The GSF bot is a bad idea

[Nee-Elder]

1 hour ago, Urthal said:

How long were you waiting for a respawn?

That scenario you quoted is from over a month ago, so my memory is abit foggy now after  running probably another 400 matches since then lol  but umm , iirc ,  it was nearly instantaneous ( hence why the situation was requested/relayed  from/to BioWare ) .

1 hour ago, Urthal said:

 Did you see actual damage numbers or just heard the co-pilot bark?

Both.  100% certain on that.

1 hour ago, Urthal said:

My guess is there's some latency between the vote kick system receiving enough votes to kick you and the actual kick.

Maybe yeah.  /shrug

[Ramalina]

Auto Kick tested and existence confirmed.

The old warning system is still there and works as previously.   After about 1.5 min, or 10% of maximum match length of no damage, a warning for non-contributing flashes mid screen.

 

If you continue in non-contribute status for about the same length of time again, a warning flashes mid screen that if you do not do damage to an enemy, or interact with an objective within 15 seconds you will be removed from the match.

 

Bioware did indeed implement an auto-kick in GSF, and as far as I can tell, didn't bother to publish it in the patch notes whenever they pushed it live, though I have to admit that I more skimmed the notes than read with a fine tooth comb, so it is possible that I missed it.

 

So there are two systems at work here.

 

The old timer that prevents other players from even trying to kick you until the first non-contribute warning timer has expired and given you a warning.

 

The new timer that continues the timer for another period and automatically boots you from the match if it expires, even if no-one on your team cares to initiate a vote kick.

 

So basically 10% of match without "contributing" = warning message, and enables other players to start a vote kick.   "Contributing" resets the timer.

At 20% of max match time without "contributing" game automatically kicks you from match and gives a PvP + GSF queue ban, according to the new stacking penalty scheme.

 

Sure, going 20% of a match with no damage is pretty poor performance, but on the whole I think I'd recommend reverting the feature, and not just because of fond memories of when we used to do 12 v 1 chases.   When you don't understand that boost start has a cost beyond boost sustain, don't know energy management, have a bad ship build, don't understand how range, tracking, evasion, and accuracy interact, then hitting one target in a 3 minute span can be genuinely challenging.

 

@Nee,   The wording on the second warning is poor in my opinion, in that though it is clearly an auto-kick, it doesn't explicitly say it's an auto-kick.   It's very similar to the old inactivity warning wording, which I think is what lead to the chorus of more experienced pilots thinking that nothing had changed and that  you might just be mis-interpreting things.

 

 

Note: It only took me 12 matches to finally resist the urge to kill things for long enough to actually get a non-contribute, I think it helped that it was an Iokath TDM, which is not exactly my favorite map.  Being in a bomber also helped.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Ramalina
for clarity

[HrRav]

Well, thanks Ramalina for investigating this and bringing clarity.

I would also like to thank Bioware, because I actually think autokick is a good idea. It is of course open for discussion how long you can be afk before autokick. Three minutes is a long time to be non-contributing (I do not remember I saw much of the non-contribution warning when I started playing---but on the other hand at that time everyone was new to gsf...)

[Ramalina]

The 15 seconds between the second warning and the kick is kind of harsh IMO.   It surprised the heck out of me when it came up, so I probably wasted a second or two, but then in a poorly positioned dronecarrier I managed to land a proton on someone and kill something with HLCs while the Proton was in flight.    So no worries for me, trivially easy to avoid a kick if I want to.

 

If I were a new player though, by the time the message had registered (assuming I had enough attention to spare to read and process the meaning), and I started figuring out what I needed to do, and how to do it, I think I'd probably end up kicked before even really being able to start responding.   Moving it out to maybe 20 or 30 seconds before the kick would probably be better, possibly with a follow up.    There's a balance somewhere between getting the message through and not having the movie style bomb countdown red wire/black wire sort of stress freaking out a new player who's already kinda stressed.

 

As far as auto-kick goes, it's really as much about the reward structure as anything else.   If participation is the route to most efficient loot acquisition, whether tech fragments, WZ currency, gear boxes, conquest points, etc., then that's what people will do.   So create a medals based reward track since they already have the code to track that for GSF achievements, and in most cases you should reward "good-ish" play.   Sure you can cheese some medals to an extent, but even the cheesing isn't really harmful and often at least mildly contributes to the team.   Probably a "too much work" prospect from Bioware's perspective, but personally I'd take that over the auto-kick.

[HrRav]

Just a thought...

It has been a while since I saw self-destructors in a game. Could it be that this autokick function also monitors self destructs? Anyone who is willing to test?

[hillerbees]

Fully agree with the OP - also when trying to avoid being killed or repairing up or preparing to snipe and missing target while having reminders popping to contribute is not fun.

Sorry if we cannot all be brilliant but I was halfway up leaderboard and narrowly avoided several kicks to "start contributing"

This needs to be looked at.

[Toraak]

On 3/11/2023 at 5:23 AM, HrRav said:

Just a thought...

It has been a while since I saw self-destructors in a game. Could it be that this autokick function also monitors self destructs? Anyone who is willing to test?

I've seen plenty of Self Destructor's in GSF over the last 3 months. Far more then we used to get. It's a rare match on SF where you aren't stuck with at least 1 SD'er

Edited March 13, 2023 by Toraak

[remylion]

On 3/11/2023 at 7:08 PM, Toraak said:

I've seen plenty of Self Destructor's in GSF over the last 3 months. Far more then we used to get. It's a rare match on SF where you aren't stuck with at least 1 SD'er

Easy solution is to switch dailies and weeklies in GSF and PvP from win and loss to medals earned like Galactic Season.

People who AFK or suicide the whole game can't advance their dailies and weeklies if the system is based on earning medals.

Edited March 14, 2023 by remylion

[Exocor]

Am 6.3.2023 um 10:46 schrieb yandcabral:

If they are 'not contributing', they are useless. If they are contributing in some form, they are not useless.

Can't be both.
 

 

 

As i've been trying to explain: In my experience, someone, who is - according to the system - not contributing (e.g. sitting in a corner doing nothing) is often more valuable than someone who is actively feeding kills and getting a stray shot in every once in a while (in order to be counted as "contributing" according to the system). The second sort of players is, actively, cheesing the system in a way that was not intended, while the latter is just... well, we're just a man down in the team then. There are worse things.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that someone who is not doing anything is "extremely valuable". But I'd rather have people that don't have a clue sitting on the sidelines instead of making it harder for me to win the game on my own. Yes, it's a team game, but I'm perfectly fine carrying the team if the other players are willing to put their own egoistic interests of the game ending faster aside and just do as little harm to our team as they can. Because, if we win, it's a win-win scenario.

 

This obviously only counts for Team Death Match. On Domination, everyone is valuable, even if they can't hit an enemy ship even if it's sitting directly in front of them. As the guy from my guild who told me starfighter said: Fly around the satellite as close as possible and use your defensive systems. That's better than to try to engage in a dogfight and perish without achieving anything.

 

That said, I have no problem with people interesting in trying to learn how to fly. But you're not learning how to play GSF by picking an unequipped Scout, flying slowly towards the enemy line in Team Death Match. If you're dedicated and willing to learn, team up with more experienced players, listen to what they have to say and put effort into the whole thing. The people my tirade is going out for are those that are only queuing for the rewards, with no intention to learn GSF at all. They're ruining the game for me and everyone else who wants to play high-quality games. To get rid of those kind of players, I would like to see a vote-kick mechanic implemented.

 

I hope I didn't hurt anybodies feelings with the last sentence? After all, you're all willing contributors to the game, aren't you? So you wouldn't be affected by what I'm suggesting?

 

 

Also, one quick note to some of the other comments here: "Fighting for your life" and being marked as not contributing is a logical fallacy. You're doing something wrong here. Try shooting the enemy - I've made the experience that it's quite helpful in those kind of situations. Should also help with the "not contributing"-issue.

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Exocor

[Brilo]

The OP objectively has a strong point.  
Trusting the bot blindly will often contribute to your team’s loss.  Especially in deathmatch, don’t just trust the bot.  It’s an algorithm and algorithms are inherently flawed.

The folks that think nothing is wrong with the kick system have a play style that the kick system encourages and apparently make little effort to understand that there might be a problem with how the same system discourages others from playing the game while they are also making a valuable contribution.

Bombers are a great example, but they are not the only one.  Our friends that have seen real battle can tell you that by the time you open fire in any battle, more often than not you have already won or lost that fight based on prior decisions, training, and planning.  That means that damage/kills is a bad metric for any sort of automatic reaction.

Two more examples:

1). You fly a scout, and 2 or 3 of the enemy decide to gang up on you.  You evade and fly 40k away from the battle because they dog your every move.  You aren’t good enough to get an angle on them but 2 minutes later they have shot you down.  You look up at the score to see that your team has gone up 10 kills while the enemy’s scouts were out of the fight.  You have done no damage but have contributed in your fleet’s success.

2). You fly a missile boat, and maybe you just started flying or otherwise still getting used to the game.  You are constantly using your EMPs to force the enemy to use up their missile breaks or got locked down for other pilots to take out.  You get unlucky and target a few of their better pilots that know to evade for long enough for their breaks to come back up.  You have done no damage but are contributing in your team’s success.

The original bomber problem is real.  It doesn’t matter how close to the battle are if your team doesn’t use your nest.  Sometimes that means your team needs more spacial awareness, and you only need to kick one good bomber to be wrong.  Let’s face it, if you have played GSF for at least a few months and blindly press the vote button, you have kicked at least one bomber that would have meant you won the battle.

Conversely, a scout that burns straight at the enemy, gets one hit in and dies might as well be on the other team, but is considered contributing and you will never be able to vote to kick them.  What’s funnier is in the decade plus I have played this game, I have never once seen someone complain about a scout with 1 kill and 20 deaths because they’re “trying”, but the bomber with no kills gets kicked out of hand.

Right.

In short, trusting the bot blindly will often contribute to your team’s loss.  Especially in deathmatch, don’t just trust the bot.  It’s an algorithm and algorithms are inherently flawed.

First use your own awareness, try using or supporting those resources.  If you see them flying straight in space THEN kick them.

On the other hand, if you want to actively discourage new players, creative or experimental play styles, and good players having a bad day, by all means click that button like it’s a morphine drip.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Brilo

[Ramalina]

I sympathize with your sentiment, but a lot of your examples are poor or flat out wrong.

Algorithms are not inherently flawed.  They're just sets of instructions, that if the hardware is capable of executing, will execute as instructed.    The non-contribute algorithm works very well.   It has a timer with three set points, a reset mechanism, two user interface message outputs, and a forced user log-out as the final step in what's probably an if-then-else structure.

Do people make mistakes implementing the algorithms they meant to implement and implement something else?  Sure.  SWTOR is full of that, though the auto-kick doesn't seem to be one of them.  Do people make bad software design choices and use algorithms that work flawlessly to perform a task that is not to be the task that needs to be performed?  Yes, frequently. but that's a problem with the overall software design having chosen the wrong algorithm, not with the algorithm itself.  If you want to screw in a screw and someone hands you a hammer, it doesn't mean that hammers are inherently flawed or even that they can't drive in a screw.  It just means it would have been better if your helper had handed you a screwdriver instead.   Metaphorically speaking, screws that have been hammered in are pretty common in software, but blaming the hammers is misguided.

 

Play style isn't really an issue so much as being below a certain skill threshold.   If you're actively playing, and above a certain threshold, the timer is a non-issue.   We know this because the entire high skill community of GSF players seems to have completely missed that there was a change to the system from how it used to be.    It's a very diverse set of playstyles.  Individual players can even play rather differently depending on mood.   I've got a "pacifist" GSF alt, where the goal is the highest win rate possible while having the lowest kills per game.  I think it's currently at something like 65% win rate with an average of less than one kill per match.  Never managed to see the non-contribute message with that alt even though I focus purely on support when flying it.  Can pure support help a team? Absolutely.  Does pure support place you at high risk of non-contribute? No, not if you're supporting effectively.

 

What skilled and experienced people often forget though, and this doesn't just apply to GSF, is what it is like and how difficult things can be as a beginner.  So enthusiasm for kicking is a bit unfair.   It also slows the rate at which people gain experience and graduate from being beginners to being more skilled if they get kicked a lot.

Training, planning, and prior decisions are things I'd love to see more of in GSF matches.  Actually, in most matches they're things I'd like to see any of.  Not really relevant to vote kick features though.

 

Kills and damage are pretty good signals of skilled participation.  If you want to have some kind of automatic effect to detect skilled participation they're good choices.  I'd add accuracy as another good indicator.   For more generic usefulness, add objectives if in Domination, and low numbers of deaths in TDMs.   The issue with them is that they all confirm positive activity.   So if there's no signal from those channels it doesn't tell you what's going with that player in any detail.  Are they trying their best but just clueless?  If the player has a low number of matches, there's a good chance of this.   Are they skilled but AFK because the popcorn they forgot in the microwave just burst into flame?  Maybe.   Are they trying to cheese through conquest fly scout/strike/gunship/bomber 5/5 goals by queuing into matches and then alt-tabbing to stream a movie?  Could be.  But the signals of positive activity don't tell you anything about whether a lack of positive activity is unacceptable or not.

   If that's the case though, then why are they using positive activity signals for the kick timer, and is that bad design?    They're probably using them because there aren't any good negative activity signals.  That and it probably only required a line or two of fairly simple code modifying the old warning system to implement.  As for the question of bad design, eh, it's messy.   It does punish genuine inactivity.  It does incentivize activity.  However, it also punishes inexperience (in a mode where the tutorials are hard to find and not very good), and can incentivize perverse/negative activity.   So it works, but with some undesirable side effects.  Without access to Bioware's match data it's hard to assess where the benefit/cost balance lies between intended effect and undesirable side effect.

 

Your examples of people "not contributing" are indeed pretty good examples of not contributing:

 

The ship running away isn't relieving much pressure from their team.  Given the amount of time it's taking to kill them, the pursuers aren't all that dangerous.  They're also not that strategically competent because they haven't given up the chase to go slaughter the target's less able teammates.   That length of chase isn't really justifiable unless the target is known to be so good that they will single-handedly demolish the other team if they aren't kept busy.  That sort of player isn't going to have any trouble with the kick timer.  They're also not going to waste time going out to the middle of nowhere.   What they'll do instead is lead the pursuers to an area where there's cover that protects the ship being chased from enemy ships' line of fire, but provides clear lines of fire to friendly ships.   This allows the rest of the team to kill the pursuing scouts along with all the other enemies they're killing, will likely keep the ship being chased alive, and leave the chased ship in a position to do something useful when the pursuers are shot off their tail.   So yeah, chased ship person in your scenario, isn't really being very useful to their team.

   They probably shouldn't be kicked though.   They may not be helping their team, but they are practicing and developing their defensive flying skills, and doing a reasonable job of it.   They're not really helping their current team in their current match, but there should be a benefit to future teams in future matches.   There's a learning progression at work.  Learning tactical defensive flying to help yourself stay alive is a less advanced skill than strategic defensive flying that both keeps you alive and helps your team at the same time.   Someone learning at the tactical level usually isn't ready to work on the strategic level yet, so it's reasonable to cut them some slack even if they aren't contributing.

 

The missile boat example seems wildly improbable.  I guess you mean Pike or Quell, as those are the only ships that at least vaguely fit the missile boat description.   If you're so new you don't realize that you have a second missile on a Pike or Quell, and are getting close enough to lock and launch EMP missiles (and therefore well within Heavy Laser, Concussion missile, Torpedo, and Railgun range), the chances of surviving long enough to hit the kick timer are very slim.  If you're actually landing any of them, it'll reset the timer and you'll be fine.   If you're just beeping at people with lock tones and not landing missiles, then honestly it's not doing much.  Strikes were like that before 5.5.  I also tried this strategy when I was testing the auto kick system.  I had to not do damage to avoid resetting the timer so I could document exactly what was going on with it, but, I still wanted to help my team so I dropped a healing beacon and started locking but not launching missiles to try to "spook" enemy ships.   Between the small sliver of players that are skilled and won't break until after the missile is launched, and the great masses that just ignore the tones and then wonder what "one shot" their 10% of remaining hull, it appears that beeping at people is just as ineffective now as it was before 5.5.   So no, the example player isn't really contributing to their team meaningfully, and being kicked and replaced would probably help their team if the backfill is more skilled.   Everyone has to start learning somewhere though, so again, though the example player isn't really contributing, they probably shouldn't be kicked for it.

 

The bomber is also not really a good example.   The job of a bomber is area denial, but it's not just random area.  It has to be meaningful area.  In Dom this is easy.  Find a friendly, neutral, or contested satellite, and you're good to go.   Even a hostile one if there's a reasonable chance of either taking it or pulling enough opponents to it so another sat can be captured.   When fighting around a node with deployables, doing enough damage to avoid the kick timer isn't an issue.   TDM is a different matter though.  No space in a TDM is inherently strategically relevant, not even the DO superspawn points.  So as a bomber, you have to deploy mines, drones, and beacons where they are relevant to what is going on in the match.   Simply dropping them somewhere and going off to hide, hoping your team will use them isn't really contributing.   If your mines and drones aren't damaging anything they're not really doing much good.   "But gunships can hide. . .," no.  If your nest of mines is never getting triggered by any ships, then any ships in your nest aren't being pressured in a way that a nest of mines defends against, and your mines are not doing any good.  Go place new mines and/or drones in a more useful place.  If you only use mines, drones, and beacons, you're actually wasting most of your component slots and base ship attributes.   If you dump deployables and then go hide your: engines, hull, shields, capacitors, magazine, primary weapon, and maybe secondary weapon depending on build, are all being useless.  The majority of your ship components, are being useless.  Bombers can fight somewhat effectively with just deployables if done correctly, they can fight entirely without deployables somewhat effectively,  but they can fight most effectively by using both the ship and the deployables.   If they neither effectively, then they're basically useless.   As Exocor points out though, in TDM useless can be quite a bit better than worse than useless.   I'd say the inactive TDM bomber is the one case I can think of where the auto-kick will reliably detect a ship that definitely should be doing something different.   It doesn't do much to help the player understand what they should be doing different though.

 

In any particular match, vote kicking is more likely to help your team than hurt it.  It doesn't improve your odds greatly, but if a player has reached the warning, and is staying there long enough for multiple people to see it and vote,  or for the auto-kick to engage, then even a pretty low skill backfill should be an improvement in the vast majority of cases.  

 

Where kicking hurts isn't in the individual game.  It's in the long term development and health of the GSF playerbase.   It punishes lack of activity reliably but can't distinguish between inactivity caused by not knowing what to do and inactivity from trying to get rewards while AFK.   It tends to completely miss deliberate malicious play and it doesn't reward good play.

 

That's what puts me mildly against the auto-kick feature.  There are players, who despite not contributing to their current match, should stay in it (and probably in a bunch more), so that they can learn to contribute.   For the players it should really influence, ones with some skill but who are just in GSF as a low effort avenue to non-GSF rewards, auto-kick isn't super effective.   Alt-tabbing on a sat in Doms and self-destructs in TDMs are viable workarounds for those players.  The actively malicious, of course, just aren't deterred by much of anything.  

For the most useful demographic, players in it for the loot with some skill but little motivation, reward structure changes would probably be a more effective solution.   Positive action is fairly easy to detect, and the code to detect it already exists.   If lots of positive action maximizes the loot/effort ratio, those players will get pretty good at GSF pretty fast.   If that replaces auto-kick, then hopefully you have a stronger positive effect on how the average game goes, while at the same time allowing new players to fumble around ineffectively for however long it takes them to learn to be effective.  

 

Given that the players who picked up GSF as a subscriber early-access perk had years to learn how to play GSF without having to worry about auto-kick, it seems excessively harsh to make new players suffer through it, especially since it seems like most current GSF players are relatively speaking, new, at least to GSF.

[Exocor]

Am 24.3.2023 um 03:13 schrieb Ramalina:

Play style isn't really an issue so much as being below a certain skill threshold.   If you're actively playing, and above a certain threshold, the timer is a non-issue.  

 

Pretty much this. The only times when I have been marked as non-contributing in the recent past was in very campy gunship standoff matches.

 

Also agree with the rest of your comment. Changing the reward structure in that it rewards good pilots is basically positive reinforcement. The current kick-system is  negative reinforcement. You're good, you stay, you're bad, you go. It's not really motivating people to become better - it's demotivating them to a point that they no longer queue. As stated in a previous comment, I prefer high quality matches, so both things work for me personally - but I'm sure the first option would lead to more of those high quality matches than the second option.

 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Exocor