Tekken 8 players demand changes as pluggers & cheaters plague ranked games

Tekken 8’s launch has been very successful, with the game garnering both critical and commercial success. However, the early days of the ranked ladder have been marred by plugging (rage quitting) & cheaters.

With a game that has such a high skill ceiling and so many variables like Tekken 8, there are bound to be players who get frustrated and try to find ways to get around the challenge. Ways other than just getting better & learning the game, of course.

Players have chosen a variety of routes to avoid having to get better to keep their rank on the ladder, all of which those who are doing things fair and square want removed.

Along with pluggers, people who rage quit by pulling the plug on their internet connection mid-match, there are also those who have discovered a method of scripting that’ll instantly kill their opponent, guaranteeing a win. Tekken 8 players are calling on devs to help clean up the ranked ladder.

Tekken 8 plagued by pluggers and cheaters

Pluggers are far more common than cheaters on the ladder, simply by notion of how much easier it is to plug on someone. All you have to do is close the game. For players who are really experienced with plugging, they’ve able to quit in less than a second by buffering their plug with the Rage Art windup animation or quitting while their opponent’s Rage Art activates.

This is such a common practice that players are starting to tech it.

What’s more, a player plugging on you completely neutralizes a win streak. Players who are able to get some momentum on the ranked ladder and start themselves out on a massive win streak may have it ruined by no fault of their own.

The best solution here would be to penalize the player who left and give the win to the player who didn’t disconnect from the game. And, while there’s a system in place that allows you to see how often a player disconnects from matches, it doesn’t seem like that number properly updates. It usually sits at 0%.

And, while it’s a shame for players who have actual internet issues to be negatively affected for being disconnected from a match, those people are likely in the minority considering just how common plugging is.

Tekken players even have a term for those who have kept their rank as a result of plugging: Pluggernauts.

A much less common but more frustrating issue is players scripting their way to the top ranks. This isn’t just a form of cheating where someone’s scripting to find the perfect response to a move, or to do certain inputs at inhuman speeds: It simply makes the game unwinnable.

It’s a sort of “insta-kill” script where the player cheating loses the first round instantly, only for their opponent to instantly die in the same way for the rest of the round. And, unfortunately, the only way around losing rank from this is to plug at the moment.

Fortunately, there is some help coming. Harada himself is aware of the issue, and the team is working toward trying to keep these sorts of players from climbing to the top without fairly winning a single match. However, the developers have yet to address the problem of plugging, and cheaters still have presence on the ladder.

While the majority of Tekken 8 players are keeping things fair and square in their matches, enough players are abusing plugging and cheating that it’s become a real problem for players who are just trying to grind out ranked matches and improve.