In every mmo I played that implemented a kick-option, those concerns arose and they were proven completely wrong in each and every one of them. I'm sure kick-abuse is going to be an even smaller problem in STO, since STO doesn't even have loot mechanics which would encourage kicking.
Never played wow then? A quick search of both the EU and US forums for "kicked for no reason" comes up with the following post numbers:
EU-1692
US-5581
Yep definately looks as though it was proven wrong.
I like how solutions that worked fine in other mmos won't work in sto, because sto is special. Oh wait, these same whiners also whined in other mmos, then they got kicked.:D
Dude, the number of elitists that need to stroke their epeen on daily basis in this game is very high.
We'll end up for players being booted because "L2P n00b", "you don't play the game the way I want you to play", "ZOMG you use beams on an escort" or "20k DPS or bust". That's without even mentioning the troll fleets that will have a field day with this and other people that just like trolling others because it's their idea of 'fun'.
People will constantly get booted for nothing, or some irrelevant things and not for AFK-ing. And as someone else pointed out - you'll have noone to complain to, because Cryptic doesn't care.
I would love for them to use the ignore feature for this. If you report a player for anything, you are told (in the email they send you) to put them on your ignore list. This, however, is pointless. If you report someone for being AFK, and put them on the ignore list, you can still be put into any content with them. You just can't see what they are typing in chat. That is all it does.
I believe that they can use our ignore list to not let us get stuck in an instance with them. This will eliminate the problem with abuse,
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I have played in a number of MMOs that have the vote to kick feature (WOW and TOR are just the ones off the top of my head) and I have never been kicked from a team. Though I have heard players complain about it, but its not an everyday thing. Each time I have been a part of a vote to kick, it has been for one reason, AFK.
Of course there will be elitists, there are elitits in every game that I have played, but the leecher problem in STO is worse. Once the leechers figured out that in the MU event you still win no matter what, roughly a third of my MU events had one, and I would play the event three times a day for alts.
However, there should be a check and balance in place, like taking away the anyonmity of the vote and there would be a feedback. Just an idea.
Works if you are a romulan in a scimitar but what about the guy in an intrepid? A sci ship would be hard pressed to get any reward when a scim or two are killing everything in reach within seconds.
As I said in my previous post, the scoring system wasn't that severe. There's more than enough time for people to contribute something even with an uberboat around.
Often when I played, I rarely if ever actually hit a score cap. I would typically hover around 3-4k exp rewards (maybe 1500-2000 on a lowbie job) while the uber guys would cap out at 5k. So in STO an equivalent would be the regular guys getting say 70-90 marks while an uberboat would get 115 or so. That's still very acceptable in my opinion, something that would be fine for me since I don't fly uberboats. The scoring system wasn't built with the uber guys in mind to give them insane scores. It was built for the purpose of encouraging people to play the game rather than AFK through it.
I like the reporting system with one modification. If you report percentage exceeds a certain amount then YOU are penalized. It will make you think twice before TRIBBLE someone over
Devs/GM's simply don't have time to read reports. They have like an automated system set up for filtering 'gold-sellers' and the like, that gets you auto-banned when typing the wrong words; but otherwise, I think they pretty much ignore player reports.
And vote-kicking can and *will* be abused.
Safest bet, IMHO, is simply not to team you up with players you have on your ignore-list. That way they're only AFK to you once, and they themselves run the risk of no longer being able to queue with *anyone* after a while.
In every mmo I played that implemented a kick-option, those concerns arose and they were proven completely wrong in each and every one of them. I'm sure kick-abuse is going to be an even smaller problem in STO, since STO doesn't even have loot mechanics which would encourage kicking.
Sorry, but no. My experience is that every MMO it's in, it has had to have protections put in because people abused it. And people are still abusing it even with the protections.
It's all very simple. If vote kick is implemented, I'll run stfs normally and not having to deal with afkers. If it is not implemented, the problem will get worse, but then I'll just afk myself so it's not my problem. It all works out.:D
Yep! In Old Republic, groups kick new players who don't have the "right build" all the time.
Incidentally, their instanced runs are also far more challenging. If the healer or tank don't have the right build, team wipes, run fails, period. It was absolutely necessary. Not having vote kick makes that game completely unplayable.
In sto, we no longer need a healer, or a tank, or anything other than dps, content is so easy that if one person afks, it just takes slightly longer. The only reason we even have a problem is when half the team afks.
Its pretty simple instead of just watching for a player to move to not auto kick them... require them to do at least X amount of active healing / dmg every 30s. If you haven't done either in that long your afk.
This is the best system - although I would give it more than 30s - more like 2 min since there are gaps and moving and the odd 1 min emergency break.
The devs can find out what the median player dmg is for X amount of time. Then from that median take a really low number - say 20% - there should be no players doing only 20% of what the games median dmg output is for a given event. If they are not doing 20% of what most people are doing they are a drag on the mission in one form or another.
This is the best system - although I would give it more than 30s - more like 2 min since there are gaps and moving and the odd 1 min emergency break.
The devs can find out what the median player dmg is for X amount of time. Then from that median take a really low number - say 20% - there should be no players doing only 20% of what the games median dmg output is for a given event. If they are not doing 20% of what most people are doing they are a drag on the mission in one form or another.
There is a problem with just using healing, or DPS. For example, a friend of mine was in a team of 5 that went into the mirror event with me. That one person was in a science ship, and the rest of us were in Avengers, and Scimitars.
The four of us made a large wall of DPS that traveled together, and wiped out everything in the path. The Science ship, and one of our Avengers closed rifts and activated the satellites. The Science ship didn't need to heal or fire a single shot. We were able to close 46 rifts, and the person in the Science ship got the AFK penalty. They were not able to queue with that toon for 2 hours, ands still had to repeat it.
Even vote to kick will have problems because of untrustworthy people (which there are in all games) with take advantage. I use to play some games on console. Not all the time, but some times, there were problems where someone that was out DPSing the rest of the group in a mission where there were rewards based off of DPS got kick voted out. All the hard work was for nothing.
However, there is no way to abuse the ignore system in the game. It will actually work better. If someone is AFK, rude, doesn't listen when others try to explain what they are doing wrong, etch then you put them on the ignore list. If the game will not place the two of you in the same PVE or STF again, then the AFK problem is solved, as well as getting stuck with others who are just D-Bags.
As it is now, the only purpose of the ignore list is to just not let others chat with you if they are on it. Why not make it useful?
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
There is a problem with just using healing, or DPS. For example, a friend of mine was in a team of 5 that went into the mirror event with me. That one person was in a science ship, and the rest of us were in Avengers, and Scimitars.
The four of us made a large wall of DPS that traveled together, and wiped out everything in the path. The Science ship, and one of our Avengers closed rifts and activated the satellites. The Science ship didn't need to heal or fire a single shot. We were able to close 46 rifts, and the person in the Science ship got the AFK penalty. They were not able to queue with that toon for 2 hours, ands still had to repeat it.
I call BS on this point. The AFK penalty didn't apply to the mirror invasion event.
It's not myfault ifyoufeel trolledbymyDisco ball...Sorry'boutit.
Well how about an option to remove them from the team, forcing them to fight on their own for their rewards.
In other words it would allow them to stay, but the rewards goal falls squarely on their own recorded achievement, and not what the team achieves.
Also would allow for them to become a neutral to the rest of the player's, as in the booted player can become a target.
It's either make something to this effect, or it needs be everyone shows up but not on a team.
This would allow everyone to remain allies and treat each other as so, but each player need meet their own personal goal to achieve the full end reward.
picked up a player non combat pet in a recent conduit runthrough. just followed me around at half impulse.for 5 minutes.
Sounds like the exploit of the fly-to-target feature. Don't know why it's there, only saw use as a means to fly me straight into the cube that killed me, w/o control. Took me a while to figure out why the helm was stuck.
assuming that the OP is correct and the follower did not fire a shot, it is plausible that he was following to learn the STF. I for one would like to group with a team of 4 who does not need my contribution to win, for the simple fact I have run exactly no STFs. I would like to see the strategy of how it's done, so when i do shoot something I don't TRIBBLE an optional or something.
assuming that the OP is correct and the follower did not fire a shot, it is plausible that he was following to learn the STF. I for one would like to group with a team of 4 who does not need my contribution to win, for the simple fact I have run exactly no STFs. I would like to see the strategy of how it's done, so when i do shoot something I don't TRIBBLE an optional or something.
So Google a few YouTube videos.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
In every mmo I played that implemented a kick-option, those concerns arose and they were proven completely wrong in each and every one of them. I'm sure kick-abuse is going to be an even smaller problem in STO, since STO doesn't even have loot mechanics which would encourage kicking.
People would most certainly get vote kicked for reasons other than AFKing. Because players have already told us they would use it for all sorts of reasons beyond AFKing. There in lies the abuse.
Who would enforce these measures are being used for legitimate reasons? Other players? That's not what I log in for. Sorry.
You can't ask for a measure to deal with one situation, then use it for all sorts of other reasons too.
You just can't, that's being disingenuous.
Especially when we're discussing kicking players, (in some cases paying customers), from what little endgame content we have.
I think Cryptic simply has to fix the issue at hand, so that players can't set their ships to simply follow another ship in STFs, avoiding the measures we already have in place now.
We know that these measures work by and large, because people have posted complaints on the forums after getting slapped for AFKing, "for just a few minutes". So in general, it works. But It needs tweaking.
This situation demonstrates two things: Bad game design will be exploited because unsavory players will exploit if they can, and It's foolish to believe that vote kicks wouldn't be exploited for the exact same reason.
In sto, we no longer need a healer, or a tank, or anything other than dps, content is so easy that if one person afks, it just takes slightly longer. The only reason we even have a problem is when half the team afks.
Nah, with the state of STFs right now, even 4/5 AFK is not enough to prevent completion with optional, it will just take slightly longer. You only have a problem if 5/5 players are AFK, but at that point, it's THEIR problem. People need to relax, chill out, and stop trying to dictate what everyone else needs to be doing. It's not necessary. All this accomplishes is making you sound very fascist and pushy. Keep calm and continue firing.
The problem is not so much the missions that are just a dps zerg fest as they just need a couple of good players with some obscene dps and they can be completed eventually.
Thew problem is in the missions where actually having a full team to get more objective finished is important. Things like Azure Nebula and the mirror invasion show how even a single AFK player can mess things up for the whole team as you really need the max number of players to get as many optional marks as possible in those games.
Seriously if the trend continues the way it had been in some recent games i've been in then there's really no point playing some missions as you spend longer playing when someone AFK's and get less reward in most cases as your team is a man short.
I feel sorry for any newer palyers who are really tring their best to earn some marks and are getting screwed over by poor mission design and AFK player resulting in poor rewards.
Marks should only be given out at the end (stops the drop outs in Fleet Defense once the dreads warp in) and there should be a way to kick AFKs.
I mean if a player sits stationary for a whole match and never moves surely that can be picked up by the game? Rewards need to be based on participation so if a player does nothing they get no reward.
Clearly this won't stop all probems as some people will go kill a single ship so the game thinks they are participating them sit AFK for the rest of the match.
Not everyone can learn that way, some learn better and more quickly by doing.
However a PUG is not the place to do that. If in a fleet that is where you ask your fleet mates to help. If not in a fleet then you have to contribute even if it is not up to the standard of the rest of the group.
Comments
Never played wow then? A quick search of both the EU and US forums for "kicked for no reason" comes up with the following post numbers:
EU-1692
US-5581
Yep definately looks as though it was proven wrong.
Dude, the number of elitists that need to stroke their epeen on daily basis in this game is very high.
We'll end up for players being booted because "L2P n00b", "you don't play the game the way I want you to play", "ZOMG you use beams on an escort" or "20k DPS or bust". That's without even mentioning the troll fleets that will have a field day with this and other people that just like trolling others because it's their idea of 'fun'.
People will constantly get booted for nothing, or some irrelevant things and not for AFK-ing. And as someone else pointed out - you'll have noone to complain to, because Cryptic doesn't care.
I believe that they can use our ignore list to not let us get stuck in an instance with them. This will eliminate the problem with abuse,
Of course there will be elitists, there are elitits in every game that I have played, but the leecher problem in STO is worse. Once the leechers figured out that in the MU event you still win no matter what, roughly a third of my MU events had one, and I would play the event three times a day for alts.
However, there should be a check and balance in place, like taking away the anyonmity of the vote and there would be a feedback. Just an idea.
As I said in my previous post, the scoring system wasn't that severe. There's more than enough time for people to contribute something even with an uberboat around.
Often when I played, I rarely if ever actually hit a score cap. I would typically hover around 3-4k exp rewards (maybe 1500-2000 on a lowbie job) while the uber guys would cap out at 5k. So in STO an equivalent would be the regular guys getting say 70-90 marks while an uberboat would get 115 or so. That's still very acceptable in my opinion, something that would be fine for me since I don't fly uberboats. The scoring system wasn't built with the uber guys in mind to give them insane scores. It was built for the purpose of encouraging people to play the game rather than AFK through it.
Mine Trap Supporter
Devs/GM's simply don't have time to read reports. They have like an automated system set up for filtering 'gold-sellers' and the like, that gets you auto-banned when typing the wrong words; but otherwise, I think they pretty much ignore player reports.
And vote-kicking can and *will* be abused.
Safest bet, IMHO, is simply not to team you up with players you have on your ignore-list. That way they're only AFK to you once, and they themselves run the risk of no longer being able to queue with *anyone* after a while.
Yep! In Old Republic, groups kick new players who don't have the "right build" all the time.
Incidentally, their instanced runs are also far more challenging. If the healer or tank don't have the right build, team wipes, run fails, period. It was absolutely necessary. Not having vote kick makes that game completely unplayable.
In sto, we no longer need a healer, or a tank, or anything other than dps, content is so easy that if one person afks, it just takes slightly longer. The only reason we even have a problem is when half the team afks.
This is the best system - although I would give it more than 30s - more like 2 min since there are gaps and moving and the odd 1 min emergency break.
The devs can find out what the median player dmg is for X amount of time. Then from that median take a really low number - say 20% - there should be no players doing only 20% of what the games median dmg output is for a given event. If they are not doing 20% of what most people are doing they are a drag on the mission in one form or another.
There is a problem with just using healing, or DPS. For example, a friend of mine was in a team of 5 that went into the mirror event with me. That one person was in a science ship, and the rest of us were in Avengers, and Scimitars.
The four of us made a large wall of DPS that traveled together, and wiped out everything in the path. The Science ship, and one of our Avengers closed rifts and activated the satellites. The Science ship didn't need to heal or fire a single shot. We were able to close 46 rifts, and the person in the Science ship got the AFK penalty. They were not able to queue with that toon for 2 hours, ands still had to repeat it.
Even vote to kick will have problems because of untrustworthy people (which there are in all games) with take advantage. I use to play some games on console. Not all the time, but some times, there were problems where someone that was out DPSing the rest of the group in a mission where there were rewards based off of DPS got kick voted out. All the hard work was for nothing.
However, there is no way to abuse the ignore system in the game. It will actually work better. If someone is AFK, rude, doesn't listen when others try to explain what they are doing wrong, etch then you put them on the ignore list. If the game will not place the two of you in the same PVE or STF again, then the AFK problem is solved, as well as getting stuck with others who are just D-Bags.
As it is now, the only purpose of the ignore list is to just not let others chat with you if they are on it. Why not make it useful?
I call BS on this point. The AFK penalty didn't apply to the mirror invasion event.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
I ran MUE on 18alts, so 250+ runs all pugged and can only remember 3 afk'ers for all those runs.
Maybe Cryptic needs to remove keybinds period, if automated bots from pressing 1 key are the problem.
In other words it would allow them to stay, but the rewards goal falls squarely on their own recorded achievement, and not what the team achieves.
Also would allow for them to become a neutral to the rest of the player's, as in the booted player can become a target.
It's either make something to this effect, or it needs be everyone shows up but not on a team.
This would allow everyone to remain allies and treat each other as so, but each player need meet their own personal goal to achieve the full end reward.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Sounds like the exploit of the fly-to-target feature. Don't know why it's there, only saw use as a means to fly me straight into the cube that killed me, w/o control. Took me a while to figure out why the helm was stuck.
So Google a few YouTube videos.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
People would most certainly get vote kicked for reasons other than AFKing. Because players have already told us they would use it for all sorts of reasons beyond AFKing. There in lies the abuse.
Who would enforce these measures are being used for legitimate reasons? Other players? That's not what I log in for. Sorry.
You can't ask for a measure to deal with one situation, then use it for all sorts of other reasons too.
You just can't, that's being disingenuous.
Especially when we're discussing kicking players, (in some cases paying customers), from what little endgame content we have.
I think Cryptic simply has to fix the issue at hand, so that players can't set their ships to simply follow another ship in STFs, avoiding the measures we already have in place now.
We know that these measures work by and large, because people have posted complaints on the forums after getting slapped for AFKing, "for just a few minutes". So in general, it works. But It needs tweaking.
This situation demonstrates two things: Bad game design will be exploited because unsavory players will exploit if they can, and It's foolish to believe that vote kicks wouldn't be exploited for the exact same reason.
Thew problem is in the missions where actually having a full team to get more objective finished is important. Things like Azure Nebula and the mirror invasion show how even a single AFK player can mess things up for the whole team as you really need the max number of players to get as many optional marks as possible in those games.
Seriously if the trend continues the way it had been in some recent games i've been in then there's really no point playing some missions as you spend longer playing when someone AFK's and get less reward in most cases as your team is a man short.
I feel sorry for any newer palyers who are really tring their best to earn some marks and are getting screwed over by poor mission design and AFK player resulting in poor rewards.
Marks should only be given out at the end (stops the drop outs in Fleet Defense once the dreads warp in) and there should be a way to kick AFKs.
I mean if a player sits stationary for a whole match and never moves surely that can be picked up by the game? Rewards need to be based on participation so if a player does nothing they get no reward.
Clearly this won't stop all probems as some people will go kill a single ship so the game thinks they are participating them sit AFK for the rest of the match.
I suggest you move as close as possible to the gate.. And then cloak. Should be fun for him...
Not everyone can learn that way, some learn better and more quickly by doing.
However a PUG is not the place to do that. If in a fleet that is where you ask your fleet mates to help. If not in a fleet then you have to contribute even if it is not up to the standard of the rest of the group.