What keeps you from sending a /friend invite to those 90%? They're on the same time as you. They don't AFK leech and by your own admission, they know what they're doing.
If the halfway competent people don't pug anymore and stick to friends, that would harm the pug system a lot. And exclude newbies who will not be able to even meet those players anymore ( because of them not being in the same group ever )
That is, why we need to solve the problem, where it is before people abandon pugging.
And every possible damage to queue time coming from the proposed feature will be negligible compared to your proposal - to not pug any more.
Care to explain how competent players not taking part would make the pug system better ?
There have been games going that route and it always produced rifts in the gaming socieity between the established players sticking too their friends and the newcomers finding at increasingly hard to do any group content. Also promoted elitism and clique-thinking.
Then the newcomers left and the game began to die.
What is leaching? To me leaching is someone who is intentionally inactive, they are not sperated as you have put them.
Leaching is the inactive guy who drifts off to lala land while everybody is doing thier best to engage the enemy. It could also be construded as the guy who deliberately goes off to the other side of the board and starts blowing stuff up aggroing more enemies. We all know there is a timer and that we have to work together as a TEAM to beat the timer to get the really good stuff. A leacher just has a bot that collects rewards while the guy isn't even technically online.
Care to explain how competent players not taking part would make the pug system better ?
There have been games going that route and it always produced rifts in the gaming socieity between the established players sticking too their friends and the newcomers finding at increasingly hard to do any group content. Also promoted elitism and clique-thinking.
Then the newcomers left and the game began to die.
Don't want to see that happen here again.
I too have seen this exclusionary type of play in other MMO's and that is exactly why I don't play in those MMO's anymore. What Arnthebard has suggested here has merit it is fair to the newcomers. But ONLY if the Ignore has the silence effects remove so that it cannot be abused or griefed. That way the dregs will eventually show themselves and end up together....imagine five AFKers in the same game...priceless
I am all for the ignore list and afkers....
but i think it would be better to just add Block list
you will have your Friends list, ignore list, and Block list
Block list will be mainly for stf/pvp and blocking those who dont
wish to team up with.
so having a new feature added Block list, would be alot better.
Leaching is the inactive guy who drifts off to lala land while everybody is doing thier best to engage the enemy. It could also be construded as the guy who deliberately goes off to the other side of the board and starts blowing stuff up aggroing more enemies. We all know there is a timer and that we have to work together as a TEAM to beat the timer to get the really good stuff. A leacher just has a bot that collects rewards while the guy isn't even technically online.
So what I summed up as my idea of a leach in one sentence expanded into a paragraph. You are the one who sperated the two not me. However some, will as I said, see the newbie who isn't up to par on the DPS, their rotation, their gear, their knowledge or any mix of those as a leach.
This is why it is a balancing act on Cryptics part, personally I would like not being placed with people on my ignore list it works elsewhere. Atleast then it is upto me, anything else is a tad to open to abuse for my tastes. The ignore list is atleast limited in the numbers that can be added to it, and so is atleast partially balanced in this area,
You're assuming, incorrectly, that no "competent" players will ever use the queue system to PUG. That's simply isn't true. Our fleet will PUG with others when we don't have enough people to fill a whole team. Sure, there is the occasional AFK or leecher, but we don't whine and cry and carry on about it. We are not the only ones either. There are a whole lot of competent players out there who use the public queues and there always will be.
ATM most of the stuff is quite well puggable, that is true. But i wasn't talking about how it is atm, but in what direction the situation will evolve, if people use your "solution".
Also i never said no competent player would be left. But if the average pug consist only of 2 competent players isnstead of the 4 you have now, that would still be far worse, will usually cost optionals and become a real motivation to the remaining to play with friends instead.
Overall i still fail to see, how the advice "play with your friends instead" does anything beside harming the game as a whole while i fail to see any such risks from the OP suggestion
I am all for the ignore list and afkers....
but i think it would be better to just add Block list
you will have your Friends list, ignore list, and Block list
Block list will be mainly for stf/pvp and blocking those who dont
wish to team up with.
so having a new feature added Block list, would be alot better.
I like the idea of a separate Block list. Or an Avoid list.
It would be great if the queue system favored putting you in a group with someone on your Friend list and at least tried to avoid putting you in a group with someone on your Avoid list. In other words, weighted toward putting Friends together and against putting together players who you'd rather Avoid without it being a hard rule.
It would neither guarantee that you wind up in a PUG with Friends, nor guarantee that you don't end up in a PUG with people you'd rather avoid. But it would push things in that direction.
That would be better than the completely random first-come, first-served selection we have now. It would promote expanding Friend lists to build a sub-community of players who like to play together. And it would enhance overall play experience by making it less likely over time to get paired up with players who can't get along.
It would also force people to make good decisions about who they Friend/Avoid because the lists will top out at a given number. You won't ignore or Avoid a noob just because you can if it means you can't put a Griefer in your Avoid list.
Ultimately though it comes down to whether this kind of functionality would be considered important by the Devs. The fact remains that anyone can choose to avoid PUGs if they want to and wrapping code around this may not be a priority for Cryptic.
More likely that they come up with a solution that's targeted specifically at AFK leeching because that does impact the intended gameplay and rewards.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Overall i still fail to see, how the advice "play with your friends instead" does anything beside harming the game as a whole while i fail to see any such risks from the OP suggestion
If you feel that making friends and teaming together hurts an MMO, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're totally wrong. Making friends and teaming together is an integral part of a successful MMO.
I think the point you're missing, Valoreah, is that if you group exclusively with people on your friends list, you won't make any new friends. If everyone stays in their own sub-groups, then the MMO devolves into a bunch of peer-to-peer LAN parties in a common background.
Of course, the current design of MMO's makes making new friends (in the context of doing content) artificially hard. All the time-sinks have been eliminated to the point where, for example, everyone warps in to a PuG, does the objectives, maybe tosses out a 'gg', and then warps out, never to be seen again. There's really no interaction time. Complain all you like about EQ1 and it's time sinks, but at least you had plenty of time to chat while sitting on your rear.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
I like the idea of a separate Block list. Or an Avoid list.
It would be great if the queue system favored putting you in a group with someone on your Friend list and at least tried to avoid putting you in a group with someone on your Avoid list. In other words, weighted toward putting Friends together and against putting together players who you'd rather Avoid without it being a hard rule.
It would neither guarantee that you wind up in a PUG with Friends, nor guarantee that you don't end up in a PUG with people you'd rather avoid. But it would push things in that direction.
That would be better than the completely random first-come, first-served selection we have now. It would promote expanding Friend lists to build a sub-community of players who like to play together. And it would enhance overall play experience by making it less likely over time to get paired up with players who can't get along.
It would also force people to make good decisions about who they Friend/Avoid because the lists will top out at a given number. You won't ignore or Avoid a noob just because you can if it means you can't put a Griefer in your Avoid list.
Ultimately though it comes down to whether this kind of functionality would be considered important by the Devs. The fact remains that anyone can choose to avoid PUGs if they want to and wrapping code around this may not be a priority for Cryptic.
More likely that they come up with a solution that's targeted specifically at AFK leeching because that does impact the intended gameplay and rewards.
We agree it may not be priority for the Devs but this problem does need attention. Primarily because it does affect the enjoyment aspect of the game for many players. A copy of the friend page would be easily duplicated and call it your "Block" list. And as stated before it would be quite easy to implement. Just got to find a Dev to take this seriously....
We agree it may not be priority for the Devs but this problem does need attention. Primarily because it does affect the enjoyment aspect of the game for many players. A copy of the friend page would be easily duplicated and call it your "Block" list. And as stated before it would be quite easy to implement. Just got to find a Dev to take this seriously....
You should really never ever say something "would be easy to implement." While the UI for a Block list is easy to envisage, and the tools for managing it can probably be extensions of existing tools, the actual matchmaking code is not trivial.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
well i do hope they take this seriously, its a growing issue
thats been a problem for months, and its about time this
gets dealt with and be done with it...
Part of me sees it as a bunch of whining and crying that he doesn't want to do the work of finding his own friends that play like he does, and if you don't play HIS GAME the way HE THINKS, then he wants to ignore you to hell and back, and it's the dev's problem to make that easier on him. Oh, but he still wants to PUG, only PUG with a group of his choosing... which isn't a PUG at all.
The other part of me is saying I love this idea. I don't know how many trolls I've met in PUGs that spend so much time yelling, they don't contribute anything to the group, then end up rage quiting because no one is listening to him, regardless of how well the STF is doing with or without him. Those I'd love to put on a block list and never have to deal with again.
So, like I said I'm kind of mixed on this. Not because of the AFKers, but because of the trolls out there.
What will you do if the system is abused (like the chat ban can be) and you wind up getting blocked?
:eek:
Can't be happening.
As the do-not-group-lists only concern interations between exactly 2 players, adding one will not harm the ability for the blocked person to group with other people. Also the blocker and the blocked would suffer equally in their ability to group because only groups with both of them together are forbidden.
It would be more similar to the effect of the ignore buttun without the chat ban - the ignorers can't read you any more, but everyone elso can.
Only if you manage to annoy a considerable part of the population you will see a problem. I can't say that this can't happen as e.g. the ground-STF-Pugging comunity on some timezones is not that big and if you manage to get blocked by all four accounts on several dozens of pugs on the same timeslot for AFK-piking, well, you will probably see results.
If you feel that making friends and teaming together hurts an MMO, then I don't know what to tell you other than you're totally wrong. Making friends and teaming together is an integral part of a successful MMO.
Making friends and spending time together gaming -> good
Sticking to friend for the sole purpose of avoiding having to deal with strangers in a pug who might be idiots/grievers (and not because you like the company of your "friends")-> bad
What will you do if the system is abused (like the chat ban can be) and you wind up getting blocked?
:eek:
It is hard to abuse something that is personal to the player and finite in numbers. Because of this it would be hard for people to convince people to put a target on their list and waste a slot on something so pathetic as targeted greifing.
Though they would have to make it so there is no silencing to the block list, or if there is it is personal and does not work as the current ignore does. Though remove the account silencing from the ignore list neds to be done ASAP.
Part of me sees it as a bunch of whining and crying that he doesn't want to do the work of finding his own friends that play like he does, and if you don't play HIS GAME the way HE THINKS, then he wants to ignore you to hell and back, and it's the dev's problem to make that easier on him. Oh, but he still wants to PUG, only PUG with a group of his choosing... which isn't a PUG at all.
The other part of me is saying I love this idea. I don't know how many trolls I've met in PUGs that spend so much time yelling, they don't contribute anything to the group, then end up rage quiting because no one is listening to him, regardless of how well the STF is doing with or without him. Those I'd love to put on a block list and never have to deal with again.
So, like I said I'm kind of mixed on this. Not because of the AFKers, but because of the trolls out there.
I understand your quandry, let me see if I can clarify my position. I have friends and fleetmates I play with when they are online. What I am asking for is a way to avoid people who choose to act trollish or simply are using bots to harvest rewards or those who do nothing to contribute to the mission at hand. It is very aggravating to lose your time invested and a superior reward in a STF because of one person.
You know how annoying the guy who sends random fleet or team invites to form a fleet is in ESD? You politely respond no thanks but the guy keeps sending team invites. That is the type of behavior that gets the ignore list activated. Give us a choice is all I am asking for.
You should really never ever say something "would be easy to implement." While the UI for a Block list is easy to envisage, and the tools for managing it can probably be extensions of existing tools, the actual matchmaking code is not trivial.
This, right here.
This is just one reason is why I say that Cryptic might be more interested in specifically targeting AFK rather than reworking the queue system yet again.
An outright Block or ignore list would create a strong potential to splinter the queues even more than they are right now, to the point where it could become nearly impossible to fill a queue. In addition to the amount of overhead necessary to process the lists of everyone who applies to a queue. The ROI doesn't seem to be a good one there.
An Avoid list that doesn't guarantee separating players into different queues wouldn't be quite as bad. But then it doesn't completely solve the problem, does it? And the processing overhead might be worse.
Specifically targeting AFK and other such undesirable behavior* -might- be a more manageable problem to solve from Cryptic's perspective. It wouldn't run contrary to the intended way queues should work. And the other issues with player incompatibility could be addressed by -- yes -- private queues or otherwise choosing not to PUG.
*When I say undesirable behavior, I am referring to specific in-game actions that can be quantified as undesirable, such as spawn camping and the like. I doubt there is a good way to address simply not being a good team player.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
yea, i know it's easier said then done to add something like a block/avoid list.
but having the block list to avoid certain players would be worth it.
it might become a problem for the Queues but there is always problems.
comes with the territory of playing a online game.
but one problem such as the afk players. are abusing a loop hole
in the rules and exploiting it. so us the players want to take matters
into our own hands by having options such as having a block list to
not play with cheaters...
but this is just my view,other might feel differently.
Bad idea. Someone gets a connection problem, doesn't do 'what they are told' or looked down upon for not having the 'right' ship/weapons and ban they are relegated to the scrap heap.
Who gets to decide if you or the 'ignored' person is kept out of the PUG?, you would be limiting a persons chance (or your own ) to be selected and its too open to abuse (a whole fleet could get members to add a person to ignore)
Bad idea. Someone gets a connection problem, doesn't do 'what they are told' or looked down upon for not having the 'right' ship/weapons and ban they are relegated to the scrap heap.
Who gets to decide if you or the 'ignored' person is kept out of the PUG?, you would be limiting a persons chance (or your own ) to be selected and its too open to abuse (a whole fleet could get members to add a person to ignore)
I don't think its workable.
The people who have a conection problem just need to say so in zone chat. As for the players who are deliberately sabotaging the STF you are only talking about four people who may or may not put that person on ignore.
Who gets to decide? Good question the simplest answer is to base it on first person quequed. Do you realize how many people queque during any given 30 second period? A whole fleet might put someone on ignore out of how many hundreds of thousands of players on STO? Sorry not buying it. Everyone in STO has rubbed someone the wrong way at one time or another. All we are asking for is a way to avoid being quequed with them.
Comments
That is, why we need to solve the problem, where it is before people abandon pugging.
And every possible damage to queue time coming from the proposed feature will be negligible compared to your proposal - to not pug any more.
Thank you, there need to be tweaks in the ignore button to fix the silencing before implementation.
Care to explain how competent players not taking part would make the pug system better ?
There have been games going that route and it always produced rifts in the gaming socieity between the established players sticking too their friends and the newcomers finding at increasingly hard to do any group content. Also promoted elitism and clique-thinking.
Then the newcomers left and the game began to die.
Don't want to see that happen here again.
Leaching is the inactive guy who drifts off to lala land while everybody is doing thier best to engage the enemy. It could also be construded as the guy who deliberately goes off to the other side of the board and starts blowing stuff up aggroing more enemies. We all know there is a timer and that we have to work together as a TEAM to beat the timer to get the really good stuff. A leacher just has a bot that collects rewards while the guy isn't even technically online.
I too have seen this exclusionary type of play in other MMO's and that is exactly why I don't play in those MMO's anymore. What Arnthebard has suggested here has merit it is fair to the newcomers. But ONLY if the Ignore has the silence effects remove so that it cannot be abused or griefed. That way the dregs will eventually show themselves and end up together....imagine five AFKers in the same game...priceless
if u put a person on that list he wont be randomly grouped with you simple and effective i like it.
but i think it would be better to just add Block list
you will have your Friends list, ignore list, and Block list
Block list will be mainly for stf/pvp and blocking those who dont
wish to team up with.
so having a new feature added Block list, would be alot better.
So what I summed up as my idea of a leach in one sentence expanded into a paragraph. You are the one who sperated the two not me. However some, will as I said, see the newbie who isn't up to par on the DPS, their rotation, their gear, their knowledge or any mix of those as a leach.
This is why it is a balancing act on Cryptics part, personally I would like not being placed with people on my ignore list it works elsewhere. Atleast then it is upto me, anything else is a tad to open to abuse for my tastes. The ignore list is atleast limited in the numbers that can be added to it, and so is atleast partially balanced in this area,
Thanks for your imput... too bad we couldn't put this to a vote in the STO community.
ATM most of the stuff is quite well puggable, that is true. But i wasn't talking about how it is atm, but in what direction the situation will evolve, if people use your "solution".
Also i never said no competent player would be left. But if the average pug consist only of 2 competent players isnstead of the 4 you have now, that would still be far worse, will usually cost optionals and become a real motivation to the remaining to play with friends instead.
Overall i still fail to see, how the advice "play with your friends instead" does anything beside harming the game as a whole while i fail to see any such risks from the OP suggestion
I like the idea of a separate Block list. Or an Avoid list.
It would be great if the queue system favored putting you in a group with someone on your Friend list and at least tried to avoid putting you in a group with someone on your Avoid list. In other words, weighted toward putting Friends together and against putting together players who you'd rather Avoid without it being a hard rule.
It would neither guarantee that you wind up in a PUG with Friends, nor guarantee that you don't end up in a PUG with people you'd rather avoid. But it would push things in that direction.
That would be better than the completely random first-come, first-served selection we have now. It would promote expanding Friend lists to build a sub-community of players who like to play together. And it would enhance overall play experience by making it less likely over time to get paired up with players who can't get along.
It would also force people to make good decisions about who they Friend/Avoid because the lists will top out at a given number. You won't ignore or Avoid a noob just because you can if it means you can't put a Griefer in your Avoid list.
Ultimately though it comes down to whether this kind of functionality would be considered important by the Devs. The fact remains that anyone can choose to avoid PUGs if they want to and wrapping code around this may not be a priority for Cryptic.
More likely that they come up with a solution that's targeted specifically at AFK leeching because that does impact the intended gameplay and rewards.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I think the point you're missing, Valoreah, is that if you group exclusively with people on your friends list, you won't make any new friends. If everyone stays in their own sub-groups, then the MMO devolves into a bunch of peer-to-peer LAN parties in a common background.
Of course, the current design of MMO's makes making new friends (in the context of doing content) artificially hard. All the time-sinks have been eliminated to the point where, for example, everyone warps in to a PuG, does the objectives, maybe tosses out a 'gg', and then warps out, never to be seen again. There's really no interaction time. Complain all you like about EQ1 and it's time sinks, but at least you had plenty of time to chat while sitting on your rear.
We agree it may not be priority for the Devs but this problem does need attention. Primarily because it does affect the enjoyment aspect of the game for many players. A copy of the friend page would be easily duplicated and call it your "Block" list. And as stated before it would be quite easy to implement. Just got to find a Dev to take this seriously....
You should really never ever say something "would be easy to implement." While the UI for a Block list is easy to envisage, and the tools for managing it can probably be extensions of existing tools, the actual matchmaking code is not trivial.
thats been a problem for months, and its about time this
gets dealt with and be done with it...
Part of me sees it as a bunch of whining and crying that he doesn't want to do the work of finding his own friends that play like he does, and if you don't play HIS GAME the way HE THINKS, then he wants to ignore you to hell and back, and it's the dev's problem to make that easier on him. Oh, but he still wants to PUG, only PUG with a group of his choosing... which isn't a PUG at all.
The other part of me is saying I love this idea. I don't know how many trolls I've met in PUGs that spend so much time yelling, they don't contribute anything to the group, then end up rage quiting because no one is listening to him, regardless of how well the STF is doing with or without him. Those I'd love to put on a block list and never have to deal with again.
So, like I said I'm kind of mixed on this. Not because of the AFKers, but because of the trolls out there.
As the do-not-group-lists only concern interations between exactly 2 players, adding one will not harm the ability for the blocked person to group with other people. Also the blocker and the blocked would suffer equally in their ability to group because only groups with both of them together are forbidden.
It would be more similar to the effect of the ignore buttun without the chat ban - the ignorers can't read you any more, but everyone elso can.
Only if you manage to annoy a considerable part of the population you will see a problem. I can't say that this can't happen as e.g. the ground-STF-Pugging comunity on some timezones is not that big and if you manage to get blocked by all four accounts on several dozens of pugs on the same timeslot for AFK-piking, well, you will probably see results.
Making friends and spending time together gaming -> good
Sticking to friend for the sole purpose of avoiding having to deal with strangers in a pug who might be idiots/grievers (and not because you like the company of your "friends")-> bad
It is hard to abuse something that is personal to the player and finite in numbers. Because of this it would be hard for people to convince people to put a target on their list and waste a slot on something so pathetic as targeted greifing.
Though they would have to make it so there is no silencing to the block list, or if there is it is personal and does not work as the current ignore does. Though remove the account silencing from the ignore list neds to be done ASAP.
I understand your quandry, let me see if I can clarify my position. I have friends and fleetmates I play with when they are online. What I am asking for is a way to avoid people who choose to act trollish or simply are using bots to harvest rewards or those who do nothing to contribute to the mission at hand. It is very aggravating to lose your time invested and a superior reward in a STF because of one person.
You know how annoying the guy who sends random fleet or team invites to form a fleet is in ESD? You politely respond no thanks but the guy keeps sending team invites. That is the type of behavior that gets the ignore list activated. Give us a choice is all I am asking for.
This, right here.
This is just one reason is why I say that Cryptic might be more interested in specifically targeting AFK rather than reworking the queue system yet again.
An outright Block or ignore list would create a strong potential to splinter the queues even more than they are right now, to the point where it could become nearly impossible to fill a queue. In addition to the amount of overhead necessary to process the lists of everyone who applies to a queue. The ROI doesn't seem to be a good one there.
An Avoid list that doesn't guarantee separating players into different queues wouldn't be quite as bad. But then it doesn't completely solve the problem, does it? And the processing overhead might be worse.
Specifically targeting AFK and other such undesirable behavior* -might- be a more manageable problem to solve from Cryptic's perspective. It wouldn't run contrary to the intended way queues should work. And the other issues with player incompatibility could be addressed by -- yes -- private queues or otherwise choosing not to PUG.
*When I say undesirable behavior, I am referring to specific in-game actions that can be quantified as undesirable, such as spawn camping and the like. I doubt there is a good way to address simply not being a good team player.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
but having the block list to avoid certain players would be worth it.
it might become a problem for the Queues but there is always problems.
comes with the territory of playing a online game.
but one problem such as the afk players. are abusing a loop hole
in the rules and exploiting it. so us the players want to take matters
into our own hands by having options such as having a block list to
not play with cheaters...
but this is just my view,other might feel differently.
Who gets to decide if you or the 'ignored' person is kept out of the PUG?, you would be limiting a persons chance (or your own ) to be selected and its too open to abuse (a whole fleet could get members to add a person to ignore)
I don't think its workable.
The people who have a conection problem just need to say so in zone chat. As for the players who are deliberately sabotaging the STF you are only talking about four people who may or may not put that person on ignore.
Who gets to decide? Good question the simplest answer is to base it on first person quequed. Do you realize how many people queque during any given 30 second period? A whole fleet might put someone on ignore out of how many hundreds of thousands of players on STO? Sorry not buying it. Everyone in STO has rubbed someone the wrong way at one time or another. All we are asking for is a way to avoid being quequed with them.