You are exactly why I don't bother learning how to do STFs. Why try, when my first mistake is going to be greeted by elitists like yourself quitting, leaving me to fend for myself with no one to help me learn? Easier not to play them at all. Sure, that means one day you'll find yourself running out of people to team with, but that seems to be what you're after, so I guess that's okay.
Not sure what you are referring to. I am not a native speaker of the English language, so forgive me if my sentiment came off wrong.
Yet you keep using this (in bold) word, after you acknowledge that their play is unintentionally poor.
Should the rest of the group carry the guy who deliberately failed it for the rest of us, so that this guy gets all the cool rewards in the end?
In essence; He screws up, we carry him through, he gets rewarded. If you deliberately cause such issues for the rest of the group, you should get zero rewards.
Using ISE as an example; Person A in group explains the strategy (10% rule for instance), which most of the group agrees upon. Person B decides to ignore strategy and destroy a generator prematurely. Person A asks Person B why he did it, and Person B remains silent. Meanwhile, probes are incoming, Nanite Spheres start to heal transformer, optional failed.
So, why should you be forgiven? Why should you not be kicked from the boards for your ignorance and incompetence regarding the conveyance of ideas using the English language?
The team's options:
1. Complete the STF without optional, and stuck with a guy who won't follow commands
2. Leave STF incurring penalty for all, and no rewards
The game already has a KICK command for team members. Why is this option not enabled for public (auto-grouped) teams?
As was stated earlier, you tacitly agreed to do your best, with the team you get, regardless of the caliber of the team you get.
Apparently, the people who know how to do them properly, only play the elite stf's. You can't learn from the best players, if you don't play with the best players.
So, I'm sitting here with a leaver penalty after a really bad Khitomer Vortex run. No one but me was trying to cover probes, and I did not make it to the gate in time to stop the first probe from the other side. This was after telling the two nitwits on the other side to get their probes in team chat. They either ignored me or could not understand English. As soon as the first probe went through the gate, I quickly disabled the wifi on my computer and went outside to play with the dog. When i came back, I couldn't queue up to try again due to a leaver penalty.
We should be able to bail on bad groups as soon as the optional fails.
There was no way that I was going to sit there and deal with the headache of guarding two sides. I don't care if it can be done by some people with ease. That is irrelevant to me.
So I was faced with the following rational choices:
1. Let the probes through so that the mission fails, thereby putting me on timer for Khitomer Vortex.
2. Bail on the failgroup and get a leaver penalty for ALL stfs.
I had hoped that by cutting the wifi on my computer, I would fool the game into treating it as a simple disconnect but, alas, that did not work. Now that I know that I cannot bail without the leaver penalty, then that leaves #1 as the best choice.
In the future, I will be using option #1 in such a situation. I can use tractor beam repulsors to speed things along, I suppose.
But SERIOUSLY, we should be able to bail on groups as soon as the optional fails.
Thank you for reading.
Simply put, you bailed. You suffer the consequences.
I have had 2 groups in the past 2 days where this has happened. Between 1 and 3 people bail, and I was one of the ones who stuck it out. Guess what I ended up with? 11 Borg Neural's for it. Both times, because I ended up being the one of the people who stuck it out and ended up with the most damage.
Optional's are just that optional.
In KV they do not affect the outcome. You can still finish and get your marks and neural's.
So no, you want to bail, then bail. But understand that YOU will be the one suffering for it, not anyone else.
I have left an ESTF early all of once. And it was HSE, when it was still bugged, and 3/5 of my teammates had already left. There was NO WAY to finish, and NO way for the misison to end of it's own accord. So I took the leaver penalty.
I've been in a handful of ESTFs that failed, mostly when Kang dies. Everything else, you may not get the optional but you can power through and get the marks. Why take an hour penalty and 0 marks, when you can do it in 30-40 min, plus get marks, and then jump right into another one?
I think, mayhaps, the problem here is that people think that being able to do elite STFs, also makes them 1337 and the cloud of entitlement and egomania makes it hard for them to see anything else.
_________________________________________________
::WARNING:: This game is not intended for use as a source of self-esteem.
There was no way that I was going to sit there and deal with the headache of guarding two sides. I don't care if it can be done by some people with ease.
Too lazy to actually work for your marks. Got it. Grow up.
Some people do it deliberately to focus the firepower of the remaining 4 on one gate which goes down within 3 minutes and then the whole team moves on to the second to kill it in 2...
Druhin, if one is too inexperienced to know what to do, the failure is not "deliberate" - deliberate failure implies that one intends to fail.
I'll define 'deliberate' in this post then:
Deliberate: Person willingly sabotages the team effort, by committing actions that directly contradicts, or hinders the progress of the team.
I believe this constitutes 'griefing' ?
Cryptic's standard reply: "Report a person if you suspect them of griefing, and we'll take appropriate action if deemed necessary."
My question: Since the game has a 'Kick' function, why is it not active for auto-teamed groups via the PVE Queues? Would it not cut down on Cryptic's GM workload (if there are any GMs to speak of), if the players themselves could enforce which players are allowed to remain in group? Certainly, you can't kick a player without reason, and not instantly. But using the STFs as an example, as soon as the 'Optional' has failed, or after 5 minutes since start, the feature should become active. And even if a player votes to kick a fellow team member, more than 50% of the votes need to agree (3 out of 4 players, to kick a 5th).
Simply because the devs feel people like the OP would abuse a kick feature.
I did not know, you speak for the devs?
In any case, such a feature could be set up to 'prevent' abuse. Can't kick the same player repeatedly, the same person can't initiate the vote everytime, monitor how often a person initiates a vote across ALL sessions. That sort of thing.
Why have the function in game, if it serves no practical use? So that it looks good, but does nothing? GNDN in STO?
No, the devs speak for the devs and in the past when they've discussed the possibility of a kick feature, they've expressed concern about needing to make such a feature grief-proof.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
I hate probe duty, but then I mostly fly carriers like the recluse, and the pets go wonky, its better handled by someone with straight dps not pet dps.
That being said, no, the amount of griefing that would happen, just no. its like a kick button, of that guys flying a ship type we don't like, kick, or that's a engineer not a sci or tac, kick. Bailing would be the same, what 3 sci and a engineer, no wah, bail.
And unfortunately, there really isn't a fix for this, outside of premade or a channel like elite stf, why, because its pugs.
You que for a random, that's what you get, random. it should be expected, and apparently that's not the expectation. I'm not sure were people lost sight of that fact with various games, as it happens in a lot of games with random ques, but tis random. The good, the bad, the under geared, the new, and the clueless, plus everything in-between, that's what your gunna get. Don't like it, don't que random.
And sure 15 more marks, nice, but the optional are just that, bailing, even if its going to take a bit longer, just gives you leaver pen, which if you weigh it against the time it might have taken to finish, odds are it would have been better to finish in most cases.
this is similer to the mentality that leads people to ignore probes "I don't want to deal with it so I wont" and ive seen that backed up by statements off such. you don't want to deal with pug style play in a pug based automated system, then don't, don't do random.
I would have liked to use such a feature to kick myself from the bad group. That would work for me.
I wonder if the fact that your position has been almost universally panned is having any impact on your thinking.
With a very few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of posters on this thread have characterised your idea as, well lets say, misguided at best.
Some have been rather stronger in their choice of language.
The other point to make is that those who do seem to have sympathy for your position, seem to be the less experienced members of these august fora.
Experience, at least as measured in numbers of posts, overwhelmingly rejects your position as either way too open to abuse or as a failure on your part.
You have rudely characterised those who diagree with you as lacking comprehension.
Respectfully, it seems to me that it is you having difficulty following the counter arguments.
In my opinion, you need to have a think about how you approach the game.
That's the risk you take in joining a pug...but quitting isn't going to help either. Yes it isn't cool that they leave you to do this all on your own...but at what point did you see they didn't care and at what point did you decide to keep caring? For me, when this happens I always just give up caring and finish the main objective because it is better to have finished it and get something then get penalized for nothing.
Deliberate: Person willingly sabotages the team effort, by committing actions that directly contradicts, or hinders the progress of the team.
I believe this constitutes 'griefing' ?
Shifting the goalposts a bit. Previously it was a player's incompetence and ignorance that was the cause of bad play and justification for their expulsion. Now it is intentionally sabotaging the event.
Okay, so how do you know the intentions of the bad player? How do you determine that their intent is malicious and not the result of ignorance or incompetence?
Better yet, how doe the kick feature know that you're not just trying to punish a player who you deem to be ignorant or incompetent?
So, that became my job. Not because anyone told me to, but because if I didn't do it nobody would have done.
Thus, what was supposed to be a leisurely stroll became 30 minutes of so of palm-sweating, occasionally-swearing, button mashing madness.
Flying from side to side, working out how to synergise my boff powers, getting the most out of what I could bring to the table.
I didn't stop them all, but less than 10 got through.
I am just NOT going to do that. A simple cost/benefit analysis shows that it is better to just go AFK and let the mission fail in that situation. You call it exhilarating, but I call it excrutiating. It is not worth the 30 minutes of frustration when you can simply go afk, watch some TV, play with the dog, and then come back and jump into another STF once the mission has failed.
-1 to this idea, optional is exactly that: optional and weak leavers (like the poster) can frustrate other players, finish the mission or dont fly it period end of discussion.
In KASE? I'm able to handle probes solo without any difficulties. We do this all the time during our fleet runs.
That is extremely inefficient. By dividing probe duties between two people, those two people are then able to destroy the probes as well as damage the transformers/cubes between probe arrivals. Leaving probe duty to one person means that person has to either be stationed by the Vortex (out of range of the transformers/cubes) or has to fly back and forth between sides (wasting TIME that could be used to damage the transformers/cubes.
On a sidenote, I despise people who think that probe duty consists of parking outside the range of EVERYTHING but the probes and only firing on the probes.
Probe duty means destroying the probes when there are probes and assisting with destroying transformers/cubes when there are no probes.
Druhin, no one is willingly inexperienced in STFs. That seems, well, contradictory. You'd have to try not to learn anything as you play. Now, that can happen in Cryptic's other offering, Champions Online, where you can level a toon all the way to the level cap in the Smash Alerts alone, and never learn how to equip or play your toon - but you can start playing those as soon as you get out of the Tutorial, while in STO, you can't play in STFs until you've already played quite a lot of the game.
Cabeza, a simple cost/benefit analysis should cause you not to play STO at all. It makes you no money, it takes time - why bother? "Simple cost/benefit analyses" have nothing at all to do with playing a game. And this is indeed a game - if you want to play a game where everyone involved treats it like a job and is always superserious, EvE is over that way. ---->
Meanwhile, a simple application of Wheaton's Law would show that you're the one in violation of it. That's why you're not getting a lot of sympathy in here. We understand your point perfectly - but you refuse to understand the contrary position, that you're ruining the experience for everyone else in the group just because an optional goal was missed. Going back to the example of CO Smash Alerts (which generally have a two-minute time limit), you remind me of the people who quit on the Alerts because the boss isn't down to less than half his health at the one-minute mark, because "it's impossible to win". Then the other three and I stick it out, and hand the bad guy his spandexed butt at the last possible moment, which is lots of fun. Similarly, missing the optional does not mean the overall goal can't be done - I've read enough STF tales in these fora to know that much.
It's inefficient in your opinion. It works for us and we don't have any issues completing all optionals for KASE. And I don't "park" by the gate and wait for probes. I'll help either side with gens/cubes/gates and take probes as needed.
If you're not able to do this on your own, I would say you're not built/specced properly.
So you fly back and forth, wasting TIME. When you are out of combat range of the transformers/cubes you cannot possibly be doing DPS to the transformers/cubes. To fly back and forth between the gates requires that you spend time outside the range of the transformers/cubes, which means that you are wasting time that could have been spent doing damage to the transformers/cubes.
It is not a matter of opinion that it is more efficient to divide probe duty between two people. It is a matter of fact. Properly positioned, two people on probe duty are able to immediately switch from probes to transformers/cubes without any downtime wasted on traveling back and forth.
Comments
You could try doing them on NORMAL, first.
Yet you keep using this (in bold) word, after you acknowledge that their play is unintentionally poor.
So, why should you be forgiven? Why should you not be kicked from the boards for your ignorance and incompetence regarding the conveyance of ideas using the English language?
As was stated earlier, you tacitly agreed to do your best, with the team you get, regardless of the caliber of the team you get.
Apparently, the people who know how to do them properly, only play the elite stf's. You can't learn from the best players, if you don't play with the best players.
The two aren't mutually exclusive in this case.
Why not both?
(Old El Paso etc)
Simply put, you bailed. You suffer the consequences.
I have had 2 groups in the past 2 days where this has happened. Between 1 and 3 people bail, and I was one of the ones who stuck it out. Guess what I ended up with? 11 Borg Neural's for it. Both times, because I ended up being the one of the people who stuck it out and ended up with the most damage.
Optional's are just that optional.
In KV they do not affect the outcome. You can still finish and get your marks and neural's.
So no, you want to bail, then bail. But understand that YOU will be the one suffering for it, not anyone else.
I've been in a handful of ESTFs that failed, mostly when Kang dies. Everything else, you may not get the optional but you can power through and get the marks. Why take an hour penalty and 0 marks, when you can do it in 30-40 min, plus get marks, and then jump right into another one?
I think, mayhaps, the problem here is that people think that being able to do elite STFs, also makes them 1337 and the cloud of entitlement and egomania makes it hard for them to see anything else.
::WARNING:: This game is not intended for use as a source of self-esteem.
Too lazy to actually work for your marks. Got it. Grow up.
So you think that it is appropriate to dump the task of handling all of the probes on ONE player? Got it. Get a clue.
It's not like it's challenging... Dealing with the probes is a cakewalk...
Unless you are clueless of cause.
I'll define 'deliberate' in this post then:
Deliberate: Person willingly sabotages the team effort, by committing actions that directly contradicts, or hinders the progress of the team.
I believe this constitutes 'griefing' ?
Cryptic's standard reply: "Report a person if you suspect them of griefing, and we'll take appropriate action if deemed necessary."
My question: Since the game has a 'Kick' function, why is it not active for auto-teamed groups via the PVE Queues? Would it not cut down on Cryptic's GM workload (if there are any GMs to speak of), if the players themselves could enforce which players are allowed to remain in group? Certainly, you can't kick a player without reason, and not instantly. But using the STFs as an example, as soon as the 'Optional' has failed, or after 5 minutes since start, the feature should become active. And even if a player votes to kick a fellow team member, more than 50% of the votes need to agree (3 out of 4 players, to kick a 5th).
With great power comes great responsibility.
If you're capable of holding back all the probes, then...yup....thats your job.
I did one of those ESTFs a while back and found myself in exactly the same position.
Nobody paying attention to the probes except me.
So, that became my job. Not because anyone told me to, but because if I didn't do it nobody would have done.
Thus, what was supposed to be a leisurely stroll became 30 minutes of so of palm-sweating, occasionally-swearing, button mashing madness.
Flying from side to side, working out how to synergise my boff powers, getting the most out of what I could bring to the table.
I didn't stop them all, but less than 10 got through.
Of course we lost the optional but we (finally) got the objective.
Now I could have followed your path. Whining because.....well, it's not faaaaaaair.
I didn't though.
Instead I had one of the more exhilirating ingame experiences I've encountered in STO.
Not a word of thanks from the other players either, but who cares?
Point is, I was forced to become better than I thought I was.
I was put into a position where it was either get a lot better, damn quick or fail.
I didnt fail.
Bailing is failing.
I would have liked to use such a feature to kick myself from the bad group. That would work for me.
I did not know, you speak for the devs?
In any case, such a feature could be set up to 'prevent' abuse. Can't kick the same player repeatedly, the same person can't initiate the vote everytime, monitor how often a person initiates a vote across ALL sessions. That sort of thing.
Why have the function in game, if it serves no practical use? So that it looks good, but does nothing? GNDN in STO?
... with the leavers penalty of cause...
Bailing is bailing... And you deserve the penalty if you leave.
No, the devs speak for the devs and in the past when they've discussed the possibility of a kick feature, they've expressed concern about needing to make such a feature grief-proof.
That being said, no, the amount of griefing that would happen, just no. its like a kick button, of that guys flying a ship type we don't like, kick, or that's a engineer not a sci or tac, kick. Bailing would be the same, what 3 sci and a engineer, no wah, bail.
And unfortunately, there really isn't a fix for this, outside of premade or a channel like elite stf, why, because its pugs.
You que for a random, that's what you get, random. it should be expected, and apparently that's not the expectation. I'm not sure were people lost sight of that fact with various games, as it happens in a lot of games with random ques, but tis random. The good, the bad, the under geared, the new, and the clueless, plus everything in-between, that's what your gunna get. Don't like it, don't que random.
And sure 15 more marks, nice, but the optional are just that, bailing, even if its going to take a bit longer, just gives you leaver pen, which if you weigh it against the time it might have taken to finish, odds are it would have been better to finish in most cases.
this is similer to the mentality that leads people to ignore probes "I don't want to deal with it so I wont" and ive seen that backed up by statements off such. you don't want to deal with pug style play in a pug based automated system, then don't, don't do random.
I wonder if the fact that your position has been almost universally panned is having any impact on your thinking.
With a very few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of posters on this thread have characterised your idea as, well lets say, misguided at best.
Some have been rather stronger in their choice of language.
The other point to make is that those who do seem to have sympathy for your position, seem to be the less experienced members of these august fora.
Experience, at least as measured in numbers of posts, overwhelmingly rejects your position as either way too open to abuse or as a failure on your part.
You have rudely characterised those who diagree with you as lacking comprehension.
Respectfully, it seems to me that it is you having difficulty following the counter arguments.
In my opinion, you need to have a think about how you approach the game.
Shifting the goalposts a bit. Previously it was a player's incompetence and ignorance that was the cause of bad play and justification for their expulsion. Now it is intentionally sabotaging the event.
Okay, so how do you know the intentions of the bad player? How do you determine that their intent is malicious and not the result of ignorance or incompetence?
Better yet, how doe the kick feature know that you're not just trying to punish a player who you deem to be ignorant or incompetent?
I am just NOT going to do that. A simple cost/benefit analysis shows that it is better to just go AFK and let the mission fail in that situation. You call it exhilarating, but I call it excrutiating. It is not worth the 30 minutes of frustration when you can simply go afk, watch some TV, play with the dog, and then come back and jump into another STF once the mission has failed.
That is extremely inefficient. By dividing probe duties between two people, those two people are then able to destroy the probes as well as damage the transformers/cubes between probe arrivals. Leaving probe duty to one person means that person has to either be stationed by the Vortex (out of range of the transformers/cubes) or has to fly back and forth between sides (wasting TIME that could be used to damage the transformers/cubes.
On a sidenote, I despise people who think that probe duty consists of parking outside the range of EVERYTHING but the probes and only firing on the probes.
Probe duty means destroying the probes when there are probes and assisting with destroying transformers/cubes when there are no probes.
Cabeza, a simple cost/benefit analysis should cause you not to play STO at all. It makes you no money, it takes time - why bother? "Simple cost/benefit analyses" have nothing at all to do with playing a game. And this is indeed a game - if you want to play a game where everyone involved treats it like a job and is always superserious, EvE is over that way. ---->
Meanwhile, a simple application of Wheaton's Law would show that you're the one in violation of it. That's why you're not getting a lot of sympathy in here. We understand your point perfectly - but you refuse to understand the contrary position, that you're ruining the experience for everyone else in the group just because an optional goal was missed. Going back to the example of CO Smash Alerts (which generally have a two-minute time limit), you remind me of the people who quit on the Alerts because the boss isn't down to less than half his health at the one-minute mark, because "it's impossible to win". Then the other three and I stick it out, and hand the bad guy his spandexed butt at the last possible moment, which is lots of fun. Similarly, missing the optional does not mean the overall goal can't be done - I've read enough STF tales in these fora to know that much.
So you fly back and forth, wasting TIME. When you are out of combat range of the transformers/cubes you cannot possibly be doing DPS to the transformers/cubes. To fly back and forth between the gates requires that you spend time outside the range of the transformers/cubes, which means that you are wasting time that could have been spent doing damage to the transformers/cubes.
It is not a matter of opinion that it is more efficient to divide probe duty between two people. It is a matter of fact. Properly positioned, two people on probe duty are able to immediately switch from probes to transformers/cubes without any downtime wasted on traveling back and forth.