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There Are Too Many Freeloaders


IdonRyle

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Main Server: Satele Shan.

 

I suppose you're wondering what I mean by freeloaders? Well, ever since galactic seasons became a thing (an awesome thing might I add), we've been getting a lot of new people joining in GSF. Unfortunately, several of them are just there literally doing nothing except for flying around and just "be there" or they constantly self destruct. It makes it hard for those who actually want to play the game, especially when a lot of these freeloaders join one side.

 

The fixes for this are easy, which I think will work well for the GSF algorithm anyway. Besides make it easier to kick, how about using how much damage you've done overall in GSF matches as a factor? People who hit/KO less stick to the novice arena. Very basic and perhaps it could be exploited yes, but this idea can easily be built into something much more solid and will either force these freeloaders to either actually play and get invested in GSF, or just deter them from being killjoys. I am open to ideas on how we can rectify this issue, in fact, I invite them.

 

Either way, this has been going on for a while now and it is getting beyond aggravating. These freeloaders are really killing the fun.

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Main Server: Satele Shan.

 

I suppose you're wondering what I mean by freeloaders? Well, ever since galactic seasons became a thing (an awesome thing might I add), we've been getting a lot of new people joining in GSF. Unfortunately, several of them are just there literally doing nothing except for flying around and just "be there" or they constantly self destruct. It makes it hard for those who actually want to play the game, especially when a lot of these freeloaders join one side.

 

.

 

This was mentioned at the start, over and over. Without sufficient rerolls, people are going to pick the easier options , which gsf is.

 

 

The fixes for this are easy, which I think will work well for the GSF algorithm anyway. Besides make it easier to kick, .

 

How would they make it easier to kick? Non participation is the best way to do it. It stops people abusing the system. If the make it so less votes will work, that might be better, but would still need 3 or 4 to vote.

 

 

how about using how much damage you've done overall in GSF matches as a factor? .

 

Definitely not, this would screw noobies, or those that aren't as good. You could end up on a team with aces, who kill everything before you even get a chance to hit anything, or worse, be on a opposite team, and they kill you before you shoot.

 

 

People who hit/KO less stick to the novice arena. .

 

 

There is no novice area, it's all one big shark tank, everyone swims in the same area, minnow fish, sharks, and dolphins

 

 

either force these freeloaders to either actually play and get invested in GSF, or just deter them from being killjoys. I am open to ideas on how we can rectify this issue, in fact, I invite them.

 

.

 

As long as the points are easy, you'll get the freeloaders.

 

 

Either way, this has been going on for a while now and it is getting beyond aggravating. These freeloaders are really killing the fun.

 

 

Yup, it's what we've been saying since the inception of Galactic Seasons....

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Dark Tergon has it right. The reason there are so many "freeloaders" is that GSF is worth an insane amount of rewards. Under Galactic Seasons 1 in about an hour (5 matches) of play time in a entire week you can break 150,000 CQ points easily (82K for the 5 ship missions (which could be repeated for 3 other ships for another 240,000 CQ points for only 1 hour more for each ship), 35 K for flying the 5 missions (7K each) another 14 K since you will win about 1/2 of the matches you fly. 30K for the Socialite I and most of the way through Socialite 2 and with all those conquest points (and the corresponding xp you get alongside it), you crack one or two reknown levels for another 6K conquest each. You also will have completed 5 daily galactic seasons rewards for (15 GS points along with the weekly for another 12 points and the login bonus for another 8 points = 37 points which if that was what you did every week, would have been sufficient to get to level 100 without touching any other content. If you are grinding, it would be impossible to pass up such easy pickings even if you only had to put in minimal effort (as opposed to AFKing). No other content in the game is anywhere near as rewarding for the same time commitment. (or setup requirements. The stock, un-upgraded ships are plenty effective to complete the objectives)

 

Galactic seasons 2 won't be a lot different since there will be a weekly GSF and each mission flown will count towards that at the same time it is counting toward the daily based on CQ points. In order to get people to not "freeload", the CQ points awarded for the 5 ship missions need to be cut by 50% if not 75% so that they are not lucrative timewise for completing CQ and GS. Too many rewards are progressed for completing only a single match.

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Actually, an idea just hit me. Could there be a way to make it so that it's a bit more than just "fly to earn" the GS point? Why not something like You must acquire 5-10 medals on daily's and 50-100 medals on weekly's? Not gonna lie, I think THAT would force some of these freeloaders to "get gud". :D
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Actually, an idea just hit me. Could there be a way to make it so that it's a bit more than just "fly to earn" the GS point? Why not something like You must acquire 5-10 medals on daily's and 50-100 medals on weekly's? Not gonna lie, I think THAT would force some of these freeloaders to "get gud". :D

 

The only people that, that would benefit would be the elite. There are matches where ,no matter how hard I try I still end up with 0 medals (DM's, when we have a few aces, and they are doing all the killing...lol), DOM is easier to earn medals, and even freeloader will be able to do that.

 

 

The best solution is for people to report the freeloaders, the people who constantly, suicide and get 0 across the board, and for the CM to do their darn jobs and ban these people from playing. They can ban people from playing PvP matches, they should be able to ban people from GSF.

Edited by DarkTergon
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The only people that, that would benefit would be the elite. There are matches where ,no matter how hard I try I still end up with 0 medals (DM's, when we have a few aces, and they are doing all the killing...lol), DOM is easier to earn medals, and even freeloader will be able to do that.

 

 

The best solution is for people to report the freeloaders, the people who constantly, suicide and get 0 across the board, and for the CM to do their darn jobs and ban these people from playing. They can ban people from playing PvP matches, they should be able to ban people from GSF.

 

I still think it's worth a shot at least. Reporting does only go so far.

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... So what do you propose we do then?

 

At the very least make the 82K ship mission objectives advance only with wins (in essence that would make them take twice as long since the win rate is right around 50%). I'd leave the Galactic Seasons as participation instead of wins. It is the Conquest point seekers that are flooding the queues. The people playing for GS points play 1 match per day.

 

Short of that, reduce the CQ point values for them to match comparable time/effort investment activities. That way there are more options to get those numbers of points and people will play the content they prefer for the CQ points (likely pulling a lot of the "freeloaders" out of GSF to those other activities). One other thing to do is reduce the number of objectives that advance simultaneously. Right now a GSF match advances the GSF daily, the GSF weekly, the GS daily, the GS weekly, Socialite, and 5 ship mission objectives.

 

The downside to removing the "freeloaders" before the match starts is much slower queue times. Its already pretty clear that pop times have increased significantly as people have gotten to GS level 100.

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As much as I hate saying this, there’s no solution that won’t make the game unplayable. I’ve played enough MMO’s and other online games to know that as long as there are systems in place, there will be trolls who make every effort to circumvent them. The best you can hope for is maybe a reduction in the number of trolls actually affecting matches.
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Main Server: Satele Shan.

 

I suppose you're wondering what I mean by freeloaders? Well, ever since galactic seasons became a thing (an awesome thing might I add), we've been getting a lot of new people joining in GSF. Unfortunately, several of them are just there literally doing nothing except for flying around and just "be there" or they constantly self destruct. It makes it hard for those who actually want to play the game, especially when a lot of these freeloaders join one side.

 

The fixes for this are easy, which I think will work well for the GSF algorithm anyway. Besides make it easier to kick, how about using how much damage you've done overall in GSF matches as a factor? People who hit/KO less stick to the novice arena. Very basic and perhaps it could be exploited yes, but this idea can easily be built into something much more solid and will either force these freeloaders to either actually play and get invested in GSF, or just deter them from being killjoys. I am open to ideas on how we can rectify this issue, in fact, I invite them.

 

Either way, this has been going on for a while now and it is getting beyond aggravating. These freeloaders are really killing the fun.

 

Wellp, each authentic coin tends to come with tails and heads alike. There's been a huge injection of life to GSF. Some of it thanks to GSF becoming valid source of conq again, most (I recon) thanks to GS, People talk about GSF more than ever since its launch. I'm quite sure that percentage-wise, larger portion of TOR community are interested to do some leaning/playing of GSF than ever before, aside from the initial interest spike at its launch. Do you remember how SS used to be like during the miserable phase where GSF got drained out of most all conquest like 18 months back? Pop was dying. Seems very far removed from how things are now, luckily.

 

 

You can't have heads side of a coin that huge and golden without a tails. Such huge spike in interest and popularity inevitably means match quality taking a hit too. Some of it in shape of new pilots still learning their ropes just like you and I once did. Some of it is cause of afkers and freeloaders. "Match quality" mostly matters to some extremely literal GSF god who watches each game from some throne in Valhalla, and evaluates how much each game pleases or displeases him based on its "quality". Players, being non- divine mortals and all, can have the luxury of focusing mostly on fun factor, not quality. Fun games happen when both teams are roughly as good..or as bad. Your team having few guys literally afking through it all won't matter if enemy team has few pilots who know nothing of controls yet.

 

Freeloading afkers basically function as NPCs that they are. You knock out half a dozen of them without slowing down much, while on your way towards the real threat. Many pretty srs pvp games have similar mechanics in place by design, tho their NPCs tend to be less....organic lets say: p

 

Seasons is supposed to be pretty acccessible. I don't think they ever move it beyond " participation trophy" when it comes to GSF and PvP. Just like you never see any real difficult content there for solo players either. Conquest side of things could be tuned though: It'd be good to replace conq dings for flying ships with conq equally generous dings for earning medals. Make sure people TRY and get rewarded for trying.

Edited by Stradlin
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I do GSF only bc GS forces me to, but I don't afk or suicide - this should def be punished. Yet I can sort of understand ppl who do this. You are basically forced to play modes you don't want to for GS points. GSF particulalry has a steep learning curve, is unfriendly and frustrating for newbies. I mean it's 100% unhealthy and wrong when you see the same 1-2 persons on every team doing 90% kills with few if any deaths. In every match. When you play a cannon fodder role over and over again, it might become unbearable esp if you have zero interest in it. Unfortunately, it's a usual case in MMO when devs are trying to shorten the queues by force, yet screwing up the quality. Adding any kind of minimum requirements will just make ppl more angry and toxic unless they are easily achiveable. This doesn't help at all. The only option is to let ppl chose how they want to do the GS. Queues will become longer ofc, but ppl will participate willingly, which will increase the quality for sure, I belive. Edited by Nortumberland
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I do GSF only bc GS forces me to, but I don't afk or suicide - this should def be punished. Yet I can sort of understand ppl who do this. You are basically forced to play modes you don't want to for GS points. GSF particulalry has a steep learning curve, is unfriendly and frustrating for newbies. I mean it's 100% unhealthy and wrong when you see the same 1-2 persons on every team doing 90% kills with few if any deaths. In every match. When you play a cannon fodder role over and over again, it might become unbearable esp if you have zero interest in it. Unfortunately, it's a usual case in MMO when devs are trying to shorten the queues by force, yet screwing up the quality. Adding any kind of minimum requirements will just make ppl more angry and toxic unless they are easily achiveable. This doesn't help at all. The only option is to let ppl chose how they want to do the GS. Queues will become longer ofc, but ppl will participate willingly, which will increase the quality for sure, I belive.

 

Next season they have already said won't be RNG based, so people can choose to do 7 of the 10 options for the Galactic Season's weeklies (the only daily next season is to do so much conquest each day). So for those that hate GSF, or PvP or whatever activity they will have the choice to do a different content style.

 

They've also said the for the GSF objectives earning medals will be required. The type of medal may change each week. Here is a Dev post if your interested in what they're planning for season 2. https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9966924#edit9966924

 

As you can see by the post of the 2 different weekly objectives

 

Week 1: Complete GSF matches while earning medals. (not listed how many medals needed).

Week 2: Earn Offensive or Defensive medals by capturing and defending Satellites in Galactic Star Fighter matches.

 

As you can see they'll be attempting to get people to put in effort in both of these examples, so someone getting 0 medals won't get credit for the match. My concern is on week 2 where if you get a TDM, you may just see massive people leave, because they will not get credit for Galactic seasons.

 

Edit: I'm sure this will slow down queu times somewhat, however I doubt it'll change much. Just force people to put in effort to get however many medals are required for Galactic Seasons.

Edited by Toraak
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i was in 15 matches yesterday where 8 of them had the same group of 2-4 afkers in them. naturally those were losing games. ALL of them were from the SAME guild. i use to love GSF but now not so much. the devs need to add a button on the scoreboard where you can send it to them as proof of afking.
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i was in 15 matches yesterday where 8 of them had the same group of 2-4 afkers in them. naturally those were losing games. ALL of them were from the SAME guild. i use to love GSF but now not so much. the devs need to add a button on the scoreboard where you can send it to them as proof of afking.

 

Again, a problem with the obscene number of conquest points available for very simple, low effort content. The guilds are (and have been for a while) farming GSF for the conquest points. There was a substantial jump in the number of conquest points that the top guilds were getting shortly after the 82K per 5 mission objectives were created. Those need to be slashed substantially to cut down on this type of "freeloading". As long as those missions are worth far more for the time and effort than any other activity in the game, they will continue to suffer from "don't care" players. This has been a constant since Conquest first started, easiest content for the time invested attracts the most guild players (was heroics until they got nerfed into the ground, then it was warzones until they became win only, now its GSF).

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i was in 15 matches yesterday where 8 of them had the same group of 2-4 afkers in them. naturally those were losing games. ALL of them were from the SAME guild. i use to love GSF but now not so much. the devs need to add a button on the scoreboard where you can send it to them as proof of afking.

 

All you can do is take screen shots and send them to CS, or better, send them to jackieCo, she's the community manager, and these people definitely need managing lol. But seeing as GS is over, we are going to see a big increase in queue times, already off peak I've been in the queue for near an hour before it pops. Even on the quietest server during GS, I've never had that long of a wait.

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All you can do is take screen shots and send them to CS, or better, send them to jackieCo, she's the community manager, and these people definitely need managing lol. But seeing as GS is over, we are going to see a big increase in queue times, already off peak I've been in the queue for near an hour before it pops. Even on the quietest server during GS, I've never had that long of a wait.

 

unfortunately i'm not tech savvy and my pc doesn't have automatic screenshot capability. spent 2hrs one day trying to search google to get it. could of spent those 2hrs banging my head against the wall and received better results.

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unfortunately i'm not tech savvy and my pc doesn't have automatic screenshot capability. spent 2hrs one day trying to search google to get it. could of spent those 2hrs banging my head against the wall and received better results.

 

Press the Windows key and Print Screen key at the same time, and Windows 10 (or 8) will take a screenshot and dump it in your Users/username/Pictures/Screenshots folder.

 

For Windows 7 I believe you can just press Print Screen to copy a screenshot to the clipboard, but then you need to open some sort of program that can save images and paste from the clipboard by hitting Control v. Wordpad and Paint or Paint 3D will likely work as programs to save the file in, and should be bundled on just about any Windows machine.

 

There's some Snip tool baked into Windows too, but I've never liked it so can't really give tips on using it.

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Week 1: Complete GSF matches while earning medals. (not listed how many medals needed).

Week 2: Earn Offensive or Defensive medals by capturing and defending Satellites in Galactic Star Fighter matches.

 

 

only problem i can see with those is what happens when you get in a BAD group? by bad i mean don't know how to play or haven't played very long. i can see waiting 30mins or more to play and after it starts you getting no medals because the group isn't up to snuff against the other team.

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Require a win to get credit for cq points or to complete the weekly/daily. Require a win to get credit for seasons points. Should thin them out.

 

 

 

Week 1: Complete GSF matches while earning medals. (not listed how many medals needed).

Week 2: Earn Offensive or Defensive medals by capturing and defending Satellites in Galactic Star Fighter matches.

 

 

only problem i can see with those is what happens when you get in a BAD group? by bad i mean don't know how to play or haven't played very long. i can see waiting 30mins or more to play and after it starts you getting no medals because the group isn't up to snuff against the other team.

 

 

 

Except look at what it has done to PvP, do you really want to compound the issues GSF has? As it is, the cues have gone bad, and probably won't revive till GS2 starts.

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Requiring a win would be a poor choice to put in. I know quite a few players that completely left PvP when they did that for the daily/weekly, because they generally only solo queu'd, and it made it very difficult to win a high enough % of the games.

 

I also noticed a significant increase in PvP queu's as well when they changed the PvP daily/weekly. I do not want that to happen to GSF as well.

Edited by Toraak
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Yeah. Good points. I don't like it either. In pvp. Definitely lowered the player pool resulting in much longer que times. The toxicity meter also went off the charts. I think a new one was created to handle the scale. Arena went from pretty bad to I'm not going to bother anymore. Did eliminate the ERPers hanging out and having emoji competitions. Idk guys. There will always be bad teams in solo anything. All we can do is take our lumps and move on. Sucks.

 

Maybe we shouldn't be asking devs to do anything. It really isn't their problem. I would rather see them put energy into a new class of ships or a couple maps.

Edited by Gundahar
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Maybe we shouldn't be asking devs to do anything. It really isn't their problem. I would rather see them put energy into a new class of ships or a couple maps.

 

Actually, we should be asking them to do theirs jobs, and remove the offending people, but like ranked and pvp cheating, no one seems to be doing anything. Or if anything is down, it's reversed or just not shown

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The best solution I've seen suggested here is Dwho's, making the amount of conquest rewards consistent across the board would encourage everyone to just play what they like.

 

Maybe we shouldn't be asking devs to do anything. It really isn't their problem. I would rather see them put energy into a new class of ships or a couple maps.

 

You do realize they have entirely separate teams that work on the game (devs) from people who manage the community and deal with cheaters right? They aren't going into a system designers or art teams office and asking them to take time out of their busy day to "deal with some cheaters."

Edited by Unfoldingsquid
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