56 replies to this topic

[Trashhead]

Background of this topic:
I am currently rather angry and this thread is my approach of turning this anger into a solution of the very problem i intend to address.

What happened ?
I ran into yet another TeamKiller this evening, twice actually.
He was quite chatty, and reported he had been IP banned yesterday or so.
I think i saw him 3 days ago (he has a very unique name), also team-killing, so either PGI does not care about TK'ers or there is a workaround vs. ban's I am not aware of.

Anyway, I did not report him, because of 4 reasons. Actually 5.
1. According to other players he already was reported (by them), so no point of creating another email with the same info that has to be read by the staff.
2. I have reported TK'ers before, and got a response-email from PGI only after between 2 and 4 days; which I reckon as the response time to the problem (meaning the ban of the player in question).
3. You can easily get a new account and start TK'ing again; if the TK'er today is right an IP ban is irrelevant.
4. Why do we have to MANUALLY write an email, instead of having a report functionality within the game ?
5. The problem could be solved in-game via a mechanism that does not require any involvement of human beings at all (making reporting TK'ers obsolete, too).

I assume PGi as well as most players do not consider this a problem worth dealing with, because it happens rather rarely.
I hope they are right, but once MWO hit's Steam, this might become an issue.
Or not.
You tell me.

However, every time this happens it makes me angry and sad at the same time.
Even if the TK'er is in the opposing team, it drains all the motivation to continue playing out of me; which is why i am currently typing this instead of playing the game.
(In other cases i just quite the game and call it a day.)


How can this be fixed ? My idea is this:

1. Have a Reduced Team Damage (RTD) - Mode.
- Player A deals 52 damage to Player B.
- the Game applies only 1 point of damage to Player B (per second, not per weapon)
- Player A gets the amount of team damage subtracted from his damage output, and subsequently gets payed less CBills in the end. (This should be standard, btw.)

1b. Have an Avenge Team Damage (ATD)- Mode.
- same as above, but Player A will get the amount of damage dealt to player B reflected back to him. The full amount, not the 1 point Player B gets.

2. New players will start automatically in RTD - Mode for their first 5 hours of playing time.
(Could also be first 25 matches, but in that case all you need to do is start a match, exit and start a new match in a different Trail Mech.)
So no more "if i get banned i create a new account and continue killing", because you have to play at least 5 hours.

3. The game should monitor each player's damage vs team (DvT).
- If this DvT is much higher then the average DvT (which is... i don't know how much this is, but PGI should know) -> Player will be switched to RTD-Mode.
- If the player still continues doing above average team damage, he will be put into ATD-mode (this should happen rather fast, within the same match, imho)
- the player should be reverted back to normal FriendlyFire Mode after X hours played without an incident (i currently have no idea how much "X" should be).

4. To prevent abuse:
- players might want to be put into RTD-Mode deliberately, so they did not have to worry about shooting teammates accidentally. Would be nice in Community Warfare, for instance.
- To prevent this, the game should monitor if there is a pattern of behavior with certain players.
- If there is: put them into Advanced Reduced Team Damage (ARTD) - Mode.
-> This would not only reduce their damage output vs. team mates, but also halve the damage output of their weapons vs. hostile targets. And you don't want THAT in Community Warfare to happen to you.


Q&A:

Do we have so many Teamkillers in game that this issue needs to be addressed ?
Subjectively: yes.
Objectively: most likely no.
The point is: currently TK'ers do not get banned that quickly. The TK'er mentioned above (no, I won't give you the name, sorry) is active for 3 days now (according to my own observation and those of other players). Plus said TK'er claims he already has been IP banned, but he is still playing. If this is true, we would need a different solution anyway.

Why the 1 point damage vs team; why not NO damage ?
The reason why i suggest that Player B (the victim of the TK'er) should receive 1 point of damage and not no damage at all is for immersion reasons.
Friendly Fire is still possible, but it is much harder to abuse it for TK'ing purposes.

Why no Auto-bans ?
I am not suggesting plain auto-ban's of players because accidental Team Kills happen.
Plus my suggestion would take out the fun that TK'ers have, because not only would they do not even nearly the amount of damage they want to (RTD-Mode), they would also get burned themselves (ARTD-Mode).

Would it work ?
I have no idea.

You have no idea ? Then why do you bother writing this post in the first place ???
Short answer: because i am stupid.
Long answer: because i perceive it as an issue that needs a solution and the current solution provided by PGI (manually writing a mail) is - imho - inadequate.

Is it easy to implement into the game ?
I have no idea how easy it would be to implement this either.
But given how much information the game is processing rather fast - for instance if you kill an enemy and have dealt the most damage to him you get the "dealt most damage-Kill"-Info on your screen INSTANTLY.... this should be not that difficult... shouldn't it ?



P.S.: @ the Moderators:
It's nice to know you read everything in this forum (and given how much... difficult posts you have to read i hope you get paid well).
But do you actually pass suggestions like this to the Dev's ?
Like "Hey, Dev X, are TeamKillers actually an issue in this game ? If you think yes, here is a link to a forum post."
Or do you just look at it, see it's bringing up a no-issue, and carry on ?
Just asking because i intend to post this very same suggestion over and over again every time i will have to deal with a Teamkiller... until you or PGI tell me either:
A: "We are working on it, now just shut up!"
or
B: "This is not an issue, now just shut up!"
Also C: "Just shut up" with no explanation given would work. Just a hint to reduce your workload.

[Pjwned]

All of those ideas are bad and horribly impractical.

[Scyther]

TKing is usually accidental, in which case a good stiff C-Bill/Exp penalty is a good idea. Especially if that penalty is granted to his target (World of Tanks does this for all team damage; penalize you 4*N, pay target N). This would mostly handle 'poor fire control' on real accounts. (Note: sloppy fire control/team damage can be as or more rough on your team than the rare TK'ers)

There should be a minimum threshold for team damage penalties, as a small amount will happen regardless. 50 dmg before penalties apply, but then all points count for the penalty, for example.

It is occasionally intentional griefing, in which case the griefer is *probably* on a throw-away free account using trial mechs.

It might make more sense to have trial mechs do 1/4 damage to teammates, for various purposes. It helps new players/learners, people who have actual problems (lag, whatever) controlling fire could choose a Trial mech. It is unlikely anyone with 'real' mechs will play Trials just to do less team damage. It gives targets time to get away or take cover.

As you suggest, when a mech does exceed the 'standard' team damage profile over X games per Y time, they should receive a warning (say after 3 matches in under 2 hours), followed by an account suspension which may trigger a review. World of Tanks also changes the color of the team damager to bright Cyan as a visible warning to others.

Whether the problem is common enough to warrant making code changes is debateable. However as you say, Steam release is coming, and 1 unhappy customer undoes the goodwill of 10 happy ones they say. It's worth a look IMO.

[Armorine]

I like it!

I also love the idea of trial mechs doing half damage. It's always the trial dire wolf they're in. I just had a guy in a dire wolf kill me and try to kill a timber( he failed) it needs to be if you kill a team mate in the first 10-20 seconds it's an auto ban. Or something like that. I don't know.

Edited by Armorine, 15 March 2015 - 02:27 PM.

[Smith Gibson]

Basically it all boils down to "If the problem goes away on it's own, then it was never really a problem."
Once PGI realized that making the reporting TKers process entirely the responsibility of the victim, and requiring us to manually collect the information that the game servers are automatically collecting anyways, the problem of us bothering them started to go away immediately.

Now if they could only figure out how to make complaints about how nothing is being done to ban these TKers against the CoC then the problem of us bothering them would completely disappear. Oh wait, they have!

DISCUSSING DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS

This category includes

• Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a player, including chat logs and email correspondence between a player and a Game Master (GM)
  
• Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a character or account on the forums

If a player is found to have participated in such actions, he/she will:

• Be given a temporary ban from the forums, depending upon severity

You may be safe due to the fact that your post appears to be to discuss ways to solve the TK problem, and only include a discussion about the disciplinary actions that are not working as an example. I suppose it's all really up to if PGI wants to be bothered to deal with your violations or not.


I on the other hand am breaking the CoC by discussing what what the rules are in the first place.

Disrupting or Circumventing Moderation
Our definition of Disrupting or Circumventing Moderation includes:

• Posting to discuss the moderation actions taken against them or another.
  
• Posting to discuss general moderation rules and guidelines.

(I cut the unneeded portion)


Yep. It is against the CoC to tell people what the CoC is. Though there might be a loophole for discussing specific moderation rules and guidelines. Good thing I cut the unneeded portion or I might not have any leg to stand on after being TKed and deciding to go to the forums to find a way to fix the TKing problem.

They've made Name and Shame against the CoC, This has helped to make sure that no one can warn others about TKers, but only in the example of specific TKers by name. What we really need to do is help PGI find out how to make talking about TKers against the CoC even when it's just the vague concept of TKers. That should make the problem go away completely and for good.

To quote my favorite demotivational poster... Customer Service - "Maybe if we stop answering they will just go away"

Edited by Smith Gibson, 15 March 2015 - 02:39 PM.

[Something Wrong]

Not really practical sadly. Also, considering the attitude of many players, most of them don't actually report TKers because they don't know how to and just scream out that they're going to do it anyway. Knowing what I do of the MWO community, just like every other community, you will have players who not only abuse the ability to hit an in game report function, but will do it anyway on entire teams just because they feel like it. And no, there will not be "solutions" to fixing "solutions", too much time and effort for PGI.

That being said, I've lost count of how many team mates I've TKed because they decide they want to steal my kill at the last second by running in between myself and the enemy and blocking me from shooting. FYI if you do that to me, I just shoot through you.

And since I'm a sniper, EVERY game I play there's always some person that decides running in front of me while I snipe is a good idea. And you want to make it easier for these paint huffers to report me for their own stupidity? Their own stupidity is the very thing keeping them from reporting things like that.

TL;DR there's nothing wrong with TKing when your team mate commits suicide by team death.

[Troutmonkey]

Trashhead, on 15 March 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

4. Why do we have to MANUALLY write an email, instead of having a report functionality within the game ?

This is pretty much all we need really.
That, and a cursor that turns blue and warns you not to shoot friendlies when you inflict team damage. Outside of open beta I've experienced maybe 3 team kills tops, and one of them may have been me when I was upset

Edited by Troutmonkey, 15 March 2015 - 04:20 PM.

[Something Wrong]

Troutmonkey, on 15 March 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

This is pretty much all we need really.
That, and a cursor that turns blue and warns you not to shoot friendlies when you inflict team damage. Outside of open beta I've experienced maybe 3 team kills tops, and one of them may have been me when I was upset

I'm kinda on the fence about TKing someone out of anger. Don't get me wrong, I've TKed about 10 team mates since beta opened on purpose because of things they've been saying or doing.

Kinda hard to put an objective limit on what point it's time to TK someone deliberately though.

Edited by Sum Ting Wong, 15 March 2015 - 04:23 PM.

[PurpleNinja]

I agree with one point, it's not a big issue right now.

[Troutmonkey]

Sum Ting Wong, on 15 March 2015 - 04:22 PM, said:

I'm kinda on the fence about TKing someone out of anger. Don't get me wrong, I've TKed about 10 team mates since beta opened on purpose because of things they've been saying or doing.

Kinda hard to put an objective limit on what point it's time to TK someone deliberately though.

I was in a bad place that day. Constant losses, terrible games, even worse teams, and I kept playing when I really should have just called it quits and went to bed for the night. If I received a temporary ban / warning I would have deserved it. It was a long time ago and I'm a better person / player now.

[Escef]

I think accounts should be auto-flagged for immediate review under 2 conditions:

1: Team damage equals or exceeds twice their used mech's Alpha during the course of a match (we've all had that perfect Alpha lined up, fired, and watched in horror as a friendly mech dashed in and took the whole thing in his backside, but something like that should not be happening twice in a match).

and/or

2. Committed a minimum of 1 team kill each in at least 2 consecutive matches.

I don't trust a machine or blanket policy to just lock down someone's account, weird stuff happens. But flagging the account for review by an actual human being seems the best option.

[oldradagast]

Escef, on 15 March 2015 - 05:11 PM, said:

I think accounts should be auto-flagged for immediate review under 2 conditions:

1: Team damage equals or exceeds twice their used mech's Alpha during the course of a match (we've all had that perfect Alpha lined up, fired, and watched in horror as a friendly mech dashed in and took the whole thing in his backside, but something like that should not be happening twice in a match).

and/or

2. Committed a minimum of 1 team kill each in at least 2 consecutive matches.

I don't trust a machine or blanket policy to just lock down someone's account, weird stuff happens. But flagging the account for review by an actual human being seems the best option.

Automatic systems will be abused.

Trolls would then rush in front of team mechs to get them banned by jumping in the way of alphas. No... people have to be involved to close such exploits.

[F4T 4L]

Trashhead, on 15 March 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

Background of this topic:
I am currently rather angry and this thread is my approach of turning this anger into a solution of the very problem i intend to address.

What happened ?
I ran into yet another TeamKiller this evening, twice actually.
He was quite chatty, and reported he had been IP banned yesterday or so.
I think i saw him 3 days ago (he has a very unique name), also team-killing, so either PGI does not care about TK'ers or there is a workaround vs. ban's I am not aware of.

Anyway, I did not report him, because of 4 reasons. Actually 5.
1. According to other players he already was reported (by them), so no point of creating another email with the same info that has to be read by the staff.
2. I have reported TK'ers before, and got a response-email from PGI only after between 2 and 4 days; which I reckon as the response time to the problem (meaning the ban of the player in question).
3. You can easily get a new account and start TK'ing again; if the TK'er today is right an IP ban is irrelevant.
4. Why do we have to MANUALLY write an email, instead of having a report functionality within the game ?
5. The problem could be solved in-game via a mechanism that does not require any involvement of human beings at all (making reporting TK'ers obsolete, too).

I assume PGi as well as most players do not consider this a problem worth dealing with, because it happens rather rarely.
I hope they are right, but once MWO hit's Steam, this might become an issue.
Or not.
You tell me.

However, every time this happens it makes me angry and sad at the same time.
Even if the TK'er is in the opposing team, it drains all the motivation to continue playing out of me; which is why i am currently typing this instead of playing the game.
(In other cases i just quite the game and call it a day.)


How can this be fixed ? My idea is this:

1. Have a Reduced Team Damage (RTD) - Mode.
- Player A deals 52 damage to Player B.
- the Game applies only 1 point of damage to Player B (per second, not per weapon)
- Player A gets the amount of team damage subtracted from his damage output, and subsequently gets payed less CBills in the end. (This should be standard, btw.)

1b. Have an Avenge Team Damage (ATD)- Mode.
- same as above, but Player A will get the amount of damage dealt to player B reflected back to him. The full amount, not the 1 point Player B gets.

2. New players will start automatically in RTD - Mode for their first 5 hours of playing time.
(Could also be first 25 matches, but in that case all you need to do is start a match, exit and start a new match in a different Trail Mech.)
So no more "if i get banned i create a new account and continue killing", because you have to play at least 5 hours.

3. The game should monitor each player's damage vs team (DvT).
- If this DvT is much higher then the average DvT (which is... i don't know how much this is, but PGI should know) -> Player will be switched to RTD-Mode.
- If the player still continues doing above average team damage, he will be put into ATD-mode (this should happen rather fast, within the same match, imho)
- the player should be reverted back to normal FriendlyFire Mode after X hours played without an incident (i currently have no idea how much "X" should be).

4. To prevent abuse:
- players might want to be put into RTD-Mode deliberately, so they did not have to worry about shooting teammates accidentally. Would be nice in Community Warfare, for instance.
- To prevent this, the game should monitor if there is a pattern of behavior with certain players.
- If there is: put them into Advanced Reduced Team Damage (ARTD) - Mode.
-> This would not only reduce their damage output vs. team mates, but also halve the damage output of their weapons vs. hostile targets. And you don't want THAT in Community Warfare to happen to you.


Q&A:

Do we have so many Teamkillers in game that this issue needs to be addressed ?
Subjectively: yes.
Objectively: most likely no.
The point is: currently TK'ers do not get banned that quickly. The TK'er mentioned above (no, I won't give you the name, sorry) is active for 3 days now (according to my own observation and those of other players). Plus said TK'er claims he already has been IP banned, but he is still playing. If this is true, we would need a different solution anyway.

Why the 1 point damage vs team; why not NO damage ?
The reason why i suggest that Player B (the victim of the TK'er) should receive 1 point of damage and not no damage at all is for immersion reasons.
Friendly Fire is still possible, but it is much harder to abuse it for TK'ing purposes.

Why no Auto-bans ?
I am not suggesting plain auto-ban's of players because accidental Team Kills happen.
Plus my suggestion would take out the fun that TK'ers have, because not only would they do not even nearly the amount of damage they want to (RTD-Mode), they would also get burned themselves (ARTD-Mode).

Would it work ?
I have no idea.

You have no idea ? Then why do you bother writing this post in the first place ???
Short answer: because i am stupid.
Long answer: because i perceive it as an issue that needs a solution and the current solution provided by PGI (manually writing a mail) is - imho - inadequate.

Is it easy to implement into the game ?
I have no idea how easy it would be to implement this either.
But given how much information the game is processing rather fast - for instance if you kill an enemy and have dealt the most damage to him you get the "dealt most damage-Kill"-Info on your screen INSTANTLY.... this should be not that difficult... shouldn't it ?



P.S.: @ the Moderators:
It's nice to know you read everything in this forum (and given how much... difficult posts you have to read i hope you get paid well).
But do you actually pass suggestions like this to the Dev's ?
Like "Hey, Dev X, are TeamKillers actually an issue in this game ? If you think yes, here is a link to a forum post."
Or do you just look at it, see it's bringing up a no-issue, and carry on ?
Just asking because i intend to post this very same suggestion over and over again every time i will have to deal with a Teamkiller... until you or PGI tell me either:
A: "We are working on it, now just shut up!"
or
B: "This is not an issue, now just shut up!"
Also C: "Just shut up" with no explanation given would work. Just a hint to reduce your workload.

Bottom line; too many folk value their damage too much to pull their shots to prevent TD. Most sensible folk only hit a circling light very very occasionally, the folk that always wade in to this argument with strong opinions believe otherwise, and any and every argument is wasted on them.

Damage reflection, or significant cbill penalty, is the answer, but too many folk just don't want to change their play-style.

Escef, on 15 March 2015 - 05:11 PM, said:

I think accounts should be auto-flagged for immediate review under 2 conditions:

1: Team damage equals or exceeds twice their used mech's Alpha during the course of a match (we've all had that perfect Alpha lined up, fired, and watched in horror as a friendly mech dashed in and took the whole thing in his backside, but something like that should not be happening twice in a match).

and/or

2. Committed a minimum of 1 team kill each in at least 2 consecutive matches.

I don't trust a machine or blanket policy to just lock down someone's account, weird stuff happens. But flagging the account for review by an actual human being seems the best option.

Not two consecutive.. Come on.. Two in five or something along those lines should be enough to raise that flag. Even two in ten!!

[Rustycan]

I have been here since closed beta and I do not feel that TKers are that big a deal., I have maybe seen 4-5 TKers on my team since then,

I do not like folks who Tk others, and those who dont watch where they shoot are annoying (or newer players/bad players) but I dont think it is very often it occurs. Maybe it happens more in the lower ELOs but I dont have the data to know that.

[F4T 4L]

oldradagast, on 15 March 2015 - 05:18 PM, said:

Automatic systems will be abused.

Trolls would then rush in front of team mechs to get them banned by jumping in the way of alphas. No... people have to be involved to close such exploits.

Yes abusers of the system will abuse. Currently, the nature of the abuse is folk shooting through others, just to secure their score.

That should be changed, even if it does mean you have to pull your shots occasionally.

We all get it wrong sometimes, but if that's happening to you regularly, then maybe you are the problem.

Rustycan, on 15 March 2015 - 05:30 PM, said:

I have been here since closed beta and I do not feel that TKers are that big a deal., I have maybe seen 4-5 TKers on my team since then,

I do not like folks who Tk others, and those who dont watch where they shoot are annoying (or newer players/bad players) but I dont think it is very often it occurs. Maybe it happens more in the lower ELOs but I dont have the data to know that.

Team damage is the bigger picture, not just team kill.

Obviously you know that already oh holier than thou.

Edit, you were on my team this evening.. peak weekend time. I suck, so maybe your elo isn't all that?

Edited by F4T 4L, 15 March 2015 - 05:55 PM.

[1453 R]

Smith Gibson, on 15 March 2015 - 02:38 PM, said:

Basically it all boils down to "If the problem goes away on it's own, then it was never really a problem."
Once PGI realized that making the reporting TKers process entirely the responsibility of the victim, and requiring us to manually collect the information that the game servers are automatically collecting anyways, the problem of us bothering them started to go away immediately.

Hi.

Let's go over this from the perspective of someone who works a job not entirely dissimilar to this, shall we?

First of all: who else is going to report TK or other ToS violations? The guy who does it? Some random schmoe? Joe Biden? Nicholas Kerensky? yes, their reporting systems could use some smoothing out, but frankly I can't even clearly remember the last honest example of a ToS violation I encountered in a match. I've never been TK'd, I've only been deliberately attacked by a teammate maybe three times in my history with the game, and the only two TKs I've ever inflicted on someone was where somebody with a cherry-red CT and no buttplating waltzed in front of my beam fire. At that point it is hardly my fault they planted their baboon cheeks in front of my guns and bent over, eh?

Perhaps - just perhaps, mind - there isn't this rampaging TK problem you think there is?

Smith Gibson, on 15 March 2015 - 02:38 PM, said:

Now if they could only figure out how to make complaints about how nothing is being done to ban these TKers against the CoC then the problem of us bothering them would completely disappear. Oh wait, they have!

DISCUSSING DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS

This category includes

• Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a player, including chat logs and email correspondence between a player and a Game Master (GM)
  
• Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a character or account on the forums

If a player is found to have participated in such actions, he/she will:

• Be given a temporary ban from the forums, depending upon severity

Your issue is "why can't we harass PGI on the forums for not providing us detailed accounts of when they banned people found to be guilty of TK, and which TKers they banned!"

How does that sound even remotely fair to you? Disciplinary action is between PGI and the disciplinee - if any old jackhole on the forums could demand YOUR discipline record just to prove some nebulous point, you'd scream. You'd be justified in screaming, too - the policy up there is to protect players as much as anything else. It's not a 'let's quash all criticism forever' rule because let's face it - this is MWO. Nothing Piranha does will ever stop people from criticizing it. It's a policy to ensure that someone who ends up moderated or disciplined is still able to play the game when their term runs up, instead of being dragged through the very public mud around this stinkhole and turned into a pariah.

Smith Gibson, on 15 March 2015 - 02:38 PM, said:

I on the other hand am breaking the CoC by discussing what what the rules are in the first place.

Disrupting or Circumventing Moderation
Our definition of Disrupting or Circumventing Moderation includes:

• Posting to discuss the moderation actions taken against them or another.
  
• Posting to discuss general moderation rules and guidelines.

(I cut the unneeded portion)




Yep. It is against the CoC to tell people what the CoC is. Though there might be a loophole for discussing specific moderation rules and guidelines. Good thing I cut the unneeded portion or I might not have any leg to stand on after being TKed and deciding to go to the forums to find a way to fix the TKing problem.

While that could certainly be phrased better, it's not a rule which is going to be enforced for anyone/everyone who even mentions the words "CoC" or 'Moderation', as you describe. It's basically there to, once again, stop people from trying to drag private disciplinary measures into the public sphere, and to stop people from pointlessly bashing on PGI's moderation systems. Would you walk into a courthouse somewhere, demand to see a judge, and then start berating him over how much you just hate how he goes about doing his job and what you think he should do instead?

Yeah.
Sounds awwwwwwfully stupid when one thinks of it that way, eh?

Smith Gibson, on 15 March 2015 - 02:38 PM, said:

They've made Name and Shame against the CoC, This has helped to make sure that no one can warn others about TKers, but only in the example of specific TKers by name. What we really need to do is help PGI find out how to make talking about TKers against the CoC even when it's just the vague concept of TKers. That should make the problem go away completely and for good.

To quote my favorite demotivational poster... Customer Service - "Maybe if we stop answering they will just go away"

If you honestly, truly think this is the reasoning behind the Name and Shame rules, then you, my friend, need to dial the Cynicism gauge back down into at least the yellow zone. N&S is strictly prohibited because nothing is stopping someone from posting untrue N&S threads just to try and slander someone they don't like. If the N&S policy wasn't in place, I could start a thread any day I wanted saying "Watch out for that Smith Gibson Jerkwad, guys. Got him in two different matches today and he started both by shooting out my back. Guess he really hates Stormcrows, huh?", and you would wander into the thread and be all "Like HELL I did!", and it'd turn into a your-word-against-mine situation until and unless Piranha checked any stored data they had of my games and determined that I was, in fact, just blowing smoke. Which is a gigantic waste of time for everyone involved, a huge spike of toxicity in an already critically toxic snakepit of a forum, and also just a horrible way to promote any sort of community.

If you have a real issue with someone, take it up with a GM, or contact Support. But remember that those guys are enormously overworked and rarely have a couple of free hours to focus on your-one-specific-claim that they need to corroborate by going over a month's worth of game logs. They need a place to start and a concrete complaint to work on, or they end up just spinning their wheels, wasting time, and getting p!ssed, all to no eventual avail when they tell you they can't do anything anyways.

Trust me. Happens to me plenty in my workday all the time, and somehow it never really gets better. You just learn to spot the useless chaff quicker and figure out ways of getting rid of it before it sours your mood any more than it already has.

Try working CS for an hour sometime. Just an hour. See how much you want to berate them for doing an awful job after that.

[Will Pike]

Trashhead, on 15 March 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

Background of this topic:
I am currently rather angry and this thread is my approach of turning this anger into a solution of the very problem i intend to address.

What happened ?
I ran into yet another TeamKiller this evening, twice actually.
He was quite chatty, and reported he had been IP banned yesterday or so.
I think i saw him 3 days ago (he has a very unique name), also team-killing, so either PGI does not care about TK'ers or there is a workaround vs. ban's I am not aware of.

Anyway, I did not report him, because of 4 reasons. Actually 5.
1. According to other players he already was reported (by them), so no point of creating another email with the same info that has to be read by the staff.
2. I have reported TK'ers before, and got a response-email from PGI only after between 2 and 4 days; which I reckon as the response time to the problem (meaning the ban of the player in question).
3. You can easily get a new account and start TK'ing again; if the TK'er today is right an IP ban is irrelevant.
4. Why do we have to MANUALLY write an email, instead of having a report functionality within the game ?
5. The problem could be solved in-game via a mechanism that does not require any involvement of human beings at all (making reporting TK'ers obsolete, too).

I assume PGi as well as most players do not consider this a problem worth dealing with, because it happens rather rarely.
I hope they are right, but once MWO hit's Steam, this might become an issue.
Or not.
You tell me.

However, every time this happens it makes me angry and sad at the same time.
Even if the TK'er is in the opposing team, it drains all the motivation to continue playing out of me; which is why i am currently typing this instead of playing the game.
(In other cases i just quite the game and call it a day.)


How can this be fixed ? My idea is this:

1. Have a Reduced Team Damage (RTD) - Mode.
- Player A deals 52 damage to Player B.
- the Game applies only 1 point of damage to Player B (per second, not per weapon)
- Player A gets the amount of team damage subtracted from his damage output, and subsequently gets payed less CBills in the end. (This should be standard, btw.)

1b. Have an Avenge Team Damage (ATD)- Mode.
- same as above, but Player A will get the amount of damage dealt to player B reflected back to him. The full amount, not the 1 point Player B gets.

2. New players will start automatically in RTD - Mode for their first 5 hours of playing time.
(Could also be first 25 matches, but in that case all you need to do is start a match, exit and start a new match in a different Trail Mech.)
So no more "if i get banned i create a new account and continue killing", because you have to play at least 5 hours.

3. The game should monitor each player's damage vs team (DvT).
- If this DvT is much higher then the average DvT (which is... i don't know how much this is, but PGI should know) -> Player will be switched to RTD-Mode.
- If the player still continues doing above average team damage, he will be put into ATD-mode (this should happen rather fast, within the same match, imho)
- the player should be reverted back to normal FriendlyFire Mode after X hours played without an incident (i currently have no idea how much "X" should be).

4. To prevent abuse:
- players might want to be put into RTD-Mode deliberately, so they did not have to worry about shooting teammates accidentally. Would be nice in Community Warfare, for instance.
- To prevent this, the game should monitor if there is a pattern of behavior with certain players.
- If there is: put them into Advanced Reduced Team Damage (ARTD) - Mode.
-> This would not only reduce their damage output vs. team mates, but also halve the damage output of their weapons vs. hostile targets. And you don't want THAT in Community Warfare to happen to you.


Q&A:

Do we have so many Teamkillers in game that this issue needs to be addressed ?
Subjectively: yes.
Objectively: most likely no.
The point is: currently TK'ers do not get banned that quickly. The TK'er mentioned above (no, I won't give you the name, sorry) is active for 3 days now (according to my own observation and those of other players). Plus said TK'er claims he already has been IP banned, but he is still playing. If this is true, we would need a different solution anyway.

Why the 1 point damage vs team; why not NO damage ?
The reason why i suggest that Player B (the victim of the TK'er) should receive 1 point of damage and not no damage at all is for immersion reasons.
Friendly Fire is still possible, but it is much harder to abuse it for TK'ing purposes.

Why no Auto-bans ?
I am not suggesting plain auto-ban's of players because accidental Team Kills happen.
Plus my suggestion would take out the fun that TK'ers have, because not only would they do not even nearly the amount of damage they want to (RTD-Mode), they would also get burned themselves (ARTD-Mode).

Would it work ?
I have no idea.

You have no idea ? Then why do you bother writing this post in the first place ???
Short answer: because i am stupid.
Long answer: because i perceive it as an issue that needs a solution and the current solution provided by PGI (manually writing a mail) is - imho - inadequate.

Is it easy to implement into the game ?
I have no idea how easy it would be to implement this either.
But given how much information the game is processing rather fast - for instance if you kill an enemy and have dealt the most damage to him you get the "dealt most damage-Kill"-Info on your screen INSTANTLY.... this should be not that difficult... shouldn't it ?



P.S.: @ the Moderators:
It's nice to know you read everything in this forum (and given how much... difficult posts you have to read i hope you get paid well).
But do you actually pass suggestions like this to the Dev's ?
Like "Hey, Dev X, are TeamKillers actually an issue in this game ? If you think yes, here is a link to a forum post."
Or do you just look at it, see it's bringing up a no-issue, and carry on ?
Just asking because i intend to post this very same suggestion over and over again every time i will have to deal with a Teamkiller... until you or PGI tell me either:
A: "We are working on it, now just shut up!"
or
B: "This is not an issue, now just shut up!"
Also C: "Just shut up" with no explanation given would work. Just a hint to reduce your workload.

I think I know who you are talking about... If it's the same one, he TK'd me today in my Stalker and acted like it was an accident. I've seen him a few other times.

[Stoned Prophet]

Trashhead, on 15 March 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

Background of this topic:
I am currently rather angry and this thread is my approach of turning this anger into a solution of the very problem i intend to address.

What happened ?
I ran into yet another TeamKiller this evening, twice actually.
He was quite chatty, and reported he had been IP banned yesterday or so.
I think i saw him 3 days ago (he has a very unique name), also team-killing, so either PGI does not care about TK'ers or there is a workaround vs. ban's I am not aware of.

Anyway, I did not report him, because of 4 reasons. Actually 5.
1. According to other players he already was reported (by them), so no point of creating another email with the same info that has to be read by the staff.
2. I have reported TK'ers before, and got a response-email from PGI only after between 2 and 4 days; which I reckon as the response time to the problem (meaning the ban of the player in question).
3. You can easily get a new account and start TK'ing again; if the TK'er today is right an IP ban is irrelevant.
4. Why do we have to MANUALLY write an email, instead of having a report functionality within the game ?
5. The problem could be solved in-game via a mechanism that does not require any involvement of human beings at all (making reporting TK'ers obsolete, too).

I assume PGi as well as most players do not consider this a problem worth dealing with, because it happens rather rarely.
I hope they are right, but once MWO hit's Steam, this might become an issue.
Or not.
You tell me.

However, every time this happens it makes me angry and sad at the same time.
Even if the TK'er is in the opposing team, it drains all the motivation to continue playing out of me; which is why i am currently typing this instead of playing the game.
(In other cases i just quite the game and call it a day.)


How can this be fixed ? My idea is this:

1. Have a Reduced Team Damage (RTD) - Mode.
- Player A deals 52 damage to Player B.
- the Game applies only 1 point of damage to Player B (per second, not per weapon)
- Player A gets the amount of team damage subtracted from his damage output, and subsequently gets payed less CBills in the end. (This should be standard, btw.)

1b. Have an Avenge Team Damage (ATD)- Mode.
- same as above, but Player A will get the amount of damage dealt to player B reflected back to him. The full amount, not the 1 point Player B gets.

2. New players will start automatically in RTD - Mode for their first 5 hours of playing time.
(Could also be first 25 matches, but in that case all you need to do is start a match, exit and start a new match in a different Trail Mech.)
So no more "if i get banned i create a new account and continue killing", because you have to play at least 5 hours.

3. The game should monitor each player's damage vs team (DvT).
- If this DvT is much higher then the average DvT (which is... i don't know how much this is, but PGI should know) -> Player will be switched to RTD-Mode.
- If the player still continues doing above average team damage, he will be put into ATD-mode (this should happen rather fast, within the same match, imho)
- the player should be reverted back to normal FriendlyFire Mode after X hours played without an incident (i currently have no idea how much "X" should be).

4. To prevent abuse:
- players might want to be put into RTD-Mode deliberately, so they did not have to worry about shooting teammates accidentally. Would be nice in Community Warfare, for instance.
- To prevent this, the game should monitor if there is a pattern of behavior with certain players.
- If there is: put them into Advanced Reduced Team Damage (ARTD) - Mode.
-> This would not only reduce their damage output vs. team mates, but also halve the damage output of their weapons vs. hostile targets. And you don't want THAT in Community Warfare to happen to you.


Q&A:

Do we have so many Teamkillers in game that this issue needs to be addressed ?
Subjectively: yes.
Objectively: most likely no.
The point is: currently TK'ers do not get banned that quickly. The TK'er mentioned above (no, I won't give you the name, sorry) is active for 3 days now (according to my own observation and those of other players). Plus said TK'er claims he already has been IP banned, but he is still playing. If this is true, we would need a different solution anyway.

Why the 1 point damage vs team; why not NO damage ?
The reason why i suggest that Player B (the victim of the TK'er) should receive 1 point of damage and not no damage at all is for immersion reasons.
Friendly Fire is still possible, but it is much harder to abuse it for TK'ing purposes.

Why no Auto-bans ?
I am not suggesting plain auto-ban's of players because accidental Team Kills happen.
Plus my suggestion would take out the fun that TK'ers have, because not only would they do not even nearly the amount of damage they want to (RTD-Mode), they would also get burned themselves (ARTD-Mode).

Would it work ?
I have no idea.

You have no idea ? Then why do you bother writing this post in the first place ???
Short answer: because i am stupid.
Long answer: because i perceive it as an issue that needs a solution and the current solution provided by PGI (manually writing a mail) is - imho - inadequate.

Is it easy to implement into the game ?
I have no idea how easy it would be to implement this either.
But given how much information the game is processing rather fast - for instance if you kill an enemy and have dealt the most damage to him you get the "dealt most damage-Kill"-Info on your screen INSTANTLY.... this should be not that difficult... shouldn't it ?



P.S.: @ the Moderators:
It's nice to know you read everything in this forum (and given how much... difficult posts you have to read i hope you get paid well).
But do you actually pass suggestions like this to the Dev's ?
Like "Hey, Dev X, are TeamKillers actually an issue in this game ? If you think yes, here is a link to a forum post."
Or do you just look at it, see it's bringing up a no-issue, and carry on ?
Just asking because i intend to post this very same suggestion over and over again every time i will have to deal with a Teamkiller... until you or PGI tell me either:
A: "We are working on it, now just shut up!"
or
B: "This is not an issue, now just shut up!"
Also C: "Just shut up" with no explanation given would work. Just a hint to reduce your workload.

I havent run into a teamkiller in.... 8 months? more? Its your elo and you really need to just let things go. He got banned and changed his IP. He gets his joy from pissing in your cheerios. You do realize this reaction is exactly what he wants right? Move on, and get over it. Itll be fine.

[Lynx7725]

Will Pike: Yeah I was in the match with you, on the opposite side. Even got a screenshot of your death.

Reported and a few hours later the GM came back and said dealt with. Which I believe, but I also believe that it won't solve the problem with this particular joker.

Why? Because he had been using slightly different names in the last few weeks. He was using a Trial Banshee in the match with Will Pike. It's fairly obvious that he's trolling us by creating and recreating accounts and taking trial mechs to grief players.

Look at it from PGI's perspective. How are you going to pre-ban someone, without appearing discriminatory?

[Will Pike]

I know what you mean. I was in a match about 3 weeks ago with him. He had a slightly different name that time. He just keeps creating new accounts with similar names. At least I got the satisfaction of dispatching him "Timber Wolf" style that time though.