AFK'ers need only group together in pairs to prevent the 4-man majority from kicking them.
My suggestion: Distribute end-mission rewards based on Total Damage + Total Healing done by each player. This way, active DPS'ers and active healers get the cut originally slated for the AFK'er.
Total DPS + Heals = 45k + 45k = 90k
Player1 receives 25k / 90k = 27.8% of the total marks / drops payout
Player2 received 25k / 90k = 27.8% of total payout
Player3 receives 30k / 90k = 33.3% of total payout
Player4 receives 10k / 90k = 11.1% of total payout
Player5 receives 0k / 90k = 0.0% total payout.
(Yes, I know there are round-off approximations above)
Basically, the more the player scores in heals damage, the better his final cut of the end-game reward.
Loot Rolls can also be modified with the same above percentage multipliers to give bonuses to active players, and penalties to AFK'ers. This means that no matter what the AFK'er rolls, his final roll number will still be near zero if he doesn't deal any heals or damage during the match.
This system would work even in the case of 4 AFK'ers + 1 active player since it is based entirely on how the player performs.
In a nutshell: Distribute rewards based on actual player performance. Even semi-active participants will still walk away with a piece of the pie originally slated for the AFK'er...
My three main characters cycle through Starbase 24 missions while I do other things (such as my first ever post here). I always initiate combat with them and check back every few minutes to respawn if needed. I also have my ships follow a teammate, so I can ensure that my ship will actually be useful. I also stay away from STFs because I agree that AFKing in something with optional objectives and such is garbage.
Am I a terrible person? Do I deserve a ban? I await judgement by my peers.
PS - it took three Starbase 24 missions to write, proofread, and submit this post. I'm now 1440 dilithium richer.
Terrible person: No idea, but you are a terrible teammate.
Ban: No...but I deserve an option to remove you from my team since you're 100% useless.
Never noticed anyone AFK in an STF, though I have occasionally seen players who would do their team a favor if they left for a cup of coffee and didn't come back until the fight was over. I still wouldn't say it's my place to tell them they can't play.
But that's the entire point. The people we're talking about AREN'T PLAYING. So you wouldn't be telling them they can't play. They already made the decision not to play. A vote kick system would give you the opportunity to say..."I recognize your decision to NOT PLAY and reward you by allowing you to NOT PLAY".
No one has a problem with the person who gets up for 1 minute to...
answer the phone
grab a drink
remove their burning lunch from the stovetop
etc...
The queues exist so people can play without asking permission from random strangers. If you want to choose your team, do so. Don't go into a PUG then whine about the other players not meeting your standards. You can't have it both ways.
That's not good for the game. The average player PUGs because that's just what most people do. Repeated bad experiences drive players away. The more people that give up in frustration, the less money STO makes. The less money it makes, the less content is created. I'd prefer that the game I like is able to attract new players and KEEP them. Less players is NOT a good thing.
I might have a solution to this issue. It's pissed me off too much recently. If you are out of range of the majority of the squad. you get kicked automatically. Something like 60 meters on ground, and more for space. Most spaces maps for STF's are small, but if this were to be applied to all maps, it'd have to be a varying amount, and maybe not possible even then.
That will either force them to actually move and help, or make spawn camping/afking a bit less worthwhile. The follow command would be an issue, so perhaps disable it on PvE maps?
That's not good for the game. The average player PUGs because that's just what most people do. Repeated bad experiences drive players away. The more people that give up in frustration, the less money STO makes. The less money it makes, the less content is created. I'd prefer that the game I like is able to attract new players and KEEP them. Less players is NOT a good thing.
The average player will find getting kicked by griefers a worse experience than ending up in a team that sucks.
The average player will find getting kicked by griefers a worse experience than ending up in a team that sucks.
If the majority of the team decides to kick a player just to grief him then they would do him a favor because the team would be so bad, it would be pointless to run a STF with them.
Yes a kick-vote system or at the very least an ignore system that does not put me together with people on my list is needed.
I might have a solution to this issue. It's pissed me off too much recently. If you are out of range of the majority of the squad. you get kicked automatically. Something like 60 meters on ground, and more for space. Most spaces maps for STF's are small, but if this were to be applied to all maps, it'd have to be a varying amount, and maybe not possible even then.
That will either force them to actually move and help, or make spawn camping/afking a bit less worthwhile. The follow command would be an issue, so perhaps disable it on PvE maps?
If the majority of the team decides to kick a player just to grief him then they would do him a favor because the team would be so bad, it would be pointless to run a STF with them.
Good players can still be jerks who'd join an STF with 4 people just to kick some pugger for laughs.
Yes a kick-vote system or at the very least an ignore system that does not put me together with people on my list is needed.
An ignore system could be fair, if it was properly implemented to not negatively affect other players (ie, you're the one who waits for the next one if the team has someone you refuse to play with).
Of course, people with huge ignore lists might have to wait pretty long to get a team that doesn't include any of them, but that's also the fair outcome of being picky.
Still not necessarily worth the developers' time, in my opinion.
Strongly agree with the original post that something needs to be done.
Sitting on a "penalty" right now because someone went rogue on Into the Hive and managed to step over the edge, respawn and then refuse to transport out of the cell before the game even began. Net result, couldn't even start the match.
That was the second time in as many days that have logged in, joined the queue, waited and not even been able to start a match.
Why is it I should have to have a "penalty" when I was forced to leave because someone else couldn't be bothered to play the game in good spirit.
Does anyone at whoever run this game actually think about such features before they just go ahead and implement them?
I will be posting screenshots of AFK offenders sometime this afternoon (see original post). The screenshots will include full character information and the handle of the player as revealed through the 'report to GM' option.
If you have an AFK that you would like to add to the list, you are welcome to post here or send me a private message. I will do my best to keep the list current and accurate.
Purpose:
1) to illustrate the extent of the ongoing AFK problem so that a solution might be implemented
2) to warn players so that they might make an informed choice about who they group with.
3) to warn AFK'ers that their inaction has been observed.
I'm sure all the vote/kick/ data tracker have been covered having speed read the thread. All sound idea but as the thread's also suggested they are either too harsh because they can impact on the innocent or they can be circumvented quite easily.
Really for 1+ person to idle seems folly you're actually going to take longer than if you'd participated and likely get less reward but obviously people seem to think it is and in some cases yes you can get rewards for doing nothing at all.
I don't know if Cryptic can do much about it especially since they made the idle out of server 1 hour from 15 minutes (so can't see them undoing that unless the server traffic is low enough that they can undo this).
Two main points seem to be possible;
Data tracker for the whole match including moving, healing, damage etc. The more they track the more likely they can respond but that's hard to do and an intensive load on the server trying to find the idler. Basing it on a couple of variables is a waste of time and effort.
Team vote. If the other 4 vote kick then the guy gets kicked. This will make it harder for one person with a grudge to kick and it would take 3 yes' to actually do it. A lot of other multiplayer games do this approach;
create vote
f1 - yes
f2 - no
It's not perfect but at least cryptic can work it in to existing code much like the need/greed.
I would suggest Cryptic put some actual manpower behind the GM's and actually deal with repeat offenders but that's even less likely than the data tracker. You can report people for all eternity (can recall one guy in pvp who I must have reported dozens of times a day) and like any feedback/bug reporting Cryptic seems to do nothing about it.
Of course innocent people can't leave because they will likely get penalised and the idler being the last to go might actually get away with it. Best thing to do is avoid pug altogether...
I will be posting screenshots of AFK offenders sometime this afternoon (see original post). The screenshots will include full character information and the handle of the player as revealed through the 'report to GM' option.
If you have an AFK that you would like to add to the list, you are welcome to post here or send me a private message. I will do my best to keep the list current and accurate.
Purpose:
1) to illustrate the extent of the ongoing AFK problem so that a solution might be implemented
2) to warn players so that they might make an informed choice about who they group with.
3) to warn AFK'ers that their inaction has been observed.
I advise against this due to forum policy blah blah blah and ironically the one time Cryptic will jump on someone like a tonne of bricks while the idlers keep idling.
Reading a few of the responses, it may seem that AFK'ers come in two catagories:
Griefers who don't giv a hoot and,
People who started playing under one system and now have to adapt to play under another.
By that, I mean people with a bajillion alts. They would come home, do clickies, convert to Zen, buy stuff. With S7 came no clickies and reduced dilithium across the board. It would seem S7 almost encourages AFK, especially with the events on a random schedules, reduced rewards across the board, the hard cap on refinement etc. People who have a bajillion toons and not enough time on their hands (don't see how that is possible with more than 4 toons though) pretty much have to AFK to grind the dilithium on their alts in order to buy things at Tiffany's...I mean the Rep system.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I still believe that using player peformance numbers to identify AFK'ers is a cleaner, less abusable solution. Using the formula below, you can reduce AFK rewards to a very small value, making AFK'ing completely non-profitable, while increasing reward towards active players:
Individual Player Reward = (Player_damage_total + Player_damage_healing) / (All_Player_Damage_Dealt + All_Players_Healing)) * Standard loot payout per player.
As Player performance (measured by Player Damage Dealt + Damage healed) increases, so does their reward. By dividing the Player's Individual Performace by the Sum of all player performances, you get their performance ratio. This ratio can then be used to distribute end-of-match rewards and add weight to random rolls.
If the above does not sound fair to under-performing players, then the player-performance-ratio can still be used to identify AFK'ers or inactive spectators since they will have almost no damage nor healing. In a 5 man map, players should be attaining 5% or higher performance ratio's individually. An AFK'er won't even break the 1% mark.
pretty much have to AFK to grind the dilithium on their alts in order to buy things at Tiffany's...I mean the Rep system.
No they don't, it just means it will take longer to get what they want. But the fact that the rewards have been lowered, is in no way an excuse to AFK farm.
If someone doesn't want to help they shouldn't get any sort of reward.
No they don't, it just means it will take longer to get what they want. But the fact that the rewards have been lowered, is in no way an excuse to AFK farm.
If someone doesn't want to help they shouldn't get any sort of reward.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I am against AFK as well. I'm just bringing up the possibility that the game encourages such behavior.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I still believe that using player peformance numbers to identify AFK'ers is a cleaner, less abusable solution. Using the formula below, you can reduce AFK rewards to a very small value, making AFK'ing completely non-profitable, while increasing reward towards active players:
Individual Player Reward = (Player_damage_total + Player_damage_healing) / (All_Player_Damage_Dealt + All_Players_Healing)) * Standard loot payout per player.
As Player performance (measured by Player Damage Dealt + Damage healed) increases, so does their reward. By dividing the Player's Individual Performace by the Sum of all player performances, you get their performance ratio. This ratio can then be used to distribute end-of-match rewards and add weight to random rolls.
If the above does not sound fair to under-performing players, then the player-performance-ratio can still be used to identify AFK'ers or inactive spectators since they will have almost no damage nor healing. In a 5 man map, players should be attaining 5% or higher performance ratio's individually. An AFK'er won't even break the 1% mark.
I would not be in favor of that formula, for two reasons:
1. A less-equipped player who is doing their best should not be penalized for if their ship simply cannot perform at the same level as someone else. For example, if my ship is equipped with all MK XII purple gear in every slot, and Joe's ship is equipped with XI blues, there's a good chance that I'm going to do more damage. He might die more too, which would lower his damage / healing totals too. So, because I'm "over-gearing" him so much, I get all the loot. How is he supposed to improve his ship if he's always stuck with the worst loot?
2. Different types of ships are geared for different roles. My escort has a lot of burst damage, but we all know that cruisers typically have higher sustained damage. So in the end, a cruiser will most likely have the most damage in the STF, meaning whoever has the strongest cruiser wins. If that's the case, why play escorts at all?
Why? Because Escorts have burst damage. While Mike pounds away steadily in his cruiser, I blow a bunch of cooldowns and take out one Sphere, then repeat on the next. Mike is doing his job by keeping a steady fire rate on (and probably the attention of) the majority of the ships, while I'm doing the actual killing. And Sam over in his science ship is making sure all of us stay alive, or keeping the baddies from doing anything effective, or giving us all extra power.
Really, the only formula you need is "Did the player participate for more than 50 - 75% of the STF? Yes = loot. No = no loot, what you would have gotten is split among the players who did."
I would not be in favor of that formula, for two reasons:
1. A less-equipped player who is doing their best should not be penalized for if their ship simply cannot perform at the same level as someone else. For example, if my ship is equipped with all MK XII purple gear in every slot, and Joe's ship is equipped with XI blues, there's a good chance that I'm going to do more damage. He might die more too, which would lower his damage / healing totals too. So, because I'm "over-gearing" him so much, I get all the loot. How is he supposed to improve his ship if he's always stuck with the worst loot?
2. Different types of ships are geared for different roles. My escort has a lot of burst damage, but we all know that cruisers typically have higher sustained damage. So in the end, a cruiser will most likely have the most damage in the STF, meaning whoever has the strongest cruiser wins. If that's the case, why play escorts at all?
Why? Because Escorts have burst damage. While Mike pounds away steadily in his cruiser, I blow a bunch of cooldowns and take out one Sphere, then repeat on the next. Mike is doing his job by keeping a steady fire rate on (and probably the attention of) the majority of the ships, while I'm doing the actual killing. And Sam over in his science ship is making sure all of us stay alive, or keeping the baddies from doing anything effective, or giving us all extra power.
This is why I drafted a formula measuring the combined damage and healing output as the player's performance metric. Sure, Escorts can output higher damage than cruisers or sci, but they won't have the healing numbers of a cruiser nor sci-ship.
Really, the only formula you need is "Did the player participate for more than 50 - 75% of the STF? Yes = loot. No = no loot, what you would have gotten is split among the players who did."
There's no way to measure the above without factoring in actual damage and healing totals. Otherwise an AFK player can just go full impulse to the edge of the map while running auto-macros to simulate live keyboard input.
As mentioned in my last post, an AFK'er won't even pass 1% of total damage and healing without actually maintaining steady damage and healing output. The reason is because each map requires a minimum 5 players. If all players perform equally well, then each player will score 20% of the total damage and healing. That number goes down as more players participate. Scaling rewards prevents players from playing the first minute, then going AFK for the remaining 14+ minutes.
If scaling rewards are not desired, then the player performance ratio can still be used as a cut-off, with >= 1% = loot, <1% = no loot. There is no way to get <1% unless the player AFK's the bulk of the match.
Really, the only formula you need is "Did the player participate for more than 50 - 75% of the STF? Yes = loot. No = no loot, what you would have gotten is split among the players who did."
The idea behind his formula is to guage participation. What actions define participation? If someone sets another person on follow and engages a keyboard macro to repeatedly spam spacebar on target of target (who they are afk following)... are they then participating?
A player regulated vote to kick feature is the best option (with inbuilt safeguards naturally).
The idea behind his formula is to guage participation. What actions define participation? If someone sets another person on follow and engages a keyboard macro to repeatedly spam spacebar on target of target (who they are afk following)... are they then participating?
A player regulated vote to kick feature is the best option (with inbuilt safeguards naturally).
A kick feature will always be abusable, but removing any rewards or mission-completion credit for AFK'ers destroys any incentive to even enter the map to waste everyone's time. This also addresses the player who plays only 1 minute, then goes away to watch TV.
In my opinion there are simply too many kinds of participation for any scaling approach to work. Remember, we already have a system like that for Fleet Actions and it is infamous for rewarding Escorts above other ship types. Yes, it's exclusively based on damage, and one that also includes healing will be some improvement, but not enough. Just think about how many potentially valuable abilities there are that don't do damage or healing: FOMM, Sensor Scan, APB, just every damage resistance debuff in the game, SNB, Science Fleet and all the resistance buffs, Energy Siphon, all shield drains (shield damage doesn't currently count as damage), the list goes on and on. A scaling approach based only on healing and damage would penalize any build using these abilities, in many cases double penalizing it because it would boost the amount of damage and healing the other players could put out. Sure, you could add in another of these things, and another, and another, but I doubt that all of them would be successfully accounted for.
The much better solution would be a vote kick system. It allows the active players to remove the inactive ones, and even allows them to remove griefers. Now, it is theoretically possible for a group of 4 people to queue up together and kick all players added, but I doubt that would happen very much, there's simply no motive for that, unlike AFKing, and it doesn't even seem like it would give the amusement of conventional griefing.
Of course, a good Ignore system would be nice too, and would cover much of the problem.
The idea behind his formula is to guage participation. What actions define participation? If someone sets another person on follow and engages a keyboard macro to repeatedly spam spacebar on target of target (who they are afk following)... are they then participating?
A player regulated vote to kick feature is the best option (with inbuilt safeguards naturally).
It would be better for the system to keep tabs on players. Anyone who is afk is automatically ejected from the event with a hour penalty. It would be set up so that a person can't just fly afk at the lowest impulse speed or do little participation. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than anything else out there for Cryptic to do. You can debate vote kicking til you're blue in the face but it WILL be abused the second PUG team members start having words with each other and someone gets booted for being an TRIBBLE. Of course I would enjoy seeing that happen, but it's abuse of the system nevertheless if the intent is solely to deal with AFK players. I could see the half TRIBBLE player who thinks someone is slacking and starts a chain reaction of agreements that the person should be kicked, regardless that no one else has been paying attention or whatnot. I could also see the elitist leading the way to vote kicking the weakest link of a group. Abuse at it's finest.
The point of anything they do is to stop people from leeching off the work of others. Whatever attains this goal is fine by me. I think simply implementing an ejection feature will surprise you at how well it works. People no longer can afk so they know when they enter, they have to play ball.
You also have to look at the reasons people afk. I guarantee you the most common if not the only reasoning for it is people who are currently busy and cannot afford to focus on the game, but they don't mind logging in anyway to TRIBBLE around and leeching STFs because they're selfish. So, you eliminate their ability to leech and they simply won't do it anymore. Anyone who keeps trying past that point is probably RMT at best. I'm sure they use the dilithium to craft and make EC. If you know anything about how RMT works, you know they are more difficult to get rid of than a cockroach or spider infestation. They are real life leechers so they do the ingame leeching at all costs.
I do see the benefits of vote kicking, but I'm just being realistic. We need to get away from something that isn't going to happen and start focusing on ideas Cryptic will take seriously that harms them the least, financially.
Let's have a voting system that allows the the other participating players to designate the AFKer as hostile. If all the other players designate the AFKer as hostile he becomes a targetable enemy ship that you can destroy. Anybody destroyed by the other players receives no rewards for that mission.
I personally would get a lot of satifaction blowing them up
Let's have a voting system that allows the the other participating players to designate the AFKer as hostile. If all the other players designate the AFKer as hostile he becomes a targetable enemy ship that you can destroy. Anybody destroyed by the other players receives no rewards for that mission.
I personally would get a lot of satifaction blowing them up
You already have a voting system, it is called warping out. And it works 100% of the time when you have an AFK person on your team.
Listen, I know you want your shiny for completing the STF. I know you want to play the STF on that character and you enjoy doing it. I know you don?t want to let your team down and you want to do your part. So, you are willing to work harder to get your shiny and theirs too. It?s okay, really. There is nothing wrong with that. The only part I don?t understand is why you want Cryptic to do something about it. If you complete the mission for the AFK?er then you support their behavior.
If I were Cryptic, then I wouldn?t do anything either.
For me, no way. I refuse to do for another player what they won?t do for themselves. It doesn?t bother me in the least to leave a team in a position where they can?t complete the STF to stop an AFK?er from exploiting me, game or not. If that toon gets time penalty, so what. I switch characters and keep going.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this considering how unpopular this is. But I have to leave you with one question, which of us is doing something to stop it- the one completing the mission for them or the one stopping everyone from completing it?
In one CSE STF yesterday one guy had combat log on and he linked the results of match.
I was in new toon, lvl 50 for 2 days and got 1st place with 3.9 mill damage with 6.5k DPS in common Advanced escort with MKXI weapons amd consoles doing solo kang guard duty in MRRMLL tactic.
BUT i had very low healing.
Other guy in Atrox had 1.5mill damage and 12.5 mill healing which he used on himself with transfer shield strength, repair drones and hazard emitters i presume.
So that formula, damage plus healing would be broken beacuse healing accounts for self heals.
It is enough to have threat control, a carrier with repair drones and engage in stationary AoE attacks to beat anyone if healing is counted.
Players with less damage per kill(which is great) and more kills(which is even better) would get smaller rewards then a cruiser, or heavy sci with threat control+high healing+beam FAW+gravity well for example.
So that system would be completely broken.
As for AFKers, i mostly see them in all Romulan missions, PvP and rarely STF.
Azure nebula is worst, because it seems that no matter how much you do, or how many scimitars spawn, you always get max 18 rom marks except when rep event is active.
AFKers there really dont need to contribute to get the SAME rewards.
PvP is even worse because doing nothing finishes the game faster then actually fighting which is used by many ppl. Just queue in any fed pvp and see how many ppl actually fight.
Kick for inactivity is only solution for leechers.
Most MP games have it.
-if you need to get AFK you shouldn't complain that you got kicked from game automaticaly.
-i you're "AFK", ie leeching , it is right thing for game to kick you for inactivity.
You already have a voting system, it is called warping out. And it works 100% of the time when you have an AFK person on your team.
Listen, I know you want your shiny for completing the STF. I know you want to play the STF on that character and you enjoy doing it. I know you don?t want to let your team down and you want to do your part. So, you are willing to work harder to get your shiny and theirs too. It?s okay, really. There is nothing wrong with that. The only part I don?t understand is why you want Cryptic to do something about it. If you complete the mission for the AFK?er then you support their behavior.
If I were Cryptic, then I wouldn?t do anything either.
For me, no way. I refuse to do for another player what they won?t do for themselves. It doesn?t bother me in the least to leave a team in a position where they can?t complete the STF to stop an AFK?er from exploiting me, game or not. If that toon gets time penalty, so what. I switch characters and keep going.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this considering how unpopular this is. But I have to leave you with one question, which of us is doing something to stop it- the one completing the mission for them or the one stopping everyone from completing it?
? to thine own self ?
Completely, 100%, disagree.
Warping out is not a solution, because the people punished by it are the people who warp out. The AFKer is completely free to queue again, while the people who attempted to "punish" them are banned from doing any event for a full hour. I suppose that might not be a problem for people who have a dozen active toons, but I barely have time to keep up with my 2, and that penalty is simply not something I can afford. I can't be throwing away time like that, and I really can't throw it away on missions doomed by AFKers or greifers, either.
In one CSE STF yesterday one guy had combat log on and he linked the results of match.
I was in new toon, lvl 50 for 2 days and got 1st place with 3.9 mill damage with 6.5k DPS in common Advanced escort with MKXI weapons amd consoles doing solo kang guard duty in MRRMLL tactic.
BUT i had very low healing.
Other guy in Atrox had 1.5mill damage and 12.5 mill healing which he used on himself with transfer shield strength, repair drones and hazard emitters i presume.
So that formula, damage plus healing would be broken beacuse healing accounts for self heals.
It is enough to have threat control, a carrier with repair drones and engage in stationary AoE attacks to beat anyone if healing is counted.
Players with less damage per kill(which is great) and more kills(which is even better) would get smaller rewards then a cruiser, or heavy sci with threat control+high healing+beam FAW+gravity well for example.
So that system would be completely broken.
As for AFKers, i mostly see them in all Romulan missions, PvP and rarely STF.
Azure nebula is worst, because it seems that no matter how much you do, or how many scimitars spawn, you always get max 18 rom marks except when rep event is active.
AFKers there really dont need to contribute to get the SAME rewards.
PvP is even worse because doing nothing finishes the game faster then actually fighting which is used by many ppl. Just queue in any fed pvp and see how many ppl actually fight.
Kick for inactivity is only solution for leechers.
Most MP games have it.
-if you need to get AFK you shouldn't complain that you got kicked from game automaticaly.
-i you're "AFK", ie leeching , it is right thing for game to kick you for inactivity.
An easy fix for the above situation is to evaluate damage and healing ratio's separately, then add them together in the end for a final average. This still gives both numbers equal weight for determining rewards:
Player's Average Performance = (Player Damage ratio + Player Healing Ratio) / 2
Player Damage Ratio = Player's Damage Total / Match Damage Total
Player Healing Ratio = Player's Healing Total / Match Healing Total
Therefore,
Player's Average Performance = ((Player's Damage Total / Match Damage Total) + (Player's Healing Total / Match Healing Total)) / 2
So if a Player deals 20% of the total damage and 10% of the total healing, then he can expect 15% of the match's total reward pay-out.
I can see the above being a problem if one person is so over-geared and over-skilled above everyone else that he carries the team and gets rewarded well above the rest.
If the scaled rewards option is not wanted, then the formula above and still be used to identify not only AFK'ers, but outright leechers as well. Both will be very hard pressed into getting above 1% without doing anything. I would actually lean closer to 2% as the performance cut-off before flagging someone an outright leecher / AFK'er since each player is supposed to be around 20% in a 5-man match. Those not making the cut-off value get no loot.
Since all of this is automated and updated at real time, AFKer's and Leechers have to keep playing to continue getting loot drops.
Comments
From http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=7078651&postcount=3465
In a nutshell: Distribute rewards based on actual player performance. Even semi-active participants will still walk away with a piece of the pie originally slated for the AFK'er...
Terrible person: No idea, but you are a terrible teammate.
Ban: No...but I deserve an option to remove you from my team since you're 100% useless.
But that's the entire point. The people we're talking about AREN'T PLAYING. So you wouldn't be telling them they can't play. They already made the decision not to play. A vote kick system would give you the opportunity to say..."I recognize your decision to NOT PLAY and reward you by allowing you to NOT PLAY".
No one has a problem with the person who gets up for 1 minute to...
answer the phone
grab a drink
remove their burning lunch from the stovetop
etc...
That's not good for the game. The average player PUGs because that's just what most people do. Repeated bad experiences drive players away. The more people that give up in frustration, the less money STO makes. The less money it makes, the less content is created. I'd prefer that the game I like is able to attract new players and KEEP them. Less players is NOT a good thing.
That will either force them to actually move and help, or make spawn camping/afking a bit less worthwhile. The follow command would be an issue, so perhaps disable it on PvE maps?
If the majority of the team decides to kick a player just to grief him then they would do him a favor because the team would be so bad, it would be pointless to run a STF with them.
Yes a kick-vote system or at the very least an ignore system that does not put me together with people on my list is needed.
That auto kicks anyone who gets killed
Of course, people with huge ignore lists might have to wait pretty long to get a team that doesn't include any of them, but that's also the fair outcome of being picky.
Still not necessarily worth the developers' time, in my opinion.
Sitting on a "penalty" right now because someone went rogue on Into the Hive and managed to step over the edge, respawn and then refuse to transport out of the cell before the game even began. Net result, couldn't even start the match.
That was the second time in as many days that have logged in, joined the queue, waited and not even been able to start a match.
Why is it I should have to have a "penalty" when I was forced to leave because someone else couldn't be bothered to play the game in good spirit.
Does anyone at whoever run this game actually think about such features before they just go ahead and implement them?
If you have an AFK that you would like to add to the list, you are welcome to post here or send me a private message. I will do my best to keep the list current and accurate.
Purpose:
1) to illustrate the extent of the ongoing AFK problem so that a solution might be implemented
2) to warn players so that they might make an informed choice about who they group with.
3) to warn AFK'ers that their inaction has been observed.
Really for 1+ person to idle seems folly you're actually going to take longer than if you'd participated and likely get less reward but obviously people seem to think it is and in some cases yes you can get rewards for doing nothing at all.
I don't know if Cryptic can do much about it especially since they made the idle out of server 1 hour from 15 minutes (so can't see them undoing that unless the server traffic is low enough that they can undo this).
Two main points seem to be possible;
Data tracker for the whole match including moving, healing, damage etc. The more they track the more likely they can respond but that's hard to do and an intensive load on the server trying to find the idler. Basing it on a couple of variables is a waste of time and effort.
Team vote. If the other 4 vote kick then the guy gets kicked. This will make it harder for one person with a grudge to kick and it would take 3 yes' to actually do it. A lot of other multiplayer games do this approach;
create vote
f1 - yes
f2 - no
It's not perfect but at least cryptic can work it in to existing code much like the need/greed.
I would suggest Cryptic put some actual manpower behind the GM's and actually deal with repeat offenders but that's even less likely than the data tracker. You can report people for all eternity (can recall one guy in pvp who I must have reported dozens of times a day) and like any feedback/bug reporting Cryptic seems to do nothing about it.
Of course innocent people can't leave because they will likely get penalised and the idler being the last to go might actually get away with it. Best thing to do is avoid pug altogether...
I advise against this due to forum policy blah blah blah and ironically the one time Cryptic will jump on someone like a tonne of bricks while the idlers keep idling.
Griefers who don't giv a hoot and,
People who started playing under one system and now have to adapt to play under another.
By that, I mean people with a bajillion alts. They would come home, do clickies, convert to Zen, buy stuff. With S7 came no clickies and reduced dilithium across the board. It would seem S7 almost encourages AFK, especially with the events on a random schedules, reduced rewards across the board, the hard cap on refinement etc. People who have a bajillion toons and not enough time on their hands (don't see how that is possible with more than 4 toons though) pretty much have to AFK to grind the dilithium on their alts in order to buy things at Tiffany's...I mean the Rep system.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Individual Player Reward = (Player_damage_total + Player_damage_healing) / (All_Player_Damage_Dealt + All_Players_Healing)) * Standard loot payout per player.
As Player performance (measured by Player Damage Dealt + Damage healed) increases, so does their reward. By dividing the Player's Individual Performace by the Sum of all player performances, you get their performance ratio. This ratio can then be used to distribute end-of-match rewards and add weight to random rolls.
If the above does not sound fair to under-performing players, then the player-performance-ratio can still be used to identify AFK'ers or inactive spectators since they will have almost no damage nor healing. In a 5 man map, players should be attaining 5% or higher performance ratio's individually. An AFK'er won't even break the 1% mark.
No they don't, it just means it will take longer to get what they want. But the fact that the rewards have been lowered, is in no way an excuse to AFK farm.
If someone doesn't want to help they shouldn't get any sort of reward.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I am against AFK as well. I'm just bringing up the possibility that the game encourages such behavior.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I would not be in favor of that formula, for two reasons:
1. A less-equipped player who is doing their best should not be penalized for if their ship simply cannot perform at the same level as someone else. For example, if my ship is equipped with all MK XII purple gear in every slot, and Joe's ship is equipped with XI blues, there's a good chance that I'm going to do more damage. He might die more too, which would lower his damage / healing totals too. So, because I'm "over-gearing" him so much, I get all the loot. How is he supposed to improve his ship if he's always stuck with the worst loot?
2. Different types of ships are geared for different roles. My escort has a lot of burst damage, but we all know that cruisers typically have higher sustained damage. So in the end, a cruiser will most likely have the most damage in the STF, meaning whoever has the strongest cruiser wins. If that's the case, why play escorts at all?
Why? Because Escorts have burst damage. While Mike pounds away steadily in his cruiser, I blow a bunch of cooldowns and take out one Sphere, then repeat on the next. Mike is doing his job by keeping a steady fire rate on (and probably the attention of) the majority of the ships, while I'm doing the actual killing. And Sam over in his science ship is making sure all of us stay alive, or keeping the baddies from doing anything effective, or giving us all extra power.
Really, the only formula you need is "Did the player participate for more than 50 - 75% of the STF? Yes = loot. No = no loot, what you would have gotten is split among the players who did."
This is why I drafted a formula measuring the combined damage and healing output as the player's performance metric. Sure, Escorts can output higher damage than cruisers or sci, but they won't have the healing numbers of a cruiser nor sci-ship.
There's no way to measure the above without factoring in actual damage and healing totals. Otherwise an AFK player can just go full impulse to the edge of the map while running auto-macros to simulate live keyboard input.
As mentioned in my last post, an AFK'er won't even pass 1% of total damage and healing without actually maintaining steady damage and healing output. The reason is because each map requires a minimum 5 players. If all players perform equally well, then each player will score 20% of the total damage and healing. That number goes down as more players participate. Scaling rewards prevents players from playing the first minute, then going AFK for the remaining 14+ minutes.
If scaling rewards are not desired, then the player performance ratio can still be used as a cut-off, with >= 1% = loot, <1% = no loot. There is no way to get <1% unless the player AFK's the bulk of the match.
The idea behind his formula is to guage participation. What actions define participation? If someone sets another person on follow and engages a keyboard macro to repeatedly spam spacebar on target of target (who they are afk following)... are they then participating?
A player regulated vote to kick feature is the best option (with inbuilt safeguards naturally).
A kick feature will always be abusable, but removing any rewards or mission-completion credit for AFK'ers destroys any incentive to even enter the map to waste everyone's time. This also addresses the player who plays only 1 minute, then goes away to watch TV.
The much better solution would be a vote kick system. It allows the active players to remove the inactive ones, and even allows them to remove griefers. Now, it is theoretically possible for a group of 4 people to queue up together and kick all players added, but I doubt that would happen very much, there's simply no motive for that, unlike AFKing, and it doesn't even seem like it would give the amusement of conventional griefing.
Of course, a good Ignore system would be nice too, and would cover much of the problem.
It would be better for the system to keep tabs on players. Anyone who is afk is automatically ejected from the event with a hour penalty. It would be set up so that a person can't just fly afk at the lowest impulse speed or do little participation. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than anything else out there for Cryptic to do. You can debate vote kicking til you're blue in the face but it WILL be abused the second PUG team members start having words with each other and someone gets booted for being an TRIBBLE. Of course I would enjoy seeing that happen, but it's abuse of the system nevertheless if the intent is solely to deal with AFK players. I could see the half TRIBBLE player who thinks someone is slacking and starts a chain reaction of agreements that the person should be kicked, regardless that no one else has been paying attention or whatnot. I could also see the elitist leading the way to vote kicking the weakest link of a group. Abuse at it's finest.
The point of anything they do is to stop people from leeching off the work of others. Whatever attains this goal is fine by me. I think simply implementing an ejection feature will surprise you at how well it works. People no longer can afk so they know when they enter, they have to play ball.
You also have to look at the reasons people afk. I guarantee you the most common if not the only reasoning for it is people who are currently busy and cannot afford to focus on the game, but they don't mind logging in anyway to TRIBBLE around and leeching STFs because they're selfish. So, you eliminate their ability to leech and they simply won't do it anymore. Anyone who keeps trying past that point is probably RMT at best. I'm sure they use the dilithium to craft and make EC. If you know anything about how RMT works, you know they are more difficult to get rid of than a cockroach or spider infestation. They are real life leechers so they do the ingame leeching at all costs.
I do see the benefits of vote kicking, but I'm just being realistic. We need to get away from something that isn't going to happen and start focusing on ideas Cryptic will take seriously that harms them the least, financially.
I personally would get a lot of satifaction blowing them up
You already have a voting system, it is called warping out. And it works 100% of the time when you have an AFK person on your team.
Listen, I know you want your shiny for completing the STF. I know you want to play the STF on that character and you enjoy doing it. I know you don?t want to let your team down and you want to do your part. So, you are willing to work harder to get your shiny and theirs too. It?s okay, really. There is nothing wrong with that. The only part I don?t understand is why you want Cryptic to do something about it. If you complete the mission for the AFK?er then you support their behavior.
If I were Cryptic, then I wouldn?t do anything either.
For me, no way. I refuse to do for another player what they won?t do for themselves. It doesn?t bother me in the least to leave a team in a position where they can?t complete the STF to stop an AFK?er from exploiting me, game or not. If that toon gets time penalty, so what. I switch characters and keep going.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this considering how unpopular this is. But I have to leave you with one question, which of us is doing something to stop it- the one completing the mission for them or the one stopping everyone from completing it?
? to thine own self ?
I was in new toon, lvl 50 for 2 days and got 1st place with 3.9 mill damage with 6.5k DPS in common Advanced escort with MKXI weapons amd consoles doing solo kang guard duty in MRRMLL tactic.
BUT i had very low healing.
Other guy in Atrox had 1.5mill damage and 12.5 mill healing which he used on himself with transfer shield strength, repair drones and hazard emitters i presume.
So that formula, damage plus healing would be broken beacuse healing accounts for self heals.
It is enough to have threat control, a carrier with repair drones and engage in stationary AoE attacks to beat anyone if healing is counted.
Players with less damage per kill(which is great) and more kills(which is even better) would get smaller rewards then a cruiser, or heavy sci with threat control+high healing+beam FAW+gravity well for example.
So that system would be completely broken.
As for AFKers, i mostly see them in all Romulan missions, PvP and rarely STF.
Azure nebula is worst, because it seems that no matter how much you do, or how many scimitars spawn, you always get max 18 rom marks except when rep event is active.
AFKers there really dont need to contribute to get the SAME rewards.
PvP is even worse because doing nothing finishes the game faster then actually fighting which is used by many ppl. Just queue in any fed pvp and see how many ppl actually fight.
Kick for inactivity is only solution for leechers.
Most MP games have it.
-if you need to get AFK you shouldn't complain that you got kicked from game automaticaly.
-i you're "AFK", ie leeching , it is right thing for game to kick you for inactivity.
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SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
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Completely, 100%, disagree.
Warping out is not a solution, because the people punished by it are the people who warp out. The AFKer is completely free to queue again, while the people who attempted to "punish" them are banned from doing any event for a full hour. I suppose that might not be a problem for people who have a dozen active toons, but I barely have time to keep up with my 2, and that penalty is simply not something I can afford. I can't be throwing away time like that, and I really can't throw it away on missions doomed by AFKers or greifers, either.
An easy fix for the above situation is to evaluate damage and healing ratio's separately, then add them together in the end for a final average. This still gives both numbers equal weight for determining rewards:
Player's Average Performance = (Player Damage ratio + Player Healing Ratio) / 2
Player Damage Ratio = Player's Damage Total / Match Damage Total
Player Healing Ratio = Player's Healing Total / Match Healing Total
Therefore,
Player's Average Performance = ((Player's Damage Total / Match Damage Total) + (Player's Healing Total / Match Healing Total)) / 2
So if a Player deals 20% of the total damage and 10% of the total healing, then he can expect 15% of the match's total reward pay-out.
I can see the above being a problem if one person is so over-geared and over-skilled above everyone else that he carries the team and gets rewarded well above the rest.
If the scaled rewards option is not wanted, then the formula above and still be used to identify not only AFK'ers, but outright leechers as well. Both will be very hard pressed into getting above 1% without doing anything. I would actually lean closer to 2% as the performance cut-off before flagging someone an outright leecher / AFK'er since each player is supposed to be around 20% in a 5-man match. Those not making the cut-off value get no loot.
Since all of this is automated and updated at real time, AFKer's and Leechers have to keep playing to continue getting loot drops.
2) Report afkers.
3) Leave/Fail the mission once there's a confirmed afker and do another STF/something else (like the Foundry IOR).
I didn't have to deal with idlers in a good while.
Going one step further or if the problem escalates:
Organize a semi-official blacklist of known idlers.
ROCKET SCIENCE.
He's dead, Jim.