GSF: Vote Kick or Autokick for Self-Destructers

[aerichoi]

For quite a while now, Galactic Starfighter has had a pretty critical issue anytime you queue into a deathmatch. That is, that there is a fairly high chance of running into a player who's only in GSF to try to get conquest -- and is trying to end the match as quickly as possible with no intention of actually playing the mode. Now, everyone has their own reasons for playing any particular mode, but the issue in GSF is that there's currently no recourse when you get on a team to remove a player who is intentionally sabotaging the game to try to speed through them as fast as possible.

I want to say that roughly one in three deathmatches I've been in since I've come back has had at least one player purposefully self-destructing over and over again. One game was a narrowly loss, by about two kills, and we had one player on our team with 0 damage and 22 deaths, all from self-destruct.

While players can and should (and are) reporting these players, as they ruin games they're in because they're just selfishly trying to speed losses for conquest, there should also be some recourse or method for players in games to remove these bad actors from their teams. Whether this is an auto-kick if you self-destruct too many times, the enabling of a votekick measure for players under a specific participation threshold, I don't know. But this has been a problem for months now and is only getting worse.

Please enable a way for those of us who play GSF because we enjoy it to evict players purposefully sabotaging our teams. It really, really hurts the integrity of the game mode -- whether we lose because someone self-destructed over and over, or whether we win because someone did the same thing to the other team.

[Dayshadow]

They should nix Deathmatch or rehaul the mechanics to promote engagement over timidness. Usually when you have deathmatch people just bunch up and avoid direct conflict. This is BORING and NOT FUN, and people DO NOT want to play those maps. And since leaving now has a 20+ minute PvP lockout across the board, guess what? You now have to deal with Bioware's thoughtless idea of trying to force people to play matches they don't want to play. It has nothing to do with Conquest as I have never seen those suicide stats at the end of a Domination map. And the quickest way to get through the torture of deathmatch is self-destruction or running headfirst into the opposing gunship wall. You can supplement self-destructs with getting blown up by the enemy, so don't think self-destruct is the only way to end matches quicker. But the worst part of all is the boot timer. Some teams, maybe random, maybe premade, have walls of snipers and they'll have some members go out and bait. Diving in and out to lure enemy players into their gunship's range. It's hard to even do any damage without getting insta-blapped by 5 gunships. Meaning destruction and reset are the only ways to restart the kick timer and register participation. Especially for less skilled players. Have you noticed the average hit percentage? And Bioware has the nerve to continue having evasion-based abilities and RNG. It's a fundamentally broken game.

There should ALWAYS be an objective other than "kill, but don't be killed".  I play starfighter to FIGHT. Not bunch up and stare down the other team from afar. How about Bioware just make the Deathmatch and Domination queues separate like WZs and Arena so people don't have to play Deathmatch at all. The lockout was one of their worst ideas. Instead of people leaving and you getting someone new who might actually want to be there, you just keep dead weight who does not contribute. And that applies to all facets of PVP, not just GSF. Because there are plenty of people in WZs who announce they are done (b/c they hate a particular WZ or are frustrated w/their team) and just sit out the match in a corner.

[aerichoi]

I'm not a fan of deathmatch either, but I don't agree with players self-destructing and ruining the game for others because they don't enjoy the match. Players giving up in Warzones is annoying and I don't particularly like that either, but there's a line between that and players deliberately feeding the enemy team points from the first second the match begins because they'd rather tank other people's experience of the game than put in a modicum of additional effort because it might prolong the game by five minutes.

If they wanted to add in a new game and replace deathmatches entirely, then that'd be good. If they want to remove the lockout for leaving a PvP match, that's fine. But in the meantime, they should still do something to stop selfish players from sabotaging an entire game mode for their own personal convenience.

[Dayshadow]

13 hours ago, aerichoi said:

I'm not a fan of deathmatch either, but I don't agree with players self-destructing and ruining the game for others because they don't enjoy the match. Players giving up in Warzones is annoying and I don't particularly like that either, but there's a line between that and players deliberately feeding the enemy team points from the first second the match begins because they'd rather tank other people's experience of the game than put in a modicum of additional effort because it might prolong the game by five minutes.

If they wanted to add in a new game and replace deathmatches entirely, then that'd be good. If they want to remove the lockout for leaving a PvP match, that's fine. But in the meantime, they should still do something to stop selfish players from sabotaging an entire game mode for their own personal convenience.

Bioware ruined it. It's their game design. They have the option to separate the queues. Remove the lockouts. Detach certain rewards from GSF. 

The people self-destructing are not there to tank anyone else's experience. They are there to get some reward that Bioware has attached to GSF. This is, again, all Bioware's fault. It is by design. They have this grind mentality where games should not be about fun and enjoyment, but rather, people should play them for ulterior reasons. They are means to other ends. They simply want their metrics to show people are playing. Making a good game that is enjoyable on its own merits is an alien concept to them. In the dev's mind, playing for your own "personal convenience" IS the point. 

There is no good way to weed out self-destructors. Because crashing into objects is not the only way. The next most efficient way is to die to opposing players. Which is very easy in deathmatch. Making it skill based would kill GSF. Every first-timer would be punished and disavow the game. I know people who played one match, had trouble figuring out controls and whatnot, got booted because they weren't doing damage (not from lack of trying), got locked out of ALL PVP for 20 minutes and never came back. Casuals who like it, try their best, but just aren't good players would be forced out too.

[Vendettus]

GSF is the best idea that has had the worst implementation that I have ever seen. There is a laundry list of what should be done to make it not only fun, but something that brings people into the game.

The level designs are garbage. Maps need to be larger, and objectives need to be more than "destroy everyone" and "hold these random satellites".  There should be a mixture of enemy kills and also achieving certain objectives, such as destroying capital ships, rescuing/protecting shuttles, and destroying pieces of superweapons.  There should be pvp environments of course with teams competing, but there should also be pve maps where you face smart AI ships that have counter-objectives to your own.  There should be procedurally generated maps with procedurally generated objectives to match, making frequent missions unique and engaging.  Players crashing should not impact either score unless they are also being actively attacked by the opposition at the same time, and crashing shouldn't default destroy a player's ship.  They should bring back the stealth design starfighters and give the entire GSF experience an overhaul based on these suggestions. As it is, I love GSF, but it gets so tedious so quickly. As a mid tier pilot, I only can hope to do well enough not to annoy my teammates, but going against a premade of gunships is lame, especially when there is so little ability to coordinate via voice to the randos I fly with.

Again, this could be the coolest experience, but its frequently an exercise in futility where you just hope you get on a team that isn't just trying to kill itself.

 

[aerichoi]

On 3/7/2023 at 12:21 PM, Dayshadow said:

Bioware ruined it. It's their game design. They have the option to separate the queues. Remove the lockouts. Detach certain rewards from GSF. 

The people self-destructing are not there to tank anyone else's experience. They are there to get some reward that Bioware has attached to GSF. This is, again, all Bioware's fault. It is by design. They have this grind mentality where games should not be about fun and enjoyment, but rather, people should play them for ulterior reasons. They are means to other ends. They simply want their metrics to show people are playing. Making a good game that is enjoyable on its own merits is an alien concept to them. In the dev's mind, playing for your own "personal convenience" IS the point. 

There is no good way to weed out self-destructors. Because crashing into objects is not the only way. The next most efficient way is to die to opposing players. Which is very easy in deathmatch. Making it skill based would kill GSF. Every first-timer would be punished and disavow the game. I know people who played one match, had trouble figuring out controls and whatnot, got booted because they weren't doing damage (not from lack of trying), got locked out of ALL PVP for 20 minutes and never came back. Casuals who like it, try their best, but just aren't good players would be forced out too.

I get where you're coming from, but self-destructing to try to make your team lose as fat as possible is tanking other player's experience. The game design isn't blameless here, but throwing games on purpose to lose as quickly as possible is overtly toxic behaviour in group content, regardless of how said players justify it to themselves.

Sabotaging other player's experience to expedite your own reward does not become justified just because the game-mode only appeals to a niche crowd of players, or because the game-mode is long overdue for other fixes. Whether it's PvE, PvP, or GSF--if you queue for group content, you should at least see it through and put in effort. You don't have to master it, but a cursory effort where you get a couple hits in is far preferable to just deciding on behalf of your team that you're going to effectively forfeit the match for them.

BioWare should fix the game-mode. But in the meantime, they should also do something about the players who decide that seeing their conquest bar tick up five minutes faster matters more than all of the players on their team that sat in a queue waiting for the chance to play a game-mode that, however broken, they enjoy.