Like most fighting games, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has a bit of a rage quitting problem. Part of that is due to the inherently unbalanced roster of 182 character where some are naturally stronger than others which means you can put yourself at a disadvantage by going off-meta, but most of it has to do with people just not being able to accept a loss. The rage quitting problem is one that affects players of all levels including Twitch and Kick streamer xQC who, in this case, just so happens to be the one doing the rage quitting himself.
xQc isn’t exactly known for playing fighting games, but Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has been part of his rotation as of late ever since it released. One of his clips made it to the Sparking! Zero subreddit where other players watched him go off on people who were using “cheese” to win fights.
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“Nope, no points for you,” xQc said after pulling the plug on the match. “I don’t give a f–k. I don’t care. You get no points. You cheese. You’re in my lobby, you do a cheese strategy, no problem. You get no points.”
He continued by tossing all kinds of expletives at his long-gone opponent, a Captain Ginyu player who, by the looks of the clip from the stream, didn’t appear to be doing anything cheesy at all other than what one might consider some light spamming. What’s ironic about the clip is that xQc is using Yajirobe here, a supremely underpowered character in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero who has only managed to find success in the meta because of his Senzu Bean ability which lets him restore health over and over again. The Yajirobe abuse online has become so bad that it’s Yajirobe — not Broly, Vegito, Gogeta, Ultra Instinct Goku, or anyone else — who’s first up for nerfs in the Sparking! Zero patch that’s coming out this month. So the irony of losing a match as Yajirobe and plugging while accusing someone else of cheesing was not lost on Sparking! Zero players.
Clips like this one from xQc in particular are not hard to come by. One of his channels, xQc Clips on YouTube, plays up these moments in the title by saying he’s “embarrassed” and “cries after losing,” so sure, part of this is probably an engagement bit after the fact. But the quitting in the moment part sure looks pretty real with how those fights are going, and it speaks to a larger problem that the game’s facing even when the camera’s not on.
Other posts in the Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero subreddit have seen players begging others to stop rage quitting in ranked matches (or any matches, for that matter). Quitting in ranked is especially annoying because as xQc points out in his rants, the other player gets no points if you quit.
“Genuinely curious why so many people are rage quitting,” one of the posts said. “Especially at higher ranks and the beginning of the match.”
Other posts pointed out this inherent flaw with the ranked system which inadvertently punishes players whose opponents quit since their time is wasted with no points to show for it. Some suggested that players fighting those who disconnect intentionally should be granted at least partial points while others proposed a “surrender” option in the menu so that players could forfeit a match instead of just quitting.
But what does Bandai Namco think about quitters in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero? Over on the support page for the game, the publisher states that there are in fact penalties for those who quit games repeatedly. It also hurts your stats that show the percentage of matches you finish so that other players can see that you are indeed a quitter. These penalties are geared solely towards queue times, however, and do not affect points.
“In this title, to maintain fair gameplay in Ranked Matches, penalties are imposed on players who repeatedly disconnect or engage in disruptive behavior,” the support page says. During a penalty, matchmaking time will increase according to the penalty level.”
Perhaps the next update will impose harsher penalties for Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero quitters, but for now, players will have to deal with those situations online.
