People need to realize, every single system can be abused. There is no such thing as an abuse proof system. Folks already abuse the ability to AFK right now and still collect rewards. That hampers the other 4 players with no means of remedy for them. That is an even greater abuse than someone being booted from a run.
Yeah all systems can be abused...but one which can be SO BLOODY OBVIOUSLY abused that it took me all of 2 seconds to come up with how to do it is not a good system. Sometimes nothing at all is better than a bad system. And no, I don't think a system where you can grief other players out of their reward is better than one where one person leeches. Not saying I am a fan of leechers mind you...my past posts should be pretty clear on my views of them...but vote kick is a terrible idea that needs to go away in ALL games.
Yeah, I agree with you on this.
The best counter in advanced queues.. get your DPS up to the point where you can do it all yourself, then ignore your team. If they want to work together and everyone is active.. then great.. lets do this. If they are going to AFK or be stupid, I just ignore them and steam roll the queue by myself.
After the months of Skills Invalid do you really expect them programming this kind of feature to work correctly? If so, see me about these Spican Flame Gems.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
People need to realize, every single system can be abused. There is no such thing as an abuse proof system. Folks already abuse the ability to AFK right now and still collect rewards. That hampers the other 4 players with no means of remedy for them. That is an even greater abuse than someone being booted from a run.
Thats exactly my point. I cannot stand ppl that just cloak and wait in Azura Nebula Rescue while others do the hard work...
People need to realize, every single system can be abused. There is no such thing as an abuse proof system. Folks already abuse the ability to AFK right now and still collect rewards. That hampers the other 4 players with no means of remedy for them. That is an even greater abuse than someone being booted from a run.
Yeah all systems can be abused...but one which can be SO BLOODY OBVIOUSLY abused that it took me all of 2 seconds to come up with how to do it is not a good system. Sometimes nothing at all is better than a bad system. And no, I don't think a system where you can grief other players out of their reward is better than one where one person leeches. Not saying I am a fan of leechers mind you...my past posts should be pretty clear on my views of them...but vote kick is a terrible idea that needs to go away in ALL games.
Yeah, I agree with you on this.
The best counter in advanced queues.. get your DPS up to the point where you can do it all yourself, then ignore your team. If they want to work together and everyone is active.. then great.. lets do this. If they are going to AFK or be stupid, I just ignore them and steam roll the queue by myself.
The issue is that in some of the ground queues, you can't do it solo, regardless of your DPS, because of puzzles.
As for potential for grifing or 'tricking' the system, etc... that's why I hit on the idea of an automated system based on the idle mechanic. If anyone was to trick it, it's the supposedly AFK player themselves, by doing non-productive but registering actions, in order to avoid being kicked. Which, if done, makes the situation no worse or different than what we have now: the 'AFK' player stays in. Meanwhile, it does not open up the ability for other players to force someone out, and therefore prevents players from kicking someone maliciously.
The reason people are touchy about the potential abuse is that we've had entire fleets of people in the past whose seeming purpose was explicitly to 'troll' people at every opportunity.
I do agree that the AFK'ers/bots/leeches are an issue, but I confess I don't have a good idea for how to combat it. Most solutions lead to new issues that don't result in a positive net gain for the overall experience. The closest thing to a productive suggestion that I have is a commendation system similar to FF14's that encourages players to actually play/go above and beyond. A couple vanity items for thresholds would probably be sufficient motivation.
People need to realize, every single system can be abused. There is no such thing as an abuse proof system. Folks already abuse the ability to AFK right now and still collect rewards. That hampers the other 4 players with no means of remedy for them. That is an even greater abuse than someone being booted from a run.
Yeah all systems can be abused...but one which can be SO BLOODY OBVIOUSLY abused that it took me all of 2 seconds to come up with how to do it is not a good system. Sometimes nothing at all is better than a bad system. And no, I don't think a system where you can grief other players out of their reward is better than one where one person leeches. Not saying I am a fan of leechers mind you...my past posts should be pretty clear on my views of them...but vote kick is a terrible idea that needs to go away in ALL games.
Yeah, I agree with you on this.
The best counter in advanced queues.. get your DPS up to the point where you can do it all yourself, then ignore your team. If they want to work together and everyone is active.. then great.. lets do this. If they are going to AFK or be stupid, I just ignore them and steam roll the queue by myself.
To be honest, this is a slight issue in itself though. I mean, there is some argument that AFK'ing is a bit of a non-issue for some TFOs anyway. Seriously - the number of instances of ISA I've played (almost always dumped in them via the random queue option) where one player in a Juggernaught has made the rest of the team completely redundant is laughable.
I could AFK those instances and no-one would notice, because the instance doesn't last long enough for it to make the slightest difference.
The problem often occurs during longer TFO's or those with time limits (which are mostly bonus objectives anyway) It is annoying when it happens but I suppose I should learn to ignore... despite the unfairness of the situation
People need to realize, every single system can be abused. There is no such thing as an abuse proof system. Folks already abuse the ability to AFK right now and still collect rewards. That hampers the other 4 players with no means of remedy for them. That is an even greater abuse than someone being booted from a run.
Yeah all systems can be abused...but one which can be SO BLOODY OBVIOUSLY abused that it took me all of 2 seconds to come up with how to do it is not a good system. Sometimes nothing at all is better than a bad system. And no, I don't think a system where you can grief other players out of their reward is better than one where one person leeches. Not saying I am a fan of leechers mind you...my past posts should be pretty clear on my views of them...but vote kick is a terrible idea that needs to go away in ALL games.
Right now STO as a community is where World of Warcraft was about 5-6 years ago. They too had a problem with leechers and folks who wanted all the rewards for doing nothing, in addition to people trolling groups. Especially since we had the new Looking for Raid system where one guy could foul up a run for 24 other people, they knew they had to do something. It's not fair that one guy was able to foul it up for 24 other people with no recourse. The same was true for the 5 man runs as well. One guy shouldn't be allowed to foul it up for 4 other people with no recourse for the 4. On one hand you had folks demanding the ability to kick problem people from the groups. On the other hand you had people saying a vote kick would be abused, raising the "what if their connection drops, what about replacements, what's to prevent new people from getting kicked", and down the line. It was to the point that if Blizzard didn't do something, they stood to lose at least 25% of their playerbase at a minimum. Now you might say "but Darkblade there's your proof it would be abused by elitists right there." If Blizzard had only given us a vote kick system over there, that would be a valid argument. However Blizzard went beyond the vote kick, and also gave the community several ways to get an idea of who was new to the game and who was just a troll. What we ultimately ended up getting was basically a complete restructuring of how the Looking For Group systems worked with three big changes being implemented.
1: Blizzard instituted a Dungeon Journal. This gave people just enough information about the various mobs and bosses they would encounter in a run to formulate their own strategies to beat them, without outright saying "do X Y Z." In addition it also told people where they can get certain kinds of gear. In STO terms if you were looking for Polaron equipment it would say "Polaron items found in X Y Z mission." This meant people no longer had an excuse for not at least having a rudimentary idea of what to expect from the mobs and bosses in a run. It also removed the "I don't know where to get gear" excuse from people since that was one of the main functions of the journal.
2: They instituted the Proving Grounds. The proving grounds was introduced as a basic test before folks were allowed to queue for any kind of major content tied to the Looking For Group system. In the Proving Grounds there were challenges for Tanks, DPS, and Healers. These challenges would provide situations and scenarios that each of the 3 roles could potentially encounter in a run. If you were a Tank you would have to taunt some mobs off one of the DPS npcs or the Healer npc, you might have to hit a damage reducer because of a large hit that's about to come. Lastly it may have you keep a mob pointed a certain way so it doesn't cleave the group. As a DPS you knew, don't stand in fire, let me interrupt this ability on the boss and similar, while still doing enough to contribute to the run. As a Healer you would have to keep certain NPCs alive. If the entire group of NPCs was getting hit, you knew to use your AoE heals. If one guy was getting spike damage, you knew to use some of your HoTs as well as larger heals. You also knew if a debuff was applied, let me cleanse that. Before folks were allowed to queue for anything major with the Looking For Group system, they had to pass the silver level proving grounds challenge for whatever role you wanted to queue as, be it Tank, Healer, or DPS. This showed you had at least a rudimentary idea of what you were doing, and were capable of contributing a basic minimum amount of effort to a run. In STO terms, this would basically mean you had a basic cohesive build and were able to dish enough damage that you could do at least 5% of the damage for the entire run, or about 7k DPS.
3: The last thing they did was institute a mandatory average item level requirement. This helped guarantee people had the stats on paper to at least survive the challenges in the run, and be able to dish out some punishment to foes in return. This way you didn't have someone coming into a run with all quest greens expecting to be carried at the expense of the 4 or 24 other people.
Between those 3 things, it removed all excuses people had for not pulling their weight and contributing the basic minimum effort to a run. If the person was capable of gathering the necessary equipment, and performing well enough to complete the silver level of the proving grounds, they had no excuse for not pulling their weight. So you knew one of two things was going on, either the person was new and perhaps the group needed to take a moment, or the person was a leech. If the group took a moment to asses the situation and the person was at least trying, then they were new. If the person continued to do nothing, they were a leech. If a leech somehow made it past the first 3 things above, the final resort was the vote to kick option.
I've hammered that point about no system being abuse proof because if folks really want something done about the AFKers, leechers, and so on, something has got to give. It's an irrational standard to demand something be done, yet at the same time expect it to be 100% abuse proof. The only way to have a 100% abuse proof system is if the devs were omniscient or convinced someone like Q to design the system for them. It isn't going to happen. The fact that it can be abused is why WoW put safeguards in place in addition to giving the vote kick system.
1: the more you call vote kicks, the more you suffer diminishing returns on being able to call vote kicks.
2: you can't kick in the first couple minutes of the run
3: if you have 3 people in a run from the same fleet, and 2 pugs, the consent from the pug is needed before the 5th person can be removed from group.
4: if you were constantly being kicked from groups, then your ability to get into a queue was gradually diminished. this was to prevent trolls from simply requeuing and starting their shenanigans again.
5: if/when someone was removed from the queue, the remaining group members were given the option to find a replacement player. That replacement player would qualify for full end rewards from the run itself, only losing out on bosses already killed. Since STO only rewards at the end of the run, that second part is a non-issue.
They knew it could be abused which is why those safeguards were put in place. I could count on one hand how many times in the average week I actually had to use the vote kick feature. When I did have to use it, 95% of the time it was because someone's net took a dump on them and it was holding up the rest of the run.
At the end of the day, all of that combined produced alot better quality of player in the community, while giving a way to remove leeches. Right now STO is at that point where they're going to have to make a decision. Does the community really want something to be done about the leeching, AFKers and the like, or do they not? Because you can't get rid of the leechers the like without being willing to get your hands dirty and some unpleasentness taking place. In an ideal world a vote kick system wouldn't be needed, but many games have them because they work. Right now STO is at that place where a decision is going to have to be made. Does the community put its foot down on the leechers and AFKers and give them the kick in the aft shuttle bay they need, or does the community continue to sit back and whine about it while doing nothing and maintaining the status quo? Time will tell.
"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 only thing the queues need is a vote to abandon the queue for no penalty. If some afker (or a bug more likely) is preventing you from completion, well it sucks but you should be able get a new team without penalty. If not, finish it and move on.
Despite all the constant conversation.. in all honesty, I hardly ever see anyone AFK'ing in queues. I must just have good luck, but to me I don't consider AFK leaching a big problem in STO.
Some players are saying that more than just DPS should matter. I think they're right.
The race in Winter wonderland shows that it's possible for Cryptic to disqualify people for not being where they should be. It shouldn't be too difficult to apply that principle to TFO's.
A player who remains more than 10km away from enemies at all times is clearly not participating. They can be kicked. By the system, not by other players so that abuse can be avoided. Players who spent less than an X percentage of the time the mission takes within range of enemies, can either be kicked or have their rewards reduced by a certain percentage.
Possible exceptions can be made for missions like Cure and Infected where players could end up out of range of enemies because others kill those enemies faster. And of course, if players are interacting in another way (like disabling holding beams in Azure Nebula) they should not be kicked either.
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
Despite all the constant conversation.. in all honesty, I hardly ever see anyone AFK'ing in queues. I must just have good luck, but to me I don't consider AFK leaching a big problem in STO.
Yeah i don't really see that many AFK these days and even if there was one in a TFO are i am personally way too busy trying to stop myself being blown up as i play my buffs like a concert pianist with only one arm. lol
But yeah i think the STO community is actually quite good for a 10 year old game and with so many casual players, and i can only think of once in the last few months were someone got stroppy over chat about something that never really went anywhere.
It has to be a system managed feature, and nothing more. As others have already said, it'll be abused if it's kick-vote.
"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.
leechers and AFKers already trick the current automated systems by deliberately doing enough to avoid the automated system penalizing them. Pure automation alone does not work and only shifts the human element to a different place. At some point somewhere, someone has to get their hands dirty which is what alot of folks refuse to see. Whether that's at the dev level or on the community level, someone has to be the one to pull the trigger.
It has to be a system managed feature, and nothing more. As others have already said, it'll be abused if it's kick-vote.
they already abuse the automated systems we have now. If you think there is going to be an abuse proof system you're fooling yourself. I tend to think the community is better at policing itself than folks think. Is it perfect, absolutely not, but those who abuse the system will be easy to identify, as would those who are constantly trolling and AFKing events. The only way a perfect abuse free system can exist is if an omniscient being was to design it, and that's not going to happen.
"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
leechers and AFKers already trick the current automated systems by deliberately doing enough to avoid the automated system penalizing them. Pure automation alone does not work and only shifts the human element to a different place. At some point somewhere, someone has to get their hands dirty which is what alot of folks refuse to see. Whether that's at the dev level or on the community level, someone has to be the one to pull the trigger.
It has to be a system managed feature, and nothing more. As others have already said, it'll be abused if it's kick-vote.
they already abuse the automated systems we have now. If you think there is going to be an abuse proof system you're fooling yourself. I tend to think the community is better at policing itself than folks think. Is it perfect, absolutely not, but those who abuse the system will be easy to identify, as would those who are constantly trolling and AFKing events. The only way a perfect abuse free system can exist is if an omniscient being was to design it, and that's not going to happen.
Agreed the majority should handle it, hence why vote and kick
having a vote kick would be the worst thing the company could do. It would create troll heaven.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
1) Does that work per toon or per account? Because if it is per toon in this game, it might as well be worthless as you just toon hope between the 50 toons that can easily reach the TFO levels. If it is per account, than all the griefers have to do is make dummy accounts to to make it so people with one accounts lose ability to vote kick.
Account wide. Also the diminishing return on the vote kick only happens for the person calling the vote kick, and not the group as a whole. If you and I were in a run, and I've called enough vote kicks to trigger diminishing returns, I am the only one effected by the diminishing return. Since you didn't call that vote you are uneffected. All they would do with their dummy accounts is get themselves penalized. There are no positive/negative effects to voting or abstaining from voting to your account.
2) Yeah not in first couple of min in this game is the ENTIRE MAP for some runs...also I'm not as worried about getting vote kicked abused in the first couple of min. I'm worried about it happening at near completion...which is what happens in WoW by those who want to abuse the system to grief people and what LITERALLY HAPPENS TO MY FRIEND ON A WEEKLY BASIS. She is a casual player. Hell I know somebody in BDO who jumped back into WoW for shadowland who just requit WoW because of this problem last night. So to espouse that WoW somehow has a miraculous that is fair to everyone with their vote kick is LAUGHABLE.
Assuming they wanted to copy WoW's system, not everything would be an exact 1:1 translation, and it would have to be adjusted for STO. As for the anecdote, I'm sorry your friend has had a bad time, but anecdote on its own is not concrete evidence of a systemic problem. Otherwise if we're going by that standard, I myself can count on one hand how many abusers I've seen, and know of many more people who have not had an issue with the vote kick system. Once again you will never have a 100% abuse proof system. Anyone who thinks there is going to be such a system is living in fantasy land and needs to come back to reality. The best you can hope for is to minimize abuse of the system. Unless someone is doing something to draw negative attention to themselves, 99% of the time you won't have an issue with the system. Otherwise if someone is getting kicked on a regular basis, there is almost always a legitimate reason for it.
So if we don't go with some kind of vote kick system, and we want to address the issues of AFKers and leechers, how do we move forward from here? If we're not going to move forward with a plan until it's 100% abuse proof, then the status quo will remain and nothing will ever get done as such a system would require its designer to be omniscient, and last time I checked, no one in here is. The WoW system isn't perfect, but it's a huge improvement to what was there previously.
3) Okay so now you need a group of 4 instead of 3 and can only grief one player at a time. Yeah that's better. But hardly in the good territory...or even a passable system still.
Once again, you will NEVER have a 100% abuse proof system. Just because someone calls a vote to kick doesn't make them an abuser either. There are times and places when vote kicks are warranted. Once again we're right back to the first bit, how do you give a remedy to the other 4 people in the run if there is an issue with the 5th? So what do you consider a passable system?
4) So...let me get this straight...now instead of griefing a player for just a queue here and there, you can have an entire armada target and harrass a player so they can't even play a queue. Nice. This goes so far beyond a bad idea...yeah just no to this.
What you're describing is impossible for a number of reasons. What you're describing is also a little thing called harassment, which is against ToS, and can have legal ramifications outside of the game depending on the severity of the harassment. If something like that is going on, then there are bigger issues than simply a vote kick in a video game.
First, simply calling a vote kick on someone is not enough to effect that person's account. In order for someone potentially be penalized, they must be getting consistently kicked on a high enough basis, and that threshold is high for the exact reason you named. Secondly, the hypothetical troll armada would need to get enough of their members into a group with their potential victims multiple times and successfully kick them from group multiple times. You also don't know who you're being grouped with until you're in the run. So the trolls have a choice to make. Do they finish the queue, or eat the penalty. If they eat the penalty it's a 30 minute wait before they can try again. Even then all our potential victim has to do is put the trolls on ignore and they can't be grouped with him anymore. So your scenario literally can't happen. So this is not a valid argument.
Overall none of the scenarios you described above are possible under the WoW system.
"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
Still think allowing the players decide immediately is a bad idea. It would just be trading 1 inadequate system which is abused for another.
Now if the Ignore-listing proposal did make it where a player wouldn't be grouped with a AFK culprit that could have a similar affect as a player kick-vote.
You play a TFO & a player, without a doubt, AFKs hampering the whole team, place them on Ignore then you wouldn't have to deal with them AFKing anymore. If a system like that worked properly & the AFKing was obvious then those AFKing would be ignored enough to eventually end-up only being grouped with other AFKers. Also have it where a direct invite would supercede the ignoring.
I think the Ignore-listing proposal along with the players' innovative AFK channel(s) that probably absorb a good amount of bad AFK actors would be a good tandem & still allow some indirect influence by players' with the possible ignoring.
Until you can come up with a way of preventing Epeen boots, no. I actually had people screaming at me in chat because I was flying a megawell ship. and heaven forbid someone make an error because they are new to a TFO.... way too many ways of being screwed over that outweighs any benefit. as has been said ad nauseam, if you don't want to risk AFKers, arrange a private group to run with
Comments
Yeah, I agree with you on this.
The best counter in advanced queues.. get your DPS up to the point where you can do it all yourself, then ignore your team. If they want to work together and everyone is active.. then great.. lets do this. If they are going to AFK or be stupid, I just ignore them and steam roll the queue by myself.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Thats exactly my point. I cannot stand ppl that just cloak and wait in Azura Nebula Rescue while others do the hard work...
TBF I only saw afking on space so far
I do agree that the AFK'ers/bots/leeches are an issue, but I confess I don't have a good idea for how to combat it. Most solutions lead to new issues that don't result in a positive net gain for the overall experience. The closest thing to a productive suggestion that I have is a commendation system similar to FF14's that encourages players to actually play/go above and beyond. A couple vanity items for thresholds would probably be sufficient motivation.
The problem often occurs during longer TFO's or those with time limits (which are mostly bonus objectives anyway) It is annoying when it happens but I suppose I should learn to ignore... despite the unfairness of the situation
Right now STO as a community is where World of Warcraft was about 5-6 years ago. They too had a problem with leechers and folks who wanted all the rewards for doing nothing, in addition to people trolling groups. Especially since we had the new Looking for Raid system where one guy could foul up a run for 24 other people, they knew they had to do something. It's not fair that one guy was able to foul it up for 24 other people with no recourse. The same was true for the 5 man runs as well. One guy shouldn't be allowed to foul it up for 4 other people with no recourse for the 4. On one hand you had folks demanding the ability to kick problem people from the groups. On the other hand you had people saying a vote kick would be abused, raising the "what if their connection drops, what about replacements, what's to prevent new people from getting kicked", and down the line. It was to the point that if Blizzard didn't do something, they stood to lose at least 25% of their playerbase at a minimum. Now you might say "but Darkblade there's your proof it would be abused by elitists right there." If Blizzard had only given us a vote kick system over there, that would be a valid argument. However Blizzard went beyond the vote kick, and also gave the community several ways to get an idea of who was new to the game and who was just a troll. What we ultimately ended up getting was basically a complete restructuring of how the Looking For Group systems worked with three big changes being implemented.
1: Blizzard instituted a Dungeon Journal. This gave people just enough information about the various mobs and bosses they would encounter in a run to formulate their own strategies to beat them, without outright saying "do X Y Z." In addition it also told people where they can get certain kinds of gear. In STO terms if you were looking for Polaron equipment it would say "Polaron items found in X Y Z mission." This meant people no longer had an excuse for not at least having a rudimentary idea of what to expect from the mobs and bosses in a run. It also removed the "I don't know where to get gear" excuse from people since that was one of the main functions of the journal.
2: They instituted the Proving Grounds. The proving grounds was introduced as a basic test before folks were allowed to queue for any kind of major content tied to the Looking For Group system. In the Proving Grounds there were challenges for Tanks, DPS, and Healers. These challenges would provide situations and scenarios that each of the 3 roles could potentially encounter in a run. If you were a Tank you would have to taunt some mobs off one of the DPS npcs or the Healer npc, you might have to hit a damage reducer because of a large hit that's about to come. Lastly it may have you keep a mob pointed a certain way so it doesn't cleave the group. As a DPS you knew, don't stand in fire, let me interrupt this ability on the boss and similar, while still doing enough to contribute to the run. As a Healer you would have to keep certain NPCs alive. If the entire group of NPCs was getting hit, you knew to use your AoE heals. If one guy was getting spike damage, you knew to use some of your HoTs as well as larger heals. You also knew if a debuff was applied, let me cleanse that. Before folks were allowed to queue for anything major with the Looking For Group system, they had to pass the silver level proving grounds challenge for whatever role you wanted to queue as, be it Tank, Healer, or DPS. This showed you had at least a rudimentary idea of what you were doing, and were capable of contributing a basic minimum amount of effort to a run. In STO terms, this would basically mean you had a basic cohesive build and were able to dish enough damage that you could do at least 5% of the damage for the entire run, or about 7k DPS.
3: The last thing they did was institute a mandatory average item level requirement. This helped guarantee people had the stats on paper to at least survive the challenges in the run, and be able to dish out some punishment to foes in return. This way you didn't have someone coming into a run with all quest greens expecting to be carried at the expense of the 4 or 24 other people.
Between those 3 things, it removed all excuses people had for not pulling their weight and contributing the basic minimum effort to a run. If the person was capable of gathering the necessary equipment, and performing well enough to complete the silver level of the proving grounds, they had no excuse for not pulling their weight. So you knew one of two things was going on, either the person was new and perhaps the group needed to take a moment, or the person was a leech. If the group took a moment to asses the situation and the person was at least trying, then they were new. If the person continued to do nothing, they were a leech. If a leech somehow made it past the first 3 things above, the final resort was the vote to kick option.
I've hammered that point about no system being abuse proof because if folks really want something done about the AFKers, leechers, and so on, something has got to give. It's an irrational standard to demand something be done, yet at the same time expect it to be 100% abuse proof. The only way to have a 100% abuse proof system is if the devs were omniscient or convinced someone like Q to design the system for them. It isn't going to happen. The fact that it can be abused is why WoW put safeguards in place in addition to giving the vote kick system.
1: the more you call vote kicks, the more you suffer diminishing returns on being able to call vote kicks.
2: you can't kick in the first couple minutes of the run
3: if you have 3 people in a run from the same fleet, and 2 pugs, the consent from the pug is needed before the 5th person can be removed from group.
4: if you were constantly being kicked from groups, then your ability to get into a queue was gradually diminished. this was to prevent trolls from simply requeuing and starting their shenanigans again.
5: if/when someone was removed from the queue, the remaining group members were given the option to find a replacement player. That replacement player would qualify for full end rewards from the run itself, only losing out on bosses already killed. Since STO only rewards at the end of the run, that second part is a non-issue.
They knew it could be abused which is why those safeguards were put in place. I could count on one hand how many times in the average week I actually had to use the vote kick feature. When I did have to use it, 95% of the time it was because someone's net took a dump on them and it was holding up the rest of the run.
At the end of the day, all of that combined produced alot better quality of player in the community, while giving a way to remove leeches. Right now STO is at that point where they're going to have to make a decision. Does the community really want something to be done about the leeching, AFKers and the like, or do they not? Because you can't get rid of the leechers the like without being willing to get your hands dirty and some unpleasentness taking place. In an ideal world a vote kick system wouldn't be needed, but many games have them because they work. Right now STO is at that place where a decision is going to have to be made. Does the community put its foot down on the leechers and AFKers and give them the kick in the aft shuttle bay they need, or does the community continue to sit back and whine about it while doing nothing and maintaining the status quo? Time will tell.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
The race in Winter wonderland shows that it's possible for Cryptic to disqualify people for not being where they should be. It shouldn't be too difficult to apply that principle to TFO's.
A player who remains more than 10km away from enemies at all times is clearly not participating. They can be kicked. By the system, not by other players so that abuse can be avoided. Players who spent less than an X percentage of the time the mission takes within range of enemies, can either be kicked or have their rewards reduced by a certain percentage.
Possible exceptions can be made for missions like Cure and Infected where players could end up out of range of enemies because others kill those enemies faster. And of course, if players are interacting in another way (like disabling holding beams in Azure Nebula) they should not be kicked either.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Yeah i don't really see that many AFK these days and even if there was one in a TFO are i am personally way too busy trying to stop myself being blown up as i play my buffs like a concert pianist with only one arm. lol
But yeah i think the STO community is actually quite good for a 10 year old game and with so many casual players, and i can only think of once in the last few months were someone got stroppy over chat about something that never really went anywhere.
they already abuse the automated systems we have now. If you think there is going to be an abuse proof system you're fooling yourself. I tend to think the community is better at policing itself than folks think. Is it perfect, absolutely not, but those who abuse the system will be easy to identify, as would those who are constantly trolling and AFKing events. The only way a perfect abuse free system can exist is if an omniscient being was to design it, and that's not going to happen.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Agreed the majority should handle it, hence why vote and kick
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Assuming they wanted to copy WoW's system, not everything would be an exact 1:1 translation, and it would have to be adjusted for STO. As for the anecdote, I'm sorry your friend has had a bad time, but anecdote on its own is not concrete evidence of a systemic problem. Otherwise if we're going by that standard, I myself can count on one hand how many abusers I've seen, and know of many more people who have not had an issue with the vote kick system. Once again you will never have a 100% abuse proof system. Anyone who thinks there is going to be such a system is living in fantasy land and needs to come back to reality. The best you can hope for is to minimize abuse of the system. Unless someone is doing something to draw negative attention to themselves, 99% of the time you won't have an issue with the system. Otherwise if someone is getting kicked on a regular basis, there is almost always a legitimate reason for it.
So if we don't go with some kind of vote kick system, and we want to address the issues of AFKers and leechers, how do we move forward from here? If we're not going to move forward with a plan until it's 100% abuse proof, then the status quo will remain and nothing will ever get done as such a system would require its designer to be omniscient, and last time I checked, no one in here is. The WoW system isn't perfect, but it's a huge improvement to what was there previously.
Once again, you will NEVER have a 100% abuse proof system. Just because someone calls a vote to kick doesn't make them an abuser either. There are times and places when vote kicks are warranted. Once again we're right back to the first bit, how do you give a remedy to the other 4 people in the run if there is an issue with the 5th? So what do you consider a passable system?
What you're describing is impossible for a number of reasons. What you're describing is also a little thing called harassment, which is against ToS, and can have legal ramifications outside of the game depending on the severity of the harassment. If something like that is going on, then there are bigger issues than simply a vote kick in a video game.
First, simply calling a vote kick on someone is not enough to effect that person's account. In order for someone potentially be penalized, they must be getting consistently kicked on a high enough basis, and that threshold is high for the exact reason you named. Secondly, the hypothetical troll armada would need to get enough of their members into a group with their potential victims multiple times and successfully kick them from group multiple times. You also don't know who you're being grouped with until you're in the run. So the trolls have a choice to make. Do they finish the queue, or eat the penalty. If they eat the penalty it's a 30 minute wait before they can try again. Even then all our potential victim has to do is put the trolls on ignore and they can't be grouped with him anymore. So your scenario literally can't happen. So this is not a valid argument.
Overall none of the scenarios you described above are possible under the WoW system.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Still think allowing the players decide immediately is a bad idea. It would just be trading 1 inadequate system which is abused for another.
Now if the Ignore-listing proposal did make it where a player wouldn't be grouped with a AFK culprit that could have a similar affect as a player kick-vote.
You play a TFO & a player, without a doubt, AFKs hampering the whole team, place them on Ignore then you wouldn't have to deal with them AFKing anymore. If a system like that worked properly & the AFKing was obvious then those AFKing would be ignored enough to eventually end-up only being grouped with other AFKers. Also have it where a direct invite would supercede the ignoring.
I think the Ignore-listing proposal along with the players' innovative AFK channel(s) that probably absorb a good amount of bad AFK actors would be a good tandem & still allow some indirect influence by players' with the possible ignoring.