Anyone who doesn't move, fire or do anything in an STF needs to be removed after 3 minutes so they cannot just afk for rewards and leave the team a man short.
This opens up the STF for another to join.
Nice, simple, helps remove some of the abusers, I realize not all but some.
Problems are:
1) Last time I checked, joining a running STF is still somewhat broken. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. In most of my short handed STFs, where someone left, no one joined later on. This particularly holds true for certain ground STFs. Sometimes I'm lucky and a fleet member helps out. But you cannot count on it.
2) STFs do not follow the Diablo principle where smaller teams have easier opponents. So kicking an AFK does not necessarily make things better. The AFK may actually rejoin later if he is not kicked.
3) This is only a game. People sometimes get important phone calls that drag on longer than expected. It is hard for them to leave because of the penalty.
So what Cryptic needs to do first is to improve the "late-join" mechanism of STFs and remove the timer penalty for leavers. This way it will be more like Battlefield 3, where you can leave and join at any time without hard feelings. Grinders may systematically try to late-join STFs, but this is still the best option in my opinion. THEN it would be reasonable to introduce some kind of kick system.
Comments
Problems are:
1) Last time I checked, joining a running STF is still somewhat broken. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. In most of my short handed STFs, where someone left, no one joined later on. This particularly holds true for certain ground STFs. Sometimes I'm lucky and a fleet member helps out. But you cannot count on it.
2) STFs do not follow the Diablo principle where smaller teams have easier opponents. So kicking an AFK does not necessarily make things better. The AFK may actually rejoin later if he is not kicked.
3) This is only a game. People sometimes get important phone calls that drag on longer than expected. It is hard for them to leave because of the penalty.
So what Cryptic needs to do first is to improve the "late-join" mechanism of STFs and remove the timer penalty for leavers. This way it will be more like Battlefield 3, where you can leave and join at any time without hard feelings. Grinders may systematically try to late-join STFs, but this is still the best option in my opinion. THEN it would be reasonable to introduce some kind of kick system.