmaking. We won’t be suspending them from playing the game; but if you disconnect from a match too often, obviously there’s going to be a grace period — because there are sometimes legitimate reasons to disconnect from a match — but if you do it too often and if your DNF percentage goes to passing a certain threshold, then the game will take action and we’ll temporarily suspend you from matchmaking.
Do you agree with how EA is handling online quitters in EA Sports UFC? What would your solution be to this age-old dilemma?
Make sure to watch out later this week for the entire interview where Brousseau also reveals who the top rated fighter in the game is, whether the striking is closer to EA Sports MMA or THQ’s UFC Undisputed games and lots more.
