This is counter-intuitive to me but it may very well be people like yourself that have created a system where any form of leaving (aside from the exploit) counts. I'm confident the exploit will be fixed soon and a stacking leaver penalty certainly has my vote.
Heh, here's the thing: Leaving by character switch hasn't actually prevented a leaver penalty for awhile now. That method was officially contraindicated months ago. There is not actually such an exploit.
If this is true then that's great. However, given the nature of this thread and some of the more colorful claims made in it I can't necessarily take your word for it. But to assume for a moment there is no such exploit what would that leave?
actually troll afk'rs and leavers (they like to ruin the fun for others)
people willing to swallow an penalty if they don't like what they got for their random.
Combined with an penalty system that seems to work in mysterious ways (which is understandable and appropriate).
it can't detect a game crash even though other portions of the game can and will even generate a ticket for you, per my posted photo.
for other issues such as server disconnects, blue screens, etc. it might be weighted towards time spent and time before returning to the queue but even in this seems to be unreliable but may be due to technical limitations and/or the fact that most security systems don't have known thresholds by way of design to prevent them from being circumvented.
I'm still for a graduating penalty that gives some leeway or credence for DC's, crashes, internet issues, RL emergencies etc., if such a system is possible.
I still characterize people who leave a random because they don't like what they got as 'self centered at best' and as TRIBBLE at worst.
As someone else may have pointed out, I'll bet you many of the "trolls" you see are simply people that don't want to run that particular crappy TFO and are ok with taking the timeout hit. So yeah, I'f I see Azure Nebula Rescue, The Vault Ensnared, That one Voth mothership mission, most of the Tzenkethi missions, I'm out.
The AFK system is flawed, the current structure of the Leaver Penalty is also flawed. HOW it's flawed is up for debate, the one camp opposes it entirely, and the other camp wants it to be more draconian.
almost like a compromise, eh?
hmmm...which side to pick, because I've been on both sides of this.
hmmm...
well...
1. why people AFK or 'Steelmax'; because the reward system and mission designs reward it, of course. Same for why people pick the easiest, most brain-dead content-because ISA rewards as much as something MUCH more complex (like Infected Ground) but can almost be botted-without-using-bots.
2. impact on new players when they're stuck with a Steelmaxer or dumped by a temper-twink.
3. the existence of optimal builds, which feeds into and off of 1 and 2.
Fixes that might work better;
1. stop giving purple ribbons for participation, across the board. stop it. this means revisiting missions to change the conditions of victory from "DPS your tribble off" to something requiring communication, and teamwork. Alternately, set up a battlevalue system and remove the base-five structure so that people who can solo your hardest content get to do exactly that-solo it-in the random queues.
2. scale access to your 'levels' of content (Normal, Advanced, and Elite) by requiring completion of ten missions in the previous tier before the next one opens on a character, with a better matchmaking algorithm that screens like-with-like instead of lumping players of wildly different power levels at the same 'level' into the same team.
3. instead of AFK kicking, track heals cast on other players, damage done, and defense rating from movement to determine the amount of reward. If someone AFK's something like that, they get a minimal reward, like maybe 5 dilithium for their fifteen minutes, while someone who is actively piloting and doing good damage, healing teammates or completing non-combat objectives can scale from "average" to "very good" rewards...IN THE SAME RUN.
aka Bill decides to Steelmax 'Featured Queue of the quarter' for the 'elite mark', that is, he does absolutely jack and TRIBBLE for his team. He gets 5 Dil and maybe one common mark. Stephanie, who has a newbie build rocking TRIBBLE weapons, but is playing her TRIBBLE off in the same mission, casting heals, shooting things, clicking objectives and even taking damage and dying, pulls 1 Event Mark, 1 Elite Mark, and 800 to 1000 marks in the same mission, plus skill points, and Ben, who's a DPS god hammering the mobs and flying his butt off, pulls down 1 event mark, 2 elite marks, and 1500-2000 dil.
That's a merit-based system, and it's fair, and it addresses the whole mess. even better, if Zack decides to bail mid-battle, because everyone who sticks it through? gets a 20% increase in their rewards for every Zack who leaves the mission. (thus, addressing the 'reward' for Trolls. instead of TRIBBLE their teams, they're giving them a bonus.)
This though, would require Cryptic to overhaul their thinking from "nobody left behind, everyone wins" mentality, to a more competitive,or meritocratic one. To go from "Mr. Ice Cream is on the Way," to "Service guarantees citizenship! Are you doing your part?"
Except you WON'T, because as I pointed out, you do NOT receive the higher-mark item on repeats, that is only given ONCE, the first time you play it. You cannot repeat the mission to get more of it.
If I play Dust to Dust at level 10 I will get a mk iv version of the item. if I go back and play that mission later on at 65 I will get a mk xii version of the set. However this is besides the point, folks absolutely can get mk xii very rare items which will do them quite well.
Upgrade events only happen once in a blue moon, unfortunately.
I agree it's better to upgrade during an upgrade weekend, however you can still upgrade without that weekend being in effect. If it means the difference between not being able to function at all, then I would think that's a small drop in the bucket. For veteran players it won't be that hard to buy some cheap ultra rare beams from the exchange or epics and upgrade them the rest of the way. With Phoenix techs and a few accelerators it won't take long. Fleet weapons are also a possibility.
Who said anything about getting an AFK penalty? I never get AFK penalties while AFK. :P AFK penalties are for people who actually try, if you simply go AFK, you'll do more damage and not get an AFK penalty. Which, you know, is just an example of why the AFK penalty doesn't work either, but that's another story. The AFK community largely regards the AFK penalty as a joke. Yes, there is such a community. The stories are damn hilarious, you really get to observe how truly horrid people actually are. And learn a new way to build ships: How to get maxdeeps from zero budget and zero APM.
Well I guess that's all the more reason it needs to change then.
It will not. Let's just use the gold standard of Generic Space Content: ISA. ISA has about 50M HP divided by 15 minutes to pass, yielding an on-paper floor of just shy of 60K. 40K, therefore, is mathematically inadequate: It is simply not possible to succeed on merely 40K, leaving you indistinguishable from AFK, as you are completely unable to complete the mission and entirely dependent on being carried.
Expecting your teammates to be able to carry their own weight in a queue is one thing and is healthy for the game. However to have expectations set so high that 40k is considered no better than being AFK
40K *IS* no better than AFK. The other reason you're indistinguishable from AFK is that, once, the queue was taking so damn long to pop that I looked away from the monitor (after leaving a rock on the "accept pop" button), and by the time I noticed, it had popped, ended, and someone had posted a parse: 47K DPS AFK. I had actually beaten everyone in the queue while AFK!
In conclusion: If that's the best you can do, just embrace being AFK. You'll probably get more DPS out of it, seeing as you're statistically indistinguishable from it.
Your math is almost spot on but you didn't fully complete it. To calculate the DPS needed to complete ISA in that time we would first want to convert our 15 minutes into seconds, since we are trying to determine Damage Per Second. We would multiply our 15 by 60 which gives us 900 seconds. We would then divide our 50m by our 900 seconds. which gives us 55,555.5 with that .5 repeating of course. This is where you dropped the ball in the calculation as you needed to take it one step further and you didn't. Your number only takes into account the COMBINED total the 5 people in the run need to do and not the individual number. When we account for the fact that there are 5 sources of damage in the run, we divide our 55,555.5 by 5 and we get 11,111.1 with that .1 repeating.
So in actuality the number each person in that run needs to deal is only 11k DPS. So your number of 60k per person is way off base. To be considered AFK you would need to be dealing less than 11k. I have a hard time believing a long time veteran player is going to be dealing less than 11k
And...these people are my problem, why? I don't own them. They're not my slaves, they're not signing my paychecks, they're not my responsibility. You want me to take responsibility for your desires and goals, then you must accept my authority, like my kids do, or pay me, like an employer does. Otherwise, you're on your own.
i didn't think there would be two posts in the same thread that made me laugh until my ribs hurt, but I was wrong. Here's where it's in part your problem. When you press that random button you are saying to the system and everyone else in queue, you don't care what it puts you in, you just want to play. By hitting that button you are agreeing to then play whatever queue it gives you. When you then bail out, this means you essentially lied to the other 4 people in there and have basically forced them to play a man down, or fouled the run up to the point they may not be able to complete it. All because you have decided you didn't want to play the queue you signed up for. When someone's actions negatively effect the ability of someone else to play the content, those other people have every right to call attention to it. Even simple contracts in real life have consequences to breaking them, and if it were a business transaction, you would have long been sued for breach of contract.
This sounds suspiciously like entitlement. You are not entitled to have someone else carry you. Completing YOUR queue is YOUR responsibility, not mine. I gotta get mine, you gotta get yours. If you're not signing my paychecks, you don't get to tell me what to do.
As alluded to above, when you press that join button, you are agreeing to play whatever queue it gives you and you are agreeing to do it with the other 4 people it sticks you with. When you bounce out of there intentionally to another toon, you are negatively impacting the other 4 people's ability to complete the queue. When the actions of one person negatively impacts my ability to play the game or content, I have every right to say they should be given an account wide lockout for intentionally griefing the group.
"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
The AFK system is flawed, the current structure of the Leaver Penalty is also flawed. HOW it's flawed is up for debate, the one camp opposes it entirely, and the other camp wants it to be more draconian.
The actual leaver penalty as it exists is almost completely unnecessary, since players leaving no longer significantly affects others' ability to complete the content.
What we do need a penalty for is people abusing the random queue by leaving until they get the queue they want, violating the rules of the random system to get the reward without holding upt their end of the bargain. To that end, the best solution is to disable the random queue (and only the random queue) for an extended period of time, account wide. The people who want to pick their queue will get to pick their queue the honest way and the bonus rewards will go to those who actually play the content they are given.
Here's the thing you're missing, though: The random queues ARE NOT RANDOM. The so-called bargain is already broken. If I want to create a trainwreck for you, I can stick you in any of the queues you absolutely despise anytime I want.
Um what you really mean is:
I can manually queue things I think people don't like and hope the people hitting random don't like them.
It will not. Let's just use the gold standard of Generic Space Content: ISA. ISA has about 50M HP divided by 15 minutes to pass, yielding an on-paper floor of just shy of 60K. 40K, therefore, is mathematically inadequate: It is simply not possible to succeed on merely 40K, leaving you indistinguishable from AFK, as you are completely unable to complete the mission and entirely dependent on being carried.
Expecting your teammates to be able to carry their own weight in a queue is one thing and is healthy for the game. However to have expectations set so high that 40k is considered no better than being AFK
40K *IS* no better than AFK. The other reason you're indistinguishable from AFK is that, once, the queue was taking so damn long to pop that I looked away from the monitor (after leaving a rock on the "accept pop" button), and by the time I noticed, it had popped, ended, and someone had posted a parse: 47K DPS AFK. I had actually beaten everyone in the queue while AFK!
In conclusion: If that's the best you can do, just embrace being AFK. You'll probably get more DPS out of it, seeing as you're statistically indistinguishable from it.
Your math is almost spot on but you didn't fully complete it. To calculate the DPS needed to complete ISA in that time we would first want to convert our 15 minutes into seconds, since we are trying to determine Damage Per Second. We would multiply our 15 by 60 which gives us 900 seconds. We would then divide our 50m by our 900 seconds. which gives us 55,555.5 with that .5 repeating of course. This is where you dropped the ball in the calculation as you needed to take it one step further and you didn't. Your number only takes into account the COMBINED total the 5 people in the run need to do and not the individual number. When we account for the fact that there are 5 sources of damage in the run, we divide our 55,555.5 by 5 and we get 11,111.1 with that .1 repeating.
So in actuality the number each person in that run needs to deal is only 11k DPS. So your number of 60k per person is way off base. To be considered AFK you would need to be dealing less than 11k. I have a hard time believing a long time veteran player is going to be dealing less than 11k
If you're not running with a premade team, you'd have no way of knowing what sort of teammates you'll end up with, so any number of them could be relatively new players that aren't putting out 11k DPS. There's also a chance that a player may end up leaving or disconnecting, thereby leaving you short of a teammate. In either case, if you're only putting out 11k, you'd be relying on luck, which is obviously unreliable. If you want to guarantee success, you'd need to be prepared for such occurrences by putting out more than 11k DPS. In the worst case scenario, your teammates simply don't exist, so you'd need to be prepared to finish the queue alone.
In theory, Ruin's logic is sound (albeit off by a few thousand DPS), but only in the most extreme circumstances. Luckily, in practice, you'll usually end up with a team that's good enough to succeed, so whether or not you're able to solo the queue isn't often a problem, but I'd advise coming prepared for less than ideal teammates anyway.
As far as stopping the trolls is concerned, I'd point out that while being able to determine exactly how much a player benefits the team as a whole and to reward them based on how much they contribute would be ideal, it would likely prove difficult, if not problematic, to actually implement. However, I do agree that not granting any payouts to players that do nothing or leave the queue, and instead having their rewards distributed among the active players that actually did something, would be relatively easy to implement and would at least add some benefit to the players suffering from smaller teams caused by leavers and AFKers.
Winning.
It's what I do. It's what I just did. It's what I'm about to do again. It's being undisputed emperor of an empire that cannot be disproved as the most powerful intergalactic empire in the entire universe; I always win, and everything I've won will definitely be won again... by me. It's my signature move, and thus, it's my signature. Problem, Sonic? Yeah, I mean you, Sonic, because you're being beat up, despite your being super. You can't even hit Shadow back, can you? Nope, he's too strong for you. Of course, I'm not Shadow, I'm the Super Emerald fueled fox that's pulling the strings; trust me, the fight would only be a few frames long if I were in it personally. Oh, and here's something for all you guys thinking you can win Last Post Wins 3.0; trust me, I'll be around a long while after the sun has already consumed the Earth while I sit out with the forum servers on Titan. Yes, I mean Titan... that comparatively little moon orbiting Saturn. It's a nice little place in a version of our solar system where the sun is a lot bigger. I mean, Mars will last longer than your precious Earth, but by then, it'll be one hot planet... and I figure Saturn's moon will be about the right temperate for a super-powered warlord. Oh, and trust me, I packed a lot of rings, and I mean a lot. Trillions, in fact, so I'll never run out of rings to power my super form. Besides, if I start to run out, I can just chaos control more rings into my reach. It's quite easy, really. You should try it. Granted, you'll never have the 7 Super Emeralds that I have in my possession, nor the Master Emerald that I've got hidden away somewhere... absorbed into my body thanks to Sonic logic, but whatever. I win. Again. I'm not kidding, either. Just check Last Post Wins, and if the last post isn't mine, it soon will be. Very, very soon. You can count on it. Seriously. By the way, if you're wondering, there's a really great Super Tails sprite sheet out there... somewhere... by some guy named shadow_91. These sprites are really great. Like, really good. Quality. Just like what I like to see in a sprite sheet. Also, credit to Joe T.E., his Sonic Battle style Super Sonic sprites have a great palette for a Super Sonic being beat up by Super Shadow, who's palette is from a Super Shadow sheet of unknown origin, but it turns out they were "borrowed" from a better sheet made by a certain Domenico. Oh, and the gif is actually a custom made super version of a similar gif, of which there are only 3 or 4 copies to be found by Google, and even then, evidently of an unknown source. Yep, it's one of those things. Stuff people have made, spread around, only for it to vanish and you to be the only person who still has a copy, not even knowing where it came from... like, literally at all. Oh, and anyone notice that Shadow's little chaos snap blast thingies are red and blue now? Yeah, I changed it. Problem, fans of purple? Yeah, I know you got a problem with that one, but you can just deal with it. After all, according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly... alright, alright, I'll spare you the entire Bee Movie script, just Google it if you want. By the way, ever wonder how your characters would've ended up if they evolved in another universe? Yeah, that. Think about it. Ok, so you probably didn't bother reading up to here, but whatever, here's a surprise for you guys over at ESD (RP) who were crazy enough to read this: Emperor Nat of the mcfreakin' Terran Empire is gonna be right all along! The universe is gonna go BOOM! *Thumbs up to the insanity*
Oh, now don't tell me you want in on all this! Well, ok. Look this that Egg Pawn hanging outside your window, pointing his laser rifle at you, waiting for my next order. He's doing his part. He helps conquer the weak-minded. He roboticizes the weak-bodied. Heck, he even helps keep the useless people from causing any trouble, but you know what? Join. Find the closest Nataran Empire roboticization center near you and join the ranks, before the ranks find you. Oh, I know, you figure it must be so satisfying to know I basically rule the world now, and you know what? It is, but do you want to know the true definition of satisfaction? Well, let me tell you a little story. One day, you see a brand new event. They're giving out boxes that give old event stuff. Your dilithium is plentiful. You buy a whole lot of Phoenix packs on your main, and open them all. You get one epic token. Then, you decide, that since you have all the Breen ships and don't give a damn about the others, you exchange it for an ultra rare, and grab yourself a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship and for the hell of it, a Voth Bulwark. You open both, leaving the Bulwark in your vast masses of starships as you jump into the bugship and deck it out, deck by deck, into the most awesome Jem'Hadar ship you can. You fly it. You enjoy it. Eventually, you get bored and leave, leaving the old Bulwark never flown... until later. Your main is long complete. Your new alt main, based off some character you pulled out of nothing just to explain away some starship being in service without the command of your dear admiral, is also complete. Mostly. Their reps and doffs are hard at work, getting you stuff. You realize the potential, and head back for your dear admiral, pull the most Voth themed build you can out of thin air, and suit up in your giant ship in the shape of you know what. You head out... and cause all sorts of havoc. Enemies scream out your name as their very life is drained away by your swarms of Aceton Assimilators. They complain to the devs of your OPness when you revive yourself from death every time you die. Do you show any form of mercy? No. After all, this isn't the United Federation of Planets, this is mother frakkin' Starfleet, where you explore strange new worlds and kick butt never kicked before. Oh, and you realize that I just wrote another speech rivaling your own signature. Cool. Oh, wait, that's just the original draft, it is part of my signature now. Oh, and yes, I am aware that I have become a Canadian Regent; one day, sooner than you'd expect, we'll suddenly decide to take over the world and declare an "alliance", and I shall become it's Regent. You know, like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe of our beloved Star Trek. Oh, who'll we be taking over with? I dunno, maybe [REDACTED], or maybe aliens from outer space. Guess you'll have to wait and find out, won't we? Until then, don't ask too many questions, or else my Breen allies on Titania might pick up on your -- [REDACTED BY BREEN CONFEDERACY FOR REASONS] Also, psst... keep an eye out for flying Tribbles! Also walls. Big, great walls, separating entire continents apart. Walls patrolled by Tribbles. Flying Tribbles. Flying Nukara Tribbles. Don't worry, it's not like they were on Venus with a herd of Tholians or anything, they just like the extreme heat and brutal weather like acid rain and hurricane force winds as the norm. Oh, and definitely keep your eye out on any two-tailed foxes, because if they ain't glowing, they're definitely an imposter. Possibly an Undine, we caught one of those once in my place once. Oh, and if you find a two-tailed fox that doesn't like the cold... most certainly ask him to say sorry. If he refuses, DESTROY HIM WITH A DOOMSDAY MACHINE, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING ELSE THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH AGAINST SUCH AN OVERPOWERED IMPOSTER!
tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
@patrickngo I commend your effort here to explain colors to blind people. A lot of things you've posted here are chock full of common sense. None of them will ever be acted on, sadly. Because they require effort, time and money. CBS and PWE/Cryptic either cannot or will not(more likely) allocate any of these resources to correcting this situation. They already demonstrated this behavior with previous problems. No reason at all to expect them to act differently this time, is there?
I am a TROLL.
I wear this title as a badge of honor bestowed upon me by people who've never met me. Who have no idea what my life is like. Who think my only purpose in this game is to be at their beck and call 24/7. Who would "punish" me by removing me entirely from this game given the choice. I am okay with them thinking of me this way. Because it has zero impact on my playing STO. My Fleetmates and friends know me and know what kind of person I am. And as long as they are okay with how I play STO, I can give a flying rodent's posterior what a bunch of forum warriors think.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
@patrickngo you speak so much sense it brings a tear to one's eye.
The whole system of rewards in STO these days (in particular the featured TFO's or events) is geared towards simply turning up and being given a reward, rather than actually having to make any effort to earn them.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
I mean if all they want is for player X to earn a reward be that they are logged in daily for Y time then why not just have us sit in an empty blank map for 15 mins daily and throw rewards at us, this is literally all current event TFO design is. The fancy map designs, enemy ships, effects....they are all a total waste of resources and time if your whole way of thinking is just to auto-reward a player for simply being present.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
From that data, it should be pretty easy to structure an algorithm that scales rewards individually. Particularly if concepts like 'Assists' in kills is also implemented. it's more complicated than the "Finished/didn't finish" they're using now, but it has the potential to increase the value of players-actually-playing while de-incentivising AFK behaviour.
STO has missions built that track that stuff. Seriously, look at the end of queue window in NW. In STO the game can and does track all of that stuff. It's how the game decides who gets First in Romulan Minefield or CC. In Champions, this system has a score requirement for getting rewards.
What does it accomplish? Realistically? Not a whole lot.
so I won't actually say why I think we have the system we have in STO, merely that it would require a mentality that is likely to be non-present in the developer staff before any change could even be designed, much less implemented.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort. That and it creates an environment where using certain builds will give you a higher score just because of your build choices. Remember the old whining about Romulans in CCA? Now imagine that applied to every TFO, but WORSE since it applies to dilithium rewards and not just junk gear and trophies.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort.
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
I honestly have no idea what to do about trolls, I think a lot of what @patrickngo said makes absolute sense - you have to rob the trolls of their incentive to troll. Turn the logic on its head somehow.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort.
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
Those are included as part of the score systems in CO and NW. In fact, the reason people complained about Romulans in CCA was due to certain Warbird consoles having passive heal effects that would enhance their score.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
Because as soon as players are required to do anything more than show up and derp around for a few minutes for their rewards, the forums light up like a christmas tree full of whiners saying "too hard."
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.
Comments
- actually troll afk'rs and leavers (they like to ruin the fun for others)
- people willing to swallow an penalty if they don't like what they got for their random.
Combined with an penalty system that seems to work in mysterious ways (which is understandable and appropriate).- it can't detect a game crash even though other portions of the game can and will even generate a ticket for you, per my posted photo.
- for other issues such as server disconnects, blue screens, etc. it might be weighted towards time spent and time before returning to the queue but even in this seems to be unreliable but may be due to technical limitations and/or the fact that most security systems don't have known thresholds by way of design to prevent them from being circumvented.
I'm still for a graduating penalty that gives some leeway or credence for DC's, crashes, internet issues, RL emergencies etc., if such a system is possible.I still characterize people who leave a random because they don't like what they got as 'self centered at best' and as TRIBBLE at worst.
This though, would require Cryptic to overhaul their thinking from "nobody left behind, everyone wins" mentality, to a more competitive,or meritocratic one. To go from "Mr. Ice Cream is on the Way," to "Service guarantees citizenship! Are you doing your part?"
If I play Dust to Dust at level 10 I will get a mk iv version of the item. if I go back and play that mission later on at 65 I will get a mk xii version of the set. However this is besides the point, folks absolutely can get mk xii very rare items which will do them quite well.
I agree it's better to upgrade during an upgrade weekend, however you can still upgrade without that weekend being in effect. If it means the difference between not being able to function at all, then I would think that's a small drop in the bucket. For veteran players it won't be that hard to buy some cheap ultra rare beams from the exchange or epics and upgrade them the rest of the way. With Phoenix techs and a few accelerators it won't take long. Fleet weapons are also a possibility.
Well I guess that's all the more reason it needs to change then.
Your math is almost spot on but you didn't fully complete it. To calculate the DPS needed to complete ISA in that time we would first want to convert our 15 minutes into seconds, since we are trying to determine Damage Per Second. We would multiply our 15 by 60 which gives us 900 seconds. We would then divide our 50m by our 900 seconds. which gives us 55,555.5 with that .5 repeating of course. This is where you dropped the ball in the calculation as you needed to take it one step further and you didn't. Your number only takes into account the COMBINED total the 5 people in the run need to do and not the individual number. When we account for the fact that there are 5 sources of damage in the run, we divide our 55,555.5 by 5 and we get 11,111.1 with that .1 repeating.
So in actuality the number each person in that run needs to deal is only 11k DPS. So your number of 60k per person is way off base. To be considered AFK you would need to be dealing less than 11k. I have a hard time believing a long time veteran player is going to be dealing less than 11k
i didn't think there would be two posts in the same thread that made me laugh until my ribs hurt, but I was wrong. Here's where it's in part your problem. When you press that random button you are saying to the system and everyone else in queue, you don't care what it puts you in, you just want to play. By hitting that button you are agreeing to then play whatever queue it gives you. When you then bail out, this means you essentially lied to the other 4 people in there and have basically forced them to play a man down, or fouled the run up to the point they may not be able to complete it. All because you have decided you didn't want to play the queue you signed up for. When someone's actions negatively effect the ability of someone else to play the content, those other people have every right to call attention to it. Even simple contracts in real life have consequences to breaking them, and if it were a business transaction, you would have long been sued for breach of contract.
As alluded to above, when you press that join button, you are agreeing to play whatever queue it gives you and you are agreeing to do it with the other 4 people it sticks you with. When you bounce out of there intentionally to another toon, you are negatively impacting the other 4 people's ability to complete the queue. When the actions of one person negatively impacts my ability to play the game or content, I have every right to say they should be given an account wide lockout for intentionally griefing the group.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
What we do need a penalty for is people abusing the random queue by leaving until they get the queue they want, violating the rules of the random system to get the reward without holding upt their end of the bargain. To that end, the best solution is to disable the random queue (and only the random queue) for an extended period of time, account wide. The people who want to pick their queue will get to pick their queue the honest way and the bonus rewards will go to those who actually play the content they are given.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I can manually queue things I think people don't like and hope the people hitting random don't like them.
My character Tsin'xing
If you're not running with a premade team, you'd have no way of knowing what sort of teammates you'll end up with, so any number of them could be relatively new players that aren't putting out 11k DPS. There's also a chance that a player may end up leaving or disconnecting, thereby leaving you short of a teammate. In either case, if you're only putting out 11k, you'd be relying on luck, which is obviously unreliable. If you want to guarantee success, you'd need to be prepared for such occurrences by putting out more than 11k DPS. In the worst case scenario, your teammates simply don't exist, so you'd need to be prepared to finish the queue alone.
In theory, Ruin's logic is sound (albeit off by a few thousand DPS), but only in the most extreme circumstances. Luckily, in practice, you'll usually end up with a team that's good enough to succeed, so whether or not you're able to solo the queue isn't often a problem, but I'd advise coming prepared for less than ideal teammates anyway.
As far as stopping the trolls is concerned, I'd point out that while being able to determine exactly how much a player benefits the team as a whole and to reward them based on how much they contribute would be ideal, it would likely prove difficult, if not problematic, to actually implement. However, I do agree that not granting any payouts to players that do nothing or leave the queue, and instead having their rewards distributed among the active players that actually did something, would be relatively easy to implement and would at least add some benefit to the players suffering from smaller teams caused by leavers and AFKers.
Winning.
Oh, now don't tell me you want in on all this! Well, ok. Look this that Egg Pawn hanging outside your window, pointing his laser rifle at you, waiting for my next order. He's doing his part. He helps conquer the weak-minded. He roboticizes the weak-bodied. Heck, he even helps keep the useless people from causing any trouble, but you know what? Join. Find the closest Nataran Empire roboticization center near you and join the ranks, before the ranks find you. Oh, I know, you figure it must be so satisfying to know I basically rule the world now, and you know what? It is, but do you want to know the true definition of satisfaction? Well, let me tell you a little story. One day, you see a brand new event. They're giving out boxes that give old event stuff. Your dilithium is plentiful. You buy a whole lot of Phoenix packs on your main, and open them all. You get one epic token. Then, you decide, that since you have all the Breen ships and don't give a damn about the others, you exchange it for an ultra rare, and grab yourself a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship and for the hell of it, a Voth Bulwark. You open both, leaving the Bulwark in your vast masses of starships as you jump into the bugship and deck it out, deck by deck, into the most awesome Jem'Hadar ship you can. You fly it. You enjoy it. Eventually, you get bored and leave, leaving the old Bulwark never flown... until later. Your main is long complete. Your new alt main, based off some character you pulled out of nothing just to explain away some starship being in service without the command of your dear admiral, is also complete. Mostly. Their reps and doffs are hard at work, getting you stuff. You realize the potential, and head back for your dear admiral, pull the most Voth themed build you can out of thin air, and suit up in your giant ship in the shape of you know what. You head out... and cause all sorts of havoc. Enemies scream out your name as their very life is drained away by your swarms of Aceton Assimilators. They complain to the devs of your OPness when you revive yourself from death every time you die. Do you show any form of mercy? No. After all, this isn't the United Federation of Planets, this is mother frakkin' Starfleet, where you explore strange new worlds and kick butt never kicked before. Oh, and you realize that I just wrote another speech rivaling your own signature. Cool. Oh, wait, that's just the original draft, it is part of my signature now. Oh, and yes, I am aware that I have become a Canadian Regent; one day, sooner than you'd expect, we'll suddenly decide to take over the world and declare an "alliance", and I shall become it's Regent. You know, like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe of our beloved Star Trek. Oh, who'll we be taking over with? I dunno, maybe [REDACTED], or maybe aliens from outer space. Guess you'll have to wait and find out, won't we? Until then, don't ask too many questions, or else my Breen allies on Titania might pick up on your -- [REDACTED BY BREEN CONFEDERACY FOR REASONS] Also, psst... keep an eye out for flying Tribbles! Also walls. Big, great walls, separating entire continents apart. Walls patrolled by Tribbles. Flying Tribbles. Flying Nukara Tribbles. Don't worry, it's not like they were on Venus with a herd of Tholians or anything, they just like the extreme heat and brutal weather like acid rain and hurricane force winds as the norm. Oh, and definitely keep your eye out on any two-tailed foxes, because if they ain't glowing, they're definitely an imposter. Possibly an Undine, we caught one of those once in my place once. Oh, and if you find a two-tailed fox that doesn't like the cold... most certainly ask him to say sorry. If he refuses, DESTROY HIM WITH A DOOMSDAY MACHINE, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING ELSE THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH AGAINST SUCH AN OVERPOWERED IMPOSTER!
tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
I wear this title as a badge of honor bestowed upon me by people who've never met me. Who have no idea what my life is like. Who think my only purpose in this game is to be at their beck and call 24/7. Who would "punish" me by removing me entirely from this game given the choice. I am okay with them thinking of me this way. Because it has zero impact on my playing STO. My Fleetmates and friends know me and know what kind of person I am. And as long as they are okay with how I play STO, I can give a flying rodent's posterior what a bunch of forum warriors think.
The whole system of rewards in STO these days (in particular the featured TFO's or events) is geared towards simply turning up and being given a reward, rather than actually having to make any effort to earn them.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
I mean if all they want is for player X to earn a reward be that they are logged in daily for Y time then why not just have us sit in an empty blank map for 15 mins daily and throw rewards at us, this is literally all current event TFO design is. The fancy map designs, enemy ships, effects....they are all a total waste of resources and time if your whole way of thinking is just to auto-reward a player for simply being present.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
What does it accomplish? Realistically? Not a whole lot. I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort. That and it creates an environment where using certain builds will give you a higher score just because of your build choices. Remember the old whining about Romulans in CCA? Now imagine that applied to every TFO, but WORSE since it applies to dilithium rewards and not just junk gear and trophies.
My character Tsin'xing
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
I honestly have no idea what to do about trolls, I think a lot of what @patrickngo said makes absolute sense - you have to rob the trolls of their incentive to troll. Turn the logic on its head somehow.
My character Tsin'xing
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.