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Bye Bye AFK'ers

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  • gstamo01gstamo01 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    predcon wrote: »
    It wouldn't have been simpler to just implement a 'points for participation' system? you know, to stick it to spawn campers? Base it off of damage done/taken, rather than ships/ground forces destroyed, just in case a player has a terrible build, or in the more likely scenario that one player has a build that far outstrips everyone else's, and is taking down everything before anyone has a chance to tag the kill shot. You know who i'm talking about, those rommie captains that can take down a borg command ship in just under a minute.

    The system should just be in place to make sure players are playing, i.e. hauling their respective weights, rather than to dole out scaling rewards, for reasons of the aforementioned 'holy $#!+, look at those cannons go!' captains.

    That still wouldn't solve the AFK farmer that sets their ship to auto assist target and uses the /follow command.

    Plus, I parse my game and let me tell you, there are MANY players out there that are actually trying to do the mission and they just straight up suck to the point that they are just wasting team space.
    You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online! :D
  • karhaekarhae Member Posts: 25 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    aarons9 wrote: »
    this sounds like bad news all around..

    For the AFKs and leachers, certainly.

    It's only bad news for anyone else if it's still buggy or inaccurate when it promotes to holodeck.

    If Cryptic is smart, they'll know that the easiest way to identify the leachers is to see who complains about the mere announcement of an anti-leacher concept. They can then monitor those accounts closely to fine-tune the system, maybe even use that list as one of the heuristic parameters . . .
  • elessymelessym Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    predcon wrote: »
    It wouldn't have been simpler to just implement a 'points for participation' system? you know, to stick it to spawn campers? Base it off of damage done/taken, rather than ships/ground forces destroyed, just in case a player has a terrible build, or in the more likely scenario that one player has a build that far outstrips everyone else's, and is taking down everything before anyone has a chance to tag the kill shot. You know who i'm talking about, those rommie captains that can take down a borg command ship in just under a minute.

    The system should just be in place to make sure players are playing, i.e. hauling their respective weights, rather than to dole out scaling rewards, for reasons of the aforementioned 'holy $#!+, look at those cannons go!' captains.

    Participation metrics are easy to describe and incredibly hard to implement in a reasonable way. It's hand-waving, basically.
    "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
  • gstamo01gstamo01 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    karhae wrote: »
    If Cryptic is smart, they'll know that the easiest way to identify the leachers is to see who complains about the mere announcement of an anti-leacher concept. They can then monitor those accounts closely to fine-tune the system, maybe even use that list as one of the heuristic parameters . . .

    Easily the dumbest post in this thread. What about us 12k+ dps people that do 80% of the actual work? Doesn't that make the other 20% leachers? This is the kind of logic you are using to make your case..
    You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online! :D
  • centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    I agree.

    No Star Trek Future,

    Only Mad Max.

    Complete with Boomerang Guy?
  • gardatgardat Member Posts: 280 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    And then let's ban players who handles start with G . . . Who gives anyone the right to say they are or are not pulling thier weight? Maybe I'm not putting monster DPS on the board. Maybe I'm keeping a dumbazz in a poorly built escort alive. you sound like the retrards from the blizzard game. You have to know the entire instance and you have to have the gear.


    Guess what, Francis.. You can't get the gear without DOING the fights.

    Stop thinking about being an elitist snob and think about how to bring that casual player up to speed

    Actually yes, you DO need to know how STFs work. That's why normal mode exists, to teach the basics. If people want to skip straight to elites because "lol marks" they have no business being there if they can't parse a minimum amount of DPS.

    Elite mode STFs are specifically where you NEED high DPS. If you aren't bringing that to the table, you are just dead weight to your team. May as well be an AFKer.

    If you've ever played Secret World they have a great way of doing this - a solo instance where you can either tank, DPS or heal your way through a challenge. Until you pass this challenge nightmare mode dungeons are not unlocked and you can't enter any of them.
    486 DX2/66Mhz, 4MB SD-RAM, 16KB L-1 cache, 120MB HDD, 3.5" FDD, 2x CD-ROM, 8-Bit Soundblaster Pro, IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard, Microsoft trackball mouse, 256KB S3 graphics chip, 14" VGA CRT monitor, MS-DOS 6.22
  • tekehdtekehd Member Posts: 2,032 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    gstamo01 wrote: »
    Easily the dumbest post in this thread. What about us 12k+ dps people that do 80% of the actual work? Doesn't that make the other 20% leachers? This is the kind of logic you are using to make your case..

    Yes, and of course you know I'm reluctant to accept afk penalties being implimented because I'm obviously a leecher, and not someone who had multiple times got stuck with leaver penalties due to system bugs.... it's purely because the only people who would be opposed to these are evil leechers.
  • karhaekarhae Member Posts: 25 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    gstamo01 wrote: »
    Easily the dumbest post in this thread. What about us 12k+ dps people that do 80% of the actual work? Doesn't that make the other 20% leachers? This is the kind of logic you are using to make your case..

    Nice cover. :) And math.

    Also nice removal of context, as you trimmed the part that made it clear this was in reference to AFK (and one-keystroke-per-mission) leaching, by participants who typically contribute 0% to <1% to the mission's success and are there only for rewards, not to play -- even if their ship could do 12K DPS were they to fly it. I've seen plenty of high-end ships like scimitars and even more high-end ground gear like MACO sets queue for missions but remain AFK so this has little to do with equipment. Or rather one of the things that makes this issue so heated is that the AFK players usually *do* have visibly good gear, and that makes any players trying to acquire that quality of gear through the mission even more frustrated.

    I don't mind being the power hitter who carries the team when the other players are trying, learning, and/or having fun, but if you're really that worried about being teamed with people that can't do 12K+ DPS you are of course free to arrange all your matches through channels with those kind of entry requirements.

    The times I get unhappy are when the other guys in fleet or lockbox ships with borg console graphics don't even engage.

    The bugs or false positives that ship will be something to complain about, but saying cryptic should not even try to address this problem because there might be bugs . . . by that logic no computer program would ever be written. This is one of many problems that it is long overdue for Cryptic to address in some fashion: whether that be an AFK penalty, changing the incentive structure to make AFKing less attractive (probably harder), or something else. The announced penalties seem reasonable as long as false positives are infrequent, and really nothing else has been announced in enough detail to comment on.
  • jessiecoltjessiecolt Member Posts: 80 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    gardat wrote: »

    If you've ever played Secret World they have a great way of doing this - a solo instance where you can either tank, DPS or heal your way through a challenge. Until you pass this challenge nightmare mode dungeons are not unlocked and you can't enter any of them.

    The Gatekeeper.

    Took me multiple tries, over a couple of weeks before I had the gear and skills to finally beat him.


    This has to be one of the best implementations from TSW. If you do not have the skills to beat this guy, you do not belong in the hard/NM dungeons.
  • karhaekarhae Member Posts: 25 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    tekehd wrote: »
    Yes, and of course you know I'm reluctant to accept afk penalties being implimented because I'm obviously a leecher, and not someone who had multiple times got stuck with leaver penalties due to system bugs.... it's purely because the only people who would be opposed to these are evil leechers.

    No. I'm sure the people arguing against this form a complete spectrum from players who have no confidence in Cryptic's ability to provide a workable implementation all the way through farmers for the "gold" sales companies who are trying to protect their ability to use windowed virtual machines to multi-keyboard dozens of characters in different missions that are not doing anything except clicking "need" on all the loot that drops.

    Without access to server logs, I won't attempt to speculate on the ratio of people in each category along that range. However, if you think PWE is not comparing IPs of forum posters to IPs of AFK players in an attempt to identify the people in that last category for special attention, then I have some oceanfront property in AZ to sell you.

    Myself, I expect them to take a month or five to get the false positive rate tuned and don't look forward to that one bit, but I'm tired enough of seeing AFK players in every instance of Mine Trap that I expect I will put up with that, grudgingly, for a little while anyway. And once they do have that false positive rate tuned, expect the penalties to get much larger, again because of that last group from two paragraphs above.
  • elessymelessym Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    karhae wrote: »
    Without access to server logs, I won't attempt to speculate on the ratio of people in each category along that range. However, if you think PWE is not comparing IPs of forum posters to IPs of AFK players in an attempt to identify the people in that last category for special attention, then I have some oceanfront property in AZ to sell you.

    Lol. Cryptic doesn't even know how to identify an AFK-er, and you think they have some secret list of their IPs?

    If they had that list, they could have just banned them and not wasted time implementing a system.
    "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
  • smoovioussmoovious Member Posts: 264 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    gstamo01 wrote: »
    Goodbye stationary AFK player. Hello auto-follow AFK player.
    At least an auto-follow one would contribute something, even if it isn't much... like having another target for weapons fire to go to, so it isn't going to you. Small benefit, but it would at least be _something_...

    -- Smoov
  • karhaekarhae Member Posts: 25 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    elessym wrote: »
    Lol. Cryptic doesn't even know how to identify an AFK-er, and you think they have some secret list of their IPs?

    If they had that list, they could have just banned them and not wasted time implementing a system.

    Actually the announcement is precisely a claim that they CAN identify AFKers. Whether it is a true claim remains to be seen.

    The list is much more complex; these gold farming companies "outsource" most of their production -- all that spam gives a contact for selling credits as well as buying. That means that the "list" of farmers is constantly changing -- every week a new batch of kids who want to supplement their allowance decide to do a little farming for them. Most of those kids are tech savvy and have few options for converting their time to money so costs are low and production is diffuse. Cryptic's problem is that they are still core players who bring their friends, so Cryptic/PWE has to be careful to make it difficult to farm unreasonably fast without alienating players who likely have enough influence to take paying customers elsewhere, hence the special attention rather than nuclear options.

    When you've got a business that makes more money giving service away than it made by charging a $15/month subscription then you may be qualified to criticize how much they may or may not know about their players.
  • elessymelessym Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    karhae wrote: »
    Actually the announcement is precisely a claim that they CAN identify AFKers. Whether it is a true claim remains to be seen.

    No, it's actually a claim that they can identify some AFKers. And probably not the worst offenders. And it's pretty laughable.
    The list is much more complex; these gold farming companies "outsource" most of their production -- all that spam gives a contact for selling credits as well as buying. That means that the "list" of farmers is constantly changing -- every week a new batch of kids who want to supplement their allowance decide to do a little farming for them. Most of those kids are tech savvy and have few options for converting their time to money so costs are low and production is diffuse. Cryptic's problem is that they are still core players who bring their friends, so Cryptic/PWE has to be careful to make it difficult to farm unreasonably fast without alienating players who likely have enough influence to take paying customers elsewhere, hence the special attention rather than nuclear options.

    If they know who they are, they can single them out for special attention without the bother of implementing this AFK detection. It's pretty simple, either they know who the offenders are, or they do not. You assert (utterly without foundation) that they do. In which case, the AFK detection they're implementing was a complete waste of resources. Incompetence as theater.

    If Cryptic is that smart, then they can't be that stupid. Can they?
    When you've got a business that makes more money giving service away than it made by charging a $15/month subscription then you may be qualified to criticize how much they may or may not know about their players.

    Ah, the "you don't know anything because you don't run an MMO" defense. Aside from it's utter ludicrousness, I'll just point out that Cryptic doesn't make any money giving the service away either.

    By the way, since you presumably don't run your own MMO, by your own assertion, you know nothing about what they know either. So why don't you admit that you're just making stuff up and exit the discussion?
    "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
  • karhaekarhae Member Posts: 25 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    elessym wrote: »
    If they know who they are, they can single them out for special attention without the bother of implementing this AFK detection. It's pretty simple, either they know who the offenders are, or they do not. You assert (utterly without foundation) that they do. In which case, the AFK detection they're implementing was a complete waste of resources. Incompetence as theater.

    You are quite good at making paper tigers; that is not what I said at all. I said that this list is constantly changing, and that they will typically know or have credible guesses about some of the accounts involved in gold farming for cash, but by no means all of them, so they are always looking for ways to make the list more accurate. However because they have no hope of keeping that list up to date, they implement actions that affect categories of accounts, like this AFK detection system, which will affect people who farm resources for sale, some who just want free stuff, and other groups in ways that they hope will produce a net improvement in revenues -- in this case either by decreasing the availability of third party EC vendors (which would shift some purchases from them to Cryptic's stores) or by increasing player satisfaction and consequently their willingness to purchase premium items.
    elessym wrote: »
    If Cryptic is that smart, then they can't be that stupid. Can they?

    I will assume from this statement that you have never managed part of a large organization, or likely even paid much attention to how one operates. International organizations inevitably have some very smart individuals and others who, through some combination of indifference and lack of ability, barely outperform a doorstop no matter what task they are set to. Add in the inevitable challenges of communication in a large organization with employees who speak multiple languages, and the kind of consistency you expect is simply impossible.
    elessym wrote: »
    Ah, the "you don't know anything because you don't run an MMO" defense. . .

    No, I was just sarcastically pointing out some apparent gaps in your knowledge. So here's another one: feel free to keep making questionable assumptions about my resume; you're clearly enjoying it.
  • jetwtfjetwtf Member Posts: 1,207
    edited October 2013
    You people are confused on what a leecher is, they are not gold farmers but normal players sick of grinding marks for rep or fleet and dilithium.

    Gold farmers grind foundry farm missions all day everyday for the EC and what the EC can buy off the exchange. Grinding dilithium daily to use that to buy big ticket items like FSM's or anything that 1 mil+ EC is not efficiant for that poor Chinese "factory" worker making pennies a day. Average 600k ec every ten minutes @ 12 hours a day is far more profitable than 8k dilithium.

    Gold farmers also do not need any marks as the only things those marks can get is account bound and they cannot sell account bound for EC or to an idiot that would trust them with a CC number.

    Then there is the whole issue with people reporting leechers, they do not want the farmer reported. let the spam bot get reported and the farmer can keep farming all day everyday without having to create a fresh account, and get a level 50 geared.

    No leechers are your fellow players and I am sure many are the dregs trolling zone chat or griefing whenever they can.
    Join Date: Nobody cares.
    "I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
  • elessymelessym Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    jetwtf wrote: »
    You people are confused on what a leecher is, they are not gold farmers but normal players sick of grinding marks for rep or fleet and dilithium.

    Gold farmers grind foundry farm missions all day everyday for the EC and what the EC can buy off the exchange. Grinding dilithium daily to use that to buy big ticket items like FSM's or anything that 1 mil+ EC is not efficiant for that poor Chinese "factory" worker making pennies a day. Average 600k ec every ten minutes @ 12 hours a day is far more profitable than 8k dilithium.

    Gold farmers also do not need any marks as the only things those marks can get is account bound and they cannot sell account bound for EC or to an idiot that would trust them with a CC number.

    Then there is the whole issue with people reporting leechers, they do not want the farmer reported. let the spam bot get reported and the farmer can keep farming all day everyday without having to create a fresh account, and get a level 50 geared.

    No leechers are your fellow players and I am sure many are the dregs trolling zone chat or griefing whenever they can.

    Don't be silly, you don't run a MMO, you have no idea what you're talking about.

    /karhae
    "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
  • jetwtfjetwtf Member Posts: 1,207
    edited October 2013
    elessym wrote: »
    Don't be silly, you don't run a MMO, you have no idea what you're talking about.

    /karhae

    And you know even less since you do not actualy know a gold farmer and thats the only requirement to understanding what they do rather than running an MMO.
    Join Date: Nobody cares.
    "I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
  • cryptiecopcryptiecop Member Posts: 239 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    dontirri wrote: »
    From Redshirt boards:



    Finally!

    They need to add Mine Trap into the mix...I can never seem to get a full team due to 1 or 2 players AFK and farming for free marks...
    cmbanner2015.jpg
  • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,462 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    I applaud the effort to promote participation by hindering afk-ers.

    However i fear the implementation. Can't shake the uneasy feeling that a beta version was sneaked into "The Big Dig" resulting in disconnects every time you play it.

    Time will tell how it turns out, but in mean time everyone join me in keeping our fingers crossed.
    This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
  • gstamo01gstamo01 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    karhae wrote: »
    Nice cover. :) And math.

    Also nice removal of context, as you trimmed the part that made it clear this was in reference to AFK (and one-keystroke-per-mission) leaching, by participants who typically contribute 0% to <1% to the mission's success and are there only for rewards, not to play -- even if their ship could do 12K DPS were they to fly it. I've seen plenty of high-end ships like scimitars and even more high-end ground gear like MACO sets queue for missions but remain AFK so this has little to do with equipment. Or rather one of the things that makes this issue so heated is that the AFK players usually *do* have visibly good gear, and that makes any players trying to acquire that quality of gear through the mission even more frustrated.

    I don't mind being the power hitter who carries the team when the other players are trying, learning, and/or having fun, but if you're really that worried about being teamed with people that can't do 12K+ DPS you are of course free to arrange all your matches through channels with those kind of entry requirements.


    Not even close to what I was referencing. The person I was commenting to is accusing anyone on this thread who doesn't agree with his views on the afk patch AS an AFK Leecher. The example given was meant to be ridiculous, because his logic is ridiculous and frankly offensive.

    I want something that works, not a simple stop gap measure that is easily worked around. So, because this is my stance, I must be an AFK Leecher according to that chuckle head..
    You know Cryptic has Jumped the Proverbial Shark when they introduced Tractor Pulling to Star Trek Online! :D
  • nickcastletonnickcastleton Member Posts: 1,212 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    there have been times when i have dc while in a STF, does this ban happen at the end or at any time cause sometimes i have managed to get back in after only a few minutes?
    0bzJyzP.gif





    "It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
  • marshalericdavidmarshalericdavid Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    there have been times when i have dc while in a STF, does this ban happen at the end or at any time cause sometimes i have managed to get back in after only a few minutes?

    Sometimes my internet acts up and it take me a couple min to get it sorted out and I am able to come back in the mission without a ban. Their is a time limit of inactive like that in missions before you booted. I don't know how long exactly that time limit is.
  • crusty8maccrusty8mac Member Posts: 1,381 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    Can't wait for this. Any false positives can be dealt with as they come up.
    __________________________________
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    I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
  • iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    cryptiecop wrote: »
    They need to add Mine Trap into the mix...I can never seem to get a full team due to 1 or 2 players AFK and farming for free marks...

    I think it's a good step in the right direction, and I do agree that Mine Trap has to be added into the mix. I'm sure they have their reasons for not including it currently.

    I'm sure there will be false positives, but this is a better solution than what currently exists -- which is putting work on the GMs who only work business hours. There's no 24 hour GM service.

    I hope this system works well and that any false positives or workarounds leechers find will be dealt with swiftly and efficiently.
    ExtxpTp.jpg
  • theraven2378theraven2378 Member Posts: 6,007 Arc User
    edited October 2013
    I tend to play via the public elite stf channel, I'm never pugging again :D
    NMXb2ph.png
      "The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
      -Lord Commander Solar Macharius
    • questeriusquesterius Member Posts: 8,462 Arc User
      edited October 2013
      I tend to play via the public elite stf channel, I'm never pugging again :D

      I dread the day when everyone knows what to do and has maximized their dps.
      Cannot imagine more boring gameplay.

      Don't like the elitist nature of these channels either.
      This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
    • macroniusmacronius Member Posts: 2,526
      edited October 2013
      questerius wrote: »
      I dread the day when everyone knows what to do and has maximized their dps.
      Cannot imagine more boring gameplay.

      Don't like the elitist nature of these channels either.

      Totally agree with this. I am always looking to improve builds and boost stats and performance. If we all max out and start killing ICE in under 5 minutes then it will be all over.
      "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

      - Judge Aaron Satie
    • notapwefannotapwefan Member Posts: 1,138 Arc User
      edited October 2013
      The AFKers should be send to China or Saudi Arabia with white powder in their luggage.
      Problem solved forever :cool:
      Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
      Ain't Nobody Got Time for That


      [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    • maddog0000doommaddog0000doom Member Posts: 1,017 Arc User
      edited October 2013
      i hope this will be enough. tho i doubt its going to stop the cloaked people flying around doing nothing.
      [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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