The sad part is even if you kick down the door, shoot everything and than free the trapped ship's, you still have plenty of time to do it this way and get the max amount of marks it rewards. You need only achieve I think it's something like 21points to get the maximum reward, anything after that is just time wasted unless you like basic loot that can drop from enemies.
So, apparently, that means that until this gets fixed, people need to alternate who gets aggro and who frees the birds, and hope that the DPS threshold or whatever hadn't been set too high.
Does the strategy "game the system" to make the mission easier? Yes. Is this an exploit? No. Far more so than running in and gunning everything down like a drunken Klingon in a room full of tribbles, the strategy requires both skill and teamwork, and rewards the players accordingly. This kind of lateral thinking is something that I wish more missions rewarded over pure DPS.
Yeah, I've done the mission, and that strat is great. Now people have to take turns apparently, but it's not a big deal IMO. This and CE are two missions where I actually have a use for Mask Energy Signature.
On two different accounts I went into an Azure Nebula Mission and when I come out I am hit with afk penalty but I was never afk....I played mission through from start to finish
I think this map is too easy to worry about. I know I can fly back and forth between 2 point kill the tholian group free the ship and fly back just before the last point spawns. This map can be 2 players and still get the max rewards. What they need to do it make the map harder. In crease the spawn frequency and scale the rewards higher with more ships freed.
Oh, I know how to play.
It sounds like both of you are trying to defend an exploit.
It's similar to a Leech in the CC event I saw.
The Leech just sat there at spawn and it's like the NPCs didn't target him because he didn't budge.
Maybe the same thing is happening, if so then Rescue needs to be reworked.
I'm not advocating a vote because it can be abused by a marauding horde of Leechers/Griefers seeking revenge for making them actually earn their rewards.
I think nothing short of gameplay video and some penalty at the account level will end Leeching/AFKers.
There is a time limit to free as many ships as possible for maximum mark reward.
A good tactic to use is to have 1 player free the ship without fighting the tholians while someone else keeps them busy. The faster the ships are freed the faster they will respawn so you can free more ships. As soon as you free the ship, all remaining tholians at that asteroid warp out so you don't have to worry about cleaning them up before another ship spawns. It can take up to a good 3-5 minutes for a ship to spawn after being freed at an asteroid. And if you have a fast enough team ya'all just flying in circles for a couple minutes waiting for a ship to spawn (I've had that happen on numerous occasions lol).
And it is nothing like leeching. The player(s) focusing on freeing the ships only while others keep the tholians busy is the best way to do this mission. It would be a bit tricky to avoid aggroing tholians, but it is possible that all players on the team could focus only on freeing the ships without shooting a single enemy. I have seen players free a ship without aggroing the tholians and no other team member near that asteroid. You can get your ship in the right position if you try hard enough.
As for the AFK tech going live by mistake, this is probably part of the reason why they decided to postpone it going live. So they can do more testing to avoid giving players a penalty when they are using certain tactics for missions.
AFKers should have marks subtracted from their inventory. That would teach them a lesson.
According to info on the AFK tech, aside from getting a 2 hour pve queue ban, players that get the ban won't be getting any rewards for the mission. So you can't just AFK farm whatever every 2 hours.
But from the sounds of things, the part preventing players with the penalty from getting mission rewards, isn't live yet. So the tech is only partially there.
I will say I did Azure Nebula Rescue at least twice and didn't get any penalty at all. Of course I kinda prefer to kill the tholians anyway for the loot drops lol.
Just like the auto-ban for saying the wrong word in chat, here is another moderation system that has spectacularly failed (and just like the auto-ban, released stealthily in the hope no-one would notice).
So the things we warned about and got insulted for as being AFKers who just rage against it (because everyone who is sceptical must be a dirty AFKer totally against the idea) actually happened...how surprising.
When on a TEAM, I'd expect WE would engage the Tholians then WE would set the jailed birds free.
If there was a vote in place, you would have gotten mine.
Another scenario a player would get my vote is the player that floats off in the distance watching you bring down a Cube's shields and hull before swooping in and delivering the killshot(s).
Cherry Pickers, imo, are just as bad as a Leech/AFKer.
The goal of Azure is release of the trapped romulan ships.... that is it.... if someone has the necessary stealth to free romulan ships while one or two of us engage the tholians, or just to start to and speed up the process that equals more marks for the team. as we can get to more ships usually.... blowing up more tholians may get you some mediocre drops.... but it's not going to get you any more marks.
Even if you believe that it is somehow proper that senseless violence occur, the fact remains that the guy responsible for rope-cutting should not be engaging in any fights. Someone ELSE should be engaging in senseless violence while the cutter makes use of the distraction to cut the ships free. That guy shouldn't be firing any shots because shooting disrupts cutting. Period.
No, no it isn't. In this case, you have a guy attempting to leech the rewards without actually doing anything. In Azure, you have a guy who is working at doing the actual mission objectives: Rescuing ships. That he doesn't engage in any unnecessary fighting is not wrong. In fact, no matter HOW you do it, even if you think the fighting should occur anyway, someone STILL has to rescue the ships, and you cannot do so while shooting.
Well you know, because you're taking potential mediocre drops from him and earning the team more marks, you're somehow equal to a leecher... or so his TRIBBLE-poor logic goes.
When I aggro the Tholians, I hope the others are not dumb enough to help me, but instead free the bird.
I can handle the Tholian alone, I don't need others to waste time. Also, by "helping" me, they loose time, which mean less reward in the end. I'm there for the reward, not killing tholians with others.
Teamplay is more than killing stuff together, it's working as a team to complete objective. Me killing Tholian, while you save the bird (objective) is teamplay. Following me like a carrier pet, and DPSing the Tholian is not.
Indeed, if a stalker can free a 3-5 solo without firing a shot more, good, more points for the team.... I can't see how someone cannot get that concept and is pissed that they are getting marks for the entire team rather than pew-pew-pewing for little reason.... the drop from killing tholians at azure are not that impressive..... and I say this as someone who can turn the entire tholian group at a haapex into dust in 20-25 seconds. the thing is, in those 20-25 seconds, a stalker or other stealthy craft could have disengaged 2 tractor beams.
I also got stuck with the afk penalty aftering running Azure Nebula Resuce. Did what I normally do, let someone else run in draw the tholians aggro and draw them away well I just free the romulan ships. Didn't fire a shot. Got all of 16 romulan marks, guessing getting tagged a few times by stray BFaW shots was the only reason I didn't get nothing.
That's, like, pretty basic ANR strategy. One person tanks the Tholians while a quick ship rushes in and saves the Romulans. Do it right, and the second player never fires a shot.
You'd almost think the mission was designed to make that possible.
When I aggro the Tholians, I hope the others are not dumb enough to help me, but instead free the bird.
I can handle the Tholian alone, I don't need others to waste time. Also, by "helping" me, they loose time, which mean less reward in the end. I'm there for the reward, not killing tholians with others.
Teamplay is more than killing stuff together, it's working as a team to complete objective. Me killing Tholian, while you save the bird (objective) is teamplay. Following me like a carrier pet, and DPSing the Tholian is not.
How many people are affect ? 10 ? 100 ? Probably no more. And it's not a really important matter. It seems to affect azure nebula only. And it's just a 2h CD, nothing more. No items loss/gain, no huge exploit...
It's not worth a 2h emergency maintenance, that will probably affect thousands who will come screaming on the forums. Claim they don't care about azure nebula rescue, how they planned to play, and how they want free zen/whatever.
Just like you, but on the other side of the fence.
Yeah,
It seems some players have a totally different mindset about how to go about completing this mission.
Another thing that should be noted is the quicker you free the Romulan NPCs the quicker the hostile NPCs warp out.
If members of my squad are already engaging the hostile NPCs, I work to free the held ships and never once even think about firing off a shot.
The quicker you free one NPC the quicker you can move on to the next.
IMO the rope cutters have the most difficult job on that mission.
I do not thing the AFK Penalty working based on DPS alone is a good system. However, while there are ways to complete some missions without firing a shot none that I have seen or done seem to be intentional game play mechanics. More like an oversight in the placement of enemies like in the Azure Nebula. If some players take the job of freeing ships while the others take agro I think that is different.
For an automated system you need to define what the criteria are for getting a penalty? I think for an automated system to work best it would need to be tailored for each team mission and then if there is a way for someone to be useless they will still find it.
Vote kicking would just be abused. How great would it be to be playing an STF and then right before the final objective is completed you get removed from the team by vote kick just for the hell of it. Maybe it is a team match with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and someone thinks you have the higher DPS..... vote kicked again. A lot of people in games vote yes to vote kick and don't even care why.
I would much prefer a system that protects the individual players from people they perceive as a griefer based on their choice, but does not necessarily punish others. People can take offence or get mad over all kinds of things that are not necessarily meant to be rude. Like in this thread some people think it is lame to free the ships in the azure nebula without anyone fighting at all and others think it is lame to fight.
At least a (do not play with) list is based on the person being offended more than the person doing the offending. If someone goes around putting everyone on this list they punish themselves if you add a person to your list it doesn't really harm them. However, if someone is a real jerk over time they may soon find that it is hard to get into team games. Only thing I would add is that you must be in a team game with a player to add them to the list. Because how do you know for sure what kind of player a person is unless you play with them at least 1 time? It would help prevent a mass of people in a fleet from just adding random people to this type of list. Kind of like how the ignore player feature is abused to silence players in chat.
Fairly obvious. Cryptic is investigating and will address any problem with it.
Doesn't address what they are talking about... as really what they are talking about is the community supported trolling of calling people against this for the potentiality of bugs like this "leechers" and when it leaks out it does exactly what they were concerned about.... that cryptic is looking into this issue is immaterial of the issue that the people who raised this concern in the first place were called leechers and their concerns were dismissed out of hand by the community (but not cryptic, as they were putting this on hold)..... they are complaining against the community.... not cryptic in that. The community which called them leechers owes them an apology for flamming them.
Indeed, it's almost as if the goal of the mission is to free the romulan NPC's, not simply blow things up.
Yet, that is what gets you the AFK Penalty. It would be nice to hear more from cryptic on this situation. Why is it active on holodeck when it was stated its being held off for further testing. What they are doing to resolve this. What they are doing to resolve the issue in respect that not attacking in ANR does not mean your AFK.
we cant tell much from this. the afk thing is not meant to be live so part of the set up has snuck through too early and in a broken state. if he played the whole mission and still got an afk warning then its clearly not working right.
Yet, that is what gets you the AFK Penalty. It would be nice to hear more from cryptic on this situation. Why is it active on holodeck when it was stated its being held off for further testing. What they are doing to resolve this. What they are doing to resolve the issue in respect that not attacking in ANR does not mean your AFK.
I'd assume the code was leaked over by accident.... somehow ended up in the last patch. Defnitely not working, and defnitely side with them keeping this on the backburner.... as is putting it back on the backburner by fixing its erred release.
I'd assume the code was leaked over by accident.... somehow ended up in the last patch. Defnitely not working, and defnitely side with them keeping this on the backburner.... as is putting it back on the backburner by fixing its erred release.
Since they decided to hold off at the eleventh hour, and probably didn't rebuild without the code (otherwise you'd think they would have at least released it to Redshirt for a smoke-test), it seems likely that they had config flags somewhere to turn the afk-detection feature on and off. I'd guess that the afk-detection code is on Holodeck right now, just turned off (except someone missed the flag to turn it off for Azure Nebula).
"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
And it was also posted in the thread titled Bye Bye AFK'ers on the 4th of this month.
A thread you yourself participated in on 10/05/2013. So you can't sit there and argue that this wasn't on Redshirt being tested when you knew it started being tested nearly a week ago. :rolleyes:
Learn to read please, especially before throwing around roll-eyes.
Since they decided to hold off at the eleventh hour, and probably didn't rebuild without the code (otherwise you'd think they would have at least released it to Redshirt for a smoke-test),
An analysis of this statement by someone who comprehends English would clearly lead to the understanding that the smoke-test in question refers to a hypothetical build that didn't include the code that they were holding off.
"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
Learn to read please, especially before throwing around roll-eyes.
An analysis of this statement by someone who comprehends English would clearly lead to the understanding that the smoke-test in question refers to a hypothetical build that didn't include the code that they were holding off.
I've come to learn he really doesn't read the stuff he's commenting on. Ignore him.
It's not myfault ifyoufeel trolledbymyDisco ball...Sorry'boutit.
I've come to learn he really doesn't read the stuff he's commenting on. Ignore him.
I don't take him seriously. But it's amusing to point out his utter wrong-headedness on occasion.
"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
Starting shortly, the Azure Nebula Rescue queued event will be temporarily unavailable for approximately one hour as we apply a fix for the the unintended AFK penalty that is live on it. Once it is available again, I will update this thread.
Comments
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
My character Tsin'xing
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=877831
There is a time limit to free as many ships as possible for maximum mark reward.
A good tactic to use is to have 1 player free the ship without fighting the tholians while someone else keeps them busy. The faster the ships are freed the faster they will respawn so you can free more ships. As soon as you free the ship, all remaining tholians at that asteroid warp out so you don't have to worry about cleaning them up before another ship spawns. It can take up to a good 3-5 minutes for a ship to spawn after being freed at an asteroid. And if you have a fast enough team ya'all just flying in circles for a couple minutes waiting for a ship to spawn (I've had that happen on numerous occasions lol).
And it is nothing like leeching. The player(s) focusing on freeing the ships only while others keep the tholians busy is the best way to do this mission. It would be a bit tricky to avoid aggroing tholians, but it is possible that all players on the team could focus only on freeing the ships without shooting a single enemy. I have seen players free a ship without aggroing the tholians and no other team member near that asteroid. You can get your ship in the right position if you try hard enough.
As for the AFK tech going live by mistake, this is probably part of the reason why they decided to postpone it going live. So they can do more testing to avoid giving players a penalty when they are using certain tactics for missions.
According to info on the AFK tech, aside from getting a 2 hour pve queue ban, players that get the ban won't be getting any rewards for the mission. So you can't just AFK farm whatever every 2 hours.
But from the sounds of things, the part preventing players with the penalty from getting mission rewards, isn't live yet. So the tech is only partially there.
I will say I did Azure Nebula Rescue at least twice and didn't get any penalty at all. Of course I kinda prefer to kill the tholians anyway for the loot drops lol.
So the things we warned about and got insulted for as being AFKers who just rage against it (because everyone who is sceptical must be a dirty AFKer totally against the idea) actually happened...how surprising.
Totally unrelated to what I said so what was your point again?
The goal of Azure is release of the trapped romulan ships.... that is it.... if someone has the necessary stealth to free romulan ships while one or two of us engage the tholians, or just to start to and speed up the process that equals more marks for the team. as we can get to more ships usually.... blowing up more tholians may get you some mediocre drops.... but it's not going to get you any more marks.
Well you know, because you're taking potential mediocre drops from him and earning the team more marks, you're somehow equal to a leecher... or so his TRIBBLE-poor logic goes.
Keep quiet till you have something of value to say.:rolleyes:
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Indeed, if a stalker can free a 3-5 solo without firing a shot more, good, more points for the team.... I can't see how someone cannot get that concept and is pissed that they are getting marks for the entire team rather than pew-pew-pewing for little reason.... the drop from killing tholians at azure are not that impressive..... and I say this as someone who can turn the entire tholian group at a haapex into dust in 20-25 seconds. the thing is, in those 20-25 seconds, a stalker or other stealthy craft could have disengaged 2 tractor beams.
Cheers,
Dont give you much confidence in the game when the right hand don't no what the left hand is doing,,,,,,,,,,,,
We are all mushrooms,,,,,,,,,,,,,,LOL
That's, like, pretty basic ANR strategy. One person tanks the Tholians while a quick ship rushes in and saves the Romulans. Do it right, and the second player never fires a shot.
You'd almost think the mission was designed to make that possible.
Yeah,
It seems some players have a totally different mindset about how to go about completing this mission.
Another thing that should be noted is the quicker you free the Romulan NPCs the quicker the hostile NPCs warp out.
If members of my squad are already engaging the hostile NPCs, I work to free the held ships and never once even think about firing off a shot.
The quicker you free one NPC the quicker you can move on to the next.
IMO the rope cutters have the most difficult job on that mission.
Indeed, it's almost as if the goal of the mission is to free the romulan NPC's, not simply blow things up.
For an automated system you need to define what the criteria are for getting a penalty? I think for an automated system to work best it would need to be tailored for each team mission and then if there is a way for someone to be useless they will still find it.
Vote kicking would just be abused. How great would it be to be playing an STF and then right before the final objective is completed you get removed from the team by vote kick just for the hell of it. Maybe it is a team match with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and someone thinks you have the higher DPS..... vote kicked again. A lot of people in games vote yes to vote kick and don't even care why.
I would much prefer a system that protects the individual players from people they perceive as a griefer based on their choice, but does not necessarily punish others. People can take offence or get mad over all kinds of things that are not necessarily meant to be rude. Like in this thread some people think it is lame to free the ships in the azure nebula without anyone fighting at all and others think it is lame to fight.
At least a (do not play with) list is based on the person being offended more than the person doing the offending. If someone goes around putting everyone on this list they punish themselves if you add a person to your list it doesn't really harm them. However, if someone is a real jerk over time they may soon find that it is hard to get into team games. Only thing I would add is that you must be in a team game with a player to add them to the list. Because how do you know for sure what kind of player a person is unless you play with them at least 1 time? It would help prevent a mass of people in a fleet from just adding random people to this type of list. Kind of like how the ignore player feature is abused to silence players in chat.
Doesn't address what they are talking about... as really what they are talking about is the community supported trolling of calling people against this for the potentiality of bugs like this "leechers" and when it leaks out it does exactly what they were concerned about.... that cryptic is looking into this issue is immaterial of the issue that the people who raised this concern in the first place were called leechers and their concerns were dismissed out of hand by the community (but not cryptic, as they were putting this on hold)..... they are complaining against the community.... not cryptic in that. The community which called them leechers owes them an apology for flamming them.
Yet, that is what gets you the AFK Penalty. It would be nice to hear more from cryptic on this situation. Why is it active on holodeck when it was stated its being held off for further testing. What they are doing to resolve this. What they are doing to resolve the issue in respect that not attacking in ANR does not mean your AFK.
I'd assume the code was leaked over by accident.... somehow ended up in the last patch. Defnitely not working, and defnitely side with them keeping this on the backburner.... as is putting it back on the backburner by fixing its erred release.
Since they decided to hold off at the eleventh hour, and probably didn't rebuild without the code (otherwise you'd think they would have at least released it to Redshirt for a smoke-test), it seems likely that they had config flags somewhere to turn the afk-detection feature on and off. I'd guess that the afk-detection code is on Holodeck right now, just turned off (except someone missed the flag to turn it off for Azure Nebula).
Learn to read please, especially before throwing around roll-eyes.
An analysis of this statement by someone who comprehends English would clearly lead to the understanding that the smoke-test in question refers to a hypothetical build that didn't include the code that they were holding off.
I've come to learn he really doesn't read the stuff he's commenting on. Ignore him.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
I don't take him seriously. But it's amusing to point out his utter wrong-headedness on occasion.
Lol I know right.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Azure Nebula Rescue Queued Event Temporarily Unavailable (October 11, 2013)
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=