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Vote to Kick Function
logicalspock
Member Posts: 836 Arc User
Dan Stahl recently said Cryptic was working on a vote to kick function, but I think this will create more problems in group pugs than it solves, for instance, a group of four trolls pugging an STF and then voting to kick a player right before he receives his rewards.
I suggest an alternate solution. Instead of a vote to kick function we introduce a secret ballot. When you are auto-teamed with someone, you can report them for specific violations such as not contributing the entire match or "griefing" (say by showing up in a starter ship to an Elite STF). These reports would put secret tokens on the player's account. The players could also leave specific descriptions. Automated tokens would also be placed on the account for such things as choosing to leave in the middle of an STF.
If the number of tokens per qualifying mission played exceeded a certain threshold (say two standard deviations from the mean), the player would get an automated warning. If he continued to accrue tokens at a significantly greater than average rate, he would get a one hour ban the next day. Every day he played an STF or similar content he would be eligible for a new ban and every day the ban would double.
The number of standard deviations from the mean would be set to make it very unlikely that it would net any innocent victims and the algorithm would have to be sophisticated enough to vary the time frame involves so that recent bad behavior does not get drown out by past good behavior and new players are not subject to the whims of statistically insignificant sample sizes.
The system would also not be a perfect solution. People could AFK or grief every once in a while and still get away with it and it would take time for griefers and AFKers to accrue a meaningful ban, but I think this, or some similar solution is the least abusable .
I suggest an alternate solution. Instead of a vote to kick function we introduce a secret ballot. When you are auto-teamed with someone, you can report them for specific violations such as not contributing the entire match or "griefing" (say by showing up in a starter ship to an Elite STF). These reports would put secret tokens on the player's account. The players could also leave specific descriptions. Automated tokens would also be placed on the account for such things as choosing to leave in the middle of an STF.
If the number of tokens per qualifying mission played exceeded a certain threshold (say two standard deviations from the mean), the player would get an automated warning. If he continued to accrue tokens at a significantly greater than average rate, he would get a one hour ban the next day. Every day he played an STF or similar content he would be eligible for a new ban and every day the ban would double.
The number of standard deviations from the mean would be set to make it very unlikely that it would net any innocent victims and the algorithm would have to be sophisticated enough to vary the time frame involves so that recent bad behavior does not get drown out by past good behavior and new players are not subject to the whims of statistically insignificant sample sizes.
The system would also not be a perfect solution. People could AFK or grief every once in a while and still get away with it and it would take time for griefers and AFKers to accrue a meaningful ban, but I think this, or some similar solution is the least abusable .
Post edited by logicalspock on
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I'm very much in favor of a kick vote feature. With minimal programming logic, sufficient safeguards can be implemented to prevent sustained abuse by individuals and groups. No measures to track participation alone will see afkers totally removed from group content - or penalized (disincentivized) satisfactorily. The community is more than capable to police itself, if given the right tools.
And for AFK, make it more AFK.... Because if you are away, you dont wanan get killed. Just make it so that you cant get attacked in AFK BUT you cant do anything while in AFK and if you move 1 you get out 2 nothing happens. All depends.. with how you make the Empire ill laugh when we can use AFK even when walking (not sayiing it will but still with the past.. I see that)
I agree with a timed kick system, or a no damage-no reward system. Having a team kick option, in my opinion, is a very, very bad idea. No matter what anyone says, it WILL be abused. Not might be abused some of the time, but WILL be abused, ALL the time. The stf's are already dominated by elitists and griefers, imagine giving them the power to kick people at will. It would be like putting a group of pyromaniacs in charge of a match factory...nothing good will come of it.
Best way to solve this is partly mentioned by the OP but already under our very noses...how about following a similar from forum poster violators:
PWE Infraction Policy
________________________________________
The vBulletin infraction system identifies, and keeps track of violations of our Community Rules and Policies. The primary purpose of this infraction system is to maximize the enjoyment of the users of our forums. To this end, we use the following point and penalty system:
5 points results in a 3 day suspension.
10 points result in a 7 day suspension.
15 points result in a 14 day suspension.
20 or more points result in a permanent ban.
Similar manner but suspension system for any STF/PVE/PVP:
A point given perhaps by anyone who reports to STO....checks an balance in place already and not much infraestructure needed to polizing the perpetrators...;)
Why this tread if you lissen corectly for exsample Stoked Radio they also think it wasn't wise to inplement this feature .
Stahl said in his words I want to have a system if you do not score or score to low for that mather you will recieve less then others who did have a good score but they were not sure about it yet but it has an high priority on the list.
Also vote this tread closed because it has no purpose other then speculation
"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised. It's got me through the worst of the last three years. I beat the Borg with it."
Trolling? You'd have to end up in a full team of freinds/fleetmates, wich pretty much never happens in a pug.... And even so, it would still be a minority...
The only people I can see a kick function would be a problem for, are leeches, and the ones breaking missions on purpose.
It's called.... get ready....
A AFK vote to kick feature. In essence, any mother****er who is tagged AFK by the system based on keystrokes/movement/lack of participation, automatically is tagged for right to vote kick by the group. Suck on that, 9 out of 10 AFKers just **** their pants. Next problem.
That said, I don't know what the answer is. Any system that allows players to "punish" other players, directly or indirectly, for transgressions real or imagined, sends up a red flag in my head, regardless of how often it's likely to be abused.
Gonna end there, otherwise I'll start ranting about the whole "on-demand teaming" mentality that seems to pervade MMOs these days...
well I was a wow player until about 6 months ago, and I can honestly say I used it only when we had people that couldn't DPS and do there jobs correctly. I have the same mindset in STO, If your in an Elite STF it should be because you know what your doing, you have taken the time to have an ideal spec and ideal gear, not because I can get more lootz. I'm not interested in handholding anyone, if you can't pull your own weight don't run them, because that just aggravates anyone tring to get a quick run in before work.
That doesn't have to be true at all. If the game tracked how often a person (or group of people) initiated a vote to kick, whether it be successful or not, it could interpret if something is amiss according to preset conditions. It could put their ability to vote on a lockout. Protecting the person/people they are trying to use the feature to abuse.
Damage and activity thresholds will never suffice. An afker can set someone on follow and have their keyboard macro automatically repeat the fire all command at the target of target.
I'm interested to see if Cryptic will institute higher rewards for those participating in doing things. How they do it is worrying though. If its based on damage, then the threshold will have to be low or those playing science will lose out. It will be the nail in the coffin of non-tactical gameplay. If an afk macro using cruiser's damage is higher than the actively participating science captain, thus qualifying, how is that fair?
If its range based, so that you need to be within x Km of something in order to register 'participation' upon destroying it, how does that exclude the afker on follow?
Has anyone thought of other ways which may be fairer for Cryptic to track participation short of these ones?
*thumbs down*
getting vote kickedby Trolls... might annoy you for 3 minutes, then you put them on ignore if you have their nicks and move on.
getting your account basically destroyed by a fleet of anonymous trolls...
yeah that sounds like a lot more fun for the professional griefers out there.
your suggestion would only increase griefing potential.
If somebody is AFK in a map and not helping, kicking him should automatically happen anyway (not happening with a 1 HOUR AFK timer), but since the auto AFK timer is also easily avoided by any kind of auto fire macro button... Cryptics simple screensaver software is not enough for this.
IMHO whoever joins first in a queue should be the appointed Teamleader and have the responsibility to kick someone who disrupts gameplay or just AFK leeches marks. Just like it is in Private queues.
Or maybe the Character with the longest /playedtime should be Teamleader in a PUG, as a kind of experience indicator.
-> simple solution for everything
*rightclick ignore*
IGNORING someone should make it impossible for the PvE queue to queue you up in the same match together ever again.
It does not, and THAT is what Cryptic needs to fix.
I do not want to PLAY with players on my IGNORE LIST... muting them in chat... who cares?
If all the AFKers are on everyones ignore list, then they will surely have fun AFKing with each other right?
When i played Minetrap for the Rom Marks i put at least one player on Ignore every round who was just standing around idle, added surely like 50 players to my ignore list in that time.
I do not want to be friends with these people, and i do not want to help them, and if they think they will ever get in a private queue, for example in the EliteSTF channel or anywhere else in a match that i started... guess again!
If that would apply to our AFKers in the queue too, then the knowledge of being blocked from joining a queue where just ONE player has you on ignore, any by that increasing your wait time for a match by that much, should be enough to discourage that kind of behavior.
And on the counter side, adding someone to your FRIEND LIST should make the queue prefer to add you together in the same queue.
I get lots of Friend requests after STFs and stuff, because people WANT to play together with me again, just that that isn't happening unless we make private queues, this should happen in the queue already, and by that it would increase quality of matches all the time!
The tracking will work both ways too. If your being voted out an inordinate amount then system flags are raised as well, perhaps locking you out for a period of time.
I agree with your 'best defence' suggestion, but thats not an option open to everyone.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
The fact they are even considering it zero contact with reality right there
So far, I haven't seen any leechers in STF, maybe I'm lucky.
Are you FOR people not having a choice about who they run content with?
If your genuinely not meeting the group's consensus of adequate participation then that group majority should have the right to choose not to carry you/spend time with you.
Forcing other people to play with you is a rather repugnant notion.
What if they don't have friends they know?
What if they don't want to participate in the fleet system?
What if their gametime doesn't coincide with their friends/fleet?
If you have problems making friends, then you've got problems beyond STO.
There's nothing stopping you from starting up a fleet without having to participate in the fleet system. Heck, set up your own private channel if you want.
See above: Make more friends.
And what's to prevent the rest of us from voting to kick you from every PUG we catch you on?
For reasons mentioned by many Vote Kick will be abuse and there's already a AFKer grief avoidance system by means of the queue system.
The current ways the game has of tracking basics is far behind the types of effective gameplay.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
valoreah I do understand the point your making about griefer teams. But I've addressed that already as being countered by conditions in the voting mechanic. Restrictions on allowing people who vote too 'liberally', especially those of the same fleet (for example), will prevent continued abuse against newcomers. I'm not saying its abuse-proof. I am saying that on the whole the community (which is not made up of a majority of griefer teams) can police itself better than rudimentary participation checks which negatively effect active participants who do not have a particular gamestyle.
I don't agree that its a bad idea. Your point on kicking before final reward could be addressed by removing the ability to initiate votes during and shortly after combat (for example, until rolls are completed).
However, you have made excellent points as far as showing what is and is not tracked (at least by way of the current reward system). If Cryptic announce a swathe of measures for PVE and PVP group content which account for and therefore reward significantly higher for those aspects of play, then that would be a step towards having a better solution, which is all I want to see.
There are PvP and PvE channels that players can join/create to form private matches to avoid griefing (AFKer or otherwise).
You underestimate Bots, those who would get lolz from kicking, to wanna-be-know-it-alls who would abuse Votekick.
They cannot create a system based on the current abilities to track the effectiveness of playstyles.
For example, a Tractor Beam on an alpha run maybe trackable if you account for the xtra damage done by oneself or teammates. But, how would you track damage avoidance by pinning and escorts DHCs away from an allied target or oneself? Or would you just give benefits to all TB usage regardless of how effective it actually is?
Spike damage dealer (in PvP escpecially) may have low overall damage scores, but they can be responsible for significant kills that break a teams defense. On the otherhand someone spamming CVS and plasma and ewp can rack up damage scores that may or maynot have been particularly usefull pressure damage.
Using CPB to decloak a target w/no shields has it's uses, using CPB on a target w/full shield is usually the least effective time to use it.
Tossing a Hazzard Emmitters on someone w/95% hull and full shields taking light plasma burn damage is basically useless but will show up as repairs. Letting a Tac get very low hull before using HE, so the Tac can get max benefit from GDF isn't.
No logs will show these kind of differences. The only metric for PvP should be did the team achieve victory or not.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Have a blacklist of users you do not want to be in queues with. When you queue up for a pug, it will wait until you can get a team with no one on your blacklist. Users may get something like this:
* If you use the system responsibly, you'll be teamed up with some AFKers initially. You'll blacklist them and never join a match with them again. Your future queues may be with some newbies, but they'll at least be trying their best. Etc etc.
* If you're an AFKer who has been blacklisted by a number of people, you may have to wait a long time for a pug.
* If you blacklist everyone who uses a ship design you don't like or something extremely picky, you may have to wait a long time for a pug.
(for those who were wondering, you currently do queue up with people on your ignore list)
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Player A blacklisted by Player B, Players C, D, E,F don't blacklist anywone.
Player A plays the match, Player B continues to wait.
Above is a potential issue particularly on KDF side and slow PvP times. Sadly, the numbers just aren't there yet. Though I agree it's less exploitable than votekick. Also, over time C,D,E,F will likely add A to a blacklist if A is a habitual abuser.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
A) A vote to kick system. However, if this is ever implemented, it should be silent (e.g. every other teammate would have to independently initiate the kick and there would be no notification other than "___ has left the team" if it were successful.
C) A metric-based reward, which would likely punish non tactical officers who do not bring ships with dual cannons.
It might not be as personally satisfying as instantly kicking a non-contributing team member, but it would just as effectively discourage them from making a habit of AFKing or griefing.
So what if everyone in the queue has blacklisted someone else in the queue and you end up having to have 100 or more players in the queue before the computer can match up five people where one has not ignored the other? Also, it does very little to discourage AFKers or griefers. Those people will be teamed up with someone if they wait long enough.
Exactly. Players C,D,E,F don't care who they team with. But Player B has stated he would rather wait than play with Player A (for whatever reason, say AFKing). Thus B has to wait a bit longer, but won't be with any known AFKers.
Admittedly, this could be a problem for anything with a very low population (PvP currently -- though if they add a reputation system you're going to get a lot of people, and until there's a solution some will be AFKing to try to get rewards). AFKers are trying to get rewards -- when they fail to do so, they will move on to something else. If they habitually AFK they may find themselves with only other AFKers or waiting a very, very long time to get in a queue.
The question is would you rather wait a few moments more, or jump in a game right away with someone who won't do anything? You're essentially playing with a man down in the latter.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
This would kill two birds with one stone, it defeats the AFKers (they will do little or no damage so NO rewards) and it also encourages people to work as hard as they can to get the best possible rewards.
Also maybe a little button that when pressed up poppes instructions for the 10% rule!
WHOS WITH ME? Lol.