8 replies to this topic

[0Life]

We can all agree that friendly fire is less than friendly. We also all know that no matter how much fire discipline you show, eventually you will shoot a teammate somewhere, sometime. It happens. But intentionally commiting fratricide? Should this not be a punishable offense? It is also difficult to prove, unless you were already recording the match already. Screenies can be difficult to capture, even if you are the unfortunate target of such horrendous actions.

Intentionally causing your team to lose, say by (just as an example) TKing the three other members of your team that are base capping while the lone enemy from the other team caps your base, then running into the out of bounds so that your team cannot win. Should such action be a punishable offense? I feel so. It is trolling, and also harassment. Now, I cannot attest to if the pilot that performed such an action does this on a regular basis, but the inability to report the actions of the player during the match makes it less likely that one can accurately list all pertinent information in order to put in an email to support about these actions.

Having the ability to report in a match can flag the info from that match to be retained and used during the investigation of the report. This can also ease needing to get a screen cap of abusive language or other forms of violation.

Also, I could not find a code of conduct that applies to in game conduct. Could someone be so kind, if they know where to find that, link it here?

[Zarlaren]

How would the scoreboard know if a player is trolling for laughs like going in a match with 1 armor and pathetic weapons to grieve for the laughs or causing there own team to lose on purpose cause he/she doesn't like someone or Etc?

[0Life]

While such actions are not condusive to good play or team work, dropping with low/no armor or a joke weapons load out does not mean that you cannot still contribute to your team (likely in the form of being a distraction or base capping).

Intentionally griefing on the other hand is something else entirely. If one is intentionally griefing (most notably TKing or stripping armor but not actually TKing) should be a punishable offense. It would be up to the judgement of the person that reviews the report and any/all evidence to make the determination of culpability. As this is not a criminal activity, the mens rea is, in some ways, even more important than ever. From there, the issue of how responsible someone is for something (shooting someone once, while it can kill, may not be punishable but an offense that warrants a warning) would come next. Someone that kills more than one teammate, especially with closely group amounts of damage being done would be more likely to cause the destruction of a teammate and therefore cause one to be responsible for the destruction of the teammate. This causes one to be able to make a reasonable assumption from hard numbers that it was intentional. Now you have a resonable assumption that it was intentional, causing guilt to be had as one is responsible and likely intended to destroy your teammate. In a court of law, this would be enough to determine guilt and then a "guilty" verdict as the person that commited the offense has displayed both that they had intention, and then took action to enact said intention (depravity of the action would be inaplicable in this instance and is therefore left out).

Now, this is not to say that wrongful execution of punishment for someone cannot happen and as such, there should be some way to appeal such a decision. Granted, it would be difficult to prove that one might just be a "bad shot/pilot" or new enough that such actions might be excusable at this time. Accidental killing of a teammate does happen, but typically one does not fire twice on a teammates cockpit from close range after killing two other teammates and then run off out of bounds. I keep using this scenario because that happened to me and is what prompted me to make this suggestion.

Intentionally causing a loss might be a punishable offense, but I would think it would depend upon the manner in which one goes about. If you are last mech standing on your team and you run off to attack instead of capping and intentionally get yourself killed, that is different than TKing and then running out of bounds. I cannot see a situation in which that is considered acceptable behaviour.

Really, the Code of Conduct for how one should act within a match would be the ultimate deciding factor on what is or is not a punishable offense in a match. As I stated earlier, I have not found one posted in the forums that has a stamp of officiality on it. Merely ones suggested by players. Until such time as there is one, it would be difficult to choose what is, or is not a punishable offense.

[Bhael Fire]

The whole match rewards need to be revised.

With that, I would like to see a Team Damage penalty added. So basically, you'd get docked 50 C-Bills per point of damage you caused to friendly targets.

This wouldn't stop a blatant troll on a fake account, but it would deter your typical jerk that decides it's his "duty/right" to kill a friendly that accidentally shot them with a small laser.

[0Life]

I can understand that, but it might be difficult with regards to penalizing someone for friendly fire that was in no way intentional. I have had people walk directly into my line of fire be it from a las weapon or just AC fire. Conversely, enemies have moved out of the way of a shot that (for one reason or another) was misjudged on how much lead needed to be given and struck a friendly that was behind said target. Should I be penalized for such unintentional friendly fire? I do not feel so, as in neither instance was it my fault. There was no intent (mens rea), and as such I am not exactly culpable. Without an active, impartial judge to watching each match I do not feel that such a penalty could be enacted in such a way as to ensure that those who should be punished are and those who are not are... well... not.

Granted, a single salvo from a pair of AC5s would only come out to 500 c-bills, but for a free to play person such as me, even 500 c-bills can determine if I get to buy a new chassis or upgrade an already purchased chassis. With the economy nerf, getting even 100,000 c-bills in a match can be something of a challenge. Of course, if I was not always running as a PUG, that might not be as much of an issue, though that is honestly immaterial to the intentions of the original intentions of this thread.

[Oppresor]

Yes we need a system to report persistent friendly fire; I don't mind if its during the scenario or at the end. The only thing we need to be really careful about is that we are not reporting accidental blue on blue; almost everyone will at some point have a friendly walk through their firing arc. The ones that we need to stop are those who persistently fire on their own.

[Amanal]

Players going and losing connection just as the game starts....

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Put a report button next to each player name in the end game lobby (one assumes nothing will be added until the Launch module adds pre- and post-game lobbies).

[tucsonspeed6]

Frankly, there isn't a lot one can do to stop trolling in a F2P game that requires no investment to create an account. Banning a real troll won't stop them from spending 5 minutes creating a new account.

I know it's frustrating dealing with people abusing the game, but making it easier and more convenient to report people on a whim would probably be worse than leaving the system as is.


For example, last night I was in a match where one teammate flipped out midmatch from frustration. He never said who, but went on and on about the crappy team and how someone kept stealing his kills. We lost the match, and after looking at the end match screen, the guy had only done about 200 damage and nobody had a disproportionate ratio of kills to damage, so I imagine the kill stealing was pretty subtle. But just the thought of a row of shiny 'report' buttons sitting in front of this guy scares me.

Everyone's been in a match with that guy. Heck, sometimes we are that guy. I don't want to give him or anyone else (myself included) the temptation of a rage button that destroys other people's legitimate accounts, or at the very least distracts moderators from real abuse. Keep it at least modestly difficult to report, if only to limit its use to those who have a real reason to go out of their way.