How dfficult would it be to programm in an interaction meter?
Every player would have one.
As long as you interact with other assets on the map regardless of damage, or heals, or CCs you put positive points into it keeping it "green".
If you stay inactive for too long, it becomes "red".
The amount of damage/heal/cc would be inconsequentiel, just the ticks count.
A red meter at the end and no reward.
The only problem I see with this to take care of the AFKers (and the required programming time) is respawn times.
The meter has to be suspended if you die. Except then AFKers would probably commit suicide after getting the meter green and not respawn.
But Im sure their could be ideas to deal with that.
Vote kick is implemented on another major MMO, and I think that big ex-MMO killer from EA as well. Its not perfect, but getting kicked off a failing STF is a GOOD THING imo. Getting kicked off a good one would hurt, but few people would actually bother.
This should be balanced with getting kicked off a STF not activating a eSTF cooldown, meaning you can go right back to queuing. This also means that the afker can go back to queuing, but that means 1) he's not really afk and 2) you can just kick him again if he appears in your stf.
If he's really afk, he would lock himself out of an stf on his own, simply because he wouldn't requeue until he comes back.
Everyone wins.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Vote kick is implemented on another major MMO, and I think that big ex-MMO killer from EA as well. Its not perfect, but getting kicked off a failing STF is a GOOD THING imo. Getting kicked off a good one would hurt, but few people would actually bother.
This should be balanced with getting kicked off a STF not activating a eSTF cooldown, meaning you can go right back to queuing. This also means that the afker can go back to queuing, but that means 1) he's not really afk and 2) you can just kick him again if he appears in your stf.
If he's really afk, he would lock himself out of an stf on his own, simply because he wouldn't requeue until he comes back.
Everyone wins.
You're making a major confusion. You're mixing the AFK issue with the lack of skill of players you don't want to team with. These are two different problems, and these two problems require a different solution. I think the OP was rather close to an acceptable solution for the PVE AFK issue.
Your "get better at it" kick button isn't. It would lead to many abuses and isn't as friendly as a MMo should be. I'm sorry to say that but when you started to play STO, I'm ready to bet anything on the fact that you sucked hard too. You must have been terrible, like any of us.
What is needed to stimulate the players to get better at it is educational "punishment". For instance, if you end the STF with more than two injuries, you get no loot and a pop-up you can't close before 1 minute explaining why and how you can solve that. Or something like inventory requirements to start an elite mission, such as 20 hypos and 20 regens of each. I would say no miniguns/full auto rifles allowed but I guess i'm just dreaming (and the gods know that the guys with that kind of equipment can get on my nerves in STFs, since they won't listen to your advices anyway).
Anyway, don't mix these two issues, because they shouldn't be mixed, since STO is a complex game with very few tutorials and allows to use terrible equipments with the toughest setting. It's a design flaw, not a player one.
I hate the AFK players and wish we could vote to kick if they have been dead for a few. I was in Starbase battle last night and there was one player that was dead for the whole match and either left or was removed just before the end. I don't mean he died and came back several times I mean he died at the start and was dead for the entire battle.
my Solutions lol my thoughts
Borg stf optional reward needs to have "unique" items as a random
drops like the anniversary items, chance at getting a combat pet
something completely unique that you can only get as a reward for the optional.
PvP - far as i can tell... there needs to something in place just like Guild wars factions
they have a unique pvp system in pve, that was added because no one like the pvp
system in that game.
and far as afk players go in the event stf missions, need to put everything as a bundle reward at the end of the mission just like the borg stf missions.
if i heal myself perm or stay near a afk player and heal him i get gren points for what?
If you're doing that, then you're not AFK. Because you are in fact doing something. Might need to discount selfheals however. But anything else as long as it involved targeting someone else and using a power on them means that the person is not AFK, because they have to stay in range of the target.
That kind of system isn't fool proof, but it's better then what we have now, and will require a great deal more work to avoid getting kicked.
Basing it off damage alone is somewhat unfair to people who play support types or healers.
Identify afk by a percentage of damage delivered and heals given. Both are trackable values in ACT, so I would assume the devs would see this as well. <10%, is considerd afk.
lower reward by the difference - 1000 dilithium is reduced to 100 (10% of the original reward)
pay remaining players 150 dilithium bonus each (enough to be a bonus, not enough to be a cheat)
One other point - people who routinely take advantage get remembered. I have a list of players who purposely ditch, bail, or spoil optionals. They simply don't get invited on my STF runs any more, on in cases where I am invited, I let the owner know who they are. If they are allowed to stay, I leave the mission before it starts without too much in the way of grumbling.
We enable the trolls by playing with them. Choose your players and join another channel (elitstf, elitstfpublic) where the quality of the gameplay is significantly better.
that got me thinking - I've got a variety of responses, but since everyone seems to be hung up on the vote-kick system, let me offer an alternative and see what people think (assuming anyone's still reading the thread)
#1 - a vote/leave system - ditch the leaver penalty, and instead, institute a vote leave system, wherein players can start a vote to voluntarily leave the instance if they can get a majority vote (3/5) - this way, if at least 3 of the players can recognize that there's some jerk just trying to osmosis mission rewards, they can all vote to leave without suffering the leaver penalty - this is followed by...
#2 - a post/mission vote/contribution system - at the end of a mission (either by leave or by completion or by failure) each player gets a vote pop-up - this includes two votes - one for *positive* feedback, one for negative feedback - each person gets one vote - you can vote for any player in the instance (including yourself) or vote for a sixth "no-one".
**EDIT**I tried to include a crude visual example, but apparently this text editor doesn't keep spacing information.../sigh**
each person gets one positive vote to assign, AND one negative vote to assign - you *can* vote for yourself if you want
the general idea is as follows - if EVERYONE contributes reasonably, everyone puts in one positive vote for themselves, and one negative vote each for "no-one" - everyone walks out with one positive point - everyone's happy
or, and this happens sometimes, one person proves to be really on top of things (good team coordinator with positive attitude, or a sci captain that puts down a key GW that saves the optional, so on and so forth) can get multiple positive votes from other players
now, of course, some people can be jerks and will put in a negative vote for whatever person they didn't seem to like for whatever stupid reason they come up with - but, as the votes will be much like a review system, getting stuck with a coupla jerks will still amount to very little over time
now, if there's ONE or TWO guys that really douche up the whole encounter (like some guy hanging out at the spawn point) EVERYONE puts in a negative vote for that a-hole (except probably the guy himself) - guy walks out at best with 1 positive (from himself) and 4 negs, does it next game, gets it again, and again...so on and so forth - and racks up a massive negative vote pile
now, make a person's fleet action rating (career positive vs negative votes) visible to other players (either at start of mission, or even better, perhaps expand the que system to make individually qued people and their ratings visible) at some point
now, I haven't yet come up with a way to reward the positive/negative vote tally's...but, you could tie a vote kick, or a mission timer penalty, or mission rewards, somehow tied to the positive/negative votes
of course, there's still *some* degree of abuse possible, but by spreading out the abuse over multiple people and multiple occasions, I like to think it'd be minimized
of course, any adjustments made to vote/kick like systems could, I feel, really benefit from a serious overhaul of the stf missions themselves, but that's another post...
There is no correct resolution; it's a test of character.
James T. Kirk
Identify afk by a percentage of damage delivered and heals given. Both are trackable values in ACT, so I would assume the devs would see this as well. <10%, is considerd afk.
.
sorry dont understand exactly what you mean with 10%.
10% dmg from them complete mission?
i will say how it works easyer amd sorry for my bad english but i hope anyone understand what i willl mean.
stf example.
1. first ad a new bar to ea player who joins.
this bar is clean at the begin of the mission to any player and fills up in 5% steps with a color.
the bar shows the percent dmg done in the mission and need exactly 1,4mio dmg point in total to fill up to 100%
if a player have reach 100% it switch to complete green.
ONLY players with have done the min of importend dmg what shows this bar in a stf space mission get the option on for loot in the mission.
the only point to hack/cheat this system is kithomer space a afk player flys to a generator what is undestroable and start autoattak and fill up his bar for free with the 1,4 mio dmg in ~2min then go afk
so its importend that only dmg will be countet on destroyable targets.
for carriers importend pets dmg will not counted that nobody comes o the idea to start pets the attak randomly nonsens an fill up the bar for free.
i have try it out its very easy to reach the 1,4 mio dmg in total for any ship also carrier with only 6 weapons.
this system will have alot of interesting ingame option:
examples:
first of all anyone will try to get the bar full to the end and will have to work in the mission.
anyone see for himself and the complettly team see it perm how good players work on the mission so nobody must waste him time with perm camera scrolling to check if others do there job.
lets say in the team is a player who have afther 5 min still 0% anyone in the team can ask him what is his prob or what is running wrong it is now visible thats the nice think so nobody must flame aginst anyone for unknown reason what happend at moment also sometimes.
if a afkler loot leeecher pug whatever goes first time in and see what happend to him and anyone tell him that leeching end now, he have to work for loot then he will decide next time to waste 15-30 min in a stf for 100% no loot again.
so with that system stfs will work much better anyone see perm his mission performance and the team to.
thats the only real way in my mind do bring the most afk leechers away from stfs.
and lets say a team have done it with 3 players and sucess the mission 2 afk players stay there in the mission so the 3 players get the loot from the afk players to so the 2200 dil from the afk players will be splittet to the 3 players what have done the mission so they get add reward for have afk players in there mission.
a nice think for me with this system will be:
it happend to me many times i go into kithomer space afther cube is dead nobody will go protect vortex coz he mean he is a fast structure destroyer so.... chaos and optional fails coz wrong player protect vortex.
with my system afther cube is dead any player reach any % lets say player 1+2 20% player 3 10% and player 4+5 5% ea so automaticly player 4+5 can fly to vortex for protect it they deal low dmg so no good option to send them for fast structure destroying, so optional will have a high sucess chance. xD
and this system can be added into ground missions to only the total dmg have to been changed.
so lets say 40k dmg for a ground mission what is also very easy to reach and.....^^
sorry dont understand exactly what you mean with 10%.
10% dmg from them complete mission?
What I propose is a simple method of determining an AFK player - it would work like this:
If the players total damage is <10% of the groups total, the system would assign a value of +1
IF his total heals are <10% of the groups total, then the systems would assign him a value of +1
IF the AFK total is +2, then he is considered AFK in the game.
Simple yes/no function: if he does not damage but heals, he's a player (+0). If he does damage, but doesn't heal, he's still a player (+0). If he doesn't do either - he's AFK (+2).
The 10% level is arbitrary on my part, but given some roles in STF's - baiting spheres for example and drawing them away - it is inconceivable that a fully functional player might achieve a very low score on either heals or damage. Even in those conditions it would still be seen as a active player. To achieve the low 10% - you literally have to do nothing.
#1 - a vote/leave system - ditch the leaver penalty, and instead, institute a vote leave system, wherein players can start a vote to voluntarily leave the instance if they can get a majority vote (3/5) - this way, if at least 3 of the players can recognize that there's some jerk just trying to osmosis mission rewards, they can all vote to leave without suffering the leaver penalty - this is followed by...
What I propose is a simple method of determining an AFK player - it would work like this:
If the players total damage is <10% of the groups total, the system would assign a value of +1
IF his total heals are <10% of the groups total, then the systems would assign him a value of +1
IF the AFK total is +2, then he is considered AFK in the game.
Simple yes/no function: if he does not damage but heals, he's a player (+1). If he does damage, but doesn't heal, he's still a player (+1). If he doesn't do either - he's AFK.
The 10% level is arbitrary on my part, but given some roles in STF's - baiting spheres for example and drawing them away - it is inconceivable that a fully functional player might achieve a very low score on either heals or damage. Even in those conditions it would still be seen as a active player. To achieve the low 10% - you literally have to do nothing.
Admiral Thrax
Actually I think it would be possible for someone active to do less than 10% of the group's damage / healing in an STF.
If you're on KA and spend most of your time probe bashing (which is required to complete the mission, don't forget) and miss out on most of the big, fat targets with six and seven figure HP totals, I would think it very possible that you'd end up below 10% even though you've been active and played just fine. And you wouldn't do any healing in that role, either. Anyone combat parsed a KA recently, who could shed some light on what numbers probe guardians get?
Also, if you put a mediocre player in into a group with 4 good ones, they could just not keep up. I'm sure 'l2p' will be trotted out as a response there, but I don't think a system that denies players who are trying their reward will get them to up their game so much as it will get them to stop doing group missions, and then leave the game. Which is totally what STO needs right now.
It's hard to find a number that's both low enough for people who active to always get it and not so low that someone can get it with about 2 minutes of effort.
there are some prob on the vote leave system to, first of all
not all players have unlimited gametime, lets say i run for optional only like alot others i see it will fail vote leave i do it perm, so alot players will never see the end of the mission and not every player have the time to go into 20 stf only to finishing one.
spezialy newbies not interested on the optional
only on the mainpart is importend to get the tech......
sorry mooney, I had a bit of a time trying to sort out what you were saying, but if I read it correctly, let me see if I got it right...
not all players have unlimited game time - given - I only get to play 2-3 hours a night, and I spend an annoying portion of that doing the tour, or trying to farm some dilithium for that stupid tribble mission I rather shortsightedly set my fleet on...
#2 - imagine you're trying for the optional, but like the members on your team, you see you won't get it - response, I've never understood the folks that bail when they don't get the optional - I really don't - I get that they want to maximize their time/reward, but, there are still reasonable rewards for mission completion. If your cost/benefit for running stf's and fleet missions is to only do them if you can get maximum reward, it's time to stop pugging (which is what the vote to leave system is mostly in place for) and start running with pre-mades - expecting pugs to pick up optional every time seems...unreasonable
still, even given only settling for getting the optional, the vote to leave system will actually do you far better than any vote to kick system I can imagine
in this way, you lose less time - period - without a "leaver penalty" if you see that you can't complete the optional that you have your heart set on, you vote to leave - if you can convince the other people in your mission to leave with you, you can restart another mission without any loss of time
now, if you *can't* convince everyone to leave because *they* aren't convinced that they HAVE to lose the optional, or they don't care if they lose the optional, and you decide to leave, then yes, you'll take the leaver penalty, and quite possibly run the risk of getting several negative votes (i haven't actually addressed what would happen to the voting system if someone bails on the instance...that's a good question) but I don't currently have an answer that accommodates both people who want to play STF's successfully, and people who ONLY consider making the optional successful
in some ways, I think it might be better to re-divide the stf's into normal (with weaker borg and NO optional objective) Advanced (with stronger Borg and optional) and elite (make optional objective and rewards MANDATORY for mission completion) - maybe that would satisfy the folks that demand optional completion and nothing less - I dunno
so yes, if I understood your post correctly, you're right, the folks that won't play STF unless they're confident they can make the optional WILL probably get screwed somewhat - again, I think a better solution for that particular problem revolves not around the vote to leave system, but around the reward/design system in the STF's themselves (and the fleet missions, which this could also work for)
There is no correct resolution; it's a test of character.
James T. Kirk
Actually I think it would be possible for someone active to do less than 10% of the group's damage / healing in an STF.
If you're on KA and spend most of your time probe bashing (which is required to complete the mission, don't forget) and miss out on most of the big, fat targets with six and seven figure HP totals, I would think it very possible that you'd end up below 10% even though you've been active and played just fine. And you wouldn't do any healing in that role, either. Anyone combat parsed a KA recently, who could shed some light on what numbers probe guardians get?
Been there, parsed that. Even on probes exclusively, you'll end up doing at least 15% of the total. Again though the 10% idea is arbitrary. It could be adjusted for a base that reflects a better percentage. Heck we could even add a random number calculation so you couldn't predict the exact number to get around the AFK ranking (10.3, 10.5 etc)
AFKers can be identified by damage dealt or healing done. Rather than scaling the reward by damage dealt. While it's not fair to use a scaling reward system where healing science officers are penalized, you can calculate a minimum percentage of the total damage dealt by the team that anyone has to match to get any reward at all. May not even need to be 10 percent. Afterall, AFKers are generally sitting outside of combat, not shooting or taking any damage.
Alternatively, AFKing can be identified by tracking time-in-Red Alert status. Either a fixed percentage of time spent in a map you'd have to match (though that could cause trouble with PvE groups that take their time explaining tactics, or waiting for ensign Joe to come back from doing battle with the porcelain dragon), or be within a certain range of the average time-in-Red Alert for all your team members for that session. Of course this one leaves the option for the player in question to just Leroy Jenkins into the nearest mob of enemies and kill himself, while TRIBBLE things up further for his teammates.
So then there's damage-dealt to death ratio to cover that last one. Maybe use all of the above. Set off any of those alarm bells, and you leave empty handed.
Those are all generic solutions, though. Some events could do with more tailor-made solutions. PvP probably could stand to reward based on performance. (Needs to track healing of others as rating higher than healing oneself, to keep science ships in the game. Currently the system makes no distinction, and all too often cruisers dominate both categories.)
Some of the fleet events could do with a scoreboard as well. The most draconian option would replace individual rewards with a team reward, that's portioned at the end based on contribution. Won't work for every map, but for instance the starbase incursion map it could work for. Though admittedly, it's already pretty hard to get people to stick to and defend their chosen/assigned 'zones', that'd probably not get any easier with additional pressure to score kills.
I don't know... I've thusfar always been against vote-kicking given the potential of abuse. Then again, we see far more idlers now than I imagine we'd ever see abuse of vote-kicks. And the worst damage can probably be avoided by having a vote-kick point of no return - after ten minutes on a map together, no one's kicking anyone, so learn to size each other up quickly.
Main reason I think that will work over all the other ideas, is because there's really no way to abuse/get around it.
Vote to kick, as with any MMO I have every played (which is a lot), there's always a high percentage of people who will abuse it.
The Damage/Heal Percentage Idea, while a nice thought, fails to take into account that some people might not hit that hard because they've never learned the proper setup for their ships.
So in the long run they'll always get screwed because the System won't be able to distinguish a Player with a bad setup and a Player who just isn't trying.
Then you have the Movement Idea, where if someone doesn't move for a certain amount of time, they get penalized or whatever. Lets face it, HORRIBLE idea, because all a person has to do is make a Macro or whatever that allows their ship to continually move, with or without actually engaging in combat.
They're all good idea's, on "paper" but when you think long and hard, you'll start to realize that there are ways to get around and/or abuse these idea's.
So, to get back to my original idea: Just make it so you can't be Queue'd with people on your ignore list.
the ignore list will also end in a big drama put perm players into list about any frustration and you will get soon a 24 hours queue ?waitingtime for free.
i hate from my side no efffektiv players more then afk players so it end vor me with a insane list.
you can put anyone what you not like into the list thats true but how many times you will come into the list from others .
you put anyone in a list i put others in the list another puts again others in the list the result will be never more will a stf start, and if you think about that it logical.
so again i have sayid my idea is 100% fair to all players in a mission and rewards only aktiv players and thats the only way.;)
wow so it was nub complaints like this that caused the very absent minded ranking system we have in place today? Question... with all these types of complaints... why has the issues with the game like bugged/glitched enemies that can't be killed but can kill you yet to be addressed? Why is it that paid lifetime gold and silver members ignored for over 2 weeks when contacting support about account issues and game related issues yet the people in charge of this game seem to keep updating items to be sold in zen market. Why is it that you seem to complain about the dumbest things and get resolve yet real issues that can be considered game breaking completely ignored?
Personally I do understand the issues with people idling, but in all honisty their are much more important things to direct your attention to and complain about then things like people afk'ing.
Perhaps if you people weren't pampered so much you would do something other then complain about pathetic issues.
Personally I like the option for additional loot/dilithium for optional extra being completed, scaled for normal/elite stfs
This will hopefully give more incentive for players to play the mission to get the most out of it.
I also like the premise for the points system that was posted, but I think needs a few adjustments
Each player that does a stf can at the end (win or lose) allocate one point for the player they thought most deserving of it (not themselves)
Failing the optional/stf completly will also give players the option to give a negative point to a player if they feel that they were negligent in the STF (AFK, not listening to tactics/advice and purposely sabotaging the STF etc)
For all players gaining the Optional Objective the system would automatically grant each player 2 points
This would then give players an established rank/score that other players can see when creating teams/private matches so that you know in advance whether the player you have teamed up with before hand is likely to afk/sabotage or is a decent player who will contribute
Also this score could be used for pug matches, people with negative scores will be pugged with other players with negative scores, this will mean if they wish to AFK they are likely to join a game with other AFKers and fail very quickly, and will force players to actually play the missions to raise their score otherwise be potentially locked out of pug stfs (could take a lot longer forming a pug team of players with negative points)
Examples
STF Pug with 5 players; 1 AFKs for whole match optional fails but team manage to complete the mission. 4 players would be able to give a negative point to the AFKer and one point to a member of the team they think most deserving
STF Pug with 5 players; Optional objective completed, all players get 2 points automatically and potentially extra points from team mates if they decide to award you extra
STF premade team; Scores are displayed in private match window before match so members can decide if they wish to play with any members with a negative score.
Players with negative points would either have to try and risk pugging with other negative point players and try for optionals to raise their score, or to ask their fleets/friends to run in premade teams to actually play and contribute to raise their score so they can Pug more easily if that is their preferred choice of play.
I think this method would encourage more players to join in and actually play is STFs. There would be less AFKers for most STFs as they would quickly be be down voted by other players to negative points so that they could not pug queue with players with positive scores, as such these players would be stuck with other AFkers and never get the Dilithium reward, or would have to actively play with fleets/friends and raise their score, and I doubt many fleets would look too kindly on a fleet member AFKing in a fleet STF
I think you need 2 components to a system to make it work, as one can be griefed or abused easily.
The performance metric is the method to determine afk, the 10% system for damage/heals should be fine. If the player reaches +2 then the 2nd part of the system kicks in.
The team vote option should pop up only after a player is eligible by falling far behind in damage and heals. 3/4 votes kicks the player. This prevents honest people from being griefed. The vote option shouldn't be in your face, possibly an indicator comes up on the team menu showing it.
It is possible in non-stfs that some players will acceptably fall behind in performances and maybe shouldn't be kicked. I did a random PUG alone with fleet alert, 4 players with the highest level of 11 joined me, what luck... they fought but obviously couldn't do anything. They shouldn't have been allowed in that fight in the first place, but its not really their fault, should they get auto kicked? No, they tried. I parsed that fight, I did more than 95% of all damage and healing, they'd all have been eligible for kicking or been kicked had only one metric been put in. How do you account for level ranges in non-stfs?
What if you PUG incursion, get four totally clueless players. You go after all the saboteurs and eliminate your area's, the other players are running around and shooting turrets and useless npcs, no more saboteurs respawn in the area you patrol because of this. You fall behind? Do you get kicked? Chances are the clueless people are clueless and don't even get it. PUG incursion enough and it will happen.
There must be penalties for afking. People will still try it, they will still grief, only kicking them isn't acceptable. At the same time people do have issues in real life, something happens and you have to run, the door bell rings, a bad phone call, so some allowances must be made. Once you go over your limit then that is it, major penalties must be given out, none of this graduated TRIBBLE, the bottom end never really hurts griefers. If a person is constantly being pulled away then they need to stop playing with others, their burden shouldn't be everyone else's.
wow so it was nub complaints like this that caused the very absent minded ranking system we have in place today? Question... with all these types of complaints... why has the issues with the game like bugged/glitched enemies that can't be killed but can kill you yet to be addressed? Why is it that paid lifetime gold and silver members ignored for over 2 weeks when contacting support about account issues and game related issues yet the people in charge of this game seem to keep updating items to be sold in zen market. Why is it that you seem to complain about the dumbest things and get resolve yet real issues that can be considered game breaking completely ignored?
Personally I do understand the issues with people idling, but in all honisty their are much more important things to direct your attention to and complain about then things like people afk'ing.
Perhaps if you people weren't pampered so much you would do something other then complain about pathetic issues.
It seems to be that if other players can go around making us miserable by trolling, 'silencing' in game, etc... than it should only be right that an AFK'r be fired upon by his very enemies.
Happened again to me recently during The Cure Found Elite (Space)... this guy just sat at the respawn point for the whole thing. There should be a way of just turning the guns on him/her and blowing them up... it may not win me the mission per se but somehow I think it would be all the more satisfying.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
I agree with the earlier posts that performance metrics can identify AFK'ers, and reward-deprivation will kill their incentive to AFK in matches. Here are some suggestions on the coding requirements:
1) Mission requirements cannot be completed while the player earns a match AFK flag, so AFK'ing in a PVP match will NOT fulfill PVP daily mission requirements, etc...
2) Players need only meet 5% (arbitrary number, can be changed later) of total damage or total healing -- only one of these roles needs to be met to be an active participant.
3) For objective-driven maps, players who personally complete a mission-objective are awarded completion points for each objective met. Those with objective completion points are granted AFK-flagging immunity for a fixed time frame, even if they have zero damage or healing numbers.
4) Only actual damage dealt or damage healed will count towards the above metrics, so transferring shield strength to already-max shields will not count towards actual healing, nor will hazard emitters on a 100% hull, etc...
5) individual NPC kills will count as extra damage dealt for purposes of measuring participation. This solves the problem of probe duty resulting in lower DPS ratings.
6) average damage and healing numbers will be constantly compiled for all Elite STF's. Those players who far exceed normal performance numbers are given extra rewards and an accolade.
7) Participation metrics are not enforced until at least 2 minutes into the game (arbitrary time frame, can be updated later) -- after that, people who are still AFK-flagged will auto-pass on all loot while they are still flagged AFK.
8) Those who AFK over 25%+ (arbitrary number, adjustable later) of the match are denied all loot.
Please feel free to add to this list. What we are doing is compiling a list of rules that will be used to build a "participation" identifier. This list will need input from active players in order to prevent falsely flagging anyone as an AFK'er.
I see all these complex "solutions", but in the end, make it score-based. You don't play, you lose, you get nothing, good day, sir!
Score-base it in tiers even. I know that has been suggested, but lets keep it simple.
Yes, keeping metrics tier-based is a must, since there is no way T1 ships will even compare to the numbers outputted by their T5 or fleet counterparts.
The above system that I mentioned does use 3 different scores to measure player participation (damage dealt, damage healed, and mission objectives completed). They could be added together to form a single score, but only beta testing can determine if such a system will work.
Comments
Every player would have one.
As long as you interact with other assets on the map regardless of damage, or heals, or CCs you put positive points into it keeping it "green".
If you stay inactive for too long, it becomes "red".
The amount of damage/heal/cc would be inconsequentiel, just the ticks count.
A red meter at the end and no reward.
The only problem I see with this to take care of the AFKers (and the required programming time) is respawn times.
The meter has to be suspended if you die. Except then AFKers would probably commit suicide after getting the meter green and not respawn.
But Im sure their could be ideas to deal with that.
This should be balanced with getting kicked off a STF not activating a eSTF cooldown, meaning you can go right back to queuing. This also means that the afker can go back to queuing, but that means 1) he's not really afk and 2) you can just kick him again if he appears in your stf.
If he's really afk, he would lock himself out of an stf on his own, simply because he wouldn't requeue until he comes back.
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You're making a major confusion. You're mixing the AFK issue with the lack of skill of players you don't want to team with. These are two different problems, and these two problems require a different solution. I think the OP was rather close to an acceptable solution for the PVE AFK issue.
Your "get better at it" kick button isn't. It would lead to many abuses and isn't as friendly as a MMo should be. I'm sorry to say that but when you started to play STO, I'm ready to bet anything on the fact that you sucked hard too. You must have been terrible, like any of us.
What is needed to stimulate the players to get better at it is educational "punishment". For instance, if you end the STF with more than two injuries, you get no loot and a pop-up you can't close before 1 minute explaining why and how you can solve that. Or something like inventory requirements to start an elite mission, such as 20 hypos and 20 regens of each. I would say no miniguns/full auto rifles allowed but I guess i'm just dreaming (and the gods know that the guys with that kind of equipment can get on my nerves in STFs, since they won't listen to your advices anyway).
Anyway, don't mix these two issues, because they shouldn't be mixed, since STO is a complex game with very few tutorials and allows to use terrible equipments with the toughest setting. It's a design flaw, not a player one.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
this intreaction meter will not work and i read still heal?
if i heal myself perm or stay near a afk player and heal him i get gren points for what?
to many ways to abuse this think thats why i say only dmg will work.
i can give you millions of examples why all ways wil not work and there is no reson why a dmg based system will not work on to 100%;)
i am wondering why nobody will have a 100% great and fair way to get all the wrong players away from pve mission?
Borg stf optional reward needs to have "unique" items as a random
drops like the anniversary items, chance at getting a combat pet
something completely unique that you can only get as a reward for the optional.
PvP - far as i can tell... there needs to something in place just like Guild wars factions
they have a unique pvp system in pve, that was added because no one like the pvp
system in that game.
and far as afk players go in the event stf missions, need to put everything as a bundle reward at the end of the mission just like the borg stf missions.
Have all of the group missions - PvE, PvP and STF be private by invite only.
If you're doing that, then you're not AFK. Because you are in fact doing something. Might need to discount selfheals however. But anything else as long as it involved targeting someone else and using a power on them means that the person is not AFK, because they have to stay in range of the target.
That kind of system isn't fool proof, but it's better then what we have now, and will require a great deal more work to avoid getting kicked.
Basing it off damage alone is somewhat unfair to people who play support types or healers.
One other point - people who routinely take advantage get remembered. I have a list of players who purposely ditch, bail, or spoil optionals. They simply don't get invited on my STF runs any more, on in cases where I am invited, I let the owner know who they are. If they are allowed to stay, I leave the mission before it starts without too much in the way of grumbling.
We enable the trolls by playing with them. Choose your players and join another channel (elitstf, elitstfpublic) where the quality of the gameplay is significantly better.
#1 - a vote/leave system - ditch the leaver penalty, and instead, institute a vote leave system, wherein players can start a vote to voluntarily leave the instance if they can get a majority vote (3/5) - this way, if at least 3 of the players can recognize that there's some jerk just trying to osmosis mission rewards, they can all vote to leave without suffering the leaver penalty - this is followed by...
#2 - a post/mission vote/contribution system - at the end of a mission (either by leave or by completion or by failure) each player gets a vote pop-up - this includes two votes - one for *positive* feedback, one for negative feedback - each person gets one vote - you can vote for any player in the instance (including yourself) or vote for a sixth "no-one".
**EDIT**I tried to include a crude visual example, but apparently this text editor doesn't keep spacing information.../sigh**
each person gets one positive vote to assign, AND one negative vote to assign - you *can* vote for yourself if you want
the general idea is as follows - if EVERYONE contributes reasonably, everyone puts in one positive vote for themselves, and one negative vote each for "no-one" - everyone walks out with one positive point - everyone's happy
or, and this happens sometimes, one person proves to be really on top of things (good team coordinator with positive attitude, or a sci captain that puts down a key GW that saves the optional, so on and so forth) can get multiple positive votes from other players
now, of course, some people can be jerks and will put in a negative vote for whatever person they didn't seem to like for whatever stupid reason they come up with - but, as the votes will be much like a review system, getting stuck with a coupla jerks will still amount to very little over time
now, if there's ONE or TWO guys that really douche up the whole encounter (like some guy hanging out at the spawn point) EVERYONE puts in a negative vote for that a-hole (except probably the guy himself) - guy walks out at best with 1 positive (from himself) and 4 negs, does it next game, gets it again, and again...so on and so forth - and racks up a massive negative vote pile
now, make a person's fleet action rating (career positive vs negative votes) visible to other players (either at start of mission, or even better, perhaps expand the que system to make individually qued people and their ratings visible) at some point
now, I haven't yet come up with a way to reward the positive/negative vote tally's...but, you could tie a vote kick, or a mission timer penalty, or mission rewards, somehow tied to the positive/negative votes
of course, there's still *some* degree of abuse possible, but by spreading out the abuse over multiple people and multiple occasions, I like to think it'd be minimized
of course, any adjustments made to vote/kick like systems could, I feel, really benefit from a serious overhaul of the stf missions themselves, but that's another post...
James T. Kirk
sorry dont understand exactly what you mean with 10%.
10% dmg from them complete mission?
i will say how it works easyer amd sorry for my bad english but i hope anyone understand what i willl mean.
stf example.
1. first ad a new bar to ea player who joins.
this bar is clean at the begin of the mission to any player and fills up in 5% steps with a color.
the bar shows the percent dmg done in the mission and need exactly 1,4mio dmg point in total to fill up to 100%
if a player have reach 100% it switch to complete green.
ONLY players with have done the min of importend dmg what shows this bar in a stf space mission get the option on for loot in the mission.
the only point to hack/cheat this system is kithomer space a afk player flys to a generator what is undestroable and start autoattak and fill up his bar for free with the 1,4 mio dmg in ~2min then go afk
so its importend that only dmg will be countet on destroyable targets.
for carriers importend pets dmg will not counted that nobody comes o the idea to start pets the attak randomly nonsens an fill up the bar for free.
i have try it out its very easy to reach the 1,4 mio dmg in total for any ship also carrier with only 6 weapons.
this system will have alot of interesting ingame option:
examples:
first of all anyone will try to get the bar full to the end and will have to work in the mission.
anyone see for himself and the complettly team see it perm how good players work on the mission so nobody must waste him time with perm camera scrolling to check if others do there job.
lets say in the team is a player who have afther 5 min still 0% anyone in the team can ask him what is his prob or what is running wrong it is now visible thats the nice think so nobody must flame aginst anyone for unknown reason what happend at moment also sometimes.
if a afkler loot leeecher pug whatever goes first time in and see what happend to him and anyone tell him that leeching end now, he have to work for loot then he will decide next time to waste 15-30 min in a stf for 100% no loot again.
so with that system stfs will work much better anyone see perm his mission performance and the team to.
thats the only real way in my mind do bring the most afk leechers away from stfs.
and lets say a team have done it with 3 players and sucess the mission 2 afk players stay there in the mission so the 3 players get the loot from the afk players to so the 2200 dil from the afk players will be splittet to the 3 players what have done the mission so they get add reward for have afk players in there mission.
a nice think for me with this system will be:
it happend to me many times i go into kithomer space afther cube is dead nobody will go protect vortex coz he mean he is a fast structure destroyer so.... chaos and optional fails coz wrong player protect vortex.
with my system afther cube is dead any player reach any % lets say player 1+2 20% player 3 10% and player 4+5 5% ea so automaticly player 4+5 can fly to vortex for protect it they deal low dmg so no good option to send them for fast structure destroying, so optional will have a high sucess chance. xD
and this system can be added into ground missions to only the total dmg have to been changed.
so lets say 40k dmg for a ground mission what is also very easy to reach and.....^^
What I propose is a simple method of determining an AFK player - it would work like this:
Simple yes/no function: if he does not damage but heals, he's a player (+0). If he does damage, but doesn't heal, he's still a player (+0). If he doesn't do either - he's AFK (+2).
The 10% level is arbitrary on my part, but given some roles in STF's - baiting spheres for example and drawing them away - it is inconceivable that a fully functional player might achieve a very low score on either heals or damage. Even in those conditions it would still be seen as a active player. To achieve the low 10% - you literally have to do nothing.
Admiral Thrax
This is the best idea i've seen here so far.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Seconded. Good idea.
I also like the no-grouping-with-people-on-ignore-list suggestion, too.
Actually I think it would be possible for someone active to do less than 10% of the group's damage / healing in an STF.
If you're on KA and spend most of your time probe bashing (which is required to complete the mission, don't forget) and miss out on most of the big, fat targets with six and seven figure HP totals, I would think it very possible that you'd end up below 10% even though you've been active and played just fine. And you wouldn't do any healing in that role, either. Anyone combat parsed a KA recently, who could shed some light on what numbers probe guardians get?
Also, if you put a mediocre player in into a group with 4 good ones, they could just not keep up. I'm sure 'l2p' will be trotted out as a response there, but I don't think a system that denies players who are trying their reward will get them to up their game so much as it will get them to stop doing group missions, and then leave the game. Which is totally what STO needs right now.
It's hard to find a number that's both low enough for people who active to always get it and not so low that someone can get it with about 2 minutes of effort.
not all players have unlimited gametime, lets say i run for optional only like alot others i see it will fail vote leave i do it perm, so alot players will never see the end of the mission and not every player have the time to go into 20 stf only to finishing one.
spezialy newbies not interested on the optional
only on the mainpart is importend to get the tech......
they will never see it.;)
not all players have unlimited game time - given - I only get to play 2-3 hours a night, and I spend an annoying portion of that doing the tour, or trying to farm some dilithium for that stupid tribble mission I rather shortsightedly set my fleet on...
#2 - imagine you're trying for the optional, but like the members on your team, you see you won't get it - response, I've never understood the folks that bail when they don't get the optional - I really don't - I get that they want to maximize their time/reward, but, there are still reasonable rewards for mission completion. If your cost/benefit for running stf's and fleet missions is to only do them if you can get maximum reward, it's time to stop pugging (which is what the vote to leave system is mostly in place for) and start running with pre-mades - expecting pugs to pick up optional every time seems...unreasonable
still, even given only settling for getting the optional, the vote to leave system will actually do you far better than any vote to kick system I can imagine
in this way, you lose less time - period - without a "leaver penalty" if you see that you can't complete the optional that you have your heart set on, you vote to leave - if you can convince the other people in your mission to leave with you, you can restart another mission without any loss of time
now, if you *can't* convince everyone to leave because *they* aren't convinced that they HAVE to lose the optional, or they don't care if they lose the optional, and you decide to leave, then yes, you'll take the leaver penalty, and quite possibly run the risk of getting several negative votes (i haven't actually addressed what would happen to the voting system if someone bails on the instance...that's a good question) but I don't currently have an answer that accommodates both people who want to play STF's successfully, and people who ONLY consider making the optional successful
in some ways, I think it might be better to re-divide the stf's into normal (with weaker borg and NO optional objective) Advanced (with stronger Borg and optional) and elite (make optional objective and rewards MANDATORY for mission completion) - maybe that would satisfy the folks that demand optional completion and nothing less - I dunno
so yes, if I understood your post correctly, you're right, the folks that won't play STF unless they're confident they can make the optional WILL probably get screwed somewhat - again, I think a better solution for that particular problem revolves not around the vote to leave system, but around the reward/design system in the STF's themselves (and the fleet missions, which this could also work for)
James T. Kirk
Been there, parsed that. Even on probes exclusively, you'll end up doing at least 15% of the total. Again though the 10% idea is arbitrary. It could be adjusted for a base that reflects a better percentage. Heck we could even add a random number calculation so you couldn't predict the exact number to get around the AFK ranking (10.3, 10.5 etc)
Just a thought
Admiral Thrax
Alternatively, AFKing can be identified by tracking time-in-Red Alert status. Either a fixed percentage of time spent in a map you'd have to match (though that could cause trouble with PvE groups that take their time explaining tactics, or waiting for ensign Joe to come back from doing battle with the porcelain dragon), or be within a certain range of the average time-in-Red Alert for all your team members for that session. Of course this one leaves the option for the player in question to just Leroy Jenkins into the nearest mob of enemies and kill himself, while TRIBBLE things up further for his teammates.
So then there's damage-dealt to death ratio to cover that last one. Maybe use all of the above. Set off any of those alarm bells, and you leave empty handed.
Those are all generic solutions, though. Some events could do with more tailor-made solutions. PvP probably could stand to reward based on performance. (Needs to track healing of others as rating higher than healing oneself, to keep science ships in the game. Currently the system makes no distinction, and all too often cruisers dominate both categories.)
Some of the fleet events could do with a scoreboard as well. The most draconian option would replace individual rewards with a team reward, that's portioned at the end based on contribution. Won't work for every map, but for instance the starbase incursion map it could work for. Though admittedly, it's already pretty hard to get people to stick to and defend their chosen/assigned 'zones', that'd probably not get any easier with additional pressure to score kills.
I don't know... I've thusfar always been against vote-kicking given the potential of abuse. Then again, we see far more idlers now than I imagine we'd ever see abuse of vote-kicks. And the worst damage can probably be avoided by having a vote-kick point of no return - after ten minutes on a map together, no one's kicking anyone, so learn to size each other up quickly.
Main reason I think that will work over all the other ideas, is because there's really no way to abuse/get around it.
Vote to kick, as with any MMO I have every played (which is a lot), there's always a high percentage of people who will abuse it.
The Damage/Heal Percentage Idea, while a nice thought, fails to take into account that some people might not hit that hard because they've never learned the proper setup for their ships.
So in the long run they'll always get screwed because the System won't be able to distinguish a Player with a bad setup and a Player who just isn't trying.
Then you have the Movement Idea, where if someone doesn't move for a certain amount of time, they get penalized or whatever. Lets face it, HORRIBLE idea, because all a person has to do is make a Macro or whatever that allows their ship to continually move, with or without actually engaging in combat.
They're all good idea's, on "paper" but when you think long and hard, you'll start to realize that there are ways to get around and/or abuse these idea's.
So, to get back to my original idea: Just make it so you can't be Queue'd with people on your ignore list.
i hate from my side no efffektiv players more then afk players so it end vor me with a insane list.
you can put anyone what you not like into the list thats true but how many times you will come into the list from others .
you put anyone in a list i put others in the list another puts again others in the list the result will be never more will a stf start, and if you think about that it logical.
so again i have sayid my idea is 100% fair to all players in a mission and rewards only aktiv players and thats the only way.;)
Personally I do understand the issues with people idling, but in all honisty their are much more important things to direct your attention to and complain about then things like people afk'ing.
Perhaps if you people weren't pampered so much you would do something other then complain about pathetic issues.
This will hopefully give more incentive for players to play the mission to get the most out of it.
I also like the premise for the points system that was posted, but I think needs a few adjustments
Each player that does a stf can at the end (win or lose) allocate one point for the player they thought most deserving of it (not themselves)
Failing the optional/stf completly will also give players the option to give a negative point to a player if they feel that they were negligent in the STF (AFK, not listening to tactics/advice and purposely sabotaging the STF etc)
For all players gaining the Optional Objective the system would automatically grant each player 2 points
This would then give players an established rank/score that other players can see when creating teams/private matches so that you know in advance whether the player you have teamed up with before hand is likely to afk/sabotage or is a decent player who will contribute
Also this score could be used for pug matches, people with negative scores will be pugged with other players with negative scores, this will mean if they wish to AFK they are likely to join a game with other AFKers and fail very quickly, and will force players to actually play the missions to raise their score otherwise be potentially locked out of pug stfs (could take a lot longer forming a pug team of players with negative points)
Examples
STF Pug with 5 players; 1 AFKs for whole match optional fails but team manage to complete the mission. 4 players would be able to give a negative point to the AFKer and one point to a member of the team they think most deserving
STF Pug with 5 players; Optional objective completed, all players get 2 points automatically and potentially extra points from team mates if they decide to award you extra
STF premade team; Scores are displayed in private match window before match so members can decide if they wish to play with any members with a negative score.
Players with negative points would either have to try and risk pugging with other negative point players and try for optionals to raise their score, or to ask their fleets/friends to run in premade teams to actually play and contribute to raise their score so they can Pug more easily if that is their preferred choice of play.
I think this method would encourage more players to join in and actually play is STFs. There would be less AFKers for most STFs as they would quickly be be down voted by other players to negative points so that they could not pug queue with players with positive scores, as such these players would be stuck with other AFkers and never get the Dilithium reward, or would have to actively play with fleets/friends and raise their score, and I doubt many fleets would look too kindly on a fleet member AFKing in a fleet STF
The performance metric is the method to determine afk, the 10% system for damage/heals should be fine. If the player reaches +2 then the 2nd part of the system kicks in.
The team vote option should pop up only after a player is eligible by falling far behind in damage and heals. 3/4 votes kicks the player. This prevents honest people from being griefed. The vote option shouldn't be in your face, possibly an indicator comes up on the team menu showing it.
It is possible in non-stfs that some players will acceptably fall behind in performances and maybe shouldn't be kicked. I did a random PUG alone with fleet alert, 4 players with the highest level of 11 joined me, what luck... they fought but obviously couldn't do anything. They shouldn't have been allowed in that fight in the first place, but its not really their fault, should they get auto kicked? No, they tried. I parsed that fight, I did more than 95% of all damage and healing, they'd all have been eligible for kicking or been kicked had only one metric been put in. How do you account for level ranges in non-stfs?
What if you PUG incursion, get four totally clueless players. You go after all the saboteurs and eliminate your area's, the other players are running around and shooting turrets and useless npcs, no more saboteurs respawn in the area you patrol because of this. You fall behind? Do you get kicked? Chances are the clueless people are clueless and don't even get it. PUG incursion enough and it will happen.
There must be penalties for afking. People will still try it, they will still grief, only kicking them isn't acceptable. At the same time people do have issues in real life, something happens and you have to run, the door bell rings, a bad phone call, so some allowances must be made. Once you go over your limit then that is it, major penalties must be given out, none of this graduated TRIBBLE, the bottom end never really hurts griefers. If a person is constantly being pulled away then they need to stop playing with others, their burden shouldn't be everyone else's.
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AFK player:rolleyes:
Happened again to me recently during The Cure Found Elite (Space)... this guy just sat at the respawn point for the whole thing. There should be a way of just turning the guns on him/her and blowing them up... it may not win me the mission per se but somehow I think it would be all the more satisfying.
1) Mission requirements cannot be completed while the player earns a match AFK flag, so AFK'ing in a PVP match will NOT fulfill PVP daily mission requirements, etc...
2) Players need only meet 5% (arbitrary number, can be changed later) of total damage or total healing -- only one of these roles needs to be met to be an active participant.
3) For objective-driven maps, players who personally complete a mission-objective are awarded completion points for each objective met. Those with objective completion points are granted AFK-flagging immunity for a fixed time frame, even if they have zero damage or healing numbers.
4) Only actual damage dealt or damage healed will count towards the above metrics, so transferring shield strength to already-max shields will not count towards actual healing, nor will hazard emitters on a 100% hull, etc...
5) individual NPC kills will count as extra damage dealt for purposes of measuring participation. This solves the problem of probe duty resulting in lower DPS ratings.
6) average damage and healing numbers will be constantly compiled for all Elite STF's. Those players who far exceed normal performance numbers are given extra rewards and an accolade.
7) Participation metrics are not enforced until at least 2 minutes into the game (arbitrary time frame, can be updated later) -- after that, people who are still AFK-flagged will auto-pass on all loot while they are still flagged AFK.
8) Those who AFK over 25%+ (arbitrary number, adjustable later) of the match are denied all loot.
Please feel free to add to this list. What we are doing is compiling a list of rules that will be used to build a "participation" identifier. This list will need input from active players in order to prevent falsely flagging anyone as an AFK'er.
Score-base it in tiers even. I know that has been suggested, but lets keep it simple.
That would require a total rework of the score system for PvP, Fleet Actions, STF's and all other team based missions.
You have my vote.
Yes, keeping metrics tier-based is a must, since there is no way T1 ships will even compare to the numbers outputted by their T5 or fleet counterparts.
The above system that I mentioned does use 3 different scores to measure player participation (damage dealt, damage healed, and mission objectives completed). They could be added together to form a single score, but only beta testing can determine if such a system will work.