The way i see it, the real problem in the game is the LEAVER PENALTY. Maybe it once served a purpose but nowadays with the automatic queues, i see no good reason for having it.
If any player decide to leave at any moment, only consequence is that another player in the queue will come in as a replacement. I see nothing wrong with that and the game go on.
Now, if the Leaver Penalty was completely removed, any player that were unsatisfied with their game experience ( say because of an AFKER, a noob or a rude moron ) could simply warp out and rejoin the queue at their leisure.
It is a so simple solution, i don't understand what Cryptic think they are gaining with the Leaver Penalty. It serves NO purpose. As long as replacements can join, there are no reason to penalize anyone who decide to quit for x reason.
We already have a spam report silence feature that is being abused and look at the stink in the forums being raised about that. A vote kick system will get abused, not might, will, some group of petty minded people, and we have plenty of those, will make a game of kicking players before an STF is completed just for laughs, we will have annoying Elite snobs kicking people for not meeting their standards, and the list of potential abusers goes on and on.
An adjustment to the scoring mechanic in the game is all that is needed, if you do no damage or do no healing of other players in an entire STF sequence you get no reward at all.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Cue the gold farmers with their transparent <this will lead to NEW ABUSES!> schtick.
what? by definition, if you add a feature where people can vote to kick people out it WILL be abused. there is no doubt about that. just like the chatban feature is abused. there is an idiom in game development: if it can be abused it will be abused
I AM BEGGING the developers to add a vote to kick... if someone is AFK and freeloading omega and romulan marks it is only fair that the other 4 team members can kick them.
'fair' is irrelevant. it would be abused. if you want to talk about fair you had best explain why its fair that others will be have their own gameplay disrupted by those that will abuse it
I might have a solution to this issue. It's pissed me off too much recently. If you are out of range of the majority of the squad. you get kicked automatically.
not practical, especially with the rubber banding and kickback issues that are common when the connection gets iffy. it also essentially autokicks anyone who dies
If the majority of the team decides to kick a player just to grief him then they would do him a favor because the team would be so bad, it would be pointless to run a STF with them.
circular logic. you're stating you are encouraging such abuse
the fact is, players voting for any action to be taken against another is going to be abused
I think you are applying circular logic here yourself.
Sure people can abuse this and there are probably some not so nice people with a grudge against tactical captains in cruisers and trying to vote-kick them, but the abuse cases from this side are less likely then the ongoing afk-abuse we have right now.
If one group decides to vote-kick a player for example they could be locked in with 4 players, with no replacement which would makes it harder for everyone and ensure the option is only used in extreme cases.
At the same time saying no to any change because there is a chance that it might get abused and ignoring all the abuse that is already going on is indeed a faulty logic.
Most effective method would be to have the game itself punish afkers. I played City of Heroes and their Incarnate Raids had a mechanism where if not enough useful activity is done (damaging npcs, healing allies), then they get the consolation prize. Just damaging the gateway in ISE would not be useful activity since its just one target. Sucks if your game crashed or disconnected, but worth the cost of reducing afkers. So instead of getting 60+ Omega Marks, then they would get 5. I doubt many afkers would afk through 12 or more elite STFs to get the same amount that they would get through one elite STF if they played normally.
Another idea is adding content similar to epohh raising for Omega Marks, Fleet Marks, and future reputation content. The thing is to make worthwhile content unattractive to afkers so they would rather do this content that takes time, but easy to do over rewarding content that requires strategy. Personally, I prefer the first method since it punishes afkers.
You already have a voting system, it is called warping out. And it works 100% of the time when you have an AFK person on your team.
Listen, I know you want your shiny for completing the STF. I know you want to play the STF on that character and you enjoy doing it. I know you don?t want to let your team down and you want to do your part. So, you are willing to work harder to get your shiny and theirs too. It?s okay, really. There is nothing wrong with that. The only part I don?t understand is why you want Cryptic to do something about it. If you complete the mission for the AFK?er then you support their behavior.
If I were Cryptic, then I wouldn?t do anything either.
For me, no way. I refuse to do for another player what they won?t do for themselves. It doesn?t bother me in the least to leave a team in a position where they can?t complete the STF to stop an AFK?er from exploiting me, game or not. If that toon gets time penalty, so what. I switch characters and keep going.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this considering how unpopular this is. But I have to leave you with one question, which of us is doing something to stop it- the one completing the mission for them or the one stopping everyone from completing it?
? to thine own self ?
The problem with that is it doesn't really stop the afk'er. He probably glances at the game every few minutes to see if it's over. Once you leave, it's pretty much over and he can queue up again and not have to worry about the leaver penalty. So at best, you're setting him back a few minutes. If everyone left, every time, that would mostly put an end to afk'ers.
Leaving isn't a big deal in an STF. But if it's a Fleet Action and you're KDF, you may have been waiting a long time for enough people to queue. And if it's pvp, as either faction, you may have waited a long time.
PvP AFK'ing is even more egregious. I queued for 6 PvP matches yesterday. Out of those 6 matches, there were 17 people that were AFK the whole time. In 2 of the ground matches, the entire FED team was AFK. You can't kill what doesn't respawn. So after sitting in the queue for over an hour for each of those matches, leaving a couple minutes into the matches because their whole team is AFK is very frustrating.
We already have a spam report silence feature that is being abused and look at the stink in the forums being raised about that. A vote kick system will get abused, not might, will, some group of petty minded people, and we have plenty of those, will make a game of kicking players before an STF is completed just for laughs, we will have annoying Elite snobs kicking people for not meeting their standards, and the list of potential abusers goes on and on.
An adjustment to the scoring mechanic in the game is all that is needed, if you do no damage or do no healing of other players in an entire STF sequence you get no reward at all.
I played WoW for years. That game has a vote to kick system. I voted to remove hundreds of people that were either AFK or intentionally causing problems (griefing). Never once did I vote to kick someone without a good reason to do it. And in all that time, I was never removed from a group. Not one single time. Is it possible that someone tried to kick me? Sure. But if that happened, there wasn't one single time where the rest of the group agreed to kick me.
So, is it possible that a vote to kick system would enable rampant griefing? I suppose it could. But, from my experience, it doesn't happen in WoW. And if griefers and elitists don't do it there, I find it hard to believe that it would be that big of an issue in STO.
Unless you'd like to suggest that STO has more griefers and elitists than WoW.
Displaying the names of afkers is against Forum Rules and you might get banned for it. However, you could create a google doc with the names of various afkers that you encounter and point people to it that are interested.
Really ?
In a year and three months of playing , I have yet to encounter even 1 person AFKing as has been described in this thread.
An Epidemic ?
If that were the case , one could not even enter and STF or Action without encountering someone AFK, which is plainly not the case. I PUG multiple PVEs a day and have yet to see an AFKer.
And, my opinion only, instituting a Vote to Kick option for something that (at least to me) is not even a problem, is simply asking for griefing. This whole idea is rife with potential for exploiting.
I think it might be important for people to remember two things.
(1) Your experience of the game is not the same as everyone elses. Truly sorry that this particular thing affects people. there are a large number of people who it does not affect.
And to put it in the difficult to hear truth, You (the subjective you) are NOT a special snowflake. Devs and Designers are NOT going to make decisions just to satisfy a small number.
(2) Exagerration does not suddenly make your point more valid. An Epidemic ?
Pardon me while I go laugh out loud for a moment.
Of note, I apply these two things to myself as well.
I realize that my experience of not ever seeing these mystical AFKers , does not mean it doesn't happen.
I freely admit that.
I play multiple PUGS and apart from people not knowing what they are supposed to be doing or doing the complete opposite I don;t think /I've seen a AFKer however I have gone into aFK mode myself on occasion I have twins and if one of my kids start crying or need to be checked on when I'm in a fleet event or STF I have no compulsion on leaving the game. I tend to return within a few minutes but there has been a occasion where that may not be feasible.
Now a vote to kick feature would work as long as everyone agreed and if I got kicked as a result of being AFK and everyone agreed to it then thats fine by me as whats good for everyone else is good enough for me.
However there is abusing a system for example if 3 members of a fleet get a non fleet member that they don't like of the elitists don;t like the ger of a agent a vote to kick can and will be abused.
However the need/greed system is the main problem as well as end of mission rewards. scrap need or greed and keep it as if you kill the enemy you get the reward or bind the reward to someone who is helping (Guldwars does this and worked well in my alliances there)
The main reason for most leechers of AFKERs is because of the need or greed system and if we only work on giving the rewards to someone who is participating or does the kill then this will make many AFKers think twice and do the same everyone who participates gets a reward on completion depending on what they were doing during the match.
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
PvP AFK'ing is even more egregious. I queued for 6 PvP matches yesterday. Out of those 6 matches, there were 17 people that were AFK the whole time. In 2 of the ground matches, the entire FED team was AFK. You can't kill what doesn't respawn. So after sitting in the queue for over an hour for each of those matches, leaving a couple minutes into the matches because their whole team is AFK is very frustrating.
The game should auto-respawn players in PvP, so you can kill them. Well, in Arena at least. You can win C&H just fine with nothing to shoot.
4 days in a row so far I have seen AFKer's and it has happened in Elite Missions and especially in the Romulan Mine Trap a lot causing sectors being overrun.
A kick voting would solve the afk problem but it would cause other problems because I know it would be abused and if it is abused even 1% of the time that is 1% of the time to many.
The best thing to do is change the reward system. Only people that take part in the death and destruction of something should have a chance to get the loot from a drop.
If someone goes 3 min at anytime without the game detecting activity from a person using the mouse,keyboard,joystick or whatever their will be a warning and 1 min later if still no activity the game automatically disqualifies the person from getting any and all rewards from the mission.
Something like that should help keep people from afk'ing missions and no chance for player abuse.
AFK/Leeching in Elite STF's is becoming worse - and it is the same people/fleets that I am noticing time and time again. Sitting at the spawn point cloaked so that even if you pull aggro towards them they don't get hit. However for all my fellow sufferers I had an revelation last night! - the "Cloakers" think they are quite smart.....no damage/collect reward but if you park just under them when the cube/mob attacks you when you blow up so do they.
I for one dont mind being stuck in Respawn hell as long as I take those delightful AFK/Leechers with me :D
Currently there is no mechanism in place to deter people from accepting a PvE mission and then going AFK to sponge the rewards.
Why should anyone be actively engaged for 10-20 minutes when they can instead tab out, surf the web, and rely on their teammates to carry them through to victory?
Going AFK is also becoming more popular. I encounter an AFK person every 4-5 missions, both space and ground. The 20-man missions appear to be favorites, presumably because they think that their inactivity will go unnoticed.
I am asking the developers to please implement some form of the following:
1) an auto-kick from the mission if they are AFK for X amount of time.
2) a vote-kick mechanism that allows the team to boot inactive members.
.
I agree. I vote for!
I ran many mine trap and there was an afker. The player stay there from start to the end. We did everything with 4 players. It's not fair. 4 players do their best to win, Why the fifth the such afker would ger reward?!
I really think it's time to do something against this bad behaviour! While captain do their best in fleet action, some admiral do afk and get reward at the end.
Cryptic devs, please, do not let bad people ruin the game
Displaying the names of afkers is against Forum Rules and you might get banned for it. However, you could create a google doc with the names of various afkers that you encounter and point people to it that are interested.
If you make one, I'll donate; I have a folio of several names from fleets that should know better (one of which are named after a type of unhappy bear). Make the doc and I'll add to it.
Why make it a vote kick? The chat ban is a similar idea and already being abused. No reason to think vote kick wouldn't be. How about a proportional reward system instead? You do more to support the team then you get more. You do nothing then you get nothing. And exclude the AFK from the Optional as well. Already scoring some missions to determine who is 1st. Shouldn't be too hard to expand on this.
I agree here on proportional rewards, but not just on what people do. Some PVE games go on longer than others, and having these sometimes much longer (compare Starbase 24 to the Klingon Scout force for instance) net you the same amount of dilithium is insane. But my issue with the lack of scaling the rewards based of average time per game is irrelevant in this case. I say they should make note of the top five people in a PVE and (unless there's only five people allowed) give each of these people a proportionally larger amount of dilithium (maybe something like 10-20% for first for example) which would encourage people to actually take part if it means more dilithium to use to prepare for their next rank. I've come in first, second, or third quite a lot, especially 2-3 levels before my next rank and every time I'm left wishing that performance would have earned me more dilithium to upgrade my weapons, shields, and other things. So in this case giving people who are more active or do better in PVEs more dilithium would hopefully make it more worthwhile to actually play instead of going AFK to net easy rewards...... Also, in the Starbase 24 I've noticed that one of the groups of Klingon ships has a tendency to wander over to the spawn area maybe 50-60% of the time, making it extremely hazardous to actually respawn since when you do your shields and weapons subsystems start underpowered, which isn't good when you have a Klingon battlegroup firing on you
A kick voting would solve the afk problem but it would cause other problems because I know it would be abused and if it is abused even 1% of the time that is 1% of the time to many.
The best thing to do is change the reward system. Only people that take part in the death and destruction of something should have a chance to get the loot from a drop.
If someone goes 3 min at anytime without the game detecting activity from a person using the mouse,keyboard,joystick or whatever their will be a warning and 1 min later if still no activity the game automatically disqualifies the person from getting any and all rewards from the mission.
Something like that should help keep people from afk'ing missions and no chance for player abuse.
Slow computers can take 2-4 minutes to reload the map when you respawn or even spawn depending on what's going on. (how many friendly ships are in the area, how many hostile ships, large amounts of weapons fire, a sudden and very large patch at the beginning of the match, etc) The kind of strict time limit enforced by denial of rewards and potentially being kicked from the match could also punish people for being unlucky enough to have their comps slow down. I know this will happen, and in your own words if it happens even 1% of the time that 1% is far too frequent.
It's forcing me to be more careful about my zen purchases. I almost bought the Odyssey pack but blew a ton of zen on the duty officer packs like an idiot. Now that I've finally gotten enough dilithium to convert to the zen to purchase that pack, I'm finding myself scrutinizing that purchase, even though it seems like it's one of the best ships in the game. So far, I've purchased 5 ships, 22 character slots, a bunch of duty officer packs, and extra duty officer slots for my main.
I'm currently saving up dilithium to trade so I have enough ZEN for the Multi-Vector Escort (that's what it's called right?) even though I'm not a rear admiral yet. Problem is that land maps tend to be glitchy for me (usually problems where there's areas that don't load so either I appear to fall through the ground or I keep bumping into what to me appears to be "invisible" walls since they haven't loaded yet) and therefore I can't play any land based PVEs. Unfortunately there's only three space PVEs available to me right now that provide dilithium and one of them seems highly unpopular or just doesn't fill up very quickly, which is why I say there should be different amounts of dilithium given out for taking part in PVEs that take a longer time to complete.
Something like this would be deleted from the forums if you filled it out and posted it. Don't think it's allowed to call out players or fleets on these forums (Sadly). lol
small problem with the vote kicking system, in the heat of battle, things get so busy, that AFK'ers can be missed, or players are so busy fighting they cant afford to vote for a kick cause they are trying to keep the shields up while hitting every function they can to do more damage. the players getting stuck in wont be able to vote because they are too overrun
The AFK people are getting cute. I saw this one afker had a random message it typed into team that was timed near the end of mine trap was funny once 3 of them who were using this afk mode they were using all at same time said "oh sorry my kid fell down the stairs and I have to go to the ER". I only have come across one person besides afkers that actually die in mine trap its so easy they might as well have been afk lol.
I am sure this has come up hundreds of times in hundreds of STF rage threads. I am merely looking for the latest on the topic as the forum search function is .... limited. This will be the first mmo in my experience that has no vote ... or leader kick option. Granted, in a random cue system tough to implement. Also, inb4 join a fleet as that puts the impetus on the player when it should be a part of game design. Also, inb4 op can't inb4.
Something people need to be willing to do is keep an eye out for AFKers/leechers early on, and if they dont help when asked, DO NOT keep doing the stf with 4 people just to help the leecher get his free loot. Yes, you have to be willing to let the STF fail and give up your loot, but if everyone does this it will discourage leechers.
In CSE if there is AFKer, rather then work harder by doing STF with 4 people and give the leecher his free loot, I will blow a cube or let BOP through and let Kang die so STF is ended and I can leave without penalty. In KASE I will just let probes through. In ISE just sit there/go AFK for about 15 min and leave without penalty, tell others in the group they need to do this to because if not they will have to 3 man it. Everyone needs to do this instead of helping leechers. I never have and never will pass a pug STF with a leecher in the group.
Only two STFs will fail, so that strategy is no good. You have to exit the rest and get the penalty, which is also no good.
Also, there are legitimate times people might be AFK. Not everybody is a griefer.
The best solution is to look to see if you have done an appropriate amount of damage and healing (say, at least 1/12th the combined total). If you have not and at least three people mark you as a non-contributor, then you get a token placed on your account. After you get enough tokens, you get a 24 hour ban from STFs. If you continue to collect tokens, the ban length increases (48 hours the next time, then 72, et cetera).
Comments
If any player decide to leave at any moment, only consequence is that another player in the queue will come in as a replacement. I see nothing wrong with that and the game go on.
Now, if the Leaver Penalty was completely removed, any player that were unsatisfied with their game experience ( say because of an AFKER, a noob or a rude moron ) could simply warp out and rejoin the queue at their leisure.
It is a so simple solution, i don't understand what Cryptic think they are gaining with the Leaver Penalty. It serves NO purpose. As long as replacements can join, there are no reason to penalize anyone who decide to quit for x reason.
An adjustment to the scoring mechanic in the game is all that is needed, if you do no damage or do no healing of other players in an entire STF sequence you get no reward at all.
what? by definition, if you add a feature where people can vote to kick people out it WILL be abused. there is no doubt about that. just like the chatban feature is abused. there is an idiom in game development: if it can be abused it will be abused
'fair' is irrelevant. it would be abused. if you want to talk about fair you had best explain why its fair that others will be have their own gameplay disrupted by those that will abuse it
not practical, especially with the rubber banding and kickback issues that are common when the connection gets iffy. it also essentially autokicks anyone who dies
circular logic. you're stating you are encouraging such abuse
the fact is, players voting for any action to be taken against another is going to be abused
I think you are applying circular logic here yourself.
Sure people can abuse this and there are probably some not so nice people with a grudge against tactical captains in cruisers and trying to vote-kick them, but the abuse cases from this side are less likely then the ongoing afk-abuse we have right now.
If one group decides to vote-kick a player for example they could be locked in with 4 players, with no replacement which would makes it harder for everyone and ensure the option is only used in extreme cases.
At the same time saying no to any change because there is a chance that it might get abused and ignoring all the abuse that is already going on is indeed a faulty logic.
Another idea is adding content similar to epohh raising for Omega Marks, Fleet Marks, and future reputation content. The thing is to make worthwhile content unattractive to afkers so they would rather do this content that takes time, but easy to do over rewarding content that requires strategy. Personally, I prefer the first method since it punishes afkers.
The problem with that is it doesn't really stop the afk'er. He probably glances at the game every few minutes to see if it's over. Once you leave, it's pretty much over and he can queue up again and not have to worry about the leaver penalty. So at best, you're setting him back a few minutes. If everyone left, every time, that would mostly put an end to afk'ers.
Leaving isn't a big deal in an STF. But if it's a Fleet Action and you're KDF, you may have been waiting a long time for enough people to queue. And if it's pvp, as either faction, you may have waited a long time.
PvP AFK'ing is even more egregious. I queued for 6 PvP matches yesterday. Out of those 6 matches, there were 17 people that were AFK the whole time. In 2 of the ground matches, the entire FED team was AFK. You can't kill what doesn't respawn. So after sitting in the queue for over an hour for each of those matches, leaving a couple minutes into the matches because their whole team is AFK is very frustrating.
I played WoW for years. That game has a vote to kick system. I voted to remove hundreds of people that were either AFK or intentionally causing problems (griefing). Never once did I vote to kick someone without a good reason to do it. And in all that time, I was never removed from a group. Not one single time. Is it possible that someone tried to kick me? Sure. But if that happened, there wasn't one single time where the rest of the group agreed to kick me.
So, is it possible that a vote to kick system would enable rampant griefing? I suppose it could. But, from my experience, it doesn't happen in WoW. And if griefers and elitists don't do it there, I find it hard to believe that it would be that big of an issue in STO.
Unless you'd like to suggest that STO has more griefers and elitists than WoW.
Dan@dempsey42532
Really ?
In a year and three months of playing , I have yet to encounter even 1 person AFKing as has been described in this thread.
An Epidemic ?
If that were the case , one could not even enter and STF or Action without encountering someone AFK, which is plainly not the case. I PUG multiple PVEs a day and have yet to see an AFKer.
And, my opinion only, instituting a Vote to Kick option for something that (at least to me) is not even a problem, is simply asking for griefing. This whole idea is rife with potential for exploiting.
I think it might be important for people to remember two things.
(1) Your experience of the game is not the same as everyone elses. Truly sorry that this particular thing affects people. there are a large number of people who it does not affect.
And to put it in the difficult to hear truth, You (the subjective you) are NOT a special snowflake. Devs and Designers are NOT going to make decisions just to satisfy a small number.
(2) Exagerration does not suddenly make your point more valid. An Epidemic ?
Pardon me while I go laugh out loud for a moment.
Of note, I apply these two things to myself as well.
I realize that my experience of not ever seeing these mystical AFKers , does not mean it doesn't happen.
I freely admit that.
Now a vote to kick feature would work as long as everyone agreed and if I got kicked as a result of being AFK and everyone agreed to it then thats fine by me as whats good for everyone else is good enough for me.
However there is abusing a system for example if 3 members of a fleet get a non fleet member that they don't like of the elitists don;t like the ger of a agent a vote to kick can and will be abused.
However the need/greed system is the main problem as well as end of mission rewards. scrap need or greed and keep it as if you kill the enemy you get the reward or bind the reward to someone who is helping (Guldwars does this and worked well in my alliances there)
The main reason for most leechers of AFKERs is because of the need or greed system and if we only work on giving the rewards to someone who is participating or does the kill then this will make many AFKers think twice and do the same everyone who participates gets a reward on completion depending on what they were doing during the match.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The best thing to do is change the reward system. Only people that take part in the death and destruction of something should have a chance to get the loot from a drop.
If someone goes 3 min at anytime without the game detecting activity from a person using the mouse,keyboard,joystick or whatever their will be a warning and 1 min later if still no activity the game automatically disqualifies the person from getting any and all rewards from the mission.
Something like that should help keep people from afk'ing missions and no chance for player abuse.
I for one dont mind being stuck in Respawn hell as long as I take those delightful AFK/Leechers with me
O'NEiLL@oneil9229
Every game he enters he just sits at the spawn point and does not move, i have had the misfortune to get put with him a few times now.
You need to remove this post, or at least edit it. Posting up exact names and character handles is a violation of PWE forum rules and EULA.
I agree. I vote for!
I ran many mine trap and there was an afker. The player stay there from start to the end. We did everything with 4 players. It's not fair. 4 players do their best to win, Why the fifth the such afker would ger reward?!
I really think it's time to do something against this bad behaviour! While captain do their best in fleet action, some admiral do afk and get reward at the end.
Cryptic devs, please, do not let bad people ruin the game
If you make one, I'll donate; I have a folio of several names from fleets that should know better (one of which are named after a type of unhappy bear). Make the doc and I'll add to it.
I agree here on proportional rewards, but not just on what people do. Some PVE games go on longer than others, and having these sometimes much longer (compare Starbase 24 to the Klingon Scout force for instance) net you the same amount of dilithium is insane. But my issue with the lack of scaling the rewards based of average time per game is irrelevant in this case. I say they should make note of the top five people in a PVE and (unless there's only five people allowed) give each of these people a proportionally larger amount of dilithium (maybe something like 10-20% for first for example) which would encourage people to actually take part if it means more dilithium to use to prepare for their next rank. I've come in first, second, or third quite a lot, especially 2-3 levels before my next rank and every time I'm left wishing that performance would have earned me more dilithium to upgrade my weapons, shields, and other things. So in this case giving people who are more active or do better in PVEs more dilithium would hopefully make it more worthwhile to actually play instead of going AFK to net easy rewards...... Also, in the Starbase 24 I've noticed that one of the groups of Klingon ships has a tendency to wander over to the spawn area maybe 50-60% of the time, making it extremely hazardous to actually respawn since when you do your shields and weapons subsystems start underpowered, which isn't good when you have a Klingon battlegroup firing on you
Slow computers can take 2-4 minutes to reload the map when you respawn or even spawn depending on what's going on. (how many friendly ships are in the area, how many hostile ships, large amounts of weapons fire, a sudden and very large patch at the beginning of the match, etc) The kind of strict time limit enforced by denial of rewards and potentially being kicked from the match could also punish people for being unlucky enough to have their comps slow down. I know this will happen, and in your own words if it happens even 1% of the time that 1% is far too frequent.
I'm sure it's been said...but they are taking the place of someone who would actually participate.
Being able to kick these players or making it so they do not receive any reward would prevent them from doing this in the future.
This way...only people who plan to actually participate will queue up.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'm currently saving up dilithium to trade so I have enough ZEN for the Multi-Vector Escort (that's what it's called right?) even though I'm not a rear admiral yet. Problem is that land maps tend to be glitchy for me (usually problems where there's areas that don't load so either I appear to fall through the ground or I keep bumping into what to me appears to be "invisible" walls since they haven't loaded yet) and therefore I can't play any land based PVEs. Unfortunately there's only three space PVEs available to me right now that provide dilithium and one of them seems highly unpopular or just doesn't fill up very quickly, which is why I say there should be different amounts of dilithium given out for taking part in PVEs that take a longer time to complete.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AvXd9AWO-VMmdGNEaWNtcXA5YXNGaTBBaV9Zb1NOV2c&output=html
Something like this would be deleted from the forums if you filled it out and posted it. Don't think it's allowed to call out players or fleets on these forums (Sadly). lol
Only two STFs will fail, so that strategy is no good. You have to exit the rest and get the penalty, which is also no good.
Also, there are legitimate times people might be AFK. Not everybody is a griefer.
The best solution is to look to see if you have done an appropriate amount of damage and healing (say, at least 1/12th the combined total). If you have not and at least three people mark you as a non-contributor, then you get a token placed on your account. After you get enough tokens, you get a 24 hour ban from STFs. If you continue to collect tokens, the ban length increases (48 hours the next time, then 72, et cetera).