Useless AFK conquest farmers

[DarthScruffy]

"Throttle time" is probably a good way to separate players from afk people. Calculate the average space bar time per match (or number of times that thruster pool empties). It's a goal that even struggling players can reach and something that afk players will not be able to reach.

 

Most damage, kill or medal minimums are going to catch sincere players when skill disparity and gear disparity are massive in the beginning.

[AgentRobP]

"Throttle time" is probably a good way to separate players from afk people. Calculate the average space bar time per match (or number of times that thruster pool empties). It's a goal that even struggling players can reach and something that afk players will not be able to reach.

 

What's to prevent a bot from just boosting randomly after spawning?

[MaximilianPower]

What's to prevent a bot from just boosting randomly after spawning?

 

Logically, nothing.

 

That said, for whatever reason, the offender in question does not appear to boost. I played a game against him earlier today. I watched him spawn, and then pulled up next to him as he ambled slowly away from his cap ship (it was a blowout TDM so I could afford to waste a little time on this). He definitely wasn't boosting. I followed him until he crashed into a wall.

 

But you're right, of course. If a bot can enter a queue, accept a pop, and spawn (and then, apparently, hit W; otherwise he would have sat at the spawn point), there's no reason it couldn't throw in a few spacebar taps as well. This one just didn't bother with that.

[AgentRobP]

But you're right, of course. If a bot can enter a queue, accept a pop, and spawn (and then, apparently, hit W; otherwise he would have sat at the spawn point), there's no reason it couldn't throw in a few spacebar taps as well. This one just didn't bother with that.

 

Because it doesn't need to. If boosting is the only additional requirement, the bot will be quickly adapted to the new situation. Any solution implemented would need to be a bit more robust than that. It should be difficult for a bot to reliably pull off (it has to be reliable enough to be worth the time, otherwise they will go elsewhere--which is exactly what we want). (Hence the suggestions I gave earlier.)

[ALaggyGrunt]

Throttle time is good until the botters figure out

 

The hardest thing for them to figure out is how to get stats like someone actually playing the game. After a while they have to get into actual AI programming. The Bioware can hire them to make bots for a PvE campaign, because they will have written a program which can actually fly a starfighter like a human.

[sartt]

Get your team to vote them out, easy.

no its not you have people who dont even know how to vote, then if tey do anything that puts them in combat they cant be kicked.

[Monumenta]

Bots are not real life robots they are rather large programs of code

 

This lone part of your explanation as to what is a bot excludes you from anyone I would listen to about the subject, I'm not sure who's been hiring you for the last 13 years but the rest of the world has been doing amazing things with fewer lines of code...

 

Obviously i meant a programmed bot, do you even know what the word robot means? I wasn't referring to an android you withering dullard. But by all means go ahead with your gleaming brilliance, you obviously have done zero research into gold farmers and how spam bots are actually implemented in games so I'll leave you to it. Its quite obvious your 2 year community college certificate in C++ has given you all the answers, what could anyone else possibly or any amount of research possibly teach someone as astute as yourself, my most humble apologies kind sir, please forgive!

Edited July 25, 2015 by Monumenta

[DarthScruffy]

Throttle time is good until the botters figure out

 

The hardest thing for them to figure out is how to get stats like someone actually playing the game. After a while they have to get into actual AI programming. The Bioware can hire them to make bots for a PvE campaign, because they will have written a program which can actually fly a starfighter like a human.

 

The problem is the false positives are brutal on a mini-game not designed for entry level players. I was absolutely awful when I started and there are still times when on a scout when I'm doing nothing but running.

 

If botters want to manipulate ship controls so their ships are flying fast, I'm fine with it. There's at least some utility to it. Maybe you couple that with a "suicide penalty" and have new people focus on controls when starting.

[MiaowZedong]

You're not going to be able to reliably filter bots from people on a single match anyway. Firstly, because unless it's a very crude bot, it's not going to be that different from a clueless player, and secondly, because players can really be extremely clueless. If they haven't done the tutorial yet they probably don't even know how to boost.

 

What distinguishes bots from people is that (unless they're extremely good) they don't learn anything and always repeat the same small number of patterns without variation. But you need a large ammount of observation to see these patterns being repeated flawlessly over and over again. Even a bot with simple "learning" protocols repeats patterns, for instance an evolutive RTS bot will always change its build priority after an engagement according to simple formulae.

Edited July 25, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[Lavaar]

**UPDATE**

 

The "nine year old daughter" was playing GSF at 2am tonight. I don't know about your kids bedtime, but I have trouble believing that.

 

Over and out

[Verain]

You're not going to be able to reliably filter bots from people on a single match anyway. Firstly, because unless it's a very crude bot, it's not going to be that different from a clueless player

 

I disagree, actually. Most bots seem to have an input problem- they can't effectively get input from the screen. The strongest wow bot could spam buttons ok, but its killer app was that it could actually parse the minimap to a degree, so it could understand roughly what it should do on each battleground. Arathi Horde = move to place, target, run rotation. This ability to parse and understand the targeting made it enough of a threat that it was hard to detect at a glance. Blizzard eventually dropped the hammer, but boy it took them awhile.

 

In GSF, you don't have the same tricks. You have to parse three-space just to figure out where you are. Of course it could be done, but the point is, most games like this don't actually have bots that can do anything at all. The few bots that I have seen generally run similar patterns, replaying keystrokes and mouse actions, and they have all been easy to report and very distinct from new players. The simple fact is, this game isn't something where you can target someone and spam buttons and have that ever do anything at all, unlike the ground game, or WoW.

[MiaowZedong]

The few bots that I have seen generally run similar patterns, replaying keystrokes and mouse actions, and they have all been easy to report and very distinct from new players.

 

That's not a bot, it's just someone running a macro. It's not a bot unless it can decipher input and actually make decisions. Any effective bot is going to run in its own version of the client, not try to decipher graphical input from the screen. It's actually going to be easier to decipher the info the server sends the client than to try and make sense from the pixels the game draws on the screen. Let's not forget that what you see on the screen isn't the game, it's a graphical representation of the game (and only approximately correct, as all the stuff like one-way LoS, phantom lock breaks, etc, should make clear). The actual game is 0s and 1s.

 

I'm not sure why anyone would code a real bot for GSF, though. If there's a bot for the main game that just accepts queue pops and iddles in the match, you'd think it would have been spotted by now. Most AFK conquest farmers seem to clear their non-contributing flag as soon as you tell people to votekick them, which makes me think they're just that: people who take the pops, do something else, and give the game 30 seconds of attention when they hear the chat notification from their name being said. Possibly they actually play on another account on another machine (or the same one) side-by-side.

Edited August 1, 2015 by MiaowZedong

[ALaggyGrunt]

If someone can write a bot that plays GSF, Bioware needs to hire them so we can get our PvE campaign.

[Danalon]

If someone can write a bot that plays GSF, Bioware needs to hire them so we can get our PvE campaign.

 

Respawning a ship and flying a straight line is probably not enough for a PvE campaign.

[Lavaar]

STILL AT IT

 

UNBELIEVABLE

 

Here's some proof.

 

[Lavaar]

Posted video on reddit as well if anyone would like to support the thread there by upvoting it would bring a lot of attention to this BIG problem.

[Lavaar]

Thread was removed on reddit....incredible

[PlagaNerezza]

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?

 

This mini-game is so poorly designed. Complaining about those crashing over and over again and asking for punishment is absurd. I will do this in Team death match when I see certain pre-mades or when we get down 15 to zero. The game has no mechanic to end lopsided matches. No vote to surrender.

 

Farming players is a worse "crime" than a player trying to just end a game and move on. You are intentionally farming them with a broken mini-game mechanic with almost no protection against your farming/griefing.

 

This is no different then not spawning or sitting way off in the middle of no where to avoid getting killed during a 3 node camp farm/griefest.

 

I have zero sympathy for this sort of complaining. GSF is toxic for many players and a lot of us only play it for the credit/fleet comm's that have a nice credit conversion ratio.

[FlavivsAetivs]

This mini-game is so poorly designed. Complaining about those crashing over and over again and asking for punishment is absurd. I will do this in Team death match when I see certain pre-mades or when we get down 15 to zero. The game has no mechanic to end lopsided matches. No vote to surrender.

 

Farming players is a worse "crime" than a player trying to just end a game and move on. You are intentionally farming them with a broken mini-game mechanic with almost no protection against your farming/griefing.

 

This is no different then not spawning or sitting way off in the middle of no where to avoid getting killed during a 3 node camp farm/griefest.

 

I have zero sympathy for this sort of complaining. GSF is toxic for many players and a lot of us only play it for the credit/fleet comm's that have a nice credit conversion ratio.

 

Dude, you have no idea. GSF is the kindest and most friendly community there is. The exact opposite of what you're stating. We don't intentionally farm noobs, the problem is that unlike PvP, the mingame is broken so Veterans get picked last for queues, groups get picked first, and noobs are in the middle. There's no learning curb, you just get thrown into a match and a veteran gunship pilot will annihilate everything in their way. The Tutorial is useless too.

 

Again, nobody intentionally farms noobs. They just get thrust into packs of veterans seeking out veteran pilots. We want a challenging match, not a slaughter. The matches that end 40-50 or 900-1000 are FAR better than the ones that end 1-50 or 100-1000.

 

We report people for self-destructing like that. We had a whole guild called "Together Ferrets" or something on Jedi Covenant the past couple days where the imps kept winning because in a matter of a few minutes these four guys in a group would keep self destructing over and over and over intentionally just to build up conquest points.

 

People like you who throw matches should be banned from GSF. But unfortunately, you can't do that.

 

You want proof that we're not there to farm noobs? Go google all the GSF tutorial guides and videos that have been written by this community. Vexxial in SRW right up there has a guild that offers mentoring to new players. We do everything we can to get people into GSF, not keep them out.

 

~ Eudoxia

Edited February 22, 2016 by FlavivsAetivs

[DomiSotto]

I see a difference between self-destructing as the means to forfeit a game that is clearly lost, and entering a game without an intention to play. First imo is a valid choice, au par with quitting the game and trying to do whatever little you can, as it does not impact the outcome at all for the rest of the group. It's a victimless behavior.

 

But queuing with a premeditated intention to throw a match is wrong imo, because it impacts the chances of the rest of the players in the queue to play with the players that intend to play to whatever end. Now, there are clearly victims to this behavior.

Edited February 22, 2016 by DomiSotto

[DakhathKilrathi]

I see a difference between self-destructing as the means to forfeit a game that is clearly lost, and entering a game without an intention to play. First imo is a valid choice, au par with quitting the game and trying to do whatever little you can, as it does not impact the outcome at all for the rest of the group. But queuing with a premeditated intention to throw a match is wrong imo, because it impacts the chances of the rest of the players in the queue to play with the players that intend to play to whatever end.

 

Have a look at this screenshot. In this game, my team was behind for a lot of the match. It looked like it was unwinnable. Had anyone on my team chosen to self destruct to "get it over with", it would have been. They stuck with it, though, and I was able to carry it. Don't punish your team just because you're discouraged. That's never okay. It also punishes the other team since they can't try for records if you do that, and a lot of us here do care about stats and records.

 

But most of all, you're punishing yourself. You can't improve if you're never challenged. Rather than making winning the objective in a game like that, make it something small. How many times can you get a gunship moving? What can you do to irritate or distract one of their good players? There's always something you can get out of a particular match, no matter how one sided it is.

Edited February 22, 2016 by DakhathKilrathi

[DomiSotto]

I believe that in the vast majority of the cases, a miraculous win is not going to happen.

 

Then it becomes a personal choice. It is how you preserve your dignity. Give up and drop it. Give up and try to deny what little you can potentially deny to the opposition (aka their precious numbers). Fight to the bitter end.

 

I cannot judge which one of those is right for someone else. I feel that they do need that room to chose, even if each choice sucks. Because if your only choice is to open up your legs a little wider and try to enjoy it, it's not good.

 

Personally, I keep going, in spite of people laughing and pointing (and I have a very clear idea what people are calling us on their VOIP/ops chat), but on a rare occasion I drop zones, normally when the own team starts turning against their own in chat.

Edited February 22, 2016 by DomiSotto

[DakhathKilrathi]

Personally, I keep going, in spite of people laughing and pointing (and I have a very clear idea what people are calling us on their VOIP/ops chat), but on a rare occasion I drop zones, normally when the own team starts turning against their own in chat.

 

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that most of the people I play with don't get a lot out of farming new players. I'm not making fun of people when I play; I'm usually saying something like "what is he doing?" or "c'mon, move when I shoot you!"

 

To the point that I've been known to offer advice to the opposing team in /say if it's cross faction or in General chat if it's a wargame. I want to see everyone improve, because it's more fun for everyone that way. That's why the conquest farming nonsense bothers me so much.

[Archonitek]

Personally, I keep going, in spite of people laughing and pointing (and I have a very clear idea what people are calling us on their VOIP/ops chat), but on a rare occasion I drop zones, normally when the own team starts turning against their own in chat.

 

TBH, I rarely see much toxicity in chat. Granted sometimes I'll get frustrated when I feel that the team isn't performing like they should and we lose a game that we should have won, but other than venting a bit on GSF I let the matter drop. In fact there's rarely any chat during ops when its a push over, maybe one or two people will tell the others to take it easy but nobody talking **** about the team on the other side.

 

The times when chat is the most active is when they are close games and people are calling for help or to assault particular objectives.

[phalczen]

If you don't think you can win the deathmatch, and you don't have any personal goals you want to achieve, you should exit the battle. Purposefully self destructing simply to get the pain over with has no point, unless you are actually more concerned with completing the match so that you finish your daily. It would be akin to going into an arena round and immediately typing /stuck. It's certainly your right to do things that way, but I personally don't ascribe to that philosophy. It does however border on selfishness or griefing. While there may appear to be a distinction between self destructing in a hopeless match and self destructing from the beginning with the sole purpose of farming conquest points, in reality that distinction is a side effect of the notion of a point of no return. As despon stated, the point of no return in a TDM isn't nearly as obvious as it is for certain ground warzones, or even domination. Because that line is more blurry, I would favor people simply leaving an apparently hopeless match rather than self destructing. It is even conceivable to argue that a player who stays in a hopeless match, does not attempt to achieve any personal goals or achievements and instead repeatedly self destructs is actually being selfish rather than merciful. I guess you could argue that I'M being selfish by keeping a match going simply to practice my aiming or dogfighting or DO awareness. But at least I'm playing the game the way it was intended to be played.