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False AFK Penalty Flags
cokebear
Member Posts: 97 Arc User
This is ridiculous.
I play daily with my 2 kids, and we have been working on Sompek. Yesterday, after watching my daughter run around shooting things and participating in the queue, she received a 2 hour AFK penalty which was clearly a screwup.
We thought, hmm, weird... and I filed a bug report.
Today, while playing with my son - and WATCHING him running around fighting and killing enemies, he received an AFK Penalty which was also obviously a false flag.
This is completely out of hand. He is now at risk of being unable to complete the event, and we will now have to go back in and play during our dinner time because of this false penalty. I have seen reports of this on Reddit and other locations, too.
There are people going into these queues and doing NOTHING but hiding in a corner and then dying at round 5 on purpose completely disregarding the desire of the rest of the team to continue and they are receiving no penalties.
Your "detection" - and I use that term very loosely - is severely broken in its methods, or there is a major bug. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
I don't give a TRIBBLE what anyone says, I am watching these kids play and they are fighting and killing enemies. If they are killing enemies, they are not AFK. Trying to confound those who actually cheat by killing x enemies and going AFK CANNOT punish players who are putting in an effort. That's just wrong-headed or incompetent.
I play daily with my 2 kids, and we have been working on Sompek. Yesterday, after watching my daughter run around shooting things and participating in the queue, she received a 2 hour AFK penalty which was clearly a screwup.
We thought, hmm, weird... and I filed a bug report.
Today, while playing with my son - and WATCHING him running around fighting and killing enemies, he received an AFK Penalty which was also obviously a false flag.
This is completely out of hand. He is now at risk of being unable to complete the event, and we will now have to go back in and play during our dinner time because of this false penalty. I have seen reports of this on Reddit and other locations, too.
There are people going into these queues and doing NOTHING but hiding in a corner and then dying at round 5 on purpose completely disregarding the desire of the rest of the team to continue and they are receiving no penalties.
Your "detection" - and I use that term very loosely - is severely broken in its methods, or there is a major bug. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
I don't give a TRIBBLE what anyone says, I am watching these kids play and they are fighting and killing enemies. If they are killing enemies, they are not AFK. Trying to confound those who actually cheat by killing x enemies and going AFK CANNOT punish players who are putting in an effort. That's just wrong-headed or incompetent.
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This is completely unacceptable.
We have 3 lifetime memberships invested in this game... years of gameplay... and being punished for something that no one did wrong is infuriating.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
True Enough... Happened to me... I also filed a bug report - it simply vanished...
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
I have only gotten hit by the AKF penalty once since I started playing at the end of January 2014. However, that was not a false positive AFK. I got hit with an AKF because there was a knock on the door followed by, "This is the Police," as soon as I queued up for CCA. Apparently, there was a robbery in the building and the police was asking around if people heard any peculiar noise or noticed anyone unfamiliar in the building. Naturally, by the time I got back to the game CCA had already ended.
So, rewards are supposed to be based on performance right? But some people have figured out a way to hack the system and just sit in the spawning area without actually participating and still get great rewards. So, the developers created this AFK penalty to discourage that activity. Is that correct?
All automated algorithms have the potential for false positives because no automated system is 100% accurate especially if they are very complex. Let's take Youtube is an example. As a result of some ads running before, during and or after controversial / extremist videos on Youtube such as a videos used to train gorilla tactics to terrorists. A lot of advertisers stopped advertising on Youtube and it was dubbed "Adpocolypse". Institutions like the UK Government, Pepsi, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson boycotted Youtube and would not return until Youtube (Google) becomes "family friendly".
Naturally this means Youtube is earning less money which that Youtubers who create content also make less money. Some Youtubers have stated that even videos with over 100k views have made far less than $1 in ad revenue for the Youtuber. To make a very long and complex story short, Youtube has "cleaned up" their act by using algorithms to automatically demonetize controversial and extremist video so the creator cannot earn any ad revenue. Most if not all of the big advertisers were pleased with what Youtube has done and they have started to cautiously advertise on Youtube again.
However, the algorithm Youtube uses is not perfect. It is probably far from perfect because some outspoken content creators on Youtube have stated as much as 95% of all their videos (whether it is 200 or 3,000 videos) have been flagged by the algorithm to be demonetized. Very high quality videos can take anywhere from 20 man hours to 40 man hours to produce, or even more. That includes writing the script, recording the video, editing the video and post production (color correction, graphics, animation, sound effects, etc). Putting all the effort into making a video and also making sure that it is "family friendly" (no cursing, no controversial or extremist subject matter, etc. just for the video to end up being flagged as demonetized is rather disheartening and have caused some Youtube channels to shutdown.
Now Youtube is an extreme case and the complexities of their algorithms far exceeds the preschool-like AFK algorithm that Cryptic uses. However, since Youtube is owned by Google it just goes to show that even throwing money and manpower into developing an algorithm is not a simple task.
The best advice has already been given... report false positives to support. That is about the only thing you can do to bring the problem to the dev team's attention.
So, instead of fixing the hack that allows people to get rewards for doing nothing, they chose to implement a penalty system that in essence penalises new inexperienced players, players with less than optimum GOLD gear, players that are disconnected because the server timed out or the game crashes on map transitions, and all the other reasons people have given in these forums that have caused them to receive an AFK unjustly. Okay fine, at least we all know where we stand now; but seriously, I see no reason to inform support that their band aid is torn and falling off, they already know it, plenty of people have already reported it, besides they are far too busy developing new content to be bothered by a few unjust AFKs! New season is almost here!
Like @jaguarskx said, you need to do 1% of the total damage the team does. And to be fair, 1% is not much at all (doesnt matter for space or ground)
ingame: @Felisean
I do not know of any hacks. However, as in my example with Youtube, automated algorithms are not 100% accurate and are prone to false positives.
"Optimum Gold gear" is not required to avoid an AFK penalty. I have a secondary free 2 play only account where I have simply relied on mission rewards and relatively inexpensive very rare Mk XII gear purchased from the Exchange to play STO since Fall 2015. In addition, I also simply rely on the free T5 ship all 3 of my characters on the secondary account selected when they reached level 40. I have all event ships on that account since the 2015 Winter Wonderland, but thus far I have not really felt the need to use them in order to play story missions and even play some of the Advanced queue space missions. I have never been hit with an AFK penalty on my F2P account. I I also have not bothered allocating any specialization points yet to any of the primary / secondary specialization trees.
I have only recently started to transfer over some "failed" gear upgrades from my primary account to my F2P account (instead of selling them on the Exchange for very little EC). However, those items are only at best ultra rare and Mk X or lower so I have not even bothered using those gear yet. At least not until the next time there is an Double Tech Point Upgrade Weekend.
Something similar happened to me on Self Destructive Tendencies, except three morons ran in immediately and started the self-destruct sequence while I was reading the mission briefing, which locked me and another player out behind a forcefield, which in turn earned us a two-hour AFK penalty. A bright spot is that because they only had three players, they failed the mission. Idiots.
Things I want in STO:
1) More character customization options such as more clothing options, letting the toon complexion affect the entire body, not just the head. Also a true RGB color picker applied to all costume and appearance options, which would allow for true appearance customization and homogenous colors instead of "this same exact color looks vastly different on two different pieces."
2) Bridge customization, not bridge packs. Let us pick a general layout and adjust the color palette, console appearance, and chair types, as well as more ready room layout options.
3) Customizable ground weapons, i.e. The aesthetic look of phaser dual pistols but they shoot antiproton bolts. For obvious reasons this would only apply to standard ground weapons.
4) For the love of Q please revamp Plasma Ground Weapons. They look like demented Supersoakers right now.
5) True Vanity Impulse and Deflector effects similar to Vanity Shields.
6) A greater payout for hitting T6 Reputations. Currently it takes more time and resources to get from T5 to T6 than it does to get from nothing to T5. Make that grind really pay out at the end.
7) Mirrorverse Refugee event similar to AoY/Delta/Gamma, complete with new Mirrorverse recruits for all factions.
8) Independent Faction, because yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me!
Why do people tend to AFK those queues "that" do not have a AFK penalty?
Wow, very impressive.
Sorry my bad, I wasn't looking for an ad hominem attack. Let me try and rephrase my question. If the rewards are based on performance and participation in these queues, then how can people AFK and get any rewards at all? It seems to me if I just beam in a sit there, never fire a weapon or interact in anyway, how is it that they can get any points at all?
Please let me know which of these queues allows this so I can go test it and see for myself. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to enter a battle and not participate. Seriously, who would they be cheating anyway, themselves? The other players will actually be getting points as they destroy enemy forces and the player just sitting idle is getting zip, nada, nothing, so who cares? I just don't get it.
So you admit you AFK? You are both taking offense to AFKers being called lazy and are asking where you can do it...
No, read again. I want to see if this is a real thing so somebody tell me how so I can see it for myself. I doubt the validity of the claims that people can AFK and be rewarded!
So why did you take offense to AFKers being called lazy? They in fact are lazy and that's why they do it.
Thanks for the info, I will look into it. I don't think I have ever done the mirror invasion unless it is part of the story arc missions, or at least don't remember doing it, so this should be interesting. Is this in the badlands where the alternate DS9 pops up and all that stuff? Let me be sure I know how to do this, I join the Mirror Invasion Queue and just sit there after spawning, even if I get attacked?
Any special difficulty level or any other inside information on how to do this? I am hoping that this will not work, but if it does, for me it will indicate that the game is far more broken that I had thought and I will be very sad, and I will issue an apology for doubting the validity of those aforementioned claims. Just to be safe, I think I will try it on an alt char, I don't want to tarnish the reputation of my main char ;-) !
As for the ad hom attack "Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself"
You had asked a question and were told the answer, it's no ones fault that your feelings got hurt. You made the argument about the character of AFKers by asking why they do it.
Well my feelings weren't hurt, I said if this AFK thing is real, that will make me sad. And you are correct, my original question was phrased incorrectly, and I rephrased my question so that my original intend was more clear, and I apologize for that misrepresentation.
I take offense because ad hom attacks do not address the issue at hand, which is, how is it that they can do what they do? Their reasons for taking advantage of this loophole are irrelevant.
Now, just suppose that that particular STF has no AFK penalty. Instead of logging in, doing your Doffing, Admiralty, R&D etc, and then running that same STF yet again that has already bored you to tears, you can log in, join the STF and sit there doing all your Doffing, Admiralty etc while waiting for the stupid timer to run down and still get your reward......
For some people, AFKing an STF is the only means of getting an event reward without totally losing their sanity and/or their will to ever play STO again.
Myself, after grinding through all 14 times of MIA once (actually playing, not AFKing), subsequent rewards just weren't worth it so I just don't do the event. I play STO to have fun and sitting in an STF AFK is not fun, and neither is MIA after the first few times.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'