BUG: Starfighter conquest objectives cause people to self-destruct over and over

[Nemarus]

In Starfighter Team Deathmatches, we are seeing a rash of people who immediately self-destruct themselves, over and over, to end a match as quickly as possible. This is undoubtedly so they can farm conquest points, which are rewarded 500 for completing a Starfighter match (regardless of win/loss or medals earned).

 

In Domination, these same individuals do not participate, and in great enough numbers, this ensures that the opposing team captures all three nodes (again to end the match as soon as possible).

 

This design bug was reported on the PTS in 2.9, and we warned it would affect both warzones and Starfighter. A fix was made to change the design of Warzone Conquest Objectives in 2.10--why was a similar change not made for the Starfighter objectives? In the case of Starfighter, matters are even worse since you can actively self-destruct to give the enemy team points.

 

Suggested Fix:

 

1) Alter GSF Conquest objectives to mirror the new set made for warzones. Refactor the GSF objectives to be:

 

Conquer the Skies (complete a match for 250) - repeatable

Dominate the Stars (win a match for 500) - repeatable

Critical Missions (complete the GSF weekly) - repeatable

 

Note that for this to work, all three of those objectives need to be available in every event, just like three base warzone objectives are.

 

2) Alternatively, as has been suggested before, we could leave Conquer the Skies and Dominate the Stars as they are, but make Medal of Bravery available in every Conquest Event. This would also encourage participation and play (even in a match you know you are doomed to lose). In fact this might be the preferable solution, just to give losing teams a reason to keep on fighting. Otherwise folks on the losing team will give up as soon as think they think can't win, and they'll start self-destructing again.

 

Really, the best solution would be to do both #1 and #2. The combination would provide steady conquest points for GSF participation, with accelerated conquest points for winning and/or good performance.

 

Each day this goes unfixed, both Conquest results and GSF matches will continue to be skewed by conquest farmers who sabotage their own team. Please address this at the earliest opportunity.

 

Thank you

[magecutter]

I had no reason to doubt you but thought perhaps it was just on your server until I saw it last night on harbinger.

 

what was weird was for the first match the opposing team all had 4 or 5 ships in their queue but no one was flying or fighting, and many times they would just fly into the nearest asteroid rather than participate in the match.

the next 5 or so matches all had 2 or 3 ship line ups.

also, I'd never seen any of the pilots names before (must of rolled a bunch of alts to farm the gsf conquest points).

 

6 of the 7 matches I played were like this. I spent a good part of these matches just sitting still and watching the map trying to figure out what was going on. finally I just quit mid match and re-queued hoping for real players but it was not to be.

 

the suggestions you made sound good and will hopefully help to prevent this from happening over and over again.

 

the only possible upside is maybe some of the people farming GSF Conquest points will find they like flying and will become regulars.

 

anyway, this needs to be addressed.

this kind of point farming could kill GSF (why bother flying if no ones going to compete?).

 

I'll by flying again today and really hope this point farming doesn't continue for too long.

Edited September 12, 2014 by magecutter

[Nemarus]

And another conquest event will be skewed, and another week of GSF soiled, because this hasn't been fixed.

 

We can't even KICK self-destructors out of GSF matches, because the system views them as "contributing". The only things they are contributing to are the enemy team's score and their own conquest points.

 

This needs to be fixed before 3.0. You can't let system-disrupting exploits like this linger.

[Catlyn]

You're assuming that everyone is GOOD at Starfighter. Frankly I dislike it (and hate pvp), but have tried Starfighter because:

 

a) it is horribly expensive to try and craft my alts way to their 35k weekly conquest point objective,

b) I have limited playtime throughout the week and can't spend all night waiting in group finder queue for fp's

c) several of my alts are not yet level 55, so can't run the level 55 objectives (like Ops)

 

I'm getting really tired of the whole conquest thing and we're only on the 4th week