AFKers/leechers in pvp getting out of hand

marc8219

AFKers and leechers who do nothing except sit at spawn in pvp and wait for it to end so they can finish their dilithium missions has always been a problem, but has gotten worse in s7 due to dil being harder to earn other ways

Yesterday while doing cap and hold I had 2 AFKers on my team, both from the same KDF fleet so it was me and one other person left taking on 4 Feds, we did well for being outnumbered 2 to 1 but eventually lost. Next match the same 2 people were there being useless again but at least the Feds had 2 AFKers also so it was balanced, but still 5 on 5 is more fun then 3 on 3.

Besides these people I see a few other regular AFKers both on KDF and Fed side caring nothing about the fact they are griefing everyone else who is out there to actually play the game.

Something needs to be done about this, both AFKers need to be penalized, and dil needs to be easier to earn outside of pvp I think.

adamkafei

I did a cap and hold today also, 4V4 thing is... I was tempted to afk because we got camped at our spawn point, that or just obliterated out in the field, I fly a fairly tanky escort (Patrol esc with cycling EPtS, running TT whenever it finishes cd (only run 1 copy in case of being subnuked) and aux2SIF on a keybind with TSS for secondary shield heal), a BoP made me look as tanky as a BoP... at which point I thought to myself "Why do I bother?".

But yeah, afkers need to go and I need a reason to not sit back and die, yes I'm only in the public cues for the dil but I do take part for the sake of the others on my team, it'd just be nice if I had a reason to not afk.

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.

marc8219

I wish more people there to farm dil would think that way also, what a concept play the game and actually try to have fun and not grief other people while still being able to get your dil.

p2wsucks

FYI, I opened a ticket about this and a while not directly stating AFKer/Feeding was griefing, the GM did say griefing is and if a ticket is made they'd investigate it. So, you could try making GM tickets for griefing. It was unclear what if anything would happen to the offender.

erkyss2

The problem is that we can`t do anything about AFK-ers in the game, i wouldn`t like to see dil mission removing from the game bcs that would be just an idiotic move. Why? Bcs i think a lot of REAL PvPers are also farming dil that way, including me. And i`m not going afk bcs i love doing PvP (altho PvP in this game needs help from dear Lord to be more fun and balanced:rolleyes:)

My idea is to add idle timers to each player that is doing some team mission, pvp, stf or what ever.. So let say some1 is afk 120 seconds, that person would be automaticly removed from the map (next Qued person would join), get 1h or 30min ban from Qing ALL team missions, again stf, fleet mark event etc. etc. I thing idle timer or sth like that would make ppl PLAY the game, not just enter the mission and be total C***t and let all other player do all hard work for him!

reginamala78

Its not just PVP where its a problem. Any kind of mark-farming team-oriented mission where someone just sits there, everyone is getting less and thus wasting their time because of some clown who can't be bothered to make the minimal effort. Got spoiled running invite-only STFs from channels, but now having to go back to the queues, ugh. Just want to smash their hands with a hammer, give them a reason to not be playing.

dank65

Now while 1 or 2 afkers are a bad yesterday morning I entered a cap and hold with
8 on 8 a full game and much to my amazement there were actually 6 KDF afkers
which left the other 2 of us at a distinct disadvantage something needs to be done
about this.

luxchristian

Capture only has AFK's. BORING.


No fun. Well, I still have MWO xD

shimmerless

I have to agree with Erkyss, a minimum of something like an AFK timer would do wonders at the minute. I don't really care if someone wants to AFK in PvE, knock yourself out (I won't really notice you're there anyway) but when it starts affecting PvP I draw the line.

To minimize false positives you could do something like we used to have with private queues where you don't suffer a queue penalty for leaving. So for example, if someone has a connection issue or something in a 5 v. 5 private premade game and he gets wrongly AFK flagged, he won't suffer the penalty and he can reenter the game once he gets sorted out. This helps keep PvP healthy and doesn't really open any windows for potential exploits.

dontdrunkimshoot

i have been in 10v10 C&H were most of the players were afk. SEVERAL TIMES.

akfers have always been a problem, but its like 10 times worse now

Unknown

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virusdancer

patrickngo wrote: »

WHEN are these Ques popping? I check the PvP ques, and if I'm lucky there might be half a team waiting fedside, and one or two KDF waiting...and the que never drops.

Not even on weekends. waits of over an hour, waits where I go to kill some time and finish re-running an episode mission (and STILL waiting), where it finally drops right as I'm about to log for the night-and I started waiting when I got home three hours before-that's the normal experience for me.

so...I"m wondering where all these people who que, then AFK or leech, are???

To an extent, I've kind of been wondering this - with folks off grinding other things (or having walked away) - it started to get rare for a queue to pop. Heck, I've seen more and more folks in Ker'rat - as if they've made the choice to PvP there instead of in the queues...

orondis

The AFK/griefer issue is a real problem that needs to be dealt with. The best way to do this would be a votekick button, something I'm sure isn't that difficult to implement.

I don't even care if someone else doesn't come and fill their spot, I'd just be happy if they're gone. I really really annoys me when people who deliberately hamper and spoil other peoples enjoyment get rewarded. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

virusdancer

orondis wrote: »

The best way to do this would be a votekick button, something I'm sure isn't that difficult to implement.

Nor difficult to abuse.

AFKers are nothing new - not just here - but in any game that rewards losing. Many things have been discussed - most of them can be abused or cause more problems than they fix.

Yet for some reason, the one thing there is always such an outcry against is no longer rewarding losing - and - I've always found that odd.

thepleasuredome

LOL broken game is even more broken.

dalnar83

LOL, Wanna hear my prophecy ? Cryptic will rather nerf the dilithium for PvP to zero, instead of implement AFK kick.

mimey2

dalnar83 wrote: »

LOL, Wanna hear my prophecy ? Cryptic will rather nerf the dilithium for PvP to zero, instead of implement AFK kick.

I can only hope the Prophets are not blessing that in this case.

marctraiderz

marc8219 wrote: »

AFKers and leechers who do nothing except sit at spawn in pvp and wait for it to end so they can finish their dilithium missions has always been a problem, but has gotten worse in s7 due to dil being harder to earn other ways

Yesterday while doing cap and hold I had 2 AFKers on my team, both from the same KDF fleet so it was me and one other person left taking on 4 Feds, we did well for being outnumbered 2 to 1 but eventually lost. Next match the same 2 people were there being useless again but at least the Feds had 2 AFKers also so it was balanced, but still 5 on 5 is more fun then 3 on 3.

Besides these people I see a few other regular AFKers both on KDF and Fed side caring nothing about the fact they are griefing everyone else who is out there to actually play the game.

Something needs to be done about this, both AFKers need to be penalized, and dil needs to be easier to earn outside of pvp I think.

And there i was, trying to figure out if i even still want to play PvP in this game, and you come out with something depressing like this. Guess they cant even 'fix' this relative small problem, they dont even care about the essentials.



Well, MWO Also has afk'ers in the queue's, but hey, that game's still in beta ^^

pvehero

I think the queues are slow because we just got a ton of new, time consuming, PvE stuff. Most players aren't PvP only, and those who are, are the most eager to get the passives.

marctraiderz wrote: »

Well, MWO Also has afk'ers in the queue's, but hey, that game's still in beta ^^

I guess they're just waiting for the launchdate!

havam

since cryptic cares greatly about pvp. Let's see how care will translate into (in-)action in this case. I mean we got a DSTahl post about DIl for STFs, why not one about pvp?

thepleasuredome

marctraiderz wrote: »

And there i was, trying to figure out if i even still want to play PvP in this game, and you come out with something depressing like this. Guess they cant even 'fix' this relative small problem, they dont even care about the essentials.



Well, MWO Also has afk'ers in the queue's, but hey, that game's still in beta ^^

Well MWO also has friendly fire and repair bills. AFK'ing can be VERY expensive in MWO. That problem almost solves itself.

houseofcritz

thepleasuredome wrote: »

Well MWO also has friendly fire and repair bills. AFK'ing can be VERY expensive in MWO. That problem almost solves itself.

It can be Very expensive to be on my team i think i have like 3 or 4 friendly fire kills lol.

aquitaine985

If I recognize the same AFKer three times or more and I happen to know his/her fleet leader I always make it a mission to pass that fact on. There's nothing I can do to punish somebody for AFKing and ruining a potential strong team besides blowing them up and flying back to the action. But if their fleet leaders give a damn then I think they'd deserve to know.

borticuscryptic

aquitaine985 wrote: »

If I recognize the same AFKer three times or more and I happen to know his/her fleet leader I always make it a mission to pass that fact on. There's nothing I can do to punish somebody for AFKing and ruining a potential strong team besides blowing them up and flying back to the action. But if their fleet leaders give a damn then I think they'd deserve to know.

For now, I definitely encourage this path.

A technical solution, if one exists, won't be implemented over the short term, though we're doing some investigating to see what it would take to address this concern for both PvP and STF maps (really, all public queues). Until we can determine what we can do, and whether or not we have the time & resources to implement it, the community will need to take the responsibility upon themselves to encourage better play habits.

I just wanted to let you all know that it's not off the radar to attempt to address this problem. It's far from being an easy fix, though.

fakehilbert

borticuscryptic wrote: »

I just wanted to let you all know that it's not off the radar to attempt to address this problem. It's far from being an easy fix, though.

Making the missions give dilithium only for wins is that difficult?

(You could increase dil-per-mission rewards to compensate for the fact that on average it will take more than three matches to get three wins.)

mattmiracle

Bort,

My solution "was" to put said persons on my ignore list. However, this does not prevent the queues from putting me in missions with said individuals. I send "GM reports" now twice about 1 individual that I keep getting teamed with late in the evenings (Eastern Time).

"Short term", could the queues honor the ignore option?

Matt

zeuxidemus001

borticuscryptic wrote: »

For now, I definitely encourage this path.

A technical solution, if one exists, won't be implemented over the short term, though we're doing some investigating to see what it would take to address this concern for both PvP and STF maps (really, all public queues). Until we can determine what we can do, and whether or not we have the time & resources to implement it, the community will need to take the responsibility upon themselves to encourage better play habits.

I just wanted to let you all know that it's not off the radar to attempt to address this problem. It's far from being an easy fix, though.

The whole part of a design of this magnitude to make sure no one afk's and can complete anything creating bad habits is doing some kind of optional and it would be optional on you getting points or not. So if someone afk's and something is setup that could not be botted like a cool example would be is if you had a pvp time travel match to where say both teams must use 2 different means to travel back in time to a specific map which would be part of the same map technically. A mechanic like that would require all members of a team to do something specific which would be tasks to get into a match. Something complex enough if a person were to not complete the task (the afker) that there would be a timer of some sort if they don't reach the given point they are ejected from the match then another person could enter to take the place of this said afker.

This is why I believe in mostly missions that are PvEvP style because it helps discourage this playstyle and gives individual points in a point system like that too so even if you have a TRIBBLE team you'd get most of your points from participation where as the afker would get nothing at all. So a design based on afker(0 points), participation 75%, and PvE and PvP skill 25% of points. It's my idea of an across the board type system and if there ever was to be a leaderboard you could rank up there on PvE skill if you wanted to but it would give that edge to those who really just want to PvP with a little bit better PvP related awards to them so it would make the majority happy.

shimmerless

borticuscryptic wrote: »

For now, I definitely encourage this path.

A technical solution, if one exists, won't be implemented over the short term, though we're doing some investigating to see what it would take to address this concern for both PvP and STF maps (really, all public queues). Until we can determine what we can do, and whether or not we have the time & resources to implement it, the community will need to take the responsibility upon themselves to encourage better play habits.

I just wanted to let you all know that it's not off the radar to attempt to address this problem. It's far from being an easy fix, though.

Why not just use the existing idle tracker tool to flag idlers and boot them with a harsh queue penalty after a reasonable length of time? I know you could get false positives and all ("My dog needed dinner", "I was getting a drink", "I'm the president of Costa Rica don't you know who I am") but I mean really if you don't have the time you ought not to queue in the first place since it just isn't fair on your team.

borticuscryptic

fakehilbert wrote: »

Making the missions give dilithium only for wins is that difficult?

This is one option under review, but it's not a true fix.

AFK'ers still spend their time doing nothing (likely tabbed out, doing something else), and teams can still win without them even if it's less likely. These two factors mean it wouldn't stop an AFK'er from jumping into a Queued Map and waiting for a win so they can earn their Dilithium. Even if that only happens like 10% of the time, that's still 10% of their non-effort. It's a diminished amount, but in the end it means nothing to the type of player that employs this method of earning.

Additionally, players that try their hardest, and don't win, get nothing for their time & effort. If an AFK'er enters a match on their team, they are even less likely to win no matter how much they try.

So, in essence, restricting rewards to a Win condition punishes active players more than it punishes AFK'ers.

p2wsucks

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This is one option under review, but it's not a true fix.

AFK'ers still spend their time doing nothing (likely tabbed out, doing something else), and teams can still win without them even if it's less likely. These two factors mean it wouldn't stop an AFK'er from jumping into a Queued Map and waiting for a win so they can earn their Dilithium. Even if that only happens like 10% of the time, that's still 10% of their non-effort. It's a diminished amount, but in the end it means nothing to the type of player that employs this method of earning.

Additionally, players that try their hardest, and don't win, get nothing for their time & effort. If an AFK'er enters a match on their team, they are even less likely to win no matter how much they try.

So, in essence, restricting rewards to a Win condition punishes active players more than it punishes AFK'ers.

So why not ban them for griefing? Why not the same for knowingly exploiting bugs? What good is that part of the ToS if it's not enforced?

Edit: There's some other issues I brough up here:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=447701

Along the same lines and haven't heard anything on them. I know policy enforcement isn't a Dev issue, but it would be nice to have some official stance on this issue even if you can't comment on it.

naz4

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This is one option under review, but it's not a true fix.

AFK'ers still spend their time doing nothing (likely tabbed out, doing something else), and teams can still win without them even if it's less likely. These two factors mean it wouldn't stop an AFK'er from jumping into a Queued Map and waiting for a win so they can earn their Dilithium. Even if that only happens like 10% of the time, that's still 10% of their non-effort. It's a diminished amount, but in the end it means nothing to the type of player that employs this method of earning.

Additionally, players that try their hardest, and don't win, get nothing for their time & effort. If an AFK'er enters a match on their team, they are even less likely to win no matter how much they try.

So, in essence, restricting rewards to a Win condition punishes active players more than it punishes AFK'ers.

However, this would stop most of the afker's in the game which is a positive step in the right direction. Also would fit DSthal's master plan of slaving for dilithium