160 replies to this topic

[Zarthalius]

I'm a little late to the table but I had to say something in case this actually goes somewhere...

James Argent, on 09 October 2017 - 07:56 AM, said:

Everybody needs to stop suggesting penalties that occur after the fact. THE TKers DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY PENALTIES, because they have hundreds of different accounts to which they can switch and never bother coming back to the account with the penalties. You have to make it so that:

A. They can't simply switch to one of the hundreds of accounts they currently already have and continue a TKing rampage without an effort significant enough to make it not worth their time to prepare all their accounts to drop.

B. Whatever you implement to deter the TKers isn't onerous enough to keep a legitimate new player account or a single alt account for an existing player from getting to the field in a reasonable amount of time.

There have only been two suggestions that meet this criteria.

The first is to have no Team Damage during Cadet Bonus matches. This would force the TKers to play 25 matches each time they switched accounts before they can resume TKing. The potential downside to this is that they could just DC at the beginning of those 25 matches. However, that's 25 matches where the team is only down one mech, which would have otherwise been down two or more because of the TKer (who wouldn't have helped the team anyway) and his TK target(s). Not really a positive, but at least a mitigating factor.

The second is my own, to require each account with zero drops on it to attain a passing score on at least the first level of every tutorial in the MechWarrior Academy before being allowed to drop into a match. Other games require tutorial completion before opening up the rest of the game...why not this one? True new players should be required to do this anyway instead of being an instant burden to their teams until they figure out under fire how to do...well, anything, and it would be no big deal for an existing player to do it once for a single legit alt account.

I see no reason why these two suggestions couldn't be combined. The goal is to make it painful to make it painful to others, without making it painful to play legitimately. We can't eliminate TKers completely, but we can make it so that throwaway accounts don't make it so easy to spam TKs.

Your recapped first solution has another fatal flaw/exploit that no one caught onto. What if collectively a team decided to trigger the penalty together in order to proceed through the next few games without team damage? Wouldn't that be a deliberate exploit to gain an advantage over the enemy? For that reason this solution is not a complete answer despite the popular vote observed on this topic.

SFC174, on 09 October 2017 - 08:30 PM, said:

The solution is rather simple. Damage reflection.

I believe friendly fire should be maintained, if for no other reason than to prevent risk free danger close arty and air strikes (which happen too often anyways).

But to TK someone at the start of a match typically requires at least 50 pts dmg (unless you're picking on lights). So its quite simple:

1. If you do over 50 pts team dmg, any additional team dmg is now reflected back on you. After the first double tap on your dakka Kodiak (which seems to be the preferred TK mech from what I'm reading) all you're doing is killing yourself.

2. If you do manage do to the 50+ pts dmg and then stop killing yourself, you also turn a different color and you're fair game for your teammates.

This won't stop you from changing colors and hurting yourself if you misplace a strike on a couple friendlies, but better that you suffer than they do. The team suffers regardless.

It's a simple solution, preserves friendly fire risk, and takes away the fun for the TKers. Of the 4-5 TKs I've committed in my MWO career most took less than 20 pts dmg on an already badly damaged friendly (did one with 1 pt dmg once). So it won't affect that vast majority of accidental TKs. The only difficult part is can PGI code it?

I really like this idea a lot. However, the previously mentioned flaw is devastating: All one needs to do is stand in front of someone and make them the "bad guy". In order for this idea to "work" better, Two things must change.

1) You can not have the mech guilty of 50+ team dmg reflect onto itself indefinitely for that game without the possibility to do enemy damage. Imagine that, someone standing in front of each team mate one by one locking their potential for doing enemy damage. That could shut down the team and game without the griefer even shooting their weapons.

We can counter this by allowing damage, after the threshold, to persist to the teammate/enemy AND then reflect that same damage back to the player. This will preserve the team damage feature, self kill Tkillers, and allow any new/noob player hitting teammates to sit back and think about aiming better without major repercussions.

2) Any team damage after the set threshold would have to scale according to the two mechs involved. This would be a necessary feature change for the following examples:

In the case that the TKiller is attaching bigger mechs, there would be no problem. The TKiller would simply be killed off before killing a team member simply because the damage needed would exceed the smaller mechs health.

However, for the reverse, bigger mechs picking on smaller mechs could get away with a lot before being stopped. This could be fixed by making reflexive dmg not weapon power based but rather health% taken. So if the big mech hits for 25% team dmg then the offender takes 25% health damage as well. This way a TKiller could only get away with a total of killing exactly 1 mech on their team (after the threshold dmg of course) weather that is one literal kill or an accumulation of health equal to one kill.

So far this suggestion doesn't prevent or really punish TKillers but I believe it can minimized the damage potential done in game. There would then need to be some procedure that if your racked up say 50-75% reflexive dmg (some threshold) then it sends you back to the academy for more training. And so on as others have suggested...

At this point I can't see any flaws with this, can anyone else?

Edited by Zarthalius, 20 November 2017 - 03:04 PM.

[Athom83]

Zarthalius, on 20 November 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

However, for the reverse, bigger mechs picking on smaller mechs could get away with a lot before being stopped. This could be fixed by making reflexive dmg not weapon power based but rather health% taken. So if the big mech hits for 25% team dmg then the offender takes 25% health damage as well. This way a TKiller could only get away with a total of killing exactly 1 mech on their team (after the threshold dmg of course) weather that is one literal kill or an accumulation of health equal to one kill. At this point I can't see any flaws with this, can anyone else?

Yah, 1 small thing. If an assault hits the threshold for team damage unknowingly (wide arms, an airstrike, etc), and then has an AC/20 shot blocked by the back of a friendly light mech that runs right into your line of fire (and you had no idea was there because it sometimes is really difficult to see a small mech close in from a cockpit of an assault, especially when zoomed in)... you didn't do anything really wrong but you still get penalized. And that can be abused by trolls. I'm recalling times in WoT and AW where players would stick their barrels in front of the barrels of their artillery players who are in the map overview, and when the arty players fire they do damage to themselves and get penalized for team damage. Same thing could happen to an assault mech like the Atlas with its hip mounted AC/20, a troll in a light mech could keep itself (with hardly any armor) sitting right in front of the gun, and when the Atlas tries to fire, it does a large % of the "friendly" light mech's health. Again the troll doesn't fire a shot yet still trolls players on his team.

[Bill Lumbar]

Novakaine, on 08 October 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

Best damn suggestion ever.

Only problem is, a true TK will just wait out the period of time not to get the ban, and start up as soon as the limit is over. I have seen it so many times.... most games back in the day, say 2 years ago, we just worked it out with our team. Problem solved, and of course fraps or record all footage and send it to PGI for review.

[TLBFestus]

OldOrgandonor, on 08 October 2017 - 12:09 PM, said:

That's why my suggestion is if you do ANY OF THE THREE:

1. Team damage in first 30-45 seconds of match.

2. A certain amount (use common game stats via PGI) of team damage over the course of the entire match.

3. More than 1 team kill in a 24 hr period.

If you do ANY ONE of these 3 things, it triggers:

1. Turns off friendly fire damage. You can't hurt any team mate.

2. Turns off penalty to team mates who kill you. Your team can kill you with impunity.

3. Turns your mech a bright glowing color (say orange or whatever) that everyone in game can see.

4. Changes your in game title to TK-TROLL. Everyone in game will know who you are and what you've been doing.

This "penalty" is not a ban. But it lasts for 100 consecutive matches. No cooldown timer. On your 101st match, everything is back to "normal". But if you do it again, it all starts over again.


And IP bans are very easy to get around. A simple script can flush your IP with your provider and give you a new one in less than a minute. That's why IP bans don't work.

All of this would be nice, but I doubt PGI can program this because it's a change to the existing system not writing new code. Not just because they lack the skill, but because most likely any developer would lack the skill or time to implement this to the legacy code they are working with.

Writing it fresh... that would be another story.

[Xmith]

Here's my idea...

Once a TK incident is corroborated, the player who suffered loses from the TK should have their stats reverted back to pre-drop. A match should be declared a mismatch if there is a mass (3 or more) TK incident on any team and all player stats from both teams reverted back to pre-drop.

Team killers may lose the thrill when there are no lasting losses.

Edited by Xmith, 20 November 2017 - 05:20 PM.

[SFC174]

Zarthalius, on 20 November 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

I really like this idea a lot. However, the previously mentioned flaw is devastating: All one needs to do is stand in front of someone and make them the "bad guy". In order for this idea to "work" better, Two things must change.

1) You can not have the mech guilty of 50+ team dmg reflect onto itself indefinitely for that game without the possibility to do enemy damage. Imagine that, someone standing in front of each team mate one by one locking their potential for doing enemy damage. That could shut down the team and game without the griefer even shooting their weapons.

The idea would be that it would only reflect team damage. Damage done to the enemy would still be allowed as normal. I don't think this should be a coding issue since PGI already monitors and tracks team damage during the match.

Would be interesting though to track a suicide through reflected team damage stat (just thinking about those occasions where someone does 100-150 pts team damage with a bad strike placement).

[Insanity09]

One is too many.

Much like a serial murderer, serial tk'ers must be dealt with efficiently and harshly.
Even one can cause ill will and poor word of mouth, which means the game is less likely to get new players to join. Heck, to some degree, even having this well meaning thread visible to someone who might be investigating the game could turn them off.
That being the case, anything that improves the defenses of MWO against this sort of scum is worthwhile.

Too easy to make multiple accounts? Make that tougher. (do those "type what you see" boxes, or "identify the pictures with 'x'" work? Implement them?
Too easy to jump into a game and start doing massive damage to your own team? I like the cadet matches idea. I also like the idea of limiting what trial mechs you can use until you hit a certain point. Perhaps limit to a light until you complete the academy, then add mediums, then at a certain number of matches, you get heavy trials, then assaults after you've finished the cadet matches?

There seem to be three big components of TK/greifing in MWO. Doing damage to your team early, legging people early (destroying components), and getting kmdd's on teammates. As suggested earlier, recognizing these factors would go a long way to punishing greifers, but minimizing the penalty for folks that make honest mistakes later on. (or have the problem thrust upon them. people should have enough sense NOT to walk into an active laser beam, especially more than once, "do not look directly into laser with remaining eye")

All the TK's I've ever gotten fall into two categories. One, "the really? All it took was 1 (or 2, etc.) damage to finish you off?" Two, people walking into air/arty strikes, even when warned (even if it doesn't kill them, that accounts for basically every team damage penalty I've gotten).

Clearly there needs to be some way to differentiate honest mistakes from griefing, and the early damage vs late damage would seem to be key on that. If there were some way to add up, within a match, how much damage had been done by the enemy team compared to friendly damage, and if the latter exceeded the former the penalty for griefing would be invoked. Failing that, a simple time limit, but that would be sadly easy to get around if it were known. (so maybe put such a limit in, but don't publish how long it is? Might need to vary a bit for smaller maps, or maps like tourmaline where some spawns are basically in sight of each other.)

[Nine-Ball]

Sam Ael, on 20 November 2017 - 04:46 PM, said:

BAN!!!

[Shifty McSwift]

Well it really comes down to a couple of specific issues, and creating workarounds rather than addressing those issues is where the problems lie.

You could add no friendly fire for cadets, but then what is to stop people abusing that to spam spray and pray new accounts and shooting through eachother on a battlefield where others take damage for the same result? And like mentioned above, even if you ban an account for 5 weeks, what is stopping that guy moving onto another account and doing it ad nauseam?

You have to get at the core issues, in this instance it is mainly abusive multi accounting causing problems, so how does one "fix" that? If you add a charge to play, you destroy the FTP feel, and isn't it just "too late" now that some have thousands of accounts?

Well no, see the devs could add a real academy training section, that we were all forced to rerun on our accounts today. An academy training section that lasts long enough to deter multi accounting in a general sense, but no so long that legitimate players find it frustrating to just do once or twice. On top of that they could add authentication systems, where if you don't log on for X amount of time, and have put on less than Y amount of money/time into the game, your account is automatically deleted (used to trim down accounts opened for name holding purposes, or that are just abusive multi accounts sitting in waiting), or whatever, my point is to get at the real issue, not to bandaid around it.

[James Argent]

Zarthalius, on 20 November 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

Your recapped first solution has another fatal flaw/exploit that no one caught onto. What if collectively a team decided to trigger the penalty together in order to proceed through the next few games without team damage? Wouldn't that be a deliberate exploit to gain an advantage over the enemy? For that reason this solution is not a complete answer despite the popular vote observed on this topic.

Nobody caught on to it because it doesn't exist. The 'no damage during Cadet Bonus' suggestion wouldn't be something that a team could trigger. The Cadet Bonus period is a new account's first 25 matches. A team can only 'abuse' it if all of its members make brand new accounts and drop without all the skilled-up mechs they usually play on their main accounts. One or two teams might do it once just for laughs, but no team would ever make a habit of it. I'm sure everyone would be OK with that if it solves the TK issue.

[Kotzi]

Welcome to the art of Griefing in F2P games. Unlimited Accounts, free Accounts.

[Asym]

The paradox is in the news for weeks now: how do we deal with this toxic behavior and still have the time or money to better the game itself?

Overwatch's CEO doesn't have an answer, his team doesn't have an answer and the industry doesn't have an answer because the paradox is linear risk.... Risk that operates on one plane of existenace: a mobius loop if you will.....

If you want to see the effects...

You cut down the center line of a Mobius loop and the loop itself doubles in size.... Games are Mobius loops in that if they are successful, they can double in size very quickly.....and, the opposite is true; if players explore the exploits, 3d party hacks and run amok morally (TK's, cheats, etc...), well, the math is the same: good or ill.... To escape the "loop", you must cut the loop by exiting the center line, thus actually cutting the loop in half eliminating that single plane of existence.... Real risk, cutting 90 degrees to the linear path, resolves the loop continuing existance... But, you then must start over....from scratch.

Real risk is what several games are exploring and that risk is very dangerous to play with; in that, it could actually anger the good players as well and double the losses..... Look at the "loot box" reactions in the press... You get the idea....
MWO is a very small, very limited, financially stable niche market and game: PGI has no ability to tinker with this issue because the risk is so great, that if they really mess it up...............well, they could lose everything.

Food for thought.

Edited by Asym, 21 November 2017 - 07:53 AM.

[Big Killy Wazza]

Revener, on 08 October 2017 - 11:42 AM, said:

An automatic TKsystem can't be to harsh, one day a while ago I had 3 accidental Teamkills in one day when damaged mech walked in in front of me as I pulled the trigger.

Yeah, I’m having this today with artillery strikes...

[Big Killy Wazza]

Big Killy Wazza said:

1611029144[/url]' post='6370715']
Yeah, I’m having this today with artillery strikes...

Ad yes, I’m sorta reviving this post.

[Dangit Karen]

Where did you dig up this old dead thread? ...and WHY?

Edited by Dangit Karen, 31 January 2021 - 08:38 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Dangit Karen, on 20 January 2021 - 04:22 PM, said:

Where did you did up this old dead thread? ...and WHY?

It is always better to post in an existing thread than to start a new one.

[General Solo]

Noice

[LordNothing]

why the **** are there zombies everywhere?

we know how pgi implements system, though the abomination known as accretion. if a system is bad it is simply removed and replaced with another one. since pgi has no interest in debugging their own damn code, what makes you think that a new system is going to solve anything. its just going to be drenched in unintended consequences like the last one, and with no one following through and patching the bugs, they just let it rot.

[LordNothing]

Wildstreak, on 20 January 2021 - 11:27 PM, said:

It is always better to post in an existing thread than to start a new one.

that was the only line in the whole thing i disagree with.

its especially troublesome in mwo because of how much the game has changed, mostly in terms of meta, not in terms of actual dev time. some noob digging up posts on meta mechs post from 2015 probably wouldn't yield anything useful, since that version of the game no longer exists. ive even been on some programming boards where entire forums are created and locked each time a new version of the code comes out. so its great tool for filtering out no longer relevant information.

from a sysadmin standpoint, old forum posts become problematic. as they are still active and can be posted to at any time, you can get a lot of drive fragmentation doing that. so its better that posts expire after a period of inactivity, then they can be locked, archived, compressed and moved to slow storage to free up space on faster storage or in memory. automatic locking and archiving of old threads really needs to be a feature of forum software. counter that with a cross reference tag of sorts to indicate that a new thread is related or a continuation of an old thread, properly timestamped for the time it was written. that way you can tell a resurrected old thread from a new one without having to scrutinize the time stamps.

Edited by LordNothing, 21 January 2021 - 06:05 AM.

[Gagis]

Lets please not necropost all the time. This has started in late 2020 and I have no idea why. New users not used to common netiquette?