Unfortunately, AFKers get clever and lazier every time (which brings the question to why they don't use this cleverness to do something constructive, other than them being jerks).
Over my runs I saw two AFKers set to follow each other at the limits of the map so they technically move
and someone using constant auto-attack on everything, including bridge and captain abilities without any valid reason, while sitting in a corner or above the station, like a bot.
I think that even if Cryptic poured resources to create an afk penalty system with enough requirements, an AFKer would still manage to stay within the rules while still doing nothing.
Why would Cryptic put resources into creating a mechanism to force players to do things they themselves made optional in the first place? Answer is, they wouldn't. If Cryptic wanted to force people to do those objectives, they'd just make them mandatory.
But then, the complainers don't actually want those objectives to be mandatory, do they? Nobody's calling for the mission to fail if the station dies, or for players to be required to close all the portals and kill all the ships to continue instead of having them all space-magically disappear on their own. Why is that? Could it be "flying around and shooting stuff for 15 minutes" would stop being fun after all, if you weren't guaranteed to win at the end?
No, the complainers want to have their cake and eat it, too. A mission with no requirements for themselves, but everyone else (somehow, space-magically) required to play it their way.
If Cryptic actually did change the mission to require something other than waiting (with optional distractions for those who care about such things), people would instantly complain it's "too hard."
I've seen one (semi) AFKer who flew to one of the power thingys and sit there nuzzling it until spawns killed them then repeating the same thing over again even after the station was fully done. I say semi as they were more than happy to roll need on everything that was being looted so unless they had a ctrl&q macro running they must have been about.
The edge scrapers could be foiled temporarily by declaring the edge of the map an auto quit zone since its so far out of the combat area and nothing hostile ever travels outwards so legit participants have no reason to go there.. You fly into the zone and after a moment the game vomits you into sector space with leecher debuff that reduces all mark rewards for the next 24hours by 50% or triggers the 20 hour cooldown on all daily boxes.
Given the number of calls for "afk mirror" runs seen in various channels not sure if this is the right queue to get overly concerned about it in. Not that I endorse it, peeps should always try and do their best to participate. I agree that if you do nothing you should get nothing. Ultimate responsibility is on those who designed the queue.
Even though I'm not doing this run much compared to previous years the afker's seem to provide a positive benefit: more to do and a target rich environment.
Comments
Thirded. I cannot abide lazy people.
Over my runs I saw two AFKers set to follow each other at the limits of the map so they technically move
and someone using constant auto-attack on everything, including bridge and captain abilities without any valid reason, while sitting in a corner or above the station, like a bot.
I think that even if Cryptic poured resources to create an afk penalty system with enough requirements, an AFKer would still manage to stay within the rules while still doing nothing.
But then, the complainers don't actually want those objectives to be mandatory, do they? Nobody's calling for the mission to fail if the station dies, or for players to be required to close all the portals and kill all the ships to continue instead of having them all space-magically disappear on their own. Why is that? Could it be "flying around and shooting stuff for 15 minutes" would stop being fun after all, if you weren't guaranteed to win at the end?
No, the complainers want to have their cake and eat it, too. A mission with no requirements for themselves, but everyone else (somehow, space-magically) required to play it their way.
If Cryptic actually did change the mission to require something other than waiting (with optional distractions for those who care about such things), people would instantly complain it's "too hard."
The edge scrapers could be foiled temporarily by declaring the edge of the map an auto quit zone since its so far out of the combat area and nothing hostile ever travels outwards so legit participants have no reason to go there.. You fly into the zone and after a moment the game vomits you into sector space with leecher debuff that reduces all mark rewards for the next 24hours by 50% or triggers the 20 hour cooldown on all daily boxes.
Even though I'm not doing this run much compared to previous years the afker's seem to provide a positive benefit: more to do and a target rich environment.