1. Right now, if anyone lets their kick vote alert time out, it counts as a No vote, and fails. 2. AFKers and bots don't vote, therefore more than 1 of either makes any kick impossible.
Thus, a quick and easy way to screw the bots and AFKers over, with little to no collateral damage to active players is to simply change a time out on the vote to count as a Yes
I'm not really sure if "More bots than players" is completely accurate, however I would hazard the opinion that there appears to be fewer players that 'give a sh*@!#' than there were prior to 16. I have personally spoken with several players who told me they have too much time, effort and expense in the game to just walk away from it even though they are no longer enjoying the game so they say they are going to stick around 'in the hopes of things changing' - but in the mean time are going to play the game in a manner inconsistent with - beneficial to the greater good -, let's say, game play.
Hopefully this is something that will pass (or the players will) quickly but on a personal observation I'm beginning to notice despite the Developers alterations in player stats and powers, to me there appears to be just as many (if not more) players attempting to solo group content (with varying degrees of success), running off and abandoning party members, going AFK and just generally attempting to scam game content... for me the most annoying types are those who try to ride their mounts in dungeon and skirmish content (or just run around in circles) avoiding opponents as much as possible and contributing as little as possible who are still able to collect the reward at the end...
And I'm still of the opinion that the player option to "kick" any player out of a random run - yes even the annoying ones I specifically mentioned above - should be completely removed from player groups. Groups should be given the option to Report Player Behavior and if found to be sound game monitors and developers should put some teeth into a response, (something like account banned from game play for a minimum of 48 hours)... ¢¢
You would have a point, if the report would lead to a ban. As it is, I stopped reporting players behaviour, due to the lack of response or consequences. One Pearl of wisdom was the advice, to put a griefing player on ignore. Gee, I wish I would have thought of that...
1. Right now, if anyone lets their kick vote alert time out, it counts as a No vote, and fails. 2. AFKers and bots don't vote, therefore more than 1 of either makes any kick impossible.
Thus, a quick and easy way to screw the bots and AFKers over, with little to no collateral damage to active players is to simply change a time out on the vote to count as a Yes
If the player is multiboxing (running 2 copies on the same PC) they can vote against the kick also making the kick impossible. Positive identification of botting is not tough as one might think.
The idea is this;
player says team member "X" is bot
server side software watches player in game and informs team, "Team member X is being studied, please continue playing."
I won't go into all the details but some good observational software could spot a bot very fast.
Next the bot is sent graphics that do not interrupt game play. There is a variety of choices to avoid simple automated answers.
They are given a minute to respond.
No response or wrong answer and they are sent to bot jail.
If human, the team is informed they are not a bot.
My husband said it would be pretty hard to explain how you "accidentally" played the false dungeon for 24 to 48 hours without returning to the real one. This is why he said, he would delete them. Botters run these to farm dungeons and most are never present or bother check back on their bots for days. Most spam bots and dungeon bots are stolen accounts, where the user was dumb enough to give the gold spammers their password. I seriously doubt you would hear of many complaints.
I won't go into all the details but some good observational software could spot a bot very fast.
Well, the big problem is actually this part. You must avoid too many false positives. If a bot is reasonably smart written it can be very hard to distinguish it from a normal player.
Also, the immediate effect of such monitoring is that the bot writers would work hard to figure out how it works and make sure to work around it. So at best it would catch only the dumb bot software, while the professionals just would fix their software and carry on.
It is easy enough to decide if here is a bot or not once you have a firm suspicion in place - but it is getting to that point that is hard.
Another question to ask is this: How much does the bots harm NW economically? They certainly steal some revenue away from Cryptic. But will money spent on making new content generate more new revenue than what is recovered if those funds are spent on fighting bots?
I am a casual nw player - I generally only queue for dailies and when an event is going on. I have noticed that usually in the event queues there is usually at least 1 player that is afk, and yes - it is a bit frustrating that they someone can get all the rewards for no effort.
Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point.
I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
If the player is multiboxing (running 2 copies on the same PC) they can vote against the kick also making the kick impossible. Positive identification of botting is not tough as one might think.
The idea is this;
player says team member "X" is bot
server side software watches player in game and informs team, "Team member X is being studied, please continue playing."
I won't go into all the details but some good observational software could spot a bot very fast.
Next the bot is sent graphics that do not interrupt game play. There is a variety of choices to avoid simple automated answers.
They are given a minute to respond.
No response or wrong answer and they are sent to bot jail.
If human, the team is informed they are not a bot.
My husband said it would be pretty hard to explain how you "accidentally" played the false dungeon for 24 to 48 hours without returning to the real one. This is why he said, he would delete them. Botters run these to farm dungeons and most are never present or bother check back on their bots for days. Most spam bots and dungeon bots are stolen accounts, where the user was dumb enough to give the gold spammers their password. I seriously doubt you would hear of many complaints.
A player mutiboxing is still a human player....and they'd be both active and able to answer any kind of "are you a bot" prompt or trap, so why even bring them up?
As for the rest of your post......brainstorming a solution is much easier than coding and implementing it. Simplicity is the key, in case the changes with the current mod hadn't made that obvious.
Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
Yes it can be bad. Players put others on ignore for all sorts of inane and stupid reasons. The matching algorithm can end up with a bunch of people in queue and have no solution for a long time.
As for the rest of your post......brainstorming a solution is much easier than coding and implementing it. Simplicity is the key, in case the changes with the current mod hadn't made that obvious.
Not only that, anti-boting mechanism that is prominently visible does not look good for the game. And intrusive ones are just annoying to human players.
@fremen#4136 You misread what I wrote, I stated "If the player is multiboxing (running 2 copies on the same PC) they can vote against the kick also making the kick impossible." How does that even translate into anything else? Multiboxers and human players refusing to play the dungeon (aka griefing) would not be effected by anti-bot software.
@mentinmindmaker I covered false positives, bot sent to jail, stays in jail. Human sent to jail they can just jump right back into the dungeon.
This thread was titled about bots over populating the game. I was casually making the observation that bots can be dealt with, if Cryptic or any other game company was serious about stopping them. I suspect the bots don't hurt their wallet bad enough to care.
All of this aside, the humans not playing is the bigger issue here. I don't play the random dungeons all that much because; I don't find them entertaining as they were in the past. Prior to module 6 (Spring 2015) my friends and I could team up or I could dare solo the dungeon on my own (same as you can in private que). The rewards was not seals or AD, we ran them for content pure and simple. The people complain about the dungeons ever since they became the prime source for AD. The Foundry had 1 hour you could run for double XP and you got AD for completing 3 Foundry quests per day. They removed the AD from the Foundry and said it was being botted, not once have they removed the AD from the dungeons for this same reason. All I see in this game is greedy little monkeys chasing AD and VIP anymore. If the random dungeon is not the one they want, they pitch a fit. So I don't run dungeons these days unless I get a few friends asking me to tag along.
They should just remove RAD from the game. Rad and the headless daily grind for rad is just..
Nah. They should assign RAD to quests, not dungeons. Most bots aren't smart enough to complete quests. Have some random quests give RAD. Much easier.
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Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
Yes it can be bad. Players put others on ignore for all sorts of inane and stupid reasons. The matching algorithm can end up with a bunch of people in queue and have no solution for a long time.
If you take the time to block someone, you've got a good reason - at least good enough for you. There's not a single player on my block list that doesn't belong there.
I won't pretend to know how Neverwinter's queue works, but once a blocked player list is in place isn't the logic fairly simple? If this, then that, otherwise... At least on PS4, Neverwinter doesn't have a true in-game block list. If I want to ignore someone, I have to visit their PSN profile and block them there. The game is capable of detecting someone on our PSN block list, and it automatically mutes them. However, I believe I still see them in chat. I can still get tells from them, and I still get queued with them.
As for taking longer to queue. It would be well worth it to me - and no doubt to a good many other players - if it reduced the number of times I was forced into a negative experience. AFK/Leeches, bots, and purposely inconsiderate Disconnects sour the experience for nearly everyone forced to put up with them. In most cases they make content more difficult, in some cases they make content impossible.
And they almost always make content take longer. So even if queuing took a little longer, there's a good chance that not only will the actual skirmish or cta go faster, and start on time, it will have less of a chance of failure.
What's most maddening is they're almost always the same exact people. The vast majority of antisocial behavior I have to put up with comes from people who have been on my block list for over a year - people who are on hundreds, even thousands of other players' block lists. Most of the time I start a kick vote, it's for someone several of us knew we were going to have to kick the moment our characters' feet touched ground. It's incredibly frustrating.
Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
Yes it can be bad. Players put others on ignore for all sorts of inane and stupid reasons. The matching algorithm can end up with a bunch of people in queue and have no solution for a long time.
If you take the time to block someone, you've got a good reason - at least good enough for you. There's not a single player on my block list that doesn't belong there.
I won't pretend to know how Neverwinter's queue works, but once a blocked player list is in place isn't the logic fairly simple? If this, then that, otherwise... At least on PS4, Neverwinter doesn't have a true in-game block list. If I want to ignore someone, I have to visit their PSN profile and block them there. The game is capable of detecting someone on our PSN block list, and it automatically mutes them. However, I believe I still see them in chat. I can still get tells from them, and I still get queued with them.
As for taking longer to queue. It would be well worth it to me - and no doubt to a good many other players - if it reduced the number of times I was forced into a negative experience. AFK/Leeches, bots, and purposely inconsiderate Disconnects sour the experience for nearly everyone forced to put up with them. In most cases they make content more difficult, in some cases they make content impossible.
And they almost always make content take longer. So even if queuing took a little longer, there's a good chance that not only will the actual skirmish or cta go faster, and start on time, it will have less of a chance of failure.
What's most maddening is they're almost always the same exact people. The vast majority of antisocial behavior I have to put up with comes from people who have been on my block list for over a year - people who are on hundreds, even thousands of other players' block lists. Most of the time I start a kick vote, it's for someone several of us knew we were going to have to kick the moment our characters' feet touched ground. It's incredibly frustrating.
I will add in here, that I sometimes block people for dumb reasons. I take head meds and if they are not working, I can get... unreasonable. Knowing that I tend to lack good reason from time to time, I clear my blocked user list at the beginning of each month giving players, trolls, and spammers another shot. I know for a fact the game teams you up with people on your friends list in the same area. I have entered PE before to find all my friends clustered in the same zone that I was placed into as well. In the past (unless they changed it) I entered the same skirmish with people on my friends list who queued for the PUG. I don't know if the mechanic works the same in reverse order, but I would imagine it does.
I will add in here, that I sometimes block people for dumb reasons.
What's the silliest reason you've ever blocked someone, though? I bet it still makes sense. I know I've occasionally blocked one of those excessive hoppers, but they really, really get under my skin 'til I long to drag their character directly into a PVP blood match where only one of us walks out again, but either way I don't have to put up with them anymore.
What is with these people? I just got out of a RIQ Kessells Retreat run that took nearly 20 minutes. One guy was AFK the entire time. Right before we enter the golems room, I brought up a kick vote and it got voted down. Then after waiting in the circle for another 2 minutes, someone finally came to their senses and started kick vote and got it done. Now I am really sick of RQs. As if the rampant AFKs were not bad enough, now there are significant numbers of AFK-sympathizers.
Perhaps maybe do a little chat polling first something like: "so-and-so's been AFK for quite a while should we vote to kick?"...
I know I've been in instances where I didn't pay a lot of attention to what other players who might be trying to leech or accused of being AFK have been doing. I'm still pretty much at the stage where I have to watch my own HAMSTER instead or being overly concerned with everyone elses and my first inclination when I just see a vote to kick without any conversation is "No", because just because someone has been accused of being AFK the whole time, doesn't necessarily mean they have been AFK the whole time... For me communication is the key to consensus when it comes to vote to kick.
1. Right now, if anyone lets their kick vote alert time out, it counts as a No vote, and fails. 2. AFKers and bots don't vote, therefore more than 1 of either makes any kick impossible.
Thus, a quick and easy way to screw the bots and AFKers over, with little to no collateral damage to active players is to simply change a time out on the vote to count as a Yes
As it is now I believe the vote to kick is by majority rule. If I'm in a party where the majority of players are either AFK or attempting to leech off of other party members, I'm not sure I'd care to stay in that party anyway, thus I see no need to change the parameters for a null response for vote to kick from no to yes...
If the majority votes to kick - so be it. If the majority votes not to kick - so be it. If the majority of the party consists of bots --- I'm outta' there
I won't go into all the details but some good observational software could spot a bot very fast.
If I had a lot of confidence in software solutions for things like that, I wouldn't feel compelled to double check the auto correct software on my cell phone - but I don't, so I do - and I often thank goodness for that lack of confidence
Well that's it for me, the wife just got home with my human beef and it's time for supper... damn, that was supposed to be Hunan Beef...
Perhaps maybe do a little chat polling first something like: "so-and-so's been AFK for quite a while should we vote to kick?"...
Why? Not every one speaks english. And even when they do, most don't say anything. The kick box, on the other hand, clearly states kicking for Away From Keyboard in whatever language they speak. And anyone who has run the short instances a number of times should know the AFK problems. Kicking should be done swiftly and with extreme prejudice.
Perhaps maybe do a little chat polling first something like: "so-and-so's been AFK for quite a while should we vote to kick?"...
Why? Not every one speaks english. And even when they do, most don't say anything. The kick box, on the other hand, clearly states kicking for Away From Keyboard in whatever language they speak. And anyone who has run the short instances a number of times should know the AFK problems. Kicking should be done swiftly and with extreme prejudice.
I already gave a "why" in my post, saying my first response to a vote to kick is usually "No" unless I am aware or made aware of the circumstances that imitated the vote.
And yes, I know a "reason" appears in the vote screen, but I often tend to be a bit of a skeptic, for instance there is no safeguard to keep any player from initiating a vote kick for someone being AFK - even if that player was never AFK to begin with - so if I'm not personally aware of a problem I don't tend to go with vote to kick, without a little more information than what pop-up kick screen says...
I figure if a player can't be bothered to take the time to even try to build a consensus as to why a player should be evicted, then I usually don't feel compelled to go along with a vote to kick - unless I am personally aware of the problem. The vote to kick has been abused in the past and without sufficient safeguards (either programmed or personal) it can be abused again.
You say kicking should be done swiftly and with extreme prejudice and I agree - with a caveat however - there should be some kind of in game programmed mechanism to remove offending players from a queue and party members should not have the power to initiate vote kicks except in extreme circumstances and every time a player initiates a vote to kick, their player info should go into a permanent database and if it appears and is confirmed they are themselves abusing the player vote to kick option their account should be suspended and later banned if the problem persists.
And yes, I know a "reason" appears in the vote screen, but I often tend to be a bit of a skeptic, for instance there is no safeguard to keep any player from initiating a vote kick for someone being AFK - even if that player was never AFK to begin with - so if I'm not personally aware of a problem I don't tend to go with vote to kick, without a little more information than what pop-up kick screen says...
I figure if a player can't be bothered to take the time to even try to build a consensus as to why a player should be evicted, then I usually don't feel compelled to go along with a vote to kick - unless I am personally aware of the problem. The vote to kick has been abused in the past and without sufficient safeguards (either programmed or personal) it can be abused again.
What do you call the one vote kick per 4-hour limit? Looks like a good safeguard to me as no one will use a precious kick for no good reason.
And yes, I know a "reason" appears in the vote screen, but I often tend to be a bit of a skeptic, for instance there is no safeguard to keep any player from initiating a vote kick for someone being AFK - even if that player was never AFK to begin with - so if I'm not personally aware of a problem I don't tend to go with vote to kick, without a little more information than what pop-up kick screen says...
I figure if a player can't be bothered to take the time to even try to build a consensus as to why a player should be evicted, then I usually don't feel compelled to go along with a vote to kick - unless I am personally aware of the problem. The vote to kick has been abused in the past and without sufficient safeguards (either programmed or personal) it can be abused again.
What do you call the one vote kick per 4-hour limit? Looks like a good safeguard to me as no one will use a precious kick for no good reason.
I believe what you probably meant to say was YOU wouldn't use your precious vote to kick for no good reason...
As far as I'm aware, no-one appointed any one of us as the spokesperson for every person playing Neverwinter.
And no, I don't consider the 4-hour cool down timer to be a sufficient safeguard for a couple of reasons.
As far as I'm aware, no-one appointed any one of us as the spokesperson for every person playing Neverwinter.
What?
In reference to your: "no one will use a precious kick for no good reason".
I don't think any of us has the ability - or the authority - to say what every player in Neverwinter may or may not do or what they might consider a "good (enough) reason" to try to kick someone from their group... I have previously read posts and been in parties where some players said they would be willing to kick players because they weren't playing in a manner consistent with how someone thought they should be playing... Not fast enough, too fast, not doing enough damage, doing too much damage, etc.
You may not use your kick votefor no particular reason, but that doesn't mean "no one" will use their precious kick vote..." just because they can.
I dont know, if it is bc no one with decent gear can be bothered, to run random dungeon anymore or bc most of these players left, but the 'quality' of the random ques went way down.
I have also noticed that the gear level in RLQ has taken a sharp turn downwards. Used to be my invoke alts could leech AD off RLQ easily, these days my low-geared invoke alts can be 1 or 2 on the dps parse.
To a lesser degree I also notice this in RIQ - the gear/skill level of the PUGs has taken a turn downwards.
For some reason the well-geared crowd are not present in RLQs and RIQs to the same degree.
The interesting question is why? Are they now all running LoMM and getting all the AD they need from MEs, and RAQ/REQ? Or did they just leave game in response to mod 16? Or is it rampant botting activity?
well geared people are running together from alliance and no longer doing it for fun with randoms because it's not fun with randoms any more like it used to be. I was one of those well geared players who did a random higher level que daily because the challenge of a non bis group was fun. however, this has taken the meaning to a different level. it's just ridiculous and pointless now. you can't carry a group if you need to. before on my hr and cw there was rarely a group who was so impossible i couldn't make it happen. you need other people to be able to do their role now and they are less capable of it than they were before. RIP random ques imo
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demonmongerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,350Arc User
> @graskitch said: > I am a casual nw player - I generally only queue for dailies and when an event is going on. I have noticed that usually in the event queues there is usually at least 1 player that is afk, and yes - it is a bit frustrating that they someone can get all the rewards for no effort. > > Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point. > > I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
This function would.be abused
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
I am a casual nw player - I generally only queue for dailies and when an event is going on. I have noticed that usually in the event queues there is usually at least 1 player that is afk, and yes - it is a bit frustrating that they someone can get all the rewards for no effort.
Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point.
I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
another way is if a person has zero or almost zero damage no rewards. (damage being healing, damage doing your role basically. if the stats are absent you haven't been helping.. no reward)
I am a casual nw player - I generally only queue for dailies and when an event is going on. I have noticed that usually in the event queues there is usually at least 1 player that is afk, and yes - it is a bit frustrating that they someone can get all the rewards for no effort.
Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point.
I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
another way is if a person has zero or almost zero damage no rewards. (damage being healing, damage doing your role basically. if the stats are absent you haven't been helping.. no reward)
I never have thought this was a viable option...
Although it isn't as common as it was prior to Mod 16, there are still overpowered speed runners in random queues and if one or more of them take off killing everything in sight while slower, lesser equipped players -playing to the best of their ability - aren't able to keep up or engage mobs, they are effectively shutout but by absolutely no fault of their own. It's happened to me on a number of occasions.
If a player's stats are low or absent - it might mean they've intentionally avoided making any effort to help - or it might mean they haven't had the opportunity to help.
Personally I like the idea of "waygates" where the entire party has to assemble before any can proceed... as a matter of fact this technique is so effective, it is used By Neverwinter, in just about every random dungeon right before the final boss battle -
"You Must Gather Your Party Before Proceeding" -
"Your Party Is Waiting For You" -
No AFK'er can remain AFK without the entire party noticing using this method and with a programmed count-down kick timer (-vs- a player initiated kick option) a player either plays or they are automatically booted by the game.
In conclusion there is absolutely no possibility of player bias effecting the "vote-to-kick' and no way to intentionally abuse the kick function that I can think of.
Comments
2. AFKers and bots don't vote, therefore more than 1 of either makes any kick impossible.
Thus, a quick and easy way to screw the bots and AFKers over, with little to no collateral damage to active players is to simply change a time out on the vote to count as a Yes
The idea is this;
- player says team member "X" is bot
- server side software watches player in game and informs team, "Team member X is being studied, please continue playing."
- I won't go into all the details but some good observational software could spot a bot very fast.
- Next the bot is sent graphics that do not interrupt game play. There is a variety of choices to avoid simple automated answers.
- They are given a minute to respond.
- No response or wrong answer and they are sent to bot jail.
- If human, the team is informed they are not a bot.
My husband said it would be pretty hard to explain how you "accidentally" played the false dungeon for 24 to 48 hours without returning to the real one. This is why he said, he would delete them. Botters run these to farm dungeons and most are never present or bother check back on their bots for days. Most spam bots and dungeon bots are stolen accounts, where the user was dumb enough to give the gold spammers their password. I seriously doubt you would hear of many complaints.Also, the immediate effect of such monitoring is that the bot writers would work hard to figure out how it works and make sure to work around it. So at best it would catch only the dumb bot software, while the professionals just would fix their software and carry on.
It is easy enough to decide if here is a bot or not once you have a firm suspicion in place - but it is getting to that point that is hard.
How much does the bots harm NW economically? They certainly steal some revenue away from Cryptic.
But will money spent on making new content generate more new revenue than what is recovered if those funds are spent on fighting bots?
Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point.
I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
As for the rest of your post......brainstorming a solution is much easier than coding and implementing it. Simplicity is the key, in case the changes with the current mod hadn't made that obvious.
@mentinmindmaker I covered false positives, bot sent to jail, stays in jail. Human sent to jail they can just jump right back into the dungeon.
This thread was titled about bots over populating the game. I was casually making the observation that bots can be dealt with, if Cryptic or any other game company was serious about stopping them. I suspect the bots don't hurt their wallet bad enough to care.
All of this aside, the humans not playing is the bigger issue here. I don't play the random dungeons all that much because;
I don't find them entertaining as they were in the past. Prior to module 6 (Spring 2015) my friends and I could team up or I could dare solo the dungeon on my own (same as you can in private que). The rewards was not seals or AD, we ran them for content pure and simple. The people complain about the dungeons ever since they became the prime source for AD. The Foundry had 1 hour you could run for double XP and you got AD for completing 3 Foundry quests per day. They removed the AD from the Foundry and said it was being botted, not once have they removed the AD from the dungeons for this same reason. All I see in this game is greedy little monkeys chasing AD and VIP anymore. If the random dungeon is not the one they want, they pitch a fit. So I don't run dungeons these days unless I get a few friends asking me to tag along.
Rad and the headless daily grind for rad is just..
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I won't pretend to know how Neverwinter's queue works, but once a blocked player list is in place isn't the logic fairly simple? If this, then that, otherwise... At least on PS4, Neverwinter doesn't have a true in-game block list. If I want to ignore someone, I have to visit their PSN profile and block them there. The game is capable of detecting someone on our PSN block list, and it automatically mutes them. However, I believe I still see them in chat. I can still get tells from them, and I still get queued with them.
As for taking longer to queue. It would be well worth it to me - and no doubt to a good many other players - if it reduced the number of times I was forced into a negative experience. AFK/Leeches, bots, and purposely inconsiderate Disconnects sour the experience for nearly everyone forced to put up with them. In most cases they make content more difficult, in some cases they make content impossible.
And they almost always make content take longer. So even if queuing took a little longer, there's a good chance that not only will the actual skirmish or cta go faster, and start on time, it will have less of a chance of failure.
What's most maddening is they're almost always the same exact people. The vast majority of antisocial behavior I have to put up with comes from people who have been on my block list for over a year - people who are on hundreds, even thousands of other players' block lists. Most of the time I start a kick vote, it's for someone several of us knew we were going to have to kick the moment our characters' feet touched ground. It's incredibly frustrating.
I know I've occasionally blocked one of those excessive hoppers, but they really, really get under my skin 'til I long to drag their character directly into a PVP blood match where only one of us walks out again, but either way I don't have to put up with them anymore.
I know I've been in instances where I didn't pay a lot of attention to what other players who might be trying to leech or accused of being AFK have been doing. I'm still pretty much at the stage where I have to watch my own HAMSTER instead or being overly concerned with everyone elses and my first inclination when I just see a vote to kick without any conversation is "No", because just because someone has been accused of being AFK the whole time, doesn't necessarily mean they have been AFK the whole time... For me communication is the key to consensus when it comes to vote to kick. As it is now I believe the vote to kick is by majority rule. If I'm in a party where the majority of players are either AFK or attempting to leech off of other party members, I'm not sure I'd care to stay in that party anyway, thus I see no need to change the parameters for a null response for vote to kick from no to yes...
If the majority votes to kick - so be it.
If the majority votes not to kick - so be it.
If the majority of the party consists of bots --- I'm outta' there If I had a lot of confidence in software solutions for things like that, I wouldn't feel compelled to double check the auto correct software on my cell phone - but I don't, so I do - and I often thank goodness for that lack of confidence
Well that's it for me, the wife just got home with my
human beefand it's time for supper... damn, that was supposed to be Hunan Beef...And yes, I know a "reason" appears in the vote screen, but I often tend to be a bit of a skeptic, for instance there is no safeguard to keep any player from initiating a vote kick for someone being AFK - even if that player was never AFK to begin with - so if I'm not personally aware of a problem I don't tend to go with vote to kick, without a little more information than what pop-up kick screen says...
I figure if a player can't be bothered to take the time to even try to build a consensus as to why a player should be evicted, then I usually don't feel compelled to go along with a vote to kick - unless I am personally aware of the problem. The vote to kick has been abused in the past and without sufficient safeguards (either programmed or personal) it can be abused again.
You say kicking should be done swiftly and with extreme prejudice and I agree - with a caveat however - there should be some kind of in game programmed mechanism to remove offending players from a queue and party members should not have the power to initiate vote kicks except in extreme circumstances and every time a player initiates a vote to kick, their player info should go into a permanent database and if it appears and is confirmed they are themselves abusing the player vote to kick option their account should be suspended and later banned if the problem persists.
As I already mentioned:
As far as I'm aware, no-one appointed any one of us as the spokesperson for every person playing Neverwinter.
And no, I don't consider the 4-hour cool down timer to be a sufficient safeguard for a couple of reasons.
Just sayin'
I don't think any of us has the ability - or the authority - to say what every player in Neverwinter may or may not do or what they might consider a "good (enough) reason" to try to kick someone from their group... I have previously read posts and been in parties where some players said they would be willing to kick players because they weren't playing in a manner consistent with how someone thought they should be playing... Not fast enough, too fast, not doing enough damage, doing too much damage, etc.
You may not use your kick votefor no particular reason, but that doesn't mean "no one" will use their precious kick vote..." just because they can. Pretty much what I said: "party members should not have the power to initiate vote kicks except in extreme circumstances...
> I am a casual nw player - I generally only queue for dailies and when an event is going on. I have noticed that usually in the event queues there is usually at least 1 player that is afk, and yes - it is a bit frustrating that they someone can get all the rewards for no effort.
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> Why not just have some type of gating mechanism where all the players have to gather at a specific location within a certain amount of time in order to be able to get completion and rewards? Like for example, in the CTA skirmishes, by the 3rd wave, you have to move your character past a certain point.
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> I was curious if there was any way in-game to have the game intentionally prevent you from grouping with a specific player? From what I could find out, the ignore function only works to prevent communication. Would it be so bad if the ignore also prevented you from grouping with a specific player in queues?
This function would.be abused
Although it isn't as common as it was prior to Mod 16, there are still overpowered speed runners in random queues and if one or more of them take off killing everything in sight while slower, lesser equipped players -playing to the best of their ability - aren't able to keep up or engage mobs, they are effectively shutout but by absolutely no fault of their own. It's happened to me on a number of occasions.
If a player's stats are low or absent - it might mean they've intentionally avoided making any effort to help - or it might mean they haven't had the opportunity to help.
Personally I like the idea of "waygates" where the entire party has to assemble before any can proceed... as a matter of fact this technique is so effective, it is used By Neverwinter, in just about every random dungeon right before the final boss battle -
"You Must Gather Your Party Before Proceeding" -
"Your Party Is Waiting For You" -
No AFK'er can remain AFK without the entire party noticing using this method and with a programmed count-down kick timer (-vs- a player initiated kick option) a player either plays or they are automatically booted by the game.
In conclusion there is absolutely no possibility of player bias effecting the "vote-to-kick' and no way to intentionally abuse the kick function that I can think of.