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AFK penalty, seriously?
possumlips
Member Posts: 107 Arc User
I finish up a PVE , the cure one, last ship to leave, noticed when I'm back at ESD I don't have a reward box and saw down in the left hand corner I had a 2 hour AFK penalty. I never got disconnected and i was the last ship to leave picking up the "items" people left behind. I didn't do anything to warrant a "AFK" penalty.
Post edited by possumlips on
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Only way to get a afk while being active is when your dps is about 1 percent of the match. Did the match quickly finish before you shot anything?
It was a quick game as a matter of fact. But i'm not sure what you mean. I was there for the entire fight with my fleet t6 Hestia escort. I destroyed many ships and protected that one damaged ship so it could warp out. I must admit I don't do a lot of PVE'S. Team members get all bent out of shape and pissed off if you don't do things in a certain order or just start shooting everything in sight so I've been avoiding them and i'm only doing them now as I need a Omega shield to make my set complete. I've calmed down some since and might have over reacted I think. lol.
I did only attack the borg that got close to the Kang, I guess I see what your saying. I can't seem to figure out how to delete my post. I've might have over reacted and there was no bug.
It happens, if nothing else you've learnt something about how one can get a penalty
Likely won't be deleted but left be it'll find its own way so don't worry about it
I hit Need instead of Greed on any loot. I used full impulse to get my sLOW level ship around faster so I was where the fight was. The game is broken when at any point I can do everything I am suppossed to, and instead of a reward, I get punished. That part of the game may as well be gone! It is not appealing to me to even think about it! OP says 'maybe I over reacted ...' NO! You didn't! You should be extremely angry when you bring your character to a mission that you are qualified for, do everything you should, and get slapped for it!!! There is no way to over react to that!
For my part, I am so angry that I want to go to every posting on every part of the forums and be loud about, but I won't because my ethic in online gaming is to be nice to my fellows, and you don't need me to spam my righteous rage all over the place.
But yeah, I am very angry that the mission my 11th level toon was offered is not designed to take into account the class of ship a player is using, or the type of play such a ship might be suited for. Heaven forbid I used a science ship or something! I would hate to get slapped for healing my pals or making the badguys shields go away! DPS is a lousy way to judge effort. All it is good for judging is how high level you are, and if you like all cannon escort builds!
The people responsable need to fix this so we players with new toons, or who like a certain build of ship, don't get treated like cheaters for just playing the game. The AFK penalty will only make the divide between hardcore PVP types, and the more broadly interested players that much worse. There IS a divide, and everyone knows it! If the divide starts to affect PVE team events, you can bet that fewer people will be doing them. I sure as blazes won't be inviting brand new players to such missions. I want my friends to enjoy what they do, not get slapped for doing it! Only Klingons enjoy a game where the winner gets punched in the face as his reward. I'll bet people who are only playing Klingon characters don't like it that much though. So somebody FIX IT!
Sorry about the long post . I'm done.
The new Big Bad around here is the DPS crowd.
They can make a liberal vote Republican and mean it. They stole all the candy from the babies. They double park at the mall. They make telemarketers call you right at dinnertime. They post pictures of cats all over the InterWebs. They created the Ebola virus, global warming, and acid rain all in one afternoon. After they got bored with ruining everyone else's fun in STO. They also secretly like JJTrek and they chain smoke just outside the designated non smoking area.
All in all, a thoroughly disreputable pack of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells. Who even now are in their hidden lair plotting for the next time they are going to ruin your fun in STO. All while constantly chanting, "Mua-ha-ha-ha!"
*cue and amplify the summer blockbuster dramatic music to a ridiculous volume*
The only essential gear any ship or away team requires is a competent player. We all have a time or two where we do not play well. Or up to the standards we set for ourselves. Looking outside ourselves for a reason is evading responsibility and accountability. But since this this is the InterWebs, where I can say I am the new bass player the Rolling Stones just picked up for their next world tour, I suffer no consequences for my own actions and I can play the victim card as loud and as long as I want to.
Thunderfoot006 says the only essential gear is a competent player. Not true. Sorry. You can't take a low level ship against a high level ship when they heal thier shields faster than you can knock them down. I have enjoyed testing builds with our dedicated DPS players in the Fleets, with much differeing levels of hardware sometimes. Sometimes the T5 and T6 ship captains just sit there and let you shoot for 5 minutes, and that line about just needing a competent player is NOT true. You don't have the consoles, the Boff stations, or the quantity of weapon slots to do it against any much higher tier ship, unless the game nerfs your opponents (Like they do when you destroy T5 battlecruisers with your Miranda early in the Fed story line) You end up respawning a lot. In a friendly challenge this makes us laugh a lot.
In the mission I am angry about, I did very well. I was providing constant damage, and Cruiser benefits that complemented other cruiser benefits activated by my team. I inflicted damage on the enemy. I used fore and aft weapons as targets moved into the right arcs. I drained shield strengths with boff abilities. It seems however, that I didn't do enough despite doing all that I could. A good science build would have probably been flagged as well.
THE GAME CAN NOT REASONABLY JUDGE PARTICIPATION, ONLY DAMAGE DONE! THIS IS A SERIOUS FLAW!
(intentional yelling, make no mistake!) THE GAME IS A MORON ROBOT AS A JUDGE! I have more to say here, It's going to be a long post, but please follow ...
I can understand low level ships becoming obselete, but when your new character is obsolete before they really get started, that is bad. For the player, sure, but also for the life of the game. This is a result as least partly, of when they raised the level cap to 60. I was glad to see them do it, and I still am, but they also had to give more punch to the new levels, so new weapons, new T6 ships, new abilities, etc, and then you have level 60 entering a que where level 5 toons with T-1 ships are just entering the fray. When is the last time anyone reading this started a new character? Read ...
Full disclosure, I do farm with my toons to make sure I have the resources to get all my toons decent stuff, and to help my Fleets. That said, I make toons to enjoy them in gaming out the voyages of the IKV/USS whatever. My toons all have biographies, and some are quite long. I give my Boffs biographies fairly often. I name things with some consideration, whether toons, ships, or boffs. I like to get immersed. SO I farm, but that isn't my goal, because farming isn't fun.
I finally hunkered down, while between RL jobs, and decided to create all the planned characters ( now at 51 total, and yes, I ground out the dilthium to get all that ZEN for slots) I had been making notes for each toons concept for the last year and a half, and now I am leveling them so that I can team with people at lower levels as well as higher ones. I have plenty of level 50+ toons. Not all my friends, or people I was going to invite to join STO and play with me, have high level toons.
There is a lot to be said for meeting newcomers at a level where they don't feel overpowered. Now I am discovering what may happen when I invite my Niece to join STO and try to do Fleet Alerts with some of us. I have lots of others who would play more, but they don't have the time to make perfect builds and became discouraged, now they play Terra? or something. I can only get them online to do some friendly PVP challenges where we split into low level teams. You can forget PVE. I can't get them to do it anyomore. They said it was to hard to get anywhere, and I was laughing, saying I would show them how, help with thier builds, etc. BUT now I know what they mean.
Wiseacre comments do not address the problem, and there is a problem. Cryptic should want low level characters to be created all the time. It is more money for Cryptic even if most newbies are F2Prs. It makes the game more alive. Paying customers like me, have more people to play with. F2Prs may become subscribers, or lifetime members, like I did. I want more new players also, and obviously, they start at low levels. We jhave common purpose here.
If there was an in game tag that rated the players participation based on ship/level/career, that would be a vast improvement over pure DPS based rulings. It would also be better in my mind to let the 'leeches' get away with more to avoid punishing others by accident. As far as I am concerned PVE leeches are vermin, and in the mission I was on, I would have been plenty angry to see someone just farming off my efforts, but I am more angry to have my efforts denied, and my contribution seen as a reason to bot-slap me with a penalty. The leech doesn't hurt me as much as a Cryptic bot does in this case. If you have to cut off my arm to save me from a leech, just leave the leech alone, and I'll manage somehow. Bot-punishing a newbie can make them go somewhere else for their online gaming fix. I am not going away over this, I am not talking about myself. But I have a hard time keeping friends interested in this game.
Cryptic SHOULD take this sort of seriously. Especially if they want word of mouth to bring in new players.
Thanks for reading ...
- The NPCs in storyline missions are all scaled to whatever level the player is at. When playing as part of a team, there is an option to match the team leader's level. Whenever someone new(er) is playing, make them the team leader and then match their level. This way the NPCs are at the correct level for the player needing them to be so. I ride shotgun like this all the time for new(er) Fleet members and intend to keep doing so. Because I enjoy it.
- AFKer's/Leeches killed off one of the better Ground Missions in terms of rewards, IMO. I cannot remember the name of it but it was the one where a team of players was defending NPCs from salt vampires. It was ridiculously easy to come in and sit back to let all the other players do all the work. Not teamwork the way I was taught it back in school.
- Whenever I am introducing someone new to the game of STO, "Fleet Alert" is probably not on the list of things I want to do with them first. With a laughable tutorial and the majority of good info about playing STO well located offsite, I try to choose something which is not quite so challenging. I want something fun and at the same time enjoyable. As well as something which says, "Star Trek". Or at least tries to. There are plenty of Foundry Missions which fit these criteria nicely.
- The AFK penalty is here to stay. Most of the time around these forums, it is always Cryptic's fault the AFK Penalty was applied. There are three sides to every story here. Cryptic's. The player's. And then what actually happened. I've gotten hit more than a few times with an AFK Penalty. Under the exact circumstances you descibed in such detail OP. Meh. I switch chars and keep playing. It's an hour.
If I get as exercised as you appear to be about this, I go to Plan B. I TURN OFF THE GAME AND GO PLAY OUTSIDE! And yes I meant to shout, too. Leeches and AFKers are an MMO problem in general. Not specific to STO. Cryptic does not do as good a job dealing with them as some other games do. A one hour timer is a joke compared the penalties imposed by these other games.
I have typed too much about this already. And given this far more attention than it deserves, OP. Your mind was already made up. Presenting a valid divergent viewpoint which did not support your opinion has probably only served to further confuse and irritate you.
It has helped me cool down seeing how many others get hit with this kind of unfairness. It was just a first for me, and very jarring. I won't say I over-reacted. I still claim my right to have been angry. Like I can also claim my right to move on. Thanks to all who took the time to discuss this with the OP and myself.
Going to go play now. Have a good one all.
The penalty isn't always perfect, but I for one prefer it stay permanately!!!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I entirely respect your answer, but for one small caveat. I want the queues to show the levels of other players queued, or anything else that would allow a smart player to avoid getting curb stomped by their own side. Right now you go in deaf, dumb, and blind to anything except how many others are also queued with you. As it sits, the game invites levels 5 to 60 to the same PVEs. You are obviously expected (by the Devs) to be able to put them together, so either the devs should fix the matching up system, or they should look at whatever else might be broken in that equation.
I don't want to ruin anyones fun, DPSers or not. I just want to bring attention to something that seems out of balance. Hey
Someone else said it might be good to offer extra reward benefits to high DPSers instead of potentially flagging low levelers. The thought was that leeches might see they were actually missing out on the best rewards, and actually try! That would reduce leeches. Also it would reduce unfair AFKs.
If you don't mind, I'd like to know what you think of that idea? Given your strong position previously mentioned.
Thanks
Qapla
Oh I get what you are saying, but this game is notorious for doing things wrong, and one of them is teaming low level player(s) with higher level player(s) in 99.9% of cases related to mission queues.
Even if it attempts to level match higher level player(s), to the lower player(s) level, it doesn't get around most of the diversity still between them when it comes to gear/traits/etc.
The higher level player(s) will still be uber powerful, by comparison!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!