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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

Just picked up my first afk penalty

primitiveangel#3304 primitiveangel
primitiveangel#3304
 Member Posts: 1 Arc User
edited September 2023 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
Hello all,

As title, I just picked up my first afk penalty [I cannot join TFO queues]. Feeling a bit miffed! Joined 'Defense of Starbase One [Advanced]' queue and just sat there - unable to close the Admiral Kensington briefing. Tried altering my throttle speed to ensure no afk penalty. Unable to target and do any damage due to sever not responding. Even my first submitted GM ticket failed to server lag! Is server lag particularly bad due to the holidays and heavy load with many players on? Do lifetime subscribers get these issues?

According to Al 'Captain Geko' Rivera on the 'Prority One' podcast it's been a stellar year for STO - why the constant red 'server not responding' messages?

Sorry this had to be my first post,
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,342 Arc User
    primitiveangel#3304 wrote: »
    Hello all,

    As title, I just picked up my first afk penalty [I cannot join TFO queues]. Feeling a bit miffed! Joined 'Defense of Starbase One [Advanced]' queue and just sat there - unable to close the Admiral Kensington briefing. Tried altering my throttle speed to ensure no afk penalty. Unable to target and do any damage due to sever not responding. Even my first submitted GM ticket failed to server lag! Is server lag particularly bad due to the holidays and heavy load with many players on? Do lifetime subscribers get these issues?

    According to Al 'Captain Geko' Rivera on the 'Prority One' podcast it's been a stellar year for STO - why the constant red 'server not responding' messages?

    Sorry this had to be my first post,

    If you're getting SNR's, it's most likely your end or your ISP. There are dozens of reasons why this could be happening, aaaaand if there was a server issue, MANY others would be posting about it.
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • forcemajeureforcemajeure Member Posts: 212 Arc User
    I confess that I have more lag, rubberbanding, and server disconnects with Cryptic than with any other game I've ever played (and I've played a lot). At first it seemed pretty easy to rage at Cryptic for their Craptic servers. In the old forums there was a quite large thread for Diagnosing your Server Connection.

    Doing some of the steps in it (traceroute, pingplot etc.), I found that about 80% of the time, the slowdown/dropped packets were in servers/nodes in Atlanta or Boston - I think it was Cogentco, something like that. About 10% of the time it was at or near Cryptics servers, and about 10% of the time it was my ISP or something near me.

    Other games I play experience about 1/4 of the connection issues that Cryptic games do, so I suspect it is a combination of some overloaded net nodes on the path to Cryptic, and Cryptic's own netcode being overly fussy about delays and dropped packets.

    As for the AFK issue, there was just another thread on that a couple weeks ago. Apparently the only criteria for AFK or not is "Did you do something like 2% of the total damage in the TFO? If not, then you were AFK, no matter how active you were."
  • darkbladejkdarkbladejk Member Posts: 3,714 Community Moderator
    When you say it wouldn't let you close out the briefing what do you mean it wouldn't let you close it out? Did you try clicking on the the x to close the window, did you hit the escape button to try to close the window? Depending on what you tried to do to close the window would put this in bug territory at which point I will move this thread to the appropriate bug reporting forum if that's the case. I must ask, what all did you try to do to close the window.

    As others have pointed out if you're getting lag, it could be the server, but that's not guaranteed to be the case. The internet is largely still wired and carried over wires. It's possible for your rig to be fine and their servers to be fine, but something between you and them is acting screwy. When communicating with the cryptic servers your rig doesn't just hop straight there, it takes a series of jumps through several data centers to get there. There's generally several hundred miles of cable between your rig and their servers. It's highly probably something is going on between there and your rig.

    I would also ask, do you have issues with other games, and also are you keeping your drivers updated? Also if you have more than one computer, is it just that one particular computer doing it?

    Finally, the AFK penalty is almost exclusively damage dependent from what I know of it. Most queues have a 2% threshold for it's requirement. That means you must deal at least 2% of the total damage for the run to be counted as present during the run and not get smacked with an AFK. There are a select few queues where I have observed the penalty being only 1%. 2% is really easy to obtain even on new toons. If they can't get 2% then odds are they legitimately are afk, or are doing so poorly they're not yet ready for advanced level queues let alone elite. Right now we need more information to know what's going on.
    "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

    Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
  • powskierpowskier Member Posts: 67 Arc User
    TONIGHT IS SUPERLAGGY..

    IN MY SHIPFOOT RACE..THE SPIDER GOTA 4 SECOND HAD START B4 I COULD MOVE
  • where2r1where2r1 Member Posts: 6,054 Arc User
    edited December 2018
    powskier wrote: »
    TONIGHT IS SUPERLAGGY..

    IN MY SHIPFOOT RACE..THE SPIDER GOTA 4 SECOND HAD START B4 I COULD MOVE

    OOOooohhhh~ I hate that white spider thing. Which reminds me, I should go run that race, now....since I don't have anything useful to add anywhere in these forums, today.
    "Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK

    “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
This discussion has been closed.