Useless AFK conquest farmers

[Fractalsponge]

There's been a rash of people from one guild on Shadowlands imperial side just spawning into matches and doing exactly nothing except self-destructing to avoid vote kick. I suspect this is to farm conquest points or credits. Anyone seeing this on other servers?

[ALaggyGrunt]

I guess now that conquest is worth doing for grade 11 purple materials, it's worth it?

[Bolo_Yeung]

Not yet - too much leftovers from slot machine frenzy.

[Danalon]

I will keep an eye on it. Although when I solo queue I end up with 4-6 afk (or almost afk) people anyway, so I'm not sure if I will notice any difference. Edited January 23, 2015 by Danalon

[havokhead]

I've seen it a lot this past fall on TEH but not so much lately, sometimes in an 8 man squad I was the only 1 flying. Nothing says "fun" like scanning for your teammates just to realize they're all huddled in a ball not moving for the whole match or the guys that fly in a straight line towards sats firing RFLs from 10k away hoping to catch a rail gun slug. Personally, I have to wonder just how sad your life is that you'd rather watch yourself sit still in space for 10mins then actually try.

[zaskar]

Get your team to vote them out, easy.

[Fractalsponge]

Get your team to vote them out, easy.

 

Like I mentioned in the OP, they will self-destruct to avoid vote kick. Death resets the non-contributing timer.

[Verain]

Report players like this. If they care about conquest, they care about a temp ban.

[Kestrel_Tensai]

Been reporting since October. Specifically 10/16/14 per my first report. I went on vacation all December and when I came back this month the guild in question was queuing two at a time during the day. I feel as though I'm doing it wrong. The results of my actions seem to not be discouraging anything at all. The names have stayed the same since I started reporting, but there are a couple new characters queueing with the old ones. The Protocol Droid M0-T0 message about investigating the issue and taking appropriate action is the same as it was back in October. The only change has been an increase in farmers.

 

The most reliable way that I have found to not get in a match with them on imp side is to join a double premade, then wish in one hand or watch the "/who denon mesas shipyard" for one of their known names to join a match before I ever accept a pop.

 

Overall the best way to never get one of them on my team is to queue pub side. Then you hope the next match is Pub vs Pub or that there is an Imp Ace on that can carry 1-2 leeches if you want a fun match.

 

Either way, it does not seem to be a problem that has been solved by simply "reporting" said characters or "vote kicking" said characters. That has been done for the past several months with no noticeable effect lasting more than a single match. Perhaps this forum post will call more attention to the matter and enact a change even if it is only to fix a Shadowlands problem.

[Fractalsponge]

Some examples:

 

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-21 22-41-34-64.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-20 22-12-04-71.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-15 15-34-48-97.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-21 22-41-34-64.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-20 22-12-04-71.jpg

 

Occasionally an ace can carry the match, sometimes they can't. But it sorta screws the experience for everyone but the botters/farmers. The winning side doesn't get as good a match as they could've gotten, and the losing side is carrying a huge millstone towards the finish line. Reporting doesn't seem to really do very much, unfortunately.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Fractalsponge

[CrazyGreggy]

Some examples:

 

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-21 22-41-34-64.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-20 22-12-04-71.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-15 15-34-48-97.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-21 22-41-34-64.jpg

http://fractalsponge.net/swtor/swtor 2015-01-20 22-12-04-71.jpg

 

Occasionally an ace can carry the match, sometimes they can't. But it sorta screws the experience for everyone but the botters/farmers. The winning side doesn't get as good a match as they could've gotten, and the losing side is carrying a huge millstone towards the finish line. Reporting doesn't seem to really do very much, unfortunately.

 

3rd link doesn't work, bottom 2 are the same as top two, but the point is taken. I've seen those 2 (fatbloke and educk - names altered to avoid calling out) votekicked from Domination, but in a TDM.....yeah, that's harsh.

[Verain]

Been reporting since October.

 

I've had much better luck reporting farmers. I'm not opposed to this post, or the public naming and shaming, but I dunno if it will be as effective.

 

When you make your report, make it concise and accurate. Emphasize that this is not a player who is bad or trying, but one who is deliberately abusing a pvp queue and literally ruining the game for any who come alongside. Make it clear that you aren't complaining about a bad participant, but a deliberately malicious non-participant.

 

Also consider making a thread under Suggestions and other places where you point out the bad setup of conquest in its relation to GSF- that the flaw is the reward system. Or just find one the million fine Nemarus posts on this issue and bump it- as someone with his toes in both worlds, he was all over this when it was still on the PTR and called every subsequent abuse.

[Danalon]

My main problem with this is: How do I determine someone is afk farming and not just bad or maybe new to the game? Sometimes there are so many useless people in pugs if I reported them all I would need to report 4-6 people per match. It feels like I'm 1v8 sometimes, except the other team also has afk/bad/new people then it's more like a 1v3 or something. And most of the afk/bad/new pilots I see are in some sort of grey area, they have 0 kills, maybe 1-3 assists 5-7 deaths and 2k-7k damage done. Did they do damage to prevent being marked afk or are they just bad and trying?

 

I reported the severe cases of not contributing to the game, those people flying into walls on purpose to manipulate the final score in TDM for whatever reasons. And so far I have to say I have never seen one of them another time in the GSF. I also put them on my ignore list but I've also never seen them in opposite teams.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Danalon

[Kestrel_Tensai]

When you make your report, make it concise and accurate. Emphasize that this is not a player who is bad or trying, but one who is deliberately abusing a pvp queue and literally ruining the game for any who come alongside. Make it clear that you aren't complaining about a bad participant, but a deliberately malicious non-participant.

 

I mentioned when I started reporting the said characters as a reference as to how long I have been reporting said behavior. The quality of my report should not be an issue. The people in charge of responding to my reports should be using available evidence to validate and draw their own conclusion without some random user/reporter's so called evidence. My own personal report with whatever I say isn't an issue beyond the time and participating characters. This does not include the screenshots and reports that other players report for the very same characters that I am mentioning.

 

It is cute and all the say "report said characters" and to "vote kick" said AFKers to solve the AFK/leech problems, but as far as Imp side shadowlands is concerned, this has not worked in the least for the past 3-4 months. Any strategy that brings this problem out into the open is just as likely to cause a change as anything we have tried in the past.

Edited January 25, 2015 by Kestrel_Tensai

[CrazyGreggy]

Put up 30 kills in a 42-50 defeat yesterday, had 2 suicide leeches with 13 deaths between them.

 

Sigh.

[ThutmoseV]

I went through 49 screen shots of final scoreboards of my matches on Shadowlands in January. These are not a perfect statistical sample, just matches I thought interesting or where I thought I played well. Out of those 49 matches, I found 38 player entries where the player did no damage and got no objective points. 7 were pub side, 31 imp side, so the problem on this server is much more on the Empire side. Some of them had 2 players not participating, one had 3 players. I might have missed a few where it was 12 vs 12 and the whole list did not show up on the screen shot. The same names usually showed up several times. There were a few instances of people who did no damage but got hundreds of objective points, which must be bombers defending uncontested sats.

 

The only thing I can think of is that there should be no conquest point reward for GSF unless you win, or at least do damage or get objective points. Some of these must be bots, why would a person join a game like this and not at least try to shoot something? I do not want to change the GSF daily or weekly reward to only reward victories, since new players need those to get ship req.

[Muljo_Stpho]

It seems like it should be better during weeks where there are additional conquest objectives for wins and medals. (I don't know how true that actually is. Honestly, I haven't been finding the time to run GSF much lately.) Although I do acknowledge that the targets for those objectives are a bit high to expect a huge impact. And those objectives only come out when GSF is meant to be a focal point for that week's theme, leaving the core objective that rewards "hey, I was there for it!" points for all of the other conquest weeks.

 

So if there could be any tweaks to provide some incentive to actually participate, they need to start with that core objective. What if instead of "complete a match" for 500 points they make it "complete 3 matches (wins count x2)" for 750 points? Three consecutive wins would be worth points twice (1500 total, averaging 500 per game) while three consecutive losses would be worth points once (750 total, averaging 250 per game). Long term as you play over and over and over, you would want as many wins as possible to reach as close as possible to a 500 points per game average instead of just accepting the losses and bottoming out at the 250 points per game average.

 

The additional objectives in GSF focus weeks currently award extra points for every 10 wins and every 50 medals. Sooo... The win objective is extra points AT BEST once every 10 games if you somehow manage to only ever run on the winning side. The medals objective will vary based on performance... Once every 10 games if someone gets 5 medals per match (could be considered good for a total noob)... Once every 5 games if someone gets 10 medals per match (probably closer to the average / semi-decent player here)... Once every 3-4 games if someone gets 15 medals per match (usually seen being done by those crazy aces that can dominate a match all by themselves)... The win objective and the medals objective are something at least, but they feel like an awfully big investment of time for those that know that they aren't at the top of the game, which can mean shrugging it off as something that they're not likely to ever get points for anyway. Lower targets would make these seem more attainable, which would help provide a reason to actually try to do your best instead of only collecting points for being there. What if they were 250 points for every 3 wins and 250 points for every 25 medals?

Edited January 25, 2015 by Muljo_Stpho

[Verain]

So, you have the following players that suck:

 

1)- Foodships

Malice: No

Skill: No

Effort: Meaningless

GM Actionable: No

Recommended Action: Be annoyed, but try to help them.

 

2)- Conquest Farmers (not real players who also want conquest, mind you)

Malice: No

Skill: Meaningless

Effort: No

GM Actionable: Maybe

Recommended Action: The ones discussed in this thread are likely actionable by GMs.

 

3)- Trollful Willful Nonparticipants

Malice: Yes

Skill: No

Effort: No

GM Actionable: Yes

Recommended Action: Report.

 

4)- Self Destructors

Malice: Extreme

Skill: No

Effort: Negative effort

GM Actionable: Yes

Recommended Action: Report.

 

 

 

Conquest faces a problem. If you are in a large game like SWTOR and you launch something that bribes players to play in exchange for something, it is with the understanding that they are taking away from some OTHER time. Your ideal situation as a game designer is that they play your game a little more and maybe some less fun game a little less. But as a player, you might take time away from other events in game as well. You don't want that as a designer, so if you add something like Conquest, you need to be sure that you spread the rewards around. You want a player who is playing some GSF, some warzones, and some raids to not feel they have to drop some activity to exclusively farm whatever you made. Hence, there need to be Conquest objectives in GSF, or players who like the ground game and GSF a lot would feel bribed to never play GSF.

 

The problem is that GSF's metrics don't lend themselves to this. A victory is never assured.

 

 

 

My recommendation is based on something I'm pretty sure Nemarus says, and that is to convert completed matches, victories, and medals into some score, and conquest is rewarded (up to the max) based on that. So that someone who goes into the game and plays well would be done immediately, but someone who chain self destructs or whatever would have to do that for hours to get their credit. This would eliminate all but the most loathsome trolls from ill behavior.

 

 

I will say that this issue is not common, though it is infuriating when it pops up.

Edited January 25, 2015 by Verain

[Pilgrim_Grey]

The only thing I can think of is that there should be no conquest point reward for GSF unless you win, or at least do damage or get objective points. Some of these must be bots, why would a person join a game like this and not at least try to shoot something? I do not want to change the GSF daily or weekly reward to only reward victories, since new players need those to get ship req.

 

And I don't want to lose out on Conquest points if I get stuck with bad teammates or if I'm grouped with bunch of newbies and I get all the Imperial aces against me (which is often enough).

 

And it is a little hard to tell who is just not playing, sometimes. Seriously, some people just don't aim all that well in GSF, somehow.

[MiaowZedong]

My recommendation is based on something I'm pretty sure Nemarus says, and that is to convert completed matches, victories, and medals into some score, and conquest is rewarded (up to the max) based on that. So that someone who goes into the game and plays well would be done immediately, but someone who chain self destructs or whatever would have to do that for hours to get their credit. This would eliminate all but the most loathsome trolls from ill behavior..

The simpler solution is to treat GSF like ground PvP. Halve the reward for showing up, and then add another reward (the double of what it is now) for winning. Casual Joe who makes a small contribution to his team in every match (he tries, he just isn't good) would probably gain conquest as fast as now since he'd be winning about half his games; Ace McAceson who wins most of his games would be happy he's making conquest faster; but most importantly those who just AFK would win conquest more slowly since they harm their team's chance of success, and even more so those who self-destruct to get the game over faster.

[Fractalsponge]

To be honest, I don't care about conquest, credits, or any of that. I just want a good match.

 

And the bad actors from this one guild are not simply bad pilots - 0s across the board, except deaths, which are almost all self destructs. Even the worst pilots will at least attempt to shoot. Bad pilots are fine, but the depths of wasted life that this kind of behavior suggests is really annoying and somewhat disturbing.

[DreadzKaiser]

There's been a rash of people from one guild on Shadowlands imperial side just spawning into matches and doing exactly nothing except self-destructing to avoid vote kick. I suspect this is to farm conquest points or credits. Anyone seeing this on other servers?

 

I have seen none of this on Pot5. just good GSFing, a bit onesided at times

[MDVZ]

Haven't really noticed any, but I haven't really been looking for it.

 

If the conquest points rewarded were tied to game performance it should minimise it. Wins count double or it's connected to req earned or something.

 

Some people would still just AFK or suicide through more matches, though.

 

To be honest, it all comes back to the lack of integration with your actual character. If you could turn req or fleet coms into basics and/or credits, rather than just bribe with a grinding matches for conquest, there wouldn't be this problem and there would be a much larger GSF base as well. All we'd need is a GSF vendor to sell req to for other ****.

[Pilgrim_Grey]

The simpler solution is to treat GSF like ground PvP. Halve the reward for showing up, and then add another reward (the double of what it is now) for winning. Casual Joe who makes a small contribution to his team in every match (he tries, he just isn't good) would probably gain conquest as fast as now since he'd be winning about half his games; Ace McAceson who wins most of his games would be happy he's making conquest faster; but most importantly those who just AFK would win conquest more slowly since they harm their team's chance of success, and even more so those who self-destruct to get the game over faster.

 

That'd probably be the best idea. I honestly don't know why they didn't have that in from the start. I also feel like the reward for medals is a good encouragement to do more as well, and should always be in the conquest stuff. I get that they shift the focus from week to week, but this isn't the same as rewarding ops or FPs in general versus noting ones in particular that you complete.

[Muljo_Stpho]

That'd probably be the best idea. I honestly don't know why they didn't have that in from the start. I also feel like the reward for medals is a good encouragement to do more as well, and should always be in the conquest stuff. I get that they shift the focus from week to week, but this isn't the same as rewarding ops or FPs in general versus noting ones in particular that you complete.

 

I've been thinking about this post and I keep trying to come up with a good model for how the objectives ought to be changed. (I'm mainly thinking in terms of GSF objectives but maybe they could make sure that warzones fit a similar model?)

 

What I've been thinking is to have the standard participation (aka "duh I wuz heer 2") objective be replaced with a low count medals objective. Select a target amount that's within reason for the average player to achieve per match. (I was thinking somewhere within 7-10 medals?) An unskilled player that's genuinely trying ought to be able to pull off almost half the amount per match. A reasonably skilled but non-ace player ought to be able to get close to the mark in most matches. And an ace will consistently pull off almost 1.5 times the amount per match. Meanwhile, non-particpants (in deathmatch anyway, not so easy to fix in domination) will almost never earn medals so they will take many matches to build up to the required amount.

 

Currently most conquest weeks feature just that participation objective and the other standard objective that awards points for the GSF weekly, although some don't even have the objective for the weekly. Only the GSF focused weeks even begin to encourage real effort, but the targets of 10 wins and 50 medals are a bit lofty even for the best of the best. I suspect that those just trying to ride an "easy points" train aren't swayed at all by these extra objectives. They come across as being virtually unattainable if you know that you aren't a top pilot, and the possible earnings from them seem minimal next to the participation points just for being in the number of matches necessary to meet to conditions of those objectives. So I think that extra objectives for the focus weeks need to seem attainable for an average player within about 3 matches to make an impact.

 

What would be some good ideas for additional objectives? Some that come to my mind might look something like...

 

1) As the secondary standard objective (replacing the current one that calls for the weekly) perhaps the objective calls for the completion of 5 matches but wins count double and the GSF daily counts as an additional match on that counter and the GSF weekly counts as an additional two matches on that counter. (Effectively, the daily and weekly give an extra boost to reach the goal slightly quicker but once those are off the table it's awarding points once in five matches for consistent losses and twice in five matches for consistent wins.)

 

2) Another medal count objective even though I've suggested one as the main objective? Perhaps this one calls for 30 medals? (That's 6-7 matches for a dedicated noob, or 3-4 matches for an average pilot, or 2-3 matches for an ace.)

 

3 & 4) Win objective that calls for 3 wins in Domination? Win objective that calls for 3 wins in Deathmatch? It's just 3 wins instead of the much more daunting goal of 10 wins, yet splitting it into two separate objectives will mean some luck of the draw. (You could have up to four wins and not have hit either of these marks yet.)

 

5) Something for captures or objectives points or turrets destroyed (obviously any of these would only apply to Domination)?

 

6) Something for kills (consider limiting to kills made in Deathmatch)? It could be a specific number of kills in general or a specific number of kills of every ship type (4 different counters as conditions in the same objective) or perhaps even a specific number of kills AS every ship type (again, multiple counters in the same objective).

 

Any changes to improve anything I've said? Anything I missed that also should be included as an option to consider?

Edited February 4, 2015 by Muljo_Stpho