To those advocating the removal of the AFK system I would like to point out my experiences with the First Contact Day events. Usually there was at least one person, knowing that participation did not affect the rewards, who just sat at their stations until the timer ran out and collected their tokens. They were even a few instances with four other players doing nothing. I'm not saying that this is a particularly bad thing in this case (although I don't see the point of just sitting at you keyboard doing nothing) since their participation does not help or hinder your progress, but the FCD event is pretty unique in that way. However it *is* an example of some players' mindset of doing the minimal participation for the shiny, a percentage over 20% based on my experience with the FCD events. Next up on the list are the Mirror Incursion events which I still see immobile ships in during the rifts phases. This was much worse before Cryptic made the shiny an account unlock (Thank you for that Cryptic!) with players burning out on the event, but it still happens. Again not a huge issue to me since participation only affects the end mark rewards and not progression towards the final shiny.
But when it comes to STFs, full participation is designed into them and failure can result in no reward at all, wasting other players time. Yes there are instances where four players, or even one, can carry the STF (Infected Space being the best example) but these STFs are made with five in mind. Given that there *are* players who will do the minimum participation, including AFKing, if it weren't for the AFK system then one would expect more wasted time PUGing an STF. I am all for the AFK system.
Are there false positives? Hey, I've been marked AFK a few times myself for things like SNRs but never because of lack of contributed damage, and I am not a DPS chaser. Then again you won't see me in elite queues because I know I'm not a DPS chaser and may not measure up. I manage well enough in advanced queues, but if I didn't and got AFK penalties that would be a sure sign to me that it's time for normal queues. Normal queues not because I can't participate in an advanced, rather that advanced queues are inherently tougher with higher expectations that builds that get AFK penalties should not be in.
> @byozuma#0956 said: > I didn't even know there was an AFK penalty till reading this thread... and it seems to be pretty polarizing with the community. Judging from what I've read the thread was started by someone joining a queue with the intent of playing support only to be hit with the penalty for not playing a DPS... I'd equate that to being penalized in more fantastical MMOs for playing a healer that didn't give much weight to throwing out the occasional attack (looking at you XIV community). It makes no sense. This game could literally use more players willing to forego balls-to-the-wall damage output to make sure the team makes it through with the least respawns. Nothing can slow down a battle like having to wait 30s to respawn. Even if it means having to suffer actual AFK players I'd rather the penalty removed than have support captains risk being penalized just for wanting to make the battle alot smoother. > > And all this backlash against someone wanting to play support... bloody hell! What is wrong with wanting to play support?! Why is that such a crime? I don't get it, I really don't. Maybe my older MMO experience has me more open-minded at the idea, mayhaps others should go play the older MMOs and tell me how successful they were playing balls-to-the-wall DDers.
The problem is, STO's metagame doesn't really encourage support casters. Even if you aren't in the stupidly high DPS minmaxing crowd, death is a minor inconvenience (wait a few seconds to respawn with no penalty) and the AI is stupid. Threat gen tanking is useless because tac escorts often put out so much more DPS than cruisers that the AI plain ignores the cruiser, and as far as healing, you can mostly get away with just Hazard Emitters II and Science Team I.
Basically, the fighter-tank-healer breakdown doesn't really apply in STO.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Basically, the fighter-tank-healer breakdown doesn't really apply in STO.
It used to before the AFK penalty killed the last of the pure support builds. Years ago support builds where common and even desirable for some content. Some content even required support builds up to a set standard. Those where the best days as missions required real team work. I miss the old style STF raids which required real teamwork not the over simple rubbish we have now. A good step would be to bring back the full STF raids back. Not the massively cut down over simple versions we have now.
Actually, yes there is. It's called the AFK penalty. You can (incorrectly) label it however you like.
The so-called AFK penalty never actually says anything but "Banned for being AFK" (or however the text goes I forget)...which is obviously neither true nor useful for any purpose.
To those advocating the removal of the AFK system I would like to point out my experiences with the First Contact Day events. Usually there was at least one person, knowing that participation did not affect the rewards, who just sat at their stations until the timer ran out and collected their tokens. They were even a few instances with four other players doing nothing. I'm not saying that this is a particularly bad thing in this case (although I don't see the point of just sitting at you keyboard doing nothing) since their participation does not help or hinder your progress, but the FCD event is pretty unique in that way. However it *is* an example of some players' mindset of doing the minimal participation for the shiny, a percentage over 20% based on my experience with the FCD events.
Just a thought but what would happen if the FCD event gave better rewards for the best rocket.. at that point it'd essentially be pvp, and we all know how that goes.
Personally if I couldn't have stood there and done my admiralty/doffing/rnd/daily reps while I waited for a mark box to be delivered I only would've participated on one toon for the minimum 4 days needed to get the account unlock and then ignore the event totally. As it was I did it on 30 toons for 6 days, I'd be doing the dailies anyway, and what's a holiday for if not to let me enjoy some steppenwolf at the end rather than have to fight some borgs for my daily mark boxes. If most people who were AFK during the FDC event did the same it might have been harder to even get a match going for those that wanted to play it.
There might also be people that have better speed traits on their characters and a weapon with a [run] mod or whatever and perhaps you'd end up losing over and over to someone who got better parts. Then instead of people complaining about afk'ers there'd be people complaining that FCD requires a specific ground build to get anything out of it or something like that. I'd guess the point of an event like FCD was to have it open to as many people as possible, rather than to people with the right gear or build.
Remember that as a f2p mmo STO demands huge amounts of time investment and resource gathering to get any meaningful progression beyond just enjoying the storyline. As such that minimal participation mindset is the only sane response towards making best use of time, to be as efficient as possible with your resource gathering so you can enjoy the rest of the gameplay at your leisure.
My best guess; this is the main reason so many queues are impossible to play. They don't pop because they don't reward enough for the time and effort you put into them to be worth doing, compared to other options that allow you to progress more efficiently, rather than being done as part of the grind. So not enough people do them often enough to keep the queues full.
Just a thought but what would happen if the FCD event gave better rewards for the best rocket.. at that point it'd essentially be pvp, and we all know how that goes...There might also be people that have better speed traits on their characters and a weapon with a [run] mod or whatever and perhaps you'd end up losing over and over to someone who got better parts...
This is off the AFK topic, but I'll bite. If better rockets rewarded better rewards I would definitely imagine more participation, and it wouldn't necessarily be PVP if the reward were based off of distance traveled and not a rocket's overall rank placement of 1st, 2nd, etc. Although an accolade/title for 1st place would be nice. If better distances rewarded more marks and a decent distance achieved rewarded two tokens instead of one I would bet there would be less people standing around. I know I would put in a little more effort on a daily basis to cut the required grind in half. As is I just make a bare rocket and then collect junk for as many tuning opportunities as I can get since I just don't see myself sitting at my keyboard. It's like completing the optionals of the 'teamwork' based STFs for more marks - which doesn't make those optionals PVP centric concepts. More power to those players with the [Run] mod (I'm not one) as long as it wouldn't be a necessity to get the highest reward, analogous to requiring certain ships for an STF optional, unlike the winter races as a counter-example. Sure they may have more opportunities for the better parts, but that wouldn't exclude you from getting those same parts.
...As such that minimal participation mindset is the only sane response towards making best use of time, to be as efficient as possible with your resource gathering so you can enjoy the rest of the gameplay at your leisure.
I agree and back to the AFK topic. Without an AFK system there's no reason to just AFK your way through the rewards which could actually decrease players efficiency.
"Tougher" content forces you to think, to strategize, and to coordinate. there's nothing in the game (that's seen developer work) t hat does that, and that's by conscious design. As someone said early, Cryptic does 'easy mode',a nd they do it exclusively now.
Worse there used to be but the devs removed everything that was not easy mode and dumbed everything down. Which is bad for the game long term. I love this game but my biggest worry is how everything its getting oversimplified which means people don't stay and leave as they get bored with the basic content.
lemme stop laughing at the 'advanced queues are tougher" comment...whew. funny, man, funny.
They're not tougher, they just take longer, because the dumb AI beasties are pumped fulla extra hitpoints...
I would point out that someone who hits you harder and can take more of your hits is generally thought of as tougher than someone who doesn't hit as hard and can take less of your hits. Advanced queues are by little means 'harder' or 'more difficult', which are other adjectives that I disregarded when making the post, but there are differences between normal/advanced/elite and the adjective I chose was 'tougher' since it seemed the best fit. Although getting the teamwork together for the optionals can actually be pretty difficult in the less used queues. What adjective would you use?
However I agree that the end result is effectively just longer times to completion because of more damage absorption. But that doesn't nullify my belief that if I was consistently getting an AFK penalty for 'tougher' (or whatever adjective you'd like to use) queues by not doing enough of that damage then I shouldn't be doing that queue difficulty.
...I love this game but my biggest worry is how everything its getting oversimplified which means people don't stay and leave as they get bored with the basic content.
I cannot speak for everyone, but most everyone I know in-game and real life friends/family have been with STO since launch and are still happily playing along. Quite a few folk here on the forums (myself included) are here since BETA.
Not everyone wants a second job experience with their MMO.
We don't always agree, but you are dishing out some mad wisdom in this thread.
Pretty much spot on with everything you have said.
"Tougher" content forces you to think, to strategize, and to coordinate. there's nothing in the game (that's seen developer work) t hat does that, and that's by conscious design. As someone said early, Cryptic does 'easy mode',a nd they do it exclusively now.
Ironcially, there IS such content in the game.
Korfez.
Which goes largely ignored. Why? Because the high DPS crowd only care about ISA and it's too difficult for pretty much everyone else.
Because it doesn't reward anything you couldn't get more easily somewhere else.
"Tougher" content forces you to think, to strategize, and to coordinate. there's nothing in the game (that's seen developer work) t hat does that, and that's by conscious design. As someone said early, Cryptic does 'easy mode',a nd they do it exclusively now.
Ironcially, there IS such content in the game.
Korfez.
Which goes largely ignored. Why? Because the high DPS crowd only care about ISA and it's too difficult for pretty much everyone else.
actually, there's plenty of...e-peen comparison regarding Korfez among the same crowd that religiously parses their ISA.
Korfez goes ignored because it's only listed if you click the little icon to show 'elite' content.
That doesn't surprise me, since "e-peen comparison" is just about the only reason to play it.
> @valoreah said: > I cannot speak for everyone, but most everyone I know in-game and real life friends/family have been with STO since launch and are still happily playing along. Quite a few folk here on the forums (myself included) are here since BETA. > > Not everyone wants a second job experience with their MMO.
Yeah, seriously, this. I'm fortunate enough to be in an occupation where I can leave my work at my workplace. I don't need my video games trying to be my job, too.
(Isn't us agreeing on something one of the signs of the apocalypse? )
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
This, then, is part of the problem-there's a system in place that punishes you for sloppy builds and sloppy play, but doesn't actually punish you for **** off or parasiting at minimal involvement.
That's exactly my point. It may be called an "AFK" penalty, but in practice it is a "git gud" penalty. It penalizes you for sucking at the game, real AFKers can easily avoid it.
In a sense, then, DPS parsing in Infected is displaying that you're really good at killing rats in WoW terms. It's treated as 'significant' merely because, well, the more genuinely challenging material's totally unfamiliar to the bulk of even 'dedicated' players at this point-they run Infected, maybe CCA, and really that...is...it, except for the Red Alerts to fill their other reps.
this is, in turn, because 'time/effort' ratios for Infected are...well...out of synch with reality.
Rewards should be about 3/4 to 1/2 what they are for the map, with a slightly closer reward level for Khitomer (space) and finally the same reward as present for Cure. Why? because Cure Space has a way to fail the mission built INTO the mission-iow if you don't keep the Kang from getting swarmed, the mission fails. Period.
Relying on the same generic currency rewards for widely different queues is an impossible equation regardless of the ratios. I've calculated the 15 minute timegated queues Cryptic likes so much, would have to reward something like 10k dil and 1k marks to match the reward/time of CCA. Or alternatively, CCA would have to reward 50 dil and 5 marks. Neither of those figures is plausible. ISA is less extreme but still way up there.
The reward paradigm is well beyond the point where it could be fixed just by adjusting the numbers.
end result being that even people who SHOULD be playing these on 'normal' difficulty don't, they queue up on 'Advanced' because of time/reward ratios and a rep for being 'easy mode'.
There's a better way to do this, but Cryptic shut that door already. it used to be, you could queue for 'normal' runs at Level 45, which is before all the powercreep. maybe to GET people into the 'normal' runs, (across all the various maps we've got in the queues now) Cryptic should reverse the decision to lock them until everyone was already higher level than the maps were designed for?
you'd probably have a lot fewer players trapping themselves with little to no knowledge or gear in Advanced queues, if they could derive rewards from 'normals' at lower level and build up their 'skillz'.
but like I said, they already closed that door by locking the reputations at 'endgame'.
Not like they couldn't change that if they wanted to...but would it actually accomplish anything? Advanced isn't actually all that much harder than Normal since they removed the fail conditions. It just takes longer because enemy has more HP. Advanced has a rep for being Easy Mode, because it IS Easy Mode. ISA and such will complete fine with just one good player and many of the timegated queues are timed for auto-win even if the whole team sucks.
Which goes largely ignored. Why? Because the high DPS crowd only care about ISA and it's too difficult for pretty much everyone else.
Actually the high DPS crowd simply play whatever they feel like. Doing Fez is no more difficult nor does it involve more coordination than getting a let’s say 100k+ ISA run straight.
The reason why it appears to be underused to you is best explained by the broken reward structure warpangle pointed out. Most high DPS crowds have multiple toons at endgame they work on and which they want to keep on top. For that you need rewards and since gaming time is limited you aim for peak efficiency here. What makes a lot of other elite maps bad is that they are simply miserably time gated and include minute long tasks which are neither challenging to you as a player nor do they put anything you aimed/worked for build-wise to any sort of test. They are simply boring.
0 money + 0 fun = empty map
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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My suggestion as a fellow Science officer main who likes specializing in debuffs and DoTs.... I have had this occur before, so I simply switched up what I was doing. I don't know your exact build or preference, but science takes a bit to start rolling effectively. GW is awesome, so is TR. Despite what some suggestions are, DpS is not the end all be all, even on this map. Its precision, and team work. As a fellow Science officer, I have out DPS'd some, been out DPS'd by some, but what I have is consistency. Changing where you position yourself, when you apply DoTs, debuffs, GR, TR, you can do quite well. In fact with the amount of AoE you can do, you can easily be tanking. That being said, I do agree that some items need to be enhanced with the AFK system. If you assist another player with a buff, heal, shield regen, etc., you should get a percentage of that damage they do accounted for your captain. The same issue occurs with engineers who specialize as tanks. Don't think of yourself as a casual, or pleeb, or a noob. Even veteran players can have issues on some maps due to ship build, talents, timing. I agree everyone needs to do their part as well.
Also as a note, it is fun flying a small science vessel and tanking half the map while the glass cannons look on =).
Sorry you were hit with this bug.. but if that's your ultimatum then good bye!
The system isn't perfect, but doing away with it completely opens the flood gates to all types of abusive behavior. The fact that you would see that done just to avoid the possibility of you encountering a bug shows how selfish you really are. You would see the entire game altered in a way that would prove overwhelmingly negative for what? to keep you as a player? I don't think so.
You were hit with a bug.. it sucks. Take some time, take a breath, chill out, and realize it's not that big of a deal. If it's so horrible for you that you're going to stop playing unless the game is altered, then it's best for everyone if you just go find another game.
I've been hit with AFK penalties maybe twice, and a very long time ago. Not sure if either of them were bugged or not, but I didn't complain about it, just did as Dark said he did and did other stuff. Not like I was chaining the RAs or anything, was just running them for fun. I don't do mark runs, I just do them when I feel like it, choose my marks and go off to the DSEs or run a mission or something.
But I almost never complain about anything that happens in the game because none of it is all that important or game-breaking. If I get frustrated enough with the game, I will take a break from it. And I have, sometimes for a year or more, or just become 'seasonal' and come in for the Summer/Winter/Anniversary/FCD events.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
Comments
But when it comes to STFs, full participation is designed into them and failure can result in no reward at all, wasting other players time. Yes there are instances where four players, or even one, can carry the STF (Infected Space being the best example) but these STFs are made with five in mind. Given that there *are* players who will do the minimum participation, including AFKing, if it weren't for the AFK system then one would expect more wasted time PUGing an STF. I am all for the AFK system.
Are there false positives? Hey, I've been marked AFK a few times myself for things like SNRs but never because of lack of contributed damage, and I am not a DPS chaser. Then again you won't see me in elite queues because I know I'm not a DPS chaser and may not measure up. I manage well enough in advanced queues, but if I didn't and got AFK penalties that would be a sure sign to me that it's time for normal queues. Normal queues not because I can't participate in an advanced, rather that advanced queues are inherently tougher with higher expectations that builds that get AFK penalties should not be in.
> I didn't even know there was an AFK penalty till reading this thread... and it seems to be pretty polarizing with the community. Judging from what I've read the thread was started by someone joining a queue with the intent of playing support only to be hit with the penalty for not playing a DPS... I'd equate that to being penalized in more fantastical MMOs for playing a healer that didn't give much weight to throwing out the occasional attack (looking at you XIV community). It makes no sense. This game could literally use more players willing to forego balls-to-the-wall damage output to make sure the team makes it through with the least respawns. Nothing can slow down a battle like having to wait 30s to respawn. Even if it means having to suffer actual AFK players I'd rather the penalty removed than have support captains risk being penalized just for wanting to make the battle alot smoother.
>
> And all this backlash against someone wanting to play support... bloody hell! What is wrong with wanting to play support?! Why is that such a crime? I don't get it, I really don't. Maybe my older MMO experience has me more open-minded at the idea, mayhaps others should go play the older MMOs and tell me how successful they were playing balls-to-the-wall DDers.
The problem is, STO's metagame doesn't really encourage support casters. Even if you aren't in the stupidly high DPS minmaxing crowd, death is a minor inconvenience (wait a few seconds to respawn with no penalty) and the AI is stupid. Threat gen tanking is useless because tac escorts often put out so much more DPS than cruisers that the AI plain ignores the cruiser, and as far as healing, you can mostly get away with just Hazard Emitters II and Science Team I.
Basically, the fighter-tank-healer breakdown doesn't really apply in STO.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Incorrecly labeled it is, but not by me.
Just a thought but what would happen if the FCD event gave better rewards for the best rocket.. at that point it'd essentially be pvp, and we all know how that goes.
Personally if I couldn't have stood there and done my admiralty/doffing/rnd/daily reps while I waited for a mark box to be delivered I only would've participated on one toon for the minimum 4 days needed to get the account unlock and then ignore the event totally. As it was I did it on 30 toons for 6 days, I'd be doing the dailies anyway, and what's a holiday for if not to let me enjoy some steppenwolf at the end rather than have to fight some borgs for my daily mark boxes. If most people who were AFK during the FDC event did the same it might have been harder to even get a match going for those that wanted to play it.
There might also be people that have better speed traits on their characters and a weapon with a [run] mod or whatever and perhaps you'd end up losing over and over to someone who got better parts. Then instead of people complaining about afk'ers there'd be people complaining that FCD requires a specific ground build to get anything out of it or something like that. I'd guess the point of an event like FCD was to have it open to as many people as possible, rather than to people with the right gear or build.
Remember that as a f2p mmo STO demands huge amounts of time investment and resource gathering to get any meaningful progression beyond just enjoying the storyline. As such that minimal participation mindset is the only sane response towards making best use of time, to be as efficient as possible with your resource gathering so you can enjoy the rest of the gameplay at your leisure.
My best guess; this is the main reason so many queues are impossible to play. They don't pop because they don't reward enough for the time and effort you put into them to be worth doing, compared to other options that allow you to progress more efficiently, rather than being done as part of the grind. So not enough people do them often enough to keep the queues full.
This is off the AFK topic, but I'll bite. If better rockets rewarded better rewards I would definitely imagine more participation, and it wouldn't necessarily be PVP if the reward were based off of distance traveled and not a rocket's overall rank placement of 1st, 2nd, etc. Although an accolade/title for 1st place would be nice. If better distances rewarded more marks and a decent distance achieved rewarded two tokens instead of one I would bet there would be less people standing around. I know I would put in a little more effort on a daily basis to cut the required grind in half. As is I just make a bare rocket and then collect junk for as many tuning opportunities as I can get since I just don't see myself sitting at my keyboard. It's like completing the optionals of the 'teamwork' based STFs for more marks - which doesn't make those optionals PVP centric concepts. More power to those players with the [Run] mod (I'm not one) as long as it wouldn't be a necessity to get the highest reward, analogous to requiring certain ships for an STF optional, unlike the winter races as a counter-example. Sure they may have more opportunities for the better parts, but that wouldn't exclude you from getting those same parts.
I agree and back to the AFK topic. Without an AFK system there's no reason to just AFK your way through the rewards which could actually decrease players efficiency.
I would point out that someone who hits you harder and can take more of your hits is generally thought of as tougher than someone who doesn't hit as hard and can take less of your hits. Advanced queues are by little means 'harder' or 'more difficult', which are other adjectives that I disregarded when making the post, but there are differences between normal/advanced/elite and the adjective I chose was 'tougher' since it seemed the best fit. Although getting the teamwork together for the optionals can actually be pretty difficult in the less used queues. What adjective would you use?
However I agree that the end result is effectively just longer times to completion because of more damage absorption. But that doesn't nullify my belief that if I was consistently getting an AFK penalty for 'tougher' (or whatever adjective you'd like to use) queues by not doing enough of that damage then I shouldn't be doing that queue difficulty.
We don't always agree, but you are dishing out some mad wisdom in this thread.
Pretty much spot on with everything you have said.
> I cannot speak for everyone, but most everyone I know in-game and real life friends/family have been with STO since launch and are still happily playing along. Quite a few folk here on the forums (myself included) are here since BETA.
>
> Not everyone wants a second job experience with their MMO.
Yeah, seriously, this. I'm fortunate enough to be in an occupation where I can leave my work at my workplace. I don't need my video games trying to be my job, too.
(Isn't us agreeing on something one of the signs of the apocalypse?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Relying on the same generic currency rewards for widely different queues is an impossible equation regardless of the ratios. I've calculated the 15 minute timegated queues Cryptic likes so much, would have to reward something like 10k dil and 1k marks to match the reward/time of CCA. Or alternatively, CCA would have to reward 50 dil and 5 marks. Neither of those figures is plausible. ISA is less extreme but still way up there.
The reward paradigm is well beyond the point where it could be fixed just by adjusting the numbers.
Not like they couldn't change that if they wanted to...but would it actually accomplish anything? Advanced isn't actually all that much harder than Normal since they removed the fail conditions. It just takes longer because enemy has more HP. Advanced has a rep for being Easy Mode, because it IS Easy Mode. ISA and such will complete fine with just one good player and many of the timegated queues are timed for auto-win even if the whole team sucks.
Actually the high DPS crowd simply play whatever they feel like. Doing Fez is no more difficult nor does it involve more coordination than getting a let’s say 100k+ ISA run straight.
The reason why it appears to be underused to you is best explained by the broken reward structure warpangle pointed out. Most high DPS crowds have multiple toons at endgame they work on and which they want to keep on top. For that you need rewards and since gaming time is limited you aim for peak efficiency here. What makes a lot of other elite maps bad is that they are simply miserably time gated and include minute long tasks which are neither challenging to you as a player nor do they put anything you aimed/worked for build-wise to any sort of test. They are simply boring.
0 money + 0 fun = empty map
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I have had this occur before, so I simply switched up what I was doing. I don't know your exact build or preference, but science takes a bit to start rolling effectively. GW is awesome, so is TR. Despite what some suggestions are, DpS is not the end all be all, even on this map. Its precision, and team work. As a fellow Science officer, I have out DPS'd some, been out DPS'd by some, but what I have is consistency. Changing where you position yourself, when you apply DoTs, debuffs, GR, TR, you can do quite well. In fact with the amount of AoE you can do, you can easily be tanking. That being said, I do agree that some items need to be enhanced with the AFK system. If you assist another player with a buff, heal, shield regen, etc., you should get a percentage of that damage they do accounted for your captain. The same issue occurs with engineers who specialize as tanks. Don't think of yourself as a casual, or pleeb, or a noob. Even veteran players can have issues on some maps due to ship build, talents, timing. I agree everyone needs to do their part as well.
Also as a note, it is fun flying a small science vessel and tanking half the map while the glass cannons look on =).
Sorry you were hit with this bug.. but if that's your ultimatum then good bye!
The system isn't perfect, but doing away with it completely opens the flood gates to all types of abusive behavior. The fact that you would see that done just to avoid the possibility of you encountering a bug shows how selfish you really are. You would see the entire game altered in a way that would prove overwhelmingly negative for what? to keep you as a player? I don't think so.
You were hit with a bug.. it sucks. Take some time, take a breath, chill out, and realize it's not that big of a deal. If it's so horrible for you that you're going to stop playing unless the game is altered, then it's best for everyone if you just go find another game.
I've been hit with AFK penalties maybe twice, and a very long time ago. Not sure if either of them were bugged or not, but I didn't complain about it, just did as Dark said he did and did other stuff. Not like I was chaining the RAs or anything, was just running them for fun. I don't do mark runs, I just do them when I feel like it, choose my marks and go off to the DSEs or run a mission or something.
But I almost never complain about anything that happens in the game because none of it is all that important or game-breaking. If I get frustrated enough with the game, I will take a break from it. And I have, sometimes for a year or more, or just become 'seasonal' and come in for the Summer/Winter/Anniversary/FCD events.