ANET, Why have we not fixed the AFK problem?

[OnlyFear.9165]

Here's my thing... As a GW player since GW1 Beta, I understand sometimes when a player is AFK. Maybe you forgot about that pizza. Maybe your window is downsized and you don't hear the horn go off. Hell, maybe it's midgame and an emergency takes place. Regardless, there should be a code written and algorithm created where example: Player goes afk, specially out of (rage) because he/she is getting spanked in game. All four other players report the player as idle. Player gets kicked, and as a new person is attempting to (Q), they get drafted to the game. At least this garners a chance for the team to come back or win.

 

Lastly. It's cool that you don't knock our rank down when someone disconnects from the game. But it should also AT LEAST apply if you wont go with the above^. Where's the passion you guys had when GW1 only existed, and GVG reigned supreme. We had glitches fixed, builds altered to adjust incoming cheaters, and balance updates faster then I could say .....

 

Cheers anet, sincerely, an over 30,000 hours invested player.

[OutOfOrder.3719]

The best way to improve ranked play would be to only award Pips when games are won .

 

Dishonor could also be given to players that don't leave the spawning area after 30 seconds Respawn

 

But honestly, only awarding pips when a match is won will solve the majority of problems.

 

People will still rage quit or intentionally run into the enemy to die, but at least they won't be able to AFK anymore.

[Rufo.3716]

You can't have replacement players. So many times when I played Rift I was put into a hopeless game because people quit. People usually don't quit when they are winning so you'd 99% of the time be put into a situation you don't want to be in.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"Rufo.3716" said:

> You can't have replacement players. So many times when I played Rift I was put into a hopeless game because people quit. People usually don't quit when they are winning so you'd 99% of the time be put into a situation you don't want to be in.

 

Gotta agree on that, based on a similar experience. Unless you restart the match, it would be better to abandon the match, score nothing on either side, and place them at or near the head of the queue to quickly proceed to their next match.

[lLobo.7960]

> @"OutOfOrder.3719" said:

> The best way to improve ranked play would be to only award Pips when games are won .

>

> Dishonor could also be given to players that don't leave the spawning area after 30 seconds Respawn

>

> But honestly, only awarding pips when a match is won will solve the majority of problems.

>

> People will still rage quit or intentionally run into the enemy to die, but at least they won't be able to AFK anymore.

 

No.

 

Not awarding pips for lost is only going to fix pip farmers on low bronze.

It going to do nothing, or even make it worse, for the people going afk because they are loosing a match. These people do so because they want the match to end so they can go to the next one.

 

If you want to incentive people to keep trying you need to make rewards better for close games (both in pips and in rank win/loss) so people try harder even on loosing scenarios.

 

[AllNightPlayer.1286]

Until the quality of the players, teams, balance, and matchmaking does not improve, there will always be AFK.

[OnlyFear.9165]

> @"AllNightPlayer.1286" said:

> Until the quality of the players, teams, balance, and matchmaking does not improve, there will always be AFK.

 

No. It's not the quality of players. They'll always be noobs in the flow, every day. It's flowing the match making more accordingly. Regardless, this is still a huge issue.

[Marxx.5021]

ANET forces player to go AFK because of bad match making and poor snowball design. For me 9 of 10 matches are one sited BS atm.

Even with winning most matches it just feels bad to get placed against inexperienced player and even worse to play with them.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"Marxx.5021" said:

> ANET forces player to go AFK because of bad match making and poor snowball design. For me 9 of 10 matches are one sited BS atm.

> Even with winning most matches it just feels bad to get placed against inexperienced player and even worse to play with them.

 

You are not "forced" to stop participating in the match when you are losing. The choice to abandon your team, and make life worse for everyone, is entirely your own, voluntary, act.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

It's funny how you bring back gw1 pvp, where match manipulation was daily occurence.

[Alira.5423]

> @"OutOfOrder.3719" said:

> The best way to improve ranked play would be to only award Pips when games are won .

>

> Dishonor could also be given to players that don't leave the spawning area after 30 seconds Respawn

>

> But honestly, only awarding pips when a match is won will solve the majority of problems.

 

Not really. Someones one just lands in a bad team and through no fault of yours, your team loses.

The initial pvp seasons had the "only get pips when you win" thing and it really, really sucked. Now, at least, one can still move forward, even when you just have a "bad luck" pvp run - it happens.

[Frostmane.9734]

I think the Conquest game mode just amplifies the impact of being short a player. Score players based on performance alone, regardless of whether their team wins or loses. If you're the best offensive player in the match but on the losing team, i dont think you should get rank decay.

 

I'll admit that if my team is getting blown out I might just choose to sit, but if I knew it was possible for my team to lose but for me to still get some green rank, or just break even, I'll keep going out there.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"Frostmane.9734" said:

> I think the Conquest game mode just amplifies the impact of being short a player. Score players based on performance alone, regardless of whether their team wins or loses. If you're the best offensive player in the match but on the losing team, i dont think you should get rank decay.

 

That is an interesting idea. How does it compare to what Microsoft implemented in their TrueSkill, and GLICKO-2, in your testing?

 

 

[shadowpass.4236]

Subbing is a bad idea.

 

Imagine getting your que pop, accepting, then get thrown into a losing match 50-380 and losing rating at the end.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

> @"shadowpass.4236" said:

> Subbing is a bad idea.

> Imagine getting your que pop, accepting, then get thrown into a losing match 50-380 and losing rating at the end.

 

If the reward was proportional to the time spent in the match, it wouldn't be so bad: spend one minute out of ten, and you get one tenth the result, so not much loss (and not much gain) to your rating, because your contribution was only a 10th the significance of the other players...

[Sanity Obscure.6054]

I had a game in Plat where a teammate threw a fit that someone else was on the team, went afk and demanded they leave or they would throw, and they sat in spawn.

 

We won without them 4v5 by around 100 points and they joined back at the last moment.

 

We need a votekick, one that kicks the player and only punishes them (not the rest of the team) if they remain in the spawn area for an amount of gameplay.

[OnlyFear.9165]

Good, collective responses. Regardless of how the solution comes about, it's a huge issue. It isn't (FAIR) for 4 other players to suffer the consequences of (1) player. I also don't disagree with why some players choose to sit out. I myself have done this due to a D/C, and there's virtually no point because at the rate the game is going, your efforts become invaluable. ANET, DO SOMETHING.

[Paintyourwindows.6785]

Would it ever be possible to have an option or checkbox or even a separate queue entirely to be considered as a substitute in games that had already started where someone had been AFK and their teammates had used the ability to vote report/kick and are in need of a substitute?

 

That way players who hate the idea of joining a game after its begun can avoid being added to that queue and players who enjoy a challenge or an underdog style of gameplay can join games where someone was kicked for being afk which has a higher chance of being a team that might be losing at the time for the challenge to attempt to swing that game and win it.

 

Maybe this substitute option could have an achievement or title linked to it to encourage more players to join that queue where after you win x-amount of games as a substitute you get an "underdog hero" title or something like that.

 

Now this wouldn't guarantee that there will always be a player in the queue to fill the newly empty slot on a team so teammates, when voting to report an AFK player could get a warning message stating that there's no guarantee that there will be a substitute who will load into their game and they will be stuck with a 4v5. But I feel like with an AFK player it's already a 4v5 so it's not that big of a difference.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The reason ANet hasn't solved it is... there's no tech solution that doesn't create other issues.

* If there's no reward for losing, then the frustration of those on an RNG-based losing streak magnify (it's already bad now). And with increased pressure to win, toxicity goes up.

* If four people can report the 5th, then people are going to grief whenever they perceive someone to be playing differently from how they would prefer.

* Subbing is awful for the ~~scabs~~ replacement players, as described above.

 

One thing I'd like to see them do is to task a small group to investigate reports aggressively on an irregular basis. And be public about the number of suspensions dished out, with a count of how often the relevant parties failed to contribute meaningfully. Their heuristics plus reports can narrow cases down, but they'd have to do a deep dive and that would be very labor intensive. It's not something they can do all the time.

 

But if they did it "enough" in PvP (and similarly for WvW and, to a lesser extent, PvE), it _should_ reduce the amount of people who do this regularly.

 

Essentially, lots of research has shown that _most_ people commit these sorts of 'crimes' when they think they can get away with it. So the idea is to make it clear that people won't get away with it. This won't stop people determined to leech, but it will stop the larger number of folks who do it because , why not?

[jcbroe.4329]

Everytime I see somebody say there's no reward for losing, I feel like we're forgetting about the liquid gold and reward tracks...