I and the rest of my teammates had a couple of matches severely messed up by this idiot (already filed a report)... Attempts to vote kick failed. They pulled every trick in the deliberate Team Killer/Griefer book Team Killing carefully within the limits Driving Vehicles off cliffs or out of bounds Damaging Teammates to near death, then stopping Trying to bait other players into Team Killing using the method above (which worked on some other players) Preemptively accusing another player of Team Killing at match start in chat to confuse those that might try to Vote Kick (No Vote Kick ever passed) Feigning innocence in chat until the match ended, then gloating about it as the picture above shows The game as it stands lacks the necessary protections to prevent this kind of stupidity. Abuse like this is extremely disruptive and spoils the game for honest players whether they are paid players like most of us or other F2P players. Up until now, while you could still encounter deliberate abuse, the monetary cost was a disincentive. When a game costs nothing you have nothing to lose. I welcome the opportunity to play with a larger population. However the way the game is currently set up, it will quickly become an unbearable cesspool if some sensible protections are not put in place. I suggest the game needs the following features... Some things to reduce or prevent most of the abuse listed above (open to suggestions) Limits on F2P vehicle usage, possibly including restrictions on creating new squads and how many vehicles they can operate per match Limits on F2P team damage (not just kills) to be less lenient, perhaps the game can boot them to the garrison with a warning to practice their aim Profanity filters on names players can use for their character and also filters in chat Some kind of better vote kick system (open to suggestions) Voluntary in game player admins drawn from trusted community members, with the ability to directly kick misbehaving F2P players (within strict guidelines from BE of course) Tagging @Oveur @NoahWard @KatieFleming to draw their attention, not looking for an immediate response. I would like to see what the thoughts are of other players here. What have you seen in other games that works well to prevent or reduce this kind of thing? In the end, whatever is done must be fair to all players and not spoil the fun of anyone willing to play the game properly.
I would be totally down with F2P players unable to spawn or drive vehicles. Seems a bit restrictive, but one I could live with. The rest sounds a fairly complicated thing to properly counter. I think the best tool we don't have is an easy, in-game method of reporting players. For team killing, just spitballing ideas: your teamkill maximum limit is reduced for every votekick attempt or agreement with same? So someone riding the limit would then find themselves above the limit and get kicked. Someone with Teamkills (above a certain level?) doesn't count against other players TK count. Basically, TK (lets say) 3 times and you're a free TK to anyone for the rest of the match - everyone could just bury you for the rest of the match if they chose.
I have not encountered this but something needs to be done. Bearing that in mind though how do you fall victim to a vehicle been driven off a cliff? You simply turn the camera and look back to safety and get out as it goes over the edge. Kicking them from game is to severe especially to go practice there aim. Reducing there Team damage is simply broken, encourages the wrong type of game play and mass AOE spam. Community admins in games is simply a no go. No matter what people say it will be at some point abused, You cannot add a "police" to the community that is not directly governed by there employer. The only incentive to not kick someone who is doing well is "Its dickish and I might lose my power". "Yea that guy is good he must be hacking guess I can kick him even though he might just be better then me" Ultimately TK is going to happen. More often then not its accidental, You do get a few bad eggs who deliberately do it but the easiest way around it? Simply leave the game since you are not punished and this only puts you into your next game quicker. Chances are if your team killer is really that rampant you are going to score low anyway. Closer to a better, Team kills reduce the number of votes for you to be voted out of a game? Making them a free target for the team is simply a bad decision. What better way to discourage team killing then promote it and have your team killing a friendly instead of the enemy attacking or holding the point. This simply ruin the game completely. its a hard thing to manage and since you cannot really push some progress backwards the only thing to do is to keep note of team killers and leave the moment you see them on your team at the start of the round.
I have never understood this mindset. It's nonsense to suggest the only incentive to admin well is the threat of punishment and loss of admin. Sure you can find faulty individuals, but you can also find plenty of folks who put fair play first. Is the possibility of an admin getting it wrong worth dismissing the idea as a whole? They wouldn't and shouldn't last long as an admin. F2P griefers are a certainty amongst the numbers the game will attract. Bad admins from a small number of well vetted players with restricted powers is a significantly lower risk. Yes. Limit it to unforgiven team kills counting and that's a better idea.
I think this issue can be even more easily solved and it has benefits past just preventing these egregious and lame acts. I've seen it a few times, luckily they all got vote kicked pretty easily. A Fire Dragon deliberately killing our wave serpents around vital capture points was the worst of it because that severely impacted our teams ability to win the game... So my solution is: Revamp the UI for squads and in game player options. As an example - a more intuitive squad menu and UI where you can: 1. Easier ability to promote and manage squad kicking/accessibility. I'm not sure about a squad lock (meaning invite only or a friend/guild only lock option) because already having those 1-3 man squads that refuse to merge but insist on taking a wave serpent when there are 7-10 man squads who will help the game a lot more if they got a WS. This happens regularly in my games and it's really frustrating to have a full squad and no WS available all game because some small squad took one and set it up in a less than preferable spot to attempt to cap a non-essential objective. -_- I don't know if it would be more harmful than good. I would advocate for the game auto filling squads to 10 before assigning players to another squad. I ask almost every game to please merge squads if there's 3-5 ragtag groups and I'd say maybe 50% of the time people actually do merge. 2. Vehicle lock menu. This might be controversial because of the Transports being so useful for everyone but they already are limited to your squad for spawns so I can't imagine it'd be that"unfair" to lock players out. Perhaps an ability to lock Driver and Gunner spots so at least you can maintain control over the vehicle you spawned for your squad for purposes of winning the match. Earlier today I had a random squad member start using our WS to fight Predators. They kept repeatedly taking WS whenever they could and chased tanks around shooting with the front driver guns. We asked so many times to please switch out. He ignored us until we started a vote kick. His response? And I quote "Quit trolling about vehicles and just play the damn game..." Mind you this was on one of the progressive capture maps where getting a transport to the next points and set up well is crucial. 3. Friendly fire penalty. If you've played Planetside (1 or 2) there was a weapons lock that would go into effect after X amount of FF damage. The timer cold be drastic if you were near reaching the penalty threshold and blow up a friendly transport loaded with 10+ guys. Or if you just barely hit the threshold it would be pretty short, a few minutes or so. You could still help with objectives etc.. believe something similar could be implemented but maybe with less time locked as the matches are timed in EC and in Planetside they'd go on for days at a time over one base. This could apply to F2P accounts only or even for everyone as it would teach some players not to spray into crowds of friendly melee fighters hoping to get the killing blow. I think today alone I was TK'd from that very situation probably 25+ times (I played for like 5-6 hours today, shame on me lol). One game there was this reckless Warlock nuking constantly into our melee fights, enough where all our melee fighters were pleading with him to please stop. He never said a word in chat once... 4. A consequential report system that is taken seriously. Most competitive games (shooters or not) have adapted what could be seen as at times an over-zealous response to reports. But it'd be nice to have the feeling like when we are reporting genuine player issues that they will be handled accordingly if the problem is serious enough. An example is Blizzard games - you get enough reports you become chat silenced (or worse) for X amount of time. It happens regularly and sometimes it is abused (like reporting for what character you play in Overwatch as compared to what they want you to be playing...). 5. War Party Mechanics and UI. While I'm talking about UI stuff - this is just horrible. The navigation is somewhat clunky and I don't understand why leaving a starting game (before it loads, just during the countdown before you leave the hub screen) quitting out of the game at the end screen to go back to the hub - doing so breaks your warparty. If the party leader hits leave, it should clear it for all party members and maintain the warparty. Why it auto-disbands like this makes no sense to me at all. Overall I think the whole UI in the hub and some stuff in game could be improved a lot. There's a lot of redundant clicking and nonsensical menu organization.
Also, have you noticed the new Game that comes around? The "kick someone of a ledge with Bash" Game, super fun, doesn't get punished anywhere and is annoying as hell
That's something I've not seen, yet. I don't doubt there other exploitable situations that will need to be tackled and I'm sure we haven't covered all of them. If anyone spots new problems please mention them. Thinking about players misbehaving, assholery has a way of snowballing. If one player starts acting like a jerk and ruining some other player's game, that often ends up spiralling out of control when they retaliate or pay it forward. New players have a hard enough time as it is. That frustration isn't improved when some clown goes out of their way to deliberately screw things up for everyone else. In the encounter I had that prompted this thread, a few of the low level players ended up getting drawn into retaliating and then whole thing got out of hand. I feel that if we can throw a few solid obstacles into the path of going full retard, a lot of this can be avoided.
You know what would be a nice change? In the garrison, especially when handling the dueling arena, you can be griefed by an asshole picking you up after you are downed. Basically, they go to "revive" you but drop the revive short before the bar fills. They can continually do that over and over, locking you into the animation. During that time, you can't access your menu to redeploy nor leave the garrison, you can't move, you can't bleed out, you can't really do anything. So after you are downed, they can keep starting the revive, cutting it short, and basically keeping you there until the mini eternity of your downed health bar empties and you finally die. And that's only if they decide not to actually pick you up, then quick kill you in the getting up animation, then start anew while you have a brand new downed health bar to run through. If that makes sense.
Yesterday I just saw a guy destroying our own serpents with a Fire Dragon, The guy was level 1. F2P allows trolls to flood
Disabling operating vehicles by F2P players? Sounds reasonable to me. F2P are grunts anyway, keep them on their own two legs.
