I have run ISA with some of the highest DPS players in this game and trust me.. there was plenty to shoot at. We're talking about 1% here, that is easy to do even if you're playing with the most elite players in this game. As someone who has been the 'low guy' in a group of super elites.. I am telling you from experience that you couldn't be more wrong. 1% is trivial no matter who you're with.
You are too modest mate. You have done ISA splits and HSE runs in 3 and 4-man teams and we could not have done it in without you. In any case your argumentation is sound, especially considering all the critter debuffs DPSer tend to bring to a stage they enter.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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ISA = Infected Space ADVANCED
ISN = Infected Space NORMAL
If you say "normal ISA," you're just going to make everyone think you mean advanced.
I remember moving my weapons around from one character to another and forgetting that I had zero weapons besides my cutting beam on my D'deridex around a year ago. With just that one weapon slotted, I still didn't get an AFK ban. So if you're being honest with yourself, OP, you could still improve on your performance so that this doesn't happen again.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
There is everything wrong with the so-called AFK system. For one, it doesn't stop people from actually AFKing on purpose and second, it fraudulently penalizes innocent newbies/casuals.
It will only "penalize" a "casual" if they happen to be in an instance with a DPS machine, which does not happen as frequently as some like to lament it does. Second, even if this were to happen, it's not necessarily a penalty. You can look at it as an incentive to improve build/skill. Casuals shouldn't have to be carried.
Randomly applied fraudulent bans are an incentive only for leaving in disgust.
I get an AFK penalty about two or three times a year. Usually when I PUG a mission. 99% of the time this occurs because of something I did. Do I like it? Of course not. Can I change it? Not currently except in a very limited fashion controlling what I bring to the mission and how I play it.
I'd like to see some changes in how AFK Penalties are assessed but I am realistic enough to know changing stuff around "under the hood" requires more manhours than anyone wants to use to work on an old part of the game. And there are no guarantees the alleged problem would be solved.
I do think Crytic was on the right track when they allowed the things they have in Crystalline Catastrophe to 'count'. I wish this were the case on all the STFs. But it isn't so the things I cannot control I try not to worry about or allow to spoil my enjoyment of the game.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I know nothing about how STOs game engine works, but I do know that in every other MMO I have ever played, heals are registered as damage when it comes to pulling aggro (threat). I don't see why it would be so difficult to make heals register as damage in STO when it comes to the calculations for the AFK penalty. Of course, it might take some serious coding to make that work in STO, in which case there are a lot more important things for the Devs to work on instead of something that occasionally effects an extremely small percentage of players.
Doing away with the AFK penalty is not an option. If they did that every PUG STF would have at least one AFKer in there leeching, before the AFK penalty was added, I myself ended up in a few PUG STFs where I was the only one actually doing anything. Too bad for the leechers that I'm nowhere near good enough to carry any STF solo so none of got anything. Also, most team STFs would consist of one or two high DPSers doing the STFs while three of their friends, or even their own toons from a secondary account, leech by permission.
Long story short, It's not a perfect system, but it's better than nothing and the (probably) less than one percent of players getting a "false" AFK pebalty is an extremely low priority when it comes to things requiring the Devs attention.
Randomly applied fraudulent bans are an incentive only for leaving in disgust.
First, there was no "fraud". The OP didn't produce enough output compared to everyone else and the system worked as designed.
Scond, one would expect those who refuse to improve to "leave in disgust".
The OP was not Away From Keyboard, so the penalty is a lie. Nothing in the game specifies players are required to "produce enough output compared to everyone else," that the fraudulent bans have anything to do with "producing enough output" or indeed any hint about any kind of "output" existing at all.
I'd like to see some changes in how AFK Penalties are assessed but I am realistic enough to know changing stuff around "under the hood" requires more manhours than anyone wants to use to work on an old part of the game. And there are no guarantees the alleged problem would be solved.
The actual problem that needs to be solved would be guaranteed to be solved simply by deactivating the whole stupid thing as worse than useless.
And in fact the game does also contain a proper AFK detection mechanic, that's used to log you out if you're idle for 1 hour.
Doing away with the AFK penalty is not an option. If they did that every PUG STF would have at least one AFKer in there leeching, before the AFK penalty was added, I myself ended up in a few PUG STFs where I was the only one actually doing anything. Too bad for the leechers that I'm nowhere near good enough to carry any STF solo so none of got anything. Also, most team STFs would consist of one or two high DPSers doing the STFs while three of their friends, or even their own toons from a secondary account, leech by permission.
Nonsense. The penalty doesn't stop AFKing on purpose. You can only get it by accident.
And regardless of the whine way back when, there were no more AFKers in the queues before this nonsense was put in.
Not that there's much of anyone in the queues these days.
Long story short, It's not a perfect system, but it's better than nothing and the (probably) less than one percent of players getting a "false" AFK pebalty is an extremely low priority when it comes to things requiring the Devs attention.
The OP was not Away From Keyboard, so the penalty is a lie. Nothing in the game specifies players are required to "produce enough output compared to everyone else," that the fraudulent bans have anything to do with "producing enough output" or indeed any hint about any kind of "output" existing at all.
There is no "lie" or "fraud" here. If you cannot make a significant enough contribution to the match accoding to the AFK code, you may as well be AFK.
There is no requirement in the game saying such. Nor does the penalty say "may as well" or anything of the sort. It is a lie.
In the years since this was implemented, it has happened to me twice personally. Once due to a lonv zone in time where the match was essentially finished by the time I zoned in and another where I was on a team with 4 insanely high DPS players. In the second instance, I wasn't able to compete and mind as well have been AFK. To me, that's working as intended.
Seriously? You think Cryptic, the kings of Easy Mode, intentionally put in a reguirement of being "able to compete" and not even tell people about it. Yeah, right.
The so-called AFK penalty was a quick botch job to appease some people's baseless whining about a nonexistent issue, with a result that matches the (lack of) manpower invested into designing, implementing and testing it. It has never stopped anyone from AFKing and only times anyone ever hears about it is a) when yet another poor newbie runs into it accidentally and b) when some waiting event is running and people come here to complain the penalty isn't working (or, hilariously, suggesting one be added, because they don't know it already does).
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
> @seaofsorrows said: > Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all. > > You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will? > > What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
We only ever hear about the false positives on the forums. We don't hear about the times it worked as intended, because the guys who got one for genuinely being AFK part or all of the mission would be flamed into oblivion if they turned up. Despite what warpangel thinks, people entering the raid and staying at start the whole was a real thing, I reported a dozen or so people for it before the penalty was implemented.
As for Mirror Invasion, I recall reading somewhere that the AFK penalty is not turned on for that mission to begin with (presumably because it's meant to be played with at least a couple teammates flying around pressing 'F' on things).
"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"
> @seaofsorrows said:
> Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
>
> You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will?
>
> What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
We only ever hear about the false positives on the forums. We don't hear about the times it worked as intended, because the guys who got one for genuinely being AFK part or all of the mission would be flamed into oblivion if they turned up. Despite what warpangel thinks, people entering the raid and staying at start the whole was a real thing, I reported a dozen or so people for it before the penalty was implemented.
As for Mirror Invasion, I recall reading somewhere that the AFK penalty is not turned on for that mission to begin with (presumably because it's meant to be played with at least a couple teammates flying around pressing 'F' on things).
I figured it had to be something like that since nothing he said really made any sense.
Removing the AFK check would be an obviously huge mistake. It is however, a good idea to consider counting healing as DPS when measuring for AFK to prevent healers from being flagged.
This is what you get when you have a game with bonkers powercreep. People doing such hilariously high damage that it causes people to get an AFK even when they're trying hard.
This is what you get when you have a game with bonkers powercreep. People doing such hilariously high damage that it causes people to get an AFK even when they're trying hard.
It's what you get when people with beginner builds play advanced queues that are beyond their skill level.
The AFK check system is not perfect but it's better than not having it at all. It's happened that I've gotten an afk penalty once or twice myself through no fault of my own, either I loaded in too late, or something technical happens. Sure it sucked, but I just went and did other things until it wore off. As for the system as a whole, it requires you to do 1-2% of the damage in a mission, usually 1% out of all the damage in a run. I really don't see that as unreasonable. If you feel you're getting an afk penalty unfairly then it's time to run through the check list. Is it something technical going on causing lag and/or de-sync? Is it something you're not understanding about the run? Is it the build itself you have? To get an afk penalty doesn't make you a bad person, it means simply that there is a technical issue going on, or what you were doing wasn't working that go around and you need to change strategies. Happens to everyone, sometimes your plan simply doesn't work as well as you thought and you need to re-evaluate.
Let's be real here for a moment, if you're getting into advanced and elite mode queues, especially elites, you need to be able to pull your own weight and carry a certain amount of weight for your team. Back when I was heavy into World of Warcraft raiding, anytime I joined a raid, or queued up for one I expected my partner tank to have a basic understanding of what was going on. If they didn't then I expected them to speak up so I could give them a brief once over of what to do. That was so we could all clear the run and "get phat loot" as the saying goes. I also expected my partner tank to have some basic understanding of how to play his class/build as well so that he didn't get punted across the room in one hit. In the case of damage and DPS, we expected the DPS to be able to pull a certain minimum as alot of the encounters required it if you were going to succeed. That's not because any of us were elitist, but if you didn't kill the boss within a certain time, you hit the enrage timer and it was an automatic wipe. In the case of STO let's take the Battle of Korfez as one example. It's an elite mode only mission and has several ways you can fail the mission easily enough. Some are luck of the draw but some aren't. At the very start of the mission if you don't clear those ships quickly enough you auto fail, so you need to be able to bring the thunder at the start or you're up the creek without a paddle. Let's say you need 20k DPS from each person in there as a minimum to clear it as a hypothetical. That means you would need 100k combined DPS to clear the run. If 4 of the 5 people are at the 20k minimum but the last guy is only at 10k, then that run is going to fail unless they somehow all make up for that damage or the 5th guy ups his game. That's just basic math. Now let's suppose that 2 guys are dealing 25k, the other 2 20k, and the 5th dealing 10k. Our hypothetical run would now succeed, but that last guy is still not pulling his weight, and thus it's not fair to the rest of the team to have to make up for that. That's not meaning he's a bad player, it simply means he is not ready for that particular content. With practice and perhaps a bit of gear, he may come back and be pulling 30k instead of 10k. Until he gets that practice and a bit of gear he doesn't need to be in there however. In fact there is a fleet mate of mine who I will not take into a Battle of Korfez for that very reason, he's not yet ready. When he is however I will be glad to take him into the run.
Virtually all games out there require some type of minimum and I don't see that as being unreasonable. Without some systems in place to discourage it, there would be people who would sit there and let everyone else do all the work for them while they sit back doing nothing and expect to get rewards. It happens in every single game that doesn't have some sort of check against it. Thankfully with STO it's one of the most forgiving games out there in terms of how easy it is to acquire gear, be it crafted or otherwise, and being able to recover from a failed mission. If you're in territory where you're getting AFK penalties, be they deserved or not, it doesn't have to stay that way. We can help you improve your build, piloting, or even just explain the missions if that's what it takes. The only question is, are you willing to accept that help from other players?
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
As I said in an earlier post in this thread, most of my input in ISA comes from science abilities. I don't recall ever getting the AFK penalty, so presumably using said abilities keeps me 'on the map' even though my weapons-produced DPS isn't terribly high?
I honestly don't know how it figures AFK.
I had an instance a couple months ago where I was doing a Borg Red Alert. Right when it started, Amazon showed up at my door with a delivery and I went to get it. I was matched with some pretty high DPS players so by the time I got back to the game, the Unimatrix was about 98% dead. I flew forward, fired one volley for maybe 2 seconds and that was my total participation and I still didn't get AFK'ed.
The truth is, I don't know how the people that complain about this manage to get AFK penalties. From my personal in game experience it's almost impossible to trigger the AFK.
Nonsense. The penalty doesn't stop AFKing on purpose. You can only get it by accident.
Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will?
What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
It might not make sense but that has been my experience. There have been a handful of times where I was forced AFK and not been able to move from the starting point but had zero AFK penalty. Then other times I boost the groups DPS by 20k+ but as the damage didn’t directly come from me I get hit with the AFK penalty despite helping the group a decent amount.
The other reason I hate the way the AFK penalty works is STO should be about team work and before we had the AFK penalty pure team build ships where used and even welcomed. The AFK penalty was a big part in killing team work and pure team buff ships. One of my favourite builds didn't target the enemy or even fire main weapons. At the time people used to call me into the group as it was that popular to have a support player. The AFK penalty has helped completely kill that type of support player. It forced me to abandon my pure team build support focused ships.
In short I have never been hit with the AFK penalty while AFK. But I have multiple times been hit with the AFK penalty while active and being useful. So yeah I hate it. Good idea terribly implanted.
I didn't even know there was an AFK penalty till reading this thread... and it seems to be pretty polarizing with the community. Judging from what I've read the thread was started by someone joining a queue with the intent of playing support only to be hit with the penalty for not playing a DPS... I'd equate that to being penalized in more fantastical MMOs for playing a healer that didn't give much weight to throwing out the occasional attack (looking at you XIV community). It makes no sense. This game could literally use more players willing to forego balls-to-the-wall damage output to make sure the team makes it through with the least respawns. Nothing can slow down a battle like having to wait 30s to respawn. Even if it means having to suffer actual AFK players I'd rather the penalty removed than have support captains risk being penalized just for wanting to make the battle alot smoother.
And all this backlash against someone wanting to play support... bloody hell! What is wrong with wanting to play support?! Why is that such a crime? I don't get it, I really don't. Maybe my older MMO experience has me more open-minded at the idea, mayhaps others should go play the older MMOs and tell me how successful they were playing balls-to-the-wall DDers.
Nonsense. The penalty doesn't stop AFKing on purpose. You can only get it by accident.
Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will?
What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
The threshold is so low a well-equipped player who knows what they're doing can hit it in a few seconds. Thus anyone who knows it's there and intentionally seeks to avoid it will almost certainly succeed simply by flying at the enemy something damageable and giving the ol' spacebar a few good taps.
On the other hand, people who are trying to play the game normally but simply can't keep up with their teammates for whatever reason, can get it.
Comments
lol at this thread...
You are too modest mate. You have done ISA splits and HSE runs in 3 and 4-man teams and we could not have done it in without you. In any case your argumentation is sound, especially considering all the critter debuffs DPSer tend to bring to a stage they enter.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
ISA = Infected Space ADVANCED
ISN = Infected Space NORMAL
If you say "normal ISA," you're just going to make everyone think you mean advanced.
I remember moving my weapons around from one character to another and forgetting that I had zero weapons besides my cutting beam on my D'deridex around a year ago. With just that one weapon slotted, I still didn't get an AFK ban. So if you're being honest with yourself, OP, you could still improve on your performance so that this doesn't happen again.
I'd like to see some changes in how AFK Penalties are assessed but I am realistic enough to know changing stuff around "under the hood" requires more manhours than anyone wants to use to work on an old part of the game. And there are no guarantees the alleged problem would be solved.
I do think Crytic was on the right track when they allowed the things they have in Crystalline Catastrophe to 'count'. I wish this were the case on all the STFs. But it isn't so the things I cannot control I try not to worry about or allow to spoil my enjoyment of the game.
Doing away with the AFK penalty is not an option. If they did that every PUG STF would have at least one AFKer in there leeching, before the AFK penalty was added, I myself ended up in a few PUG STFs where I was the only one actually doing anything. Too bad for the leechers that I'm nowhere near good enough to carry any STF solo so none of got anything. Also, most team STFs would consist of one or two high DPSers doing the STFs while three of their friends, or even their own toons from a secondary account, leech by permission.
Long story short, It's not a perfect system, but it's better than nothing and the (probably) less than one percent of players getting a "false" AFK pebalty is an extremely low priority when it comes to things requiring the Devs attention.
The actual problem that needs to be solved would be guaranteed to be solved simply by deactivating the whole stupid thing as worse than useless.
And in fact the game does also contain a proper AFK detection mechanic, that's used to log you out if you're idle for 1 hour.
Nonsense. The penalty doesn't stop AFKing on purpose. You can only get it by accident.
And regardless of the whine way back when, there were no more AFKers in the queues before this nonsense was put in.
Not that there's much of anyone in the queues these days.
It's significantly worse than nothing.
Seriously? You think Cryptic, the kings of Easy Mode, intentionally put in a reguirement of being "able to compete" and not even tell people about it. Yeah, right.
The so-called AFK penalty was a quick botch job to appease some people's baseless whining about a nonexistent issue, with a result that matches the (lack of) manpower invested into designing, implementing and testing it. It has never stopped anyone from AFKing and only times anyone ever hears about it is a) when yet another poor newbie runs into it accidentally and b) when some waiting event is running and people come here to complain the penalty isn't working (or, hilariously, suggesting one be added, because they don't know it already does).
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Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will?
What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
> Can you expand upon this please? Because it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
>
> You're saying that if you actually do AFK you don't get the penalty, but if you try and just don't do enough..then you will?
>
> What leads you to believe this is true exactly?
We only ever hear about the false positives on the forums. We don't hear about the times it worked as intended, because the guys who got one for genuinely being AFK part or all of the mission would be flamed into oblivion if they turned up. Despite what warpangel thinks, people entering the raid and staying at start the whole was a real thing, I reported a dozen or so people for it before the penalty was implemented.
As for Mirror Invasion, I recall reading somewhere that the AFK penalty is not turned on for that mission to begin with (presumably because it's meant to be played with at least a couple teammates flying around pressing 'F' on things).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I figured it had to be something like that since nothing he said really made any sense.
Removing the AFK check would be an obviously huge mistake. It is however, a good idea to consider counting healing as DPS when measuring for AFK to prevent healers from being flagged.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
It's what you get when people with beginner builds play advanced queues that are beyond their skill level.
Let's be real here for a moment, if you're getting into advanced and elite mode queues, especially elites, you need to be able to pull your own weight and carry a certain amount of weight for your team. Back when I was heavy into World of Warcraft raiding, anytime I joined a raid, or queued up for one I expected my partner tank to have a basic understanding of what was going on. If they didn't then I expected them to speak up so I could give them a brief once over of what to do. That was so we could all clear the run and "get phat loot" as the saying goes. I also expected my partner tank to have some basic understanding of how to play his class/build as well so that he didn't get punted across the room in one hit. In the case of damage and DPS, we expected the DPS to be able to pull a certain minimum as alot of the encounters required it if you were going to succeed. That's not because any of us were elitist, but if you didn't kill the boss within a certain time, you hit the enrage timer and it was an automatic wipe. In the case of STO let's take the Battle of Korfez as one example. It's an elite mode only mission and has several ways you can fail the mission easily enough. Some are luck of the draw but some aren't. At the very start of the mission if you don't clear those ships quickly enough you auto fail, so you need to be able to bring the thunder at the start or you're up the creek without a paddle. Let's say you need 20k DPS from each person in there as a minimum to clear it as a hypothetical. That means you would need 100k combined DPS to clear the run. If 4 of the 5 people are at the 20k minimum but the last guy is only at 10k, then that run is going to fail unless they somehow all make up for that damage or the 5th guy ups his game. That's just basic math. Now let's suppose that 2 guys are dealing 25k, the other 2 20k, and the 5th dealing 10k. Our hypothetical run would now succeed, but that last guy is still not pulling his weight, and thus it's not fair to the rest of the team to have to make up for that. That's not meaning he's a bad player, it simply means he is not ready for that particular content. With practice and perhaps a bit of gear, he may come back and be pulling 30k instead of 10k. Until he gets that practice and a bit of gear he doesn't need to be in there however. In fact there is a fleet mate of mine who I will not take into a Battle of Korfez for that very reason, he's not yet ready. When he is however I will be glad to take him into the run.
Virtually all games out there require some type of minimum and I don't see that as being unreasonable. Without some systems in place to discourage it, there would be people who would sit there and let everyone else do all the work for them while they sit back doing nothing and expect to get rewards. It happens in every single game that doesn't have some sort of check against it. Thankfully with STO it's one of the most forgiving games out there in terms of how easy it is to acquire gear, be it crafted or otherwise, and being able to recover from a failed mission. If you're in territory where you're getting AFK penalties, be they deserved or not, it doesn't have to stay that way. We can help you improve your build, piloting, or even just explain the missions if that's what it takes. The only question is, are you willing to accept that help from other players?
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I honestly don't know how it figures AFK.
I had an instance a couple months ago where I was doing a Borg Red Alert. Right when it started, Amazon showed up at my door with a delivery and I went to get it. I was matched with some pretty high DPS players so by the time I got back to the game, the Unimatrix was about 98% dead. I flew forward, fired one volley for maybe 2 seconds and that was my total participation and I still didn't get AFK'ed.
The truth is, I don't know how the people that complain about this manage to get AFK penalties. From my personal in game experience it's almost impossible to trigger the AFK.
The other reason I hate the way the AFK penalty works is STO should be about team work and before we had the AFK penalty pure team build ships where used and even welcomed. The AFK penalty was a big part in killing team work and pure team buff ships. One of my favourite builds didn't target the enemy or even fire main weapons. At the time people used to call me into the group as it was that popular to have a support player. The AFK penalty has helped completely kill that type of support player. It forced me to abandon my pure team build support focused ships.
In short I have never been hit with the AFK penalty while AFK. But I have multiple times been hit with the AFK penalty while active and being useful. So yeah I hate it. Good idea terribly implanted.
And all this backlash against someone wanting to play support... bloody hell! What is wrong with wanting to play support?! Why is that such a crime? I don't get it, I really don't. Maybe my older MMO experience has me more open-minded at the idea, mayhaps others should go play the older MMOs and tell me how successful they were playing balls-to-the-wall DDers.
On the other hand, people who are trying to play the game normally but simply can't keep up with their teammates for whatever reason, can get it.