While Free mode has fewer incentives to disconnect, I still have it happen on me far too often. Even with a comparatively small sample size of around 100-150 battles, it's easy to divide things into categories.
When playing against American players, disconnects seem very frequent. I'd say anywhere from 20-50% of the time, typically occurring either late battle or right after a key move. I have never, even once seen a disconnect when my opponent was winning, and I never intentionally disconnect on anyone.
Against Japanese players I don't see disconnects very often... unless playing against one of the players with a very high win count. In such a case they will almost always disconnect, typically as close to the end as possible just to waste as much time as they can. Their connection will work perfectly when they're winning, which given the experience differences between me and them is often. I have noticed though that a lot of Japanese players are much slower in making decisions. They'll never have their team of three before the clock hits 30 seconds, and seeing the timer flash red is common. It could be argued that they're thinking things through carefully because they are experienced, but at the same time that experience should enable them to determine their options faster.
Another thing that seems common is that they will often forfeit if it's clear you're going to win. I'm completely fine with that. I just wish more people would take the honorable route and lose/forfeit if they aren't going to win, and I hate waiting. On the flip side, on the admittedly rare occasions I have managed to outplay them, and they didn't ragequit I can fairly say those are the best battles I've had, and that more than makes up for all the other irritation of wifi such as the high ragequit rate, and forced Item Clause.
For me, having good competitive battles is more important than having an e peen symbol such as a win count showing that I've had a lot of battles, which might or might not be good and competitive. It's clear from reading this thread Rating mode is even worse about ragequits, which in turn makes it harder to get what I want out of battles, so I won't be doing that.
I don't know. I just don't get it. I completely understand the whole playing to win thing. If I had a problem with that I would not be informally introducing myself to this community, and chose to join it because I am of like mind. But at the same time though, sometimes you lose. It might be because of some facepalm inducing hax, sure. Or the opponent could just be better, outplayed you, that sort of thing. I'd like to believe I'm not in the minority here in that while I obviously prefer to win, an informative or amusing loss is not a complete waste of my time, and is certainly nothing to get upset over. It demonstrated a problem either in my team or in the way I played it, and that in turn allows me to consider fixing it. If it's obscure I can probably ignore it, but if it's common then it's a critical flaw that must be fixed. Sure I'm most likely preaching to the choir, but introductions tend to involve common ground. Not much more to say here.
To anyone still reading this, hi.