Sports Game Pet Peeve: Let Us Back Out Before a Game Starts

It seems so insignificant, but barriers to having a good time can start from something seemingly insignificant and blossom into full-on frustration. Not allowing people to back out before a game starts in online modes is one of those sports game pet peeves.

It’s funny how all this works as well because it’s not consistent even mode to mode. How Play Now Online works in something like NBA 2K24 is not the same as the system in its MyTeam mode. MLB The Show’s system is mostly similar across its modes, but what these two games have in common is you can’t leave before the game starts.

The term “dashboarding” is something we talk most about when it comes to Play Now Online (PNO) in NBA 2K because it’s a mode that has notoriously received no support in years. Your teams are in tiers, and this inevitably means you meet up with the same couple teams in your tier, and you can’t escape them or quit out before the game starts without taking a loss.

There was a time where you could avoid a loss if you “dashboarded” and went back to the home screen of your console by closing your game before it started. It was archaic and monotonous, but it was a workaround.

You have not been able to do this in a couple years, and the added issue incorporated this cycle was that you just straight up get banned from being able to play online for a certain amount of time after so many quits.

I don’t have a major issue with the quitting penalties, but it’s absolutely ridiculous to not be able to leave before you’ve even locked in your teams.

MLB The Show has a similar problem in a different way. For their Ranked mode (much like their other online modes), you have no clue who you’re facing until your game is about to start. I suppose this exists to avoid intimidation, but when people just don’t want to play the Dodgers for the 50th time, they shouldn’t be forced to play them. There is a “friendly quit” option in The Show, but both parties have to agree to it after the game starts.

Madden takes a lot of crap (rightfully so) but it’s the actual right model for what a standard online system should look like — and it’s because they didn’t screw with the formula. In Madden’s ranked mode, you just see who your opponent is picking and either you ready up or don’t. That’s it. It’s not actually hard because the problem was already solved.

I don’t want to go full-on “old man yells at cloud” here so I don’t think I need to say much more than that. As much as ranked modes have been forgotten as many folks move to the team-building/card collection modes (and developers forget about the old “play now” modes), it should not be hard to simply give the “old-school” experience of picking your team, picking your jerseys, and then readying up or dipping out to re-queue for a different opponent.