334 replies to this topic

[darkviper]

Sounds like we are all playing back in NBT for 'sheep stations' so to speak. If a battle is sabotaged or thrown or what ever will the world come to an end?

I play for fun and if someone wants to play dirty they will get noticed by the community and get a rep for this.

Treat everyone as an adult/professional will encourage maturity. Treat everyone as children, you will get them.

Just saying.

Edited by darkviper, 18 March 2012 - 06:26 AM.

[karish]

one thing to remember is this you have been pounding down a target for a while and you get that 12 yr old who rushes in in front of you for the kill shot (to get the kill credit) there should be a a mechanic so that you can blast their stupid a$$ or just make sure there is more credit for damage done then that one lucky shot that killed the target

[Red Beard]

Unnecessary trolling removed.. - DrHat

[Tryg]

The major flaw in games without Friendly Fire enabled is saturation attacks or shoot-through attacks. Crowding an enemy in an area and locking him up while friendly air-strikes or artillery rain down in the area hurting ONLY the enemy and not all the friendlies is rather absurd, the other common tactic in games in which its disabled...is the shoot-through, in which one player stands directly behind the other, both pouring death into you, but not harming each other. You have to shoot and kill the front one before you even get a chance at hurting the rear one. You want suspension of disbelief, watch someone put a machine gun into their buddie's back and lay into you without their comrade so much as twitching!

Or more specifically for this game, imagine a scout mech standing flat out in the open unafraid of the atlas five meters in front of him because of the rain of artillery, happily just painting a target from right in front for the support mechs to rain missiles down. This sort of nonsense is precisely why FF ought to remain enabled. However, there needs to be a way to discourage intentional griefing... for those who think it isn't that common, play any major title on public servers, you'll see plenty of it.

*Edit: And as an afterthought, its not the core fans (many of whom are adults) that I'm worried about. As a free-to-play title, we'll have a lot of players trying the game out just because they can. Some of them, will be seriously looking at it as a potential new game. Others, will be utilizing it as a new place to get their internet trolling jollies. This latter group, are the ones to be wary of. The sorts who find irritating others far more entertaining than any game they happen to be playing.

Edited by Tryg, 18 March 2012 - 09:52 AM.

[Dlardrageth]

Hawkeye 72, on 17 March 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

This is something I have yet to see addressed but is critical when working with any MMO. Now most of us here have respect for the game and see something morally wrong with pumping a gauss rifle into the rear of your lancemate. However we are also a minority. Any online game runs the risk of seeing a swath of destruction by players hell-bent on ruining your day. This isn't limited to team-killing either, but any actions which ruin the spirit of the game.

They can only ruin your game, if you let them do that. Basic paradigm of people totally freaking out over a "bunch of pixels", somewhat asking for the abuse themselves. Once we get the option to form up teams of our own in some fashion, nobody will force you at gunpoint to play with random people. Sure, you might have to be a bit sociable for that, but it is hardly PGI's issue if you aren't.

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But what happens when you pick up a lone wolf player who just had his cheerios pooped in? Or face an opposing lance of mechs spamming the game in a manner we haven't figured out yet?

You give reasoning a shot or two. If that doesn't work you punch out. It is a game after all? Unless you are expressing your maso-chist tendencies in game, no point to keep up with aggravating gameplay, right?

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The internet is littered with a$$holes, so obviously this game will need some enforcers.

I don't think so. A bit of common sense and a grip on it being a game after all might go a laong way. And of course the option to properly group up. "Enforcers" sounds to me like you'd want a "PGI hit squad", that gets every morning their travel orders and baseball bats handed from Paul to take care of yet another obnoxious player's kneecaps...

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Reporting system: This goes beyond just filing an online report. Instead games should display players ratings so others can see if someone has a reputation for foul play.

Right, because ratings systems of any sort have never been "gamed" or abused. All it takes is a couple of buddies to steer it the way you want. Ratings would thus become basically totally useless.

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I am also in favor of bans for players causing problems or c-bill reductions.

"Causing problems"? Care to narrow that down a bit? I've seen people arguing permabans and almost public flogging just because they felt, "their game" got ruined by others having internet issues and thus not being much of a help for the team.

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Moderators: Just like the forum, it wouldn't hurt having a small number of trusted individuals who play the game to spot foul play and step in. In-game police? However this runs the risk of power abuse. In that case maybe the removal of players from the House or Merc unit?

A "small number" won't work. If you want a round-the-clock coverage which you will kind of require unless you fancy day- to week-long queues piling up, you will need some coverage in all timezones. And that means real people. Power abuse can be somewhat kept in check by having a tiered hierarchy, if you feel you got mistreated by a basic-level GM, you can opt to escalate, this will take longer tho. And get you (semi-)permanently blacklisted if you abuse that option. This model has been done before with decent results.

Removal from house /Merc unit is a somewhat silly suggestion IMHO. First of all a real "griefer" won't give a wet **** about that. So he lost his "RP ties" or whatever due to intervention form above? Boo-hoo, like that would stop him from his favourite pastime! All you'd obtain by this is yet another open door for abuse, as you could gang up on players to get them "kicked" due to fabricating/spamming false/made-up reports. Asking for exploiting there.

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Kill switch: In the event of a rogue unit, maybe give a commander the ability to shut down a rogue team member? Not so much boot him from the game, but keep his mech shutdown so he suffers for his transgressions lol. Once again I recognize the window for such a feature to be abused.

Not really thrilled about this. Will only lead to all those people with over-inflated egos and self-esteem running to the commander role. Because it can easily be abused to "shut down/up" anyone who objects to their supreme genius etc. I'd very much prefer a dynamic blocking mechanism over that. Where, if you had a particular bad experience in one match with an online sociopath e.g., you set him on your personal blacklist and thus prevent getting teamed up with him in the future.

Main question there would be if the size of the blacklist should be limited. And if it would suffice as a premier means of keeping the "unwanted" away from you or if it should be combined somehow with a reporting feature. Remember that any kind of reporting feature can become a nightmare in terms of manpower needed to handle reports. For PGI. Bercause you either need quite a few people (regionally dislocated as well probably), or it will take forever and two days till a report gets actually processed.

Red Beard, on 18 March 2012 - 09:45 AM, said:

Unnecessary trolling removed.. - DrHat

Trolling much recently? Reported... just to prove a point here.

Edited by DrHat, 18 March 2012 - 12:14 PM.

[Hawkeye 72]

I only started this thread because after nearly a decade on Xbox Live I have thorough experience with jerks, cheaters, spammers, glitching, and other unruly players because of random pairing. I was just floating ideas out for keeping things civil. I since rescinded some of my initial suggestions and posed a theoretical suggestion that should appease everyone.

Community solution: http://mwomercs.com/...post__p__164418

I have seen what good moderating can do and what bad moderating can do. But I have also seen what NO moderating can do. Bungie was great at taking out the rotten apples online while keeping 95% of the community happy. Halo was designed around random matchmaking though. I also remember seeing Chromehounds, Ghost Recon 2, and other games being forgotten by the developers...it wasn't pretty, did not service new players, and ran like anarchy with respected members a minority and modders/glitchers dictating how the other 80% played the game. It was extremely difficult at times to organize a clean, fun game, especially with all the cheating and hacking

[Red1769]

I didn't read everything that was posted after my last post, had to sleep. Red Beard, that last post should get you, considering a moderator did say enough bashing, and you just insulted a lot of people. Those that think this issue is stupid or worthless can post elsewhere. Enough with the trolling and agree to disagree (as what the moderator said) and let those that care about the issue discuss it without you. If you have nothing to contribute to the thread, please leave with your insults.

Moving on...

The topic is team killers and pure accident. Friendly fire is a must in this game, as not all of us are trained military personal let alone real life mech jockies, so don't say it will never happen if left alone and allow it. It would just take away from the realism and basically something I thought I saw Hawkeye already say about ghost shots or something like that. I don't mind paying a small fee for an accident, as what's likely to happen since no one has perfect target discipline, with those being close to having very good target discipline being in the military or retired military. We don't know how much of a problem this will be until the game is released. For all we know, it would be so little of a problem that most people won't even notice or it could be a huge problem where everyone notices it. Either way, it's something that some people are concerned about, including me. No one likes to be backstabbed. The matchmaker system the game will implement will also affect this issue, as if it is random within the faction/group (for mercs and lone wolves) you might just get a consistant TKer on your team with no say of your own.

The trick is striking a balance to where there is something there, but nothing too loose or overregulated. I like the dossier that keep tracks of in-game stats, including how many times you've FFed and Tked. I'd also like to forgive them or not, as accidents happen and sometimes the person that got hit by FF is at fault. But, it should be listed who they FFed against or TKed so that you can ask them, maybe ask the person that did it as well. Be it forgiven or not. There are always two sides to the story. Perhaps even include those on the same team or opposite team that was in that same area 100, 200 meters of the incident? For witnesses that could give further insight?

There is bound to be someone that will give a former TKer a chance to redeem himself. A small number of moderators won't work, it should be some sort of ingame mechanic or system. More work, but later on less headache to hearing complaints of TKers and possibly hiring more people on the devs' end to moderate. A reputation system appeals to me, only if the main commander of the team is able to question them or boot them if they don't get satisfying answers or something. Just throwing that out there. Though some won't even do that and will just boot without even hearing them out...thoughts?

I don't do online gaming much, because of this very thing. I'm a hardcore BT/MW fan, that's why I'll play this. I detest backstabbers and traitors. If there's nothing in place, enough TKers in each faction/group will ruin the game for everyone else. Another trick is how it would be handled if a TKer plays nicely for a while and then goes back, or a good player deciding to try it just for kicks, in-game. Do you TK that TKer and have it reflect on your own record? What if you accidentally kill your own lancemate because they were so heavily damaged? Would that count as an on purpose TKer? Or will you have the chance to clear that up in some sort of after game report for the mission or whatever?

[CobraFive]

Red Beard, on 18 March 2012 - 09:45 AM, said:

This thread should be renamed to the cry-baby thread.

Considering you solution is "Don't play with teamkillers" in a free-to-play, automatch-based game, I don't think your solution is any better then these silly "in-game-cop" systems.

[Darkrasp]

Red1769, on 18 March 2012 - 11:15 AM, said:

Another trick is how it would be handled if a TKer plays nicely for a while and then goes back, or a good player deciding to try it just for kicks, in-game. Do you TK that TKer and have it reflect on your own record? What if you accidentally kill your own lancemate because they were so heavily damaged? Would that count as an on purpose TKer? Or will you have the chance to clear that up in some sort of after game report for the mission or whatever?

I liked your post and agree with most of what you put in it. I think a reputation system or a dossier system would be good. If the game is going to build a dossier on players, it could include stats like %accuracy, % of damage that is friendly fire, etc. A commander could -at a glance- determine if a player is a dangerous liability or not (a new player might have poor accuracy, but neither are they going to be racking up tons of FF).

Also in that dossier could be the "10 most recent reports about this player" (or more, if the reports are kept very brief), which other players could create after a match, similar to the reporting system in League of Legends, except that it goes to their dossier instead of off into the wild blue yonder to possibly be put before the tribunal at some point. Then if the commander or team doesn't like the look of the player, they can vote to boot them from the pre-game lobby. Puts the "enforcement" solely in the player's hands, without any need for outside moderation.

I don't really know that there is *any* way to protect against a TKer who plays nice for a while then goes on a rampage. I guess longer duration bans for repeated bad behavior, but I don't know. I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of maintaining that.

Edit: The idea with tracking not teamkills but %ff damage is to give "grace" to a player who accidentally finishes off a badly damaged teammate. If he was 99% destroyed by enemies and you deal the last 1%, you only get the blame for the last 1%.

Edited by Darkrasp, 18 March 2012 - 11:50 AM.

[palebear]

Darkrasp, on 18 March 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

I don't really know that there is *any* way to protect against a TKer who plays nice for a while then goes on a rampage. I guess longer duration bans for repeated bad behavior, but I don't know. I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of maintaining that.

Call his Mom...

[DrHat]

Ladies and Gentlemen of the various respectful houses and mercenary outfits your attention please:
This is just a reminder from a moderator (myself)to everyone to keep your posting respectful, free of ad hominems and unnecessary trolling. Thank you.

Carry on!

[daishisand]

What stop's all TK'er from haveing fun at killing teamates is to have no FF in the game. Thats just plain fact. Haveing no FF make shur that all that on the battle field is 1 faction killing other faction.

It's the only way to stop TK'ers. Its a very very said fact.

What ruins a good day of playing is haveing someone or your side kill you for no reson. In a other game I play. The outfit I belong to, over the year's have taken in new players to help them learn the game.

By doing that over the years they have made friendly players hate us and just yesterday was playing and what ruined alot of player haveing a good time, they started TK alot of us by shooting us in the back. Not all the time they did it over hrs.

They just wanted to make a good day turn to bad, they didnt even shoot us in the front where we could fight back. They shoot then ran away.

[Felix Dracc]

Honestly to me a service record sounds like a great idea giving the the ability for a person to see what a player has been up to in the game until now, do they tend cause a lot of FF have they killed many team mates, other than this I don't think there should a be a system well much of one. Beyond say one found like in Eve Online.

[Danko]

Hawkeye 72, on 18 March 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

Community solution: http://mwomercs.com/...post__p__164418

1) Preventing TKer in your team:

I) Have some effective ID system (no simple way to get another account for griefers);
II) Get one statistic implemented, "average hits on teammates per hour of play", e.g. 9 hits/hour .

If creating new accounts is too easy, happy life for griefers too as this kind of approach won't work.

2) Punishing TKer after fire on teammate:

I) Enable lance leader option or team voting to kick the griefer out of team;
II) As TKer is kicked out of party, his mech should be marked & visible on map/radar for both teams.

Edited by Danko, 18 March 2012 - 01:22 PM.

[CaerusBlue]

Boy oh Boy, looking through the first 6 pages I can say this topic will never have an answer, Teamkilling in video games has been around since the conception of teams and multiplayer (Doom, so-on-so-forth)

Many games in the early days depending on player honor and active server-admins, I feel this game will not have "Servers" ala Battlefield 3, but a hopper, ala League of Legends, World of Tanks, and Starcraft 2, so there will be no server-admins to immedietly boot unruly, trolling, intentionally killing players from the game.

I have yet to really find an honest, good working answer to the problem of no direct moderation (server administators), I see pointing out to Eve Online's system, both ratings and bounties, Bounties, are dumb, crappy, inefficient, and lines the bad-guy's pockes with ISK (in game currency for Eve-O), you get a huge bounty, get your alt account or friend to kill you, reap millions or billions of isk, which pays for new ships to troll and get another bounty. By no means efficient or effective. Bounty is a dumb idea for an instance based game such as MWO. Ratings are usefull, but can be milked (get a good rating from friends and other players, teamkill until your rating drops to almost a certain point, stop teamkilling and get a good rating again, rince repeat) this happened in Halo 2's matchmaking system where people would intentionally drop their rating to play easier people

Ratings, are always innacurate to how a person plays a game, will ratings have modifiers for classes?Such as a missleboat'er having a different percentage scale as they're missles can easily hit people unintentionally? (Hills are a factor in this game, you could shoot someone over a hill only to have a friendly climb it and put their sillouette in the way) How about Assaults, as they will most certainly be circle brawling with enemy assaults, will they have a different scale due to the fact they're missed rounds could hit friendlies as they will face all directions?

You cannot make human interaction a science, for no amount of science, modifiers, rules, penalties, or statistics can ever predict the actions of a human being in the gamescape, instead you must take the action of fairness for majority over minority.

Someone pointed out Halo's way of "Choose to forgive x player", BF3 also has a thing like this, and it's been used in games for a very long time. Basically, it's ineffective. People getting accidentally killed on kill streaks or in good positions will always punish because they're angry. Is that fair to the person who really did accidentally damage a player? Not at all.

Halo's system gets me booted from games because people are dumb. You can easily run over to a friendly grenade and intentionally kill yourself on my grenade, or hop on top of my Wraith tank and force me to either run you over or shoot my main gun, TKing you. All because I got the vehicle and you didn't. This cannot happen in MWO (you're picking your mech going in, afterall), but the ideals can still be applied.

Is it so unbelivable that a scout will intenionally walk in front of a long range PPC'ers alpha for ***** and giggles? Absolutely, will someone dart in front of a missleboater just as they launch a volley? Absolutely. Will an Atlas park in front of a Catapult and keep strafing in front of him because it blocks his shot? You kidding? Thats -going- to happen.

I just don't understand the players saying "Well people won't do that!", you're obviously a multiplayer virgin. I've been playing online Shooters online since 2003. Let me tell you, they were out there then, they're most certainly out there now.

If there is a system in place where players that do team-damage have to pay, there -WILL- be atlases walkiing in front of Catapults to get money. there -WILL- be scouts running in front of atlases in a circle-brawl to get money. This isn't a guess, or a "maybe", this is going to happen. Anonymous people over the internet care only about themselves, for the pub players who won't have Lances to play with, (like me) deal with them daily all across the multiplayer gamescape. If you can make money off of other people and get them in trouble for it? It's going to happen.

This is why a rating system can be abused, a Punish system will never work properly, and a Pay-Damages system will hurt innocent people more then the ones doing it intenionally.

---------------------

TL;DR, Each system has massive flaws, we will never have a proper system in place. Reputations can be artificially inflated (a F2P game means you've made -how- many accounts to make your rep better?) and Pay-For-Damage will just mean people will -intentionally- walk in front of people for both financial gain and the lulz. We must simply find a blanket that'll cover most instances and let a reporting system do the work, even though there will never be an immediate in-process answer other then a team-vote, which can be as abused just as easily (my clanmates don't like you, we have the majority, you keep stealing my kills, goodbye)

Also, Goonswarm isn't exactly evil, theres a reason why they're one of the largest alliances in EVE-Online. This coming from an ex BoB/IT pilot. They enjoy their game at others expenses. How is that evil?

Lastly, we keep talking about team-killers, killing takes a lot of effort in mechwarrior, stop talking about team-killers, talk about team-leggers, or team-strippers, who leave you with no guns, a limping leg, and are intenionally doing it for their friend on the other team to poach, or because your caps-lock raging is absolutely hilarious.

[Moncai Icaza]

NGNC podcast for GDC made a passing referance to a spectator mode that could put a bounty upon targets aswell as a place to bet c-bills on matches while this is unconfermed i may well work against TK players especially if own team can get the bounty

[Sheewa]

If you damage teammate's mech you will have to pay for this with your C-Bills and lose loyality. imo

Edited by Sheewa, 18 March 2012 - 01:53 PM.

[Dnarvel]

To start with, FF is a must in this type of game, it adds more realism. Now, differentiating between an obvious TK (standing right behind your teammate and letting loose with an AC20) and accidental (some scout in a Light doest realize he is standing right in front of an enemy with some LRMs already on their way). So, for some weapons (Missles) a target lock is required, so an IFF shouldn't let you target it. For AC/lazer/ppc, if your HUD centers on a friendly, it cuts the firing mechanism, preventing friendly fire. Think of it as an IFF interlock switch. Now for the accidentals.. like stepping in front of a missle barrage... too bad so sad, that wasn't a TK per say... it was a severe lack of communication. As for the payment system( paying for any damage you cause to a friendly), I'm not sure I under stood it all.. but I believe the consensus was paying for the points of damage you inflicted.. not all damage? Because I can see lots of pepole trying to get free repairs that way.
I'm not 100% sure about how extra spaces for fights will be filled, will it be automatic or can a specific person be selected? If it is not automatic, then simply not selecting someone who has caused a TK is easy enough since once it happens it will be all over the forums.
Not sure if everything in this post is clear, as I am tired and working on a Sunday, but it makes sense to me as of right now.

[MrDred]

What worked pretty well in MW4:M was this system:

1st TK = server warning message
2nd Tk = disconnect

If somebody really goes beyond that... and i remember one case, well we cheased to fight and ganged up on him. He wouldnt leave, so we set aside a Sunder to keep him shut down with flamers.

As i said thats the only case i can remember and i think the system implemented in MW4:M servers currently is exactly right. Anything requiring action beyond that can be handled by the players themselves, really. Its not like we are unarmed.

Edited by MrDred, 18 March 2012 - 02:58 PM.

[DrHat]

CoyoteBlue, on 18 March 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

Also, Goonswarm isn't exactly evil, theres a reason why they're one of the largest alliances in EVE-Online. This coming from an ex BoB/IT pilot. They enjoy their game at others expenses. How is that evil?

This is not supposed to get sidetracked, but as an EVE Player myself, who also happens to be an ex-MC (Mecenary Coalition) ex-IT and currently a Raiden pilot, I cannot begin to disagree with you enough.
Goonswarm harbor people who did terrible things to real people by harassing them in RL and their RL jobs..I don't mind any of the stuff that is said and done in EVE, nor in any other game..but the line is firmly drawn there. The moment you cross into real life and affect people's real health, work, relationships and so on..you have made an enemy of me, permanently.

Anyway, back to MWO - Yes indeed you are at least partially right..There seems to be no actual perfect formula as it resides somewhere between leaving people to their own devises and not having anyone being able to affect whatever they do and also being able to somehow punish those who do meddle in a malicious way..there is a fundamental contradiction here I'm sure most of you see.
In the end its a question of methodology and execution I think..Some have mentioned the repair bill, or the bill for a new mech (personally I'm still hoping that mechs can be permanently destroy to where you have to go shop for a new one..but thats me) which is a system that has potential..the problem is execution. Time will tell I guess