enable votekick for AFK/bots

[Danylia]

I had a match last night where we shut out the opposition 1000-0 and I played the Flashfire ace. With 61 objectives points (which probably involved two satellite flips), I earned less than 700 requisition.

 

Let me repeat that. In a perfect game, where literally every member of my premade performed flawlessly and none of the PUGs could get in a notable contribution around the locust swarm...

Honest question: for such horribly one-sided match, you really think you deserve more requisition?

 

It's not just situationally dependent, it's integral to the class. This is an entire class - which also happens to be massively overpowered - that receives almost no requisition for doing their job right.

Another honest question, what's wrong with that? They play, as you yourself admit, a massively overpowered ship designed for farming kills, assist and damage, and stroking the ego by looking at the scoreboard. Maybe there should be a drawback to it, too?

[Sangrar]

I am just going to ask this again, is there any real way to tell who really are bots/afkers? Seriously once I was on my gunship alone defending a node, blowing up any imp ships that showed up near the node, the match was fast so I only got 6 medals but I still did good on objectives and kills, however after the match a guy whispers me saying he reported me for afking on a node because I was always on the same position on his map, even though the whole time I had participated in the battle to capture the node at the start followed by keeping it, and also the fact that gunships are supposed to be stationary especially when firing, so I seriously have my doubts about afk's.

 

Anyway as for the OP's suggestion, a vote to kick would not work here are several reasons. First of all the way it has been presented before is in warzones everyone has to vote individually, and that can easily be negated if that person fights no matter what he has been screwing his team with. Second there is the way with group finder has it, someone votes and it starts the vote for everyone, this is the most effective model but sadly it allows anyone to troll someone off a team just because they don't like them or something. Either way, both methods require a majority vote, and when the majority is busy piloting around asteroids I am pretty sure that they won't risk crashing or getting blown up just because someone wants a certain person they "think" is afking off.

 

Also to the people who said no rewards for people who do nothing I agree partially. While if you get absolutely no points in ANYTHING that person unless they backfilled at the absolute last second or something does not deserve a thing, however I can understand how hard it is starting out, for example the first match I ever played of GSF on the pts, I was so confused and barely adjusting to the controls, the whole match was me getting blown up practically I had never had to deal with a mouse control that sensitive before, I did get 1 kill somehow, 1 assist, and a couple of objective points but no medals, but I had tried and did help a little as the clueless scout I was back then so I think it should be a little fair towards the new pilots like I once was and like some of you people were so they are encouraged to keep playing and getting more practice at it. Also, if there is an actual afker, what if they are hugging a node the whole time and milking objective points? then that guy would still get rewarded at the end of the match regardless.

 

And lastly saw someone post about bots with a pattern recognition software to recognize people flying in straight lines or circles again and again. That would not work either, as it would mainly serve to punish players who are defending nodes, most of the ships I see defending are either still or circling the node, and well, what would you do if you got kicked for circling around a node while guarding it? As it is there are very few ways to even pinpoint if someone is a legit bot or not, because for example, a guy gets killed, he goes back to b and gets blown up, goes back again to b to help, blown up, again and again, now who is to stop someone from yelling "bot" at him? I seriously have doubts as I suspect many of the people who shout about this stuff many times are looking for a scapegoat or something, I see it in ground pvp all the time when we lose someone I sometimes get in warzones shouts "FU hack!" again and again. They hacked nothing otherwise the win would have been so much easier for them. So yeah, in conclusion, I got my doubts about this but if there are real afkers and bots it will not be as easy to get rid of that problem (if there is really a large problem) as anyone thinks without as least punishing a lot of the honest players and I just would like to point those things out.

[Armonddd]

Honest question: for such horribly one-sided match, you really think you deserve more requisition?

 

Another honest question, what's wrong with that? They play, as you yourself admit, a massively overpowered ship designed for farming kills, assist and damage, and stroking the ego by looking at the scoreboard. Maybe there should be a drawback to it, too?

 

The answer to both of these is, if I and my team perform very well, we should be rewarded very well. Gunships being broken is unrelated to the rewards for skilled play. It's still possible for a bad player to do poorly in a gunship; the problems begin when a skilled player in a gunship gets to farm kills with little downside. A new player will simply be frustrated. Further, the "downside" of an overpowered ship receiving terrible amounts of requisition not only does nothing to alleviate the problems gunships prevent, and also becomes completely ignorable once the gunship is mastered (outside of saving up req for bombers etc, but anyone who wants to do that is just going to save their daily and weekly tokens until the patch hits).

 

I am just going to ask this again, is there any real way to tell who really are bots/afkers? Seriously once I was on my gunship alone defending a node, blowing up any imp ships that showed up near the node, the match was fast so I only got 6 medals but I still did good on objectives and kills, however after the match a guy whispers me saying he reported me for afking on a node because I was always on the same position on his map, even though the whole time I had participated in the battle to capture the node at the start followed by keeping it, and also the fact that gunships are supposed to be stationary especially when firing, so I seriously have my doubts about afk's.

 

That guy was just an idiot. If you get six medals, you're pretty clearly not afk. It's when people make bots that fly off into space in a straight line and fire shots at nothing, dealing no damage and contributing to no part of the match, that there's a problem.

 

Also to the people who said no rewards for people who do nothing I agree partially. While if you get absolutely no points in ANYTHING that person unless they backfilled at the absolute last second or something does not deserve a thing, however I can understand how hard it is starting out, for example the first match I ever played of GSF on the pts, I was so confused and barely adjusting to the controls, the whole match was me getting blown up practically I had never had to deal with a mouse control that sensitive before, I did get 1 kill somehow, 1 assist, and a couple of objective points but no medals, but I had tried and did help a little as the clueless scout I was back then so I think it should be a little fair towards the new pilots like I once was and like some of you people were so they are encouraged to keep playing and getting more practice at it. Also, if there is an actual afker, what if they are hugging a node the whole time and milking objective points? then that guy would still get rewarded at the end of the match regardless.

 

Again, new players aren't the problem. Like you said, you got a kill, an assist, and some objective points. You were pretty far from MVP, but you did something.

 

Currently, the biggest problem is people who don't even launch until the last few seconds (or launch once at the beginning and don't re-launch after they inevitably die). You're right that satellite huggers who go AFK are an issue, but they're also much less of one (and they would still follow the pattern of not re-launching after getting blown up).

 

And lastly saw someone post about bots with a pattern recognition software to recognize people flying in straight

lines or circles again and again. That would not work either, as it would mainly serve to punish players who are defending nodes, most of the ships I see defending are either still or circling the node, and well, what would you do if you got kicked for circling around a node while guarding it? As it is there are very few ways to even pinpoint if someone is a legit bot or not, because for example, a guy gets killed, he goes back to b and gets blown up, goes back again to b to help, blown up, again and again, now who is to stop someone from yelling "bot" at him? I seriously have doubts as I suspect many of the people who shout about this stuff many times are looking for a scapegoat or something, I see it in ground pvp all the time when we lose someone I sometimes get in warzones shouts "FU hack!" again and again. They hacked nothing otherwise the win would have been so much easier for them. So yeah, in conclusion, I got my doubts about this but if there are real afkers and bots it will not be as easy to get rid of that problem (if there is really a large problem) as anyone thinks without as least punishing a lot of the honest players and I just would like to point those things out.

 

There's specific patterns down to very precise level of detail that bots tend to follow. A human will very, very rarely follow the exact same path back to the node (and I mean turning x degrees over y seconds from spawn, boosting in a perfectly straight line for z seconds, etc); a bot will (usually) follow a specific preprogrammed path to the node every single time.

 

You have a better grasp than most how difficult it is to differentiate bots from players, but there are some tricks the industry has learned for detecting them. Most of what I've described here are common counters to simple bot programs, but there's also ways to, for example, read what's in the player's RAM and detect illegal software and whatnot. It gets very complex, and I honestly don't know very much about it, but it's also not quite as scary as it sounds.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Armonddd

[Verain]

Another honest question, what's wrong with that?

 

Literally everything. If a squad of gunship / scout / strike take a sat, it's ludicrous that only the scout and strike earn req for the cap. SO MANY times I have to barrel roll in just in time to get in on the cap, and many times I get nothing because the enemy troops break off to chase me across the map, leaving my scouts and strikes to cap the sat. We all did our job, but only they get paid. Dumb.

 

They

I think I see your problem.

 

a massively overpowered ship designed for farming kills, assist and damage, and stroking the ego by looking at the scoreboard. Maybe there should be a drawback to it, too?

 

Wait, we were talking about gunships, not flashfire/string.

 

 

ZING!!!

 

 

 

No, it's awful to bribe gunships to play poorly. This is just your hatred of gunships and inability to play versus them. The other is an issue with the way the req goes out.

 

 

In a tight game I have to play in a way that denies me req. It's only in a farm game where you can get the req. To the guy with the 1000-0 shutout, yes, that should definitely give more req than it does, but do recall such a game is also very short compared to longer ones.

[Sangrar]

The answer to both of these is, if I and my team perform very well, we should be rewarded very well. Gunships being broken is unrelated to the rewards for skilled play. It's still possible for a bad player to do poorly in a gunship; the problems begin when a skilled player in a gunship gets to farm kills with little downside. A new player will simply be frustrated. Further, the "downside" of an overpowered ship receiving terrible amounts of requisition not only does nothing to alleviate the problems gunships prevent, and also becomes completely ignorable once the gunship is mastered (outside of saving up req for bombers etc, but anyone who wants to do that is just going to save their daily and weekly tokens until the patch hits).

 

 

 

That guy was just an idiot. If you get six medals, you're pretty clearly not afk. It's when people make bots that fly off into space in a straight line and fire shots at nothing, dealing no damage and contributing to no part of the match, that there's a problem.

 

 

 

Again, new players aren't the problem. Like you said, you got a kill, an assist, and some objective points. You were pretty far from MVP, but you did something.

 

Currently, the biggest problem is people who don't even launch until the last few seconds (or launch once at the beginning and don't re-launch after they inevitably die). You're right that satellite huggers who go AFK are an issue, but they're also much less of one (and they would still follow the pattern of not re-launching after getting blown up).

 

And lastly saw someone post about bots with a pattern recognition software to recognize people flying in straight

 

There's specific patterns down to very precise level of detail that bots tend to follow. A human will very, very rarely follow the exact same path back to the node (and I mean turning x degrees over y seconds from spawn, boosting in a perfectly straight line for z seconds, etc); a bot will (usually) follow a specific preprogrammed path to the node every single time.

 

You have a better grasp than most how difficult it is to differentiate bots from players, but there are some tricks the industry has learned for detecting them. Most of what I've described here are common counters to simple bot programs, but there's also ways to, for example, read what's in the player's RAM and detect illegal software and whatnot. It gets very complex, and I honestly don't know very much about it, but it's also not quite as scary as it sounds.

wow thank you, finally someone actually gave me a logical concise response. Do not see that often on the forums do we

 

Anyway thanks for clearing that bot stuff up for me I don't know much about it myself but I know that people go in and accuse anyone of anything despite no real evidence a lot of times, I want to see actual afkers and bots punished but not anyone else. Anyway thanks for taking the time to write that response.

[Sadishist]

Truly and Ace pilot if ever I see one.... By the way Sadishist its fun running into you in Space pvp your good and its always a nice dog fight wish there were more pilots on both sides that were good and less like the imps..... ACE .

 

Thanks, and likewise. A lot of people reported that guy already.

[mr_sim]

So there is a major Bug in PTS I won't go into details but basically we were all flying around and couldn't see each other or the enemy and therefore couldn't shoot each other and therefor couldn't cap nodes because both factions were on it.

 

So really what it was was I was forced to be useless and I got a message similar to when you are AFK in the ground game telling me how I was flagged as useless and should shoot some things or engage objectives, like I could.

 

Anyway I never did see what extended uselessness resulted in, somehow I managed to prove myself useful. I don't know if this function is already in the 2.5 release but if not then 2.6 should see measures taken against AFK players.

[Kain_Turinbar]

I was scanning for enemies yesterday and kept noticing when I looked to my right the same green circle and pilot name was always on the capital ship. After about 5 minutes of this I was sitting on my sat with no one in sight and typed "this sucks, pretty sure we have an AFKer" because up to that point it was a close match. Apparently, they weren't AFK but were just sitting there for some reason because they actually replied "Yep, sure do LOL" like they were proud of it or something. Would have been nice to be able to vote kick that loser.

 

 

You almost wonder if people from the other faction are trying to bring down the other faction. On the Harbinger there is a clear advantage to the Republic side. They just have so many more people queuing that its a mirror match most of the time and when you do go against them they have more noobs than you and the result is a squash match. Perhaps a few people are getting together and making an alt in the opposite faction, queuing up and sitting the match out to help out their buddies? It would be even worse if people started grouping up and group queuing only to AFK.

Edited January 21, 2014 by Kain_Turinbar

[TUXs]

It needs to be an automated "kick" generated by the system - this can't be on the players to police, it needs to be done by the system imo.

[Zharik]

It needs to be an automated "kick" generated by the system - this can't be on the players to police, it needs to be done by the system imo.

 

Hell I'd be happy with member of my ignore list never allowed on my team and matchmaker picks people not on ignore lists over people that are. Then the community could just /ignore the afk player/BOTs/lagging-flying-around-the-sats cheaters... and make them sit on fleet never flying after their tactics were known.

 

Oh and before you cry that people could mass ignore the aces, this would only work on your faction and when you were flying on that side. And it would work against you on same faction matches, cause the aces would all be on the opposing side...

[Zharik]

Perhaps a few people are getting together and making an alt in the opposite faction, queuing up and sitting the match out to help out their buddies? It would be even worse if people started grouping up and group queuing only to AFK.

 

Unfortunately there is no way to counter this...

[LordMakusen]

I was scanning for enemies yesterday and kept noticing when I looked to my right the same green circle and pilot name was always on the capital ship. After about 5 minutes of this I was sitting on my sat with no one in sight and typed "this sucks, pretty sure we have an AFKer" because up to that point it was a close match. Apparently, they weren't AFK but were just sitting there for some reason because they actually replied "Yep, sure do LOL" like they were proud of it or something. Would have been nice to be able to vote kick that loser.

 

 

You almost wonder if people from the other faction are trying to bring down the other faction. On the Harbinger there is a clear advantage to the Republic side. They just have so many more people queuing that its a mirror match most of the time and when you do go against them they have more noobs than you and the result is a squash match. Perhaps a few people are getting together and making an alt in the opposite faction, queuing up and sitting the match out to help out their buddies? It would be even worse if people started grouping up and group queuing only to AFK.

 

 

That is my theory. I have noticed two players over the last couple days that I have had the unfortunate chance to play on their side. Played 5 matches with one and 3 with the other...same thing. Zeroes across the board except for one death. Last match I was so mad at the start of the match i followed him/her on idle and watched them drive right into a cliff...never respawned.

 

Theory is: have a generic character run a unmanned drone on one faction while you play your real one on the other. Stacks the deck in your factions favor. Nothing like 12 vs 11, huh. i'm starting to take photos to find a pattern of who is on the other faction that is always getting the benefit. But like y'all said, not really my job to police, just play and enjoy. Devs need to do something about it.

[JadedJasper]

Ran into a set of 3 guys just camping at the cruiser right form the start, across several matches. They were specific in chat about what they were doing too. Their mains were on the other faction, and they didn't bother to go out because "this faction was just too weak", and they got "roughly the same amount of Req by camping anyway".

 

Simply ensuring people camping like this get no Requisition would go a long ways.

[XavinNydek]

Let me repeat that. In a perfect game, where literally every member of my premade performed flawlessly and none of the PUGs could get in a notable contribution around the locust swarm, I received less than 700 requisition for my 13 kills and 39k damage.

Blowouts are very short. Gaining req requires time, and those really short matches will never give you as much req as a long drawn out one where nodes were fought over, dozens of turrets were destroyed, etc. You are putting way too much emphasis on kills and winning, work the objectives. To counter the arguments I know are coming: If you reward winning too much, people will AFK/leave when it's clear they are losing. If you reward kills, people will ignore the objectives and focus on kills. There's a very specific reason the rewards are the way they are, and it's actually some of the most fair PvP rewards I have seen in an MMO. These are dominion maps, if you aren't on a node, you are doing it wrong.

Edited January 23, 2014 by XavinNydek

[Kain_Turinbar]

Ran into a set of 3 guys just camping at the cruiser right form the start, across several matches. They were specific in chat about what they were doing too. Their mains were on the other faction, and they didn't bother to go out because "this faction was just too weak", and they got "roughly the same amount of Req by camping anyway".

 

Simply ensuring people camping like this get no Requisition would go a long ways.

 

I knew this **** was going on. We need a way to kick intentional AFKers ASAP.

[JadedJasper]

I knew this **** was going on. We need a way to kick intentional AFKers ASAP.

My experience in other games is that this is satisfying, but maintenance intensive and doesn't really solve the problem. Plus this problem is relatively rare, and a kick/ban approach is open to other (arguably worse) abuse.

 

Take away the incentive for people to idle like that and basically nobody will do it. Just make spending more than maybe 10% of your time near your cruiser yield zero Req and no progress towards Daily/Weekly missions.

 

You might still have some people botting, but that's more of a pain to setup and so less frequent.

Edited January 23, 2014 by JadedJasper

[Verain]

If I run back to my cap ship I shouldn't have to be worried about being flagged afk. I frequently tie up several scouts and strikes with such a tactic.

 

 

Plus, the one egregrious bot I have seen (who appears to have been banned!) had no such problems being afk near the cap ship. His bot would take him to A, each and every game without fail, along the exact same path. He never did any damage, of course, or helped in any way, but something like "stay near a cap ship, get no req" would hurt a good player like me and not do anything to discourage the existing bots. Total misfire.

[JadedJasper]

Maybe raise the 10% to 20%? If you're just running back occasionally I doubt you're spending that much time near the cruisers.

 

And that one egregious bot you saw was just one, and as you say he's banned. Such people have to be dealt with in a different manner.

Edited January 23, 2014 by JadedJasper

[Sadishist]

My experience in other games is that this is satisfying, but maintenance intensive and doesn't really solve the problem. Plus this problem is relatively rare, and a kick/ban approach is open to other (arguably worse) abuse.

 

Take away the incentive for people to idle like that and basically nobody will do it. Just make spending more than maybe 10% of your time near your cruiser yield zero Req and no progress towards Daily/Weekly missions.

 

You might still have some people botting, but that's more of a pain to setup and so less frequent.

 

Votekicks are used in ground WZ already.

[Sadishist]

If I run back to my cap ship I shouldn't have to be worried about being flagged afk. I frequently tie up several scouts and strikes with such a tactic.

 

 

Plus, the one egregrious bot I have seen (who appears to have been banned!) had no such problems being afk near the cap ship. His bot would take him to A, each and every game without fail, along the exact same path. He never did any damage, of course, or helped in any way, but something like "stay near a cap ship, get no req" would hurt a good player like me and not do anything to discourage the existing bots. Total misfire.

 

Not banned, just doing it with different toons. I think he's doing this to level them up.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Sadishist