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Why is this still a AFK penalty? Is this game not about tactics and instead just blow stuff up
rascally8abbit
Member Posts: 36 Arc User
My friend and I use a special tactic in the Azure Nebula TFO. Whoever has the best powered ship - shields, weapons, hull and exotic powers will engage the tholian forces and use things like draw aggression towards you. The other one of us gets to do the tractor beam take down.
But thanks to the afk system, this tactic punishes the person who does the tractor beam take down. By the time they are done most if not all enemy ships are gone or they warp out leaving them with nothing to kill. So my friend who got the tractor beam job gets a lovely and enjoyable 30 MINUTES afk penalty.
This TFO has been around for some time and I can't believe devs did not put in the needed code so an afk is not given if a person is avoiding drawing enemy fire to free ships fast.
Now this is an example of what drives (I didn't get afk as I did the firing/killing) people to ponder why keep playing if simple things like this aren't corrected. By the time a dev or mod reads this the penalty time probably would have expired for my teammate. The only problem is they will have to they get home from work and I will be doing something else so they have to fly it again. There are I think one or two others like this where one draws the aggression and does the hard work while a friend or someone in the TFO goes and open, pick up, locates, disables, beam up or whatever.
I am disgusted because I know he wasn't afk and he helped us get one of the optional parts done and for that he has to do the mission yet again. We all grind enough as it is without a senseless afk penalty.
But thanks to the afk system, this tactic punishes the person who does the tractor beam take down. By the time they are done most if not all enemy ships are gone or they warp out leaving them with nothing to kill. So my friend who got the tractor beam job gets a lovely and enjoyable 30 MINUTES afk penalty.
This TFO has been around for some time and I can't believe devs did not put in the needed code so an afk is not given if a person is avoiding drawing enemy fire to free ships fast.
Now this is an example of what drives (I didn't get afk as I did the firing/killing) people to ponder why keep playing if simple things like this aren't corrected. By the time a dev or mod reads this the penalty time probably would have expired for my teammate. The only problem is they will have to they get home from work and I will be doing something else so they have to fly it again. There are I think one or two others like this where one draws the aggression and does the hard work while a friend or someone in the TFO goes and open, pick up, locates, disables, beam up or whatever.
I am disgusted because I know he wasn't afk and he helped us get one of the optional parts done and for that he has to do the mission yet again. We all grind enough as it is without a senseless afk penalty.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
It is better not to change anything with STO as it's more likely to end up totally knackered.
"This TFO has been around for some time and I can't believe devs did not put in the needed code so an afk is not given if a person is avoiding drawing enemy fire to free ships fast"
I am going to highlight this comment right here. Coding for AFK Penalties is extrodinary complex. As you need to try and balance around the capability of trying to capture legitimate people who are AFKing around people who aren't. This is one of the most simple explanations for something that can be a nightmare to implement.
The devs had decided that damage is the best metric. As relatively speaking you need to be performing multiple actions at once (flying to the target, engaging your weapon systems and ensuring your 'arc; is enough to hit your enemy). Even then, while we dont have concrete numbers, members of the community believe the damage requirement to get a AFK penalty is roughly 1% of the entire team.
That's 1% of all 5 players (10 for CCA, though it has been a long time since i heard someone get a AFK from CCA). That is a extremely low requirement. Unless you get a massive DPS group with a new player or have really bad luck with lag or disconnects, generally speaking you can avoid that penalty.
With your example. How would the devs determine if someone is contributing to this particular TFO? How many tractors they would need to disable? What is the magical number? 4? 8? 12? Too low, and someone could free a single ship and go AFK to get a coffee/soda for the rest of the TFO. Which could hurt legitmate players who are trying their best to free as many ships as possible.
What happens, if you get 2 of those type of players in a single instance? You an see the problem. While the damage requirement can be abused too, it is a more 'simple' method to program as a AFK system, with less chances of something going wrong, or needing multiple variables to trigger/not trigger.
What you and your partner could do is rotate the duty. One asteroid one frees the ship, the other engages the Tholians. Next asteroid, you swap roles.