334 replies to this topic

[Hawkeye 72]

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.

Now obviously the role warfare aspect of this game encourages communication, so you probably won't be dropping into a combat zone with your scout/recon unit unleashing all manner of threats and obscenities to his teammates. 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?

The internet is littered with a$$holes, so obviously this game will need some enforcers. The dedication of the PGI team so far gives me confidence, but what does the community think? My own suggestions:

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. It's on the developer just as much as the community to ensure unwanted play stays away. I am also in favor of bans for players causing problems or c-bill reductions.

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?

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. Just throwing out ideas for now.

If you have any experience with online games, you know people exist whose sole purpose in the game is to sabotage their teammates and break everything. Too much behavior like this can ruin the fun.

Thoughts? Ideas? Should we start forging our own lovely ban-hammers? Nothing says street justice like a well placed PPC

[palebear]

I would be very interested in a lance-block list for lone wolves and a bounty system for all players.

[Gozer]

As a WoT player I know darn well how annoying TKer's are. Their "blue player" system that turns TKer's into blue "free for all" targets kind of works, but most dedicated arseholes know how to deal with that system.

Honestly I've always been fine with the wild west "kill the TKer" system. I'm not sure though as this is always an annoying thing that needs to be examined. A "bounty" system might work. Make it like a voting system that if you're TK'ed you get to vote to frogive or not. If not your mech's cost is added to that player's bounty. Players with bounties on their heads don't get to vote and any bounties on their heads are instantly divided between those who kill them.

I don't know. It's a difficult proposition.

[SirDenOfYork]

I think the Dev's might have somthing in mine for this.They have put alot of effort into this for it to get spoiled by team killing..

[Hawkeye 72]

SirDenOfYork, on 17 March 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

I think the Dev's might have somthing in mine for this.They have put alot of effort into this for it to get spoiled by team killing..

Thats what I am hoping for. No doubt they are hard at work on this. Although I like a bounty idea. If you found a way to incorporate a bounty on these players that rewards the community for killing this players (figuratively). It would make him a fugitive from the IS and the equivalent of a pirate. Players that hunt them down are rewarded a cbill bonus?

[Insidious Johnson]

Hey, hands off TK! Leave it alone. I'm waiting for the day I get Paul in a game. I don't want a 50/50 chance that I even get to shoot at him. After that, do what you want.

[Pvt Dancer]

The problem Hawkeye is already actually being addressed... do a search for Friendly Fire. The Devs have stated they are unsure if they are going to allow FF or not because of this issue.

The other side of the coin is accidential TKs. If they do have FF, there are times when someone steps in front of you, jumps behind the targeted mech, or zigs when it should have zagged because it is a Jenner and has to get in close to shoot. On a previous post on this subject, I broke down a sampling of r-ear armor protection for mechs from the 3025 book (since that seems to be the mechs we are getting right now) and none of them have more than 20pts of r-ear armor (r-ear is blocked, so I am typing it that way to get around the filters). Most Mediums on down would be crippled by a PPC to the rear as well.

Frankly, I want FF, and I don't mind the WoTs route. The difference is little Timmy the 6 year old Power Gamer can start out with a Atlas. This can be a brutal combo. :/

[Gozer]

Pvt Dancer, on 17 March 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

The problem Hawkeye is already actually being addressed... do a search for Friendly Fire. The Devs have stated they are unsure if they are going to allow FF or not because of this issue.

The other side of the coin is accidential TKs. If they do have FF, there are times when someone steps in front of you, jumps behind the targeted mech, or zigs when it should have zagged because it is a Jenner and has to get in close to shoot. On a previous post on this subject, I broke down a sampling of r-ear armor protection for mechs from the 3025 book (since that seems to be the mechs we are getting right now) and none of them have more than 20pts of r-ear armor (r-ear is blocked, so I am typing it that way to get around the filters). Most Mediums on down would be crippled by a PPC to the rear as well.

Frankly, I want FF, and I don't mind the WoTs route. The difference is little Timmy the 6 year old Power Gamer can start out with a Atlas. This can be a brutal combo. :/

Can we? I didn't notice we could start out in assaults. Heavies maybe but assaults? (I haven't read everything yet so I could be wrong.)

Still I agree that friendly fire isn't, especially in the back! O.O!

[Hawkeye 72]

Insidious Johnson, on 17 March 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

Hey, hands off TK! Leave it alone. I'm waiting for the day I get Paul in a game. I don't want a 50/50 chance that I even get to shoot at him. After that, do what you want.

Point taken

Pvt Dancer, on 17 March 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

The problem Hawkeye is already actually being addressed... do a search for Friendly Fire. The Devs have stated they are unsure if they are going to allow FF or not because of this issue.

Ah forgot to use 'friendly fire' in the search. I just typed in team killing and saw no results.

[Fabe]

A systeam to deal with griefers would be great but it would also need to be set up so playesr could not abuse it. A player should not be black list or have a bounty put on them just because some other players have taken a dislike to them for some BS reason.

[Parhelion]

I wish Commander was an earned position. If this was the case, Commanders would guard their status carefully. Then I would be completely on board with the kill switch idea. As it stands, the abuse is too much of a concern.

What about having a function to have the Commander suggest kill switching a team-mate, and requiring approval from a lancemate or maybe the whole team? Once the quorum is reached, the ***** is frozen.

Then, people who feel they've been KS'ed inappropriately can file a more time-consuming complaint outside of the game itself, and commanders with multiple complaints can be reviewed.

I would prefer abusive commanders to the wealth of TK'ing idiots out there... at least I think I would, LOL.

[Aegis Kleais]

Insidious Johnson, on 17 March 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

Hey, hands off TK! Leave it alone. I'm waiting for the day I get Paul in a game. I don't want a 50/50 chance that I even get to shoot at him. After that, do what you want.

You can't argue flawless logic like this.

As far as the game goes, I'd be interested in seeing what they do, but I don't think you can effectively offer anti-team measures without giving corrupt players the ability to kick legitimate players. To my knowledge, we won't be getting the ability to host our own dedicated servers, so you won't be able to administrate a game to the way you want.

[Togg Bott]

well. the bounty system sounds good on the surface.. but after spending 6 yeares in EVE online, i know how broken that method is.. broken and exploitable.

[FinnMcKool]

There was a thread about saving a video of the game from
players perspective or something like that , this would make it easy
to nail the **#@% . Then let the DEVs decide, if you turn them into
a target maybe they will like that , so Im not sure what to do,???

I was thinking maybe a 5000 volt spike to their computer???

Edited by FinnMcKool, 17 March 2012 - 03:46 PM.

[Snowflake Muffin]

Its hard to make a system that would differentiate between an honest TK, and one that is on purpose. For example you are lining up for an alpha strike on an enemy mech and a friendly quickly runs up in front of it purely by accident, and you end up hitting them in the back and killing them. Now a voting system can work in this case, granted the player is not too angry that you accidentally killed him. However I noticed that will only happen about half the time and the person will just vote a punishment for the other player b/c they are pissed. I would have to say the system should assess the type of firing at your own team, or if you are trying to hit them in the legs or arms to hinder their movement or weapons, respectively. For example if you have a TKer who is does a certain amount of damage over a certain period of time (and factor in alpha strikes and accidental shots) should have some sort of punishment, such as getting disabled or placed under a vote to boot.

I also must agree that the service record would be a great idea to assess (and keep track of) the amounts of kills, team kills, assists, deaths, and maybe even things like preferred roles, times ejected, and how well they work with the team (ie history of the last 10 or so matches that shows there score).
On top of that, have certain warnings about players before a match, like if they had 20-30 complaints from different people, the players can have a vote to kick that person. But in case that person wants to actually play this time around and doesn't want to grieve/TK any more, they will have to wait a certain time penalty, such as 24 or 48 hours (depending on the amount of repeated offenses or the frequency at which others complain about them) before they can play a new match.

Im sure this kind of system has been done before and will not eliminate the problem but it should discourage it and reduce the overall amount people can be ****** bags in that respect.

but in any case there should still be a team penalty for any kind of team kill

[Dras Black]

I cant speak from experience in WoT, but I do know i cant stand the smack talking, foul mouthed, 1diots that if you don't do something they like, they gun you're poor little Jenner in the back with a PPC.

I like the commander killswitch idea, but the abuse could be just as annoying. If commander was like a voted position, limiting command mechs to 1 per team or something (much like the commander in BF2142 or something) or permanent placement like said before and its actually hard to become a commander and their KS usage were put under review every now and again that would be a great idea.

The bounty system is probably a bad idea, and heres the reason why: Join up 30 random games, Tk to the extreme, join up with you're pirate gang and go "Get at that bounty!" and then they all spit the bounty that everyones put on their head. Easy way to steal you're credits.

The WoT idea is a pretty good idea, but whats the threshold for getting marked as rouge? a PPC in the back? One mech down? two? five? whats the cut off? cause there have been times when "Oops" happens. It's part of Murphy Combat Laws: The only thing more accurate then incoming Enemy fire: Is incoming Friendly Fire.

Edited by Dras Black, 17 March 2012 - 03:59 PM.

[CentralCentral]

I like the idea that a players "bad" behavior can influence the meta-game. The devs have said that there is a penalty for switching between lone-wolf/faction/merc roles. Couple that with a bounty system (could function like the merc contract system) and I think it would be fairly effective provided the bounty was tied to an account and not the game character. I wonder if we'll end up seeing lone-wolf players acting a bounty hunters...

[The Cheese]

It's a difficult thing to sort out, I'm sure.

You can't just say "if a player kills a friendly, they are on the TK list", because they might just bring the target player into the red, destroy weapons, take off a leg, what have you.

Likewise, you can't say "if a player does X damage to a friendly, they are on the TK list", because FF is just a part of this game. Launch a volley of missiles, a friendly walks through the stream. There's some FF right there. Now, Imagine you're in a catapault trying to provide fire support for some nublet in an Atlas who just keeps walking through your firing line. Whelp, I guess you're a TKer.

My suggestion would be a steadily increasing penalty for people who repeatedly attack team mates, intentionally or not. For example, you damage a friendly, your HUD might start alarming that "YOU'RE SHOOTING A FRIENDLY", making it impossible to get any other readouts for a second or so. Continued attacks make the alert show for longer and longer. After enough damage has been done, your computer declares you a rogue agent and sends a message to your team mates saying that you're repeatedly attacking friendly units and should be treated as an enemy.

If it's accidental, you get a few messages and your readouts are down for a couple seconds, so you start being more careful with your shots. If it's intentional, your team will soon turn around and fry you.

Of course, that doesn't really help of the TKer is in an assault mech and goes all Alpha on your ***. Maybe, in the event of a friendly vs friendly alpha strike, make the shooter pay for repairs? I dunno.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

The previous threads we've had on this subject couldn't come up with any real ideas that were foolproof either. I'm not sure, other than disabling FF if there is. It still wont stop people wandering in front of missiles if they do so after you've fired. Also as lasers are DoT, does that mean they cut off if someone walks in the way and FF stop activates?
Maybe they'll leave FF in to start with and see what happens.

[Morashtak]

For obvious infractions and continuous flagrant fouls would be nice to see in game commands such as;

/Ignore - mute channels (text and VoIP, if introduced)
/Block - never see the player on either side f the battlefield
/Report - to the Mods so they can track and take the appropriate action, up to and including IP blocking

Unintentional;
For new people (which we'll all be at launch) a word from the more seasoned players for everyone to watch their fire and don't cross in front of your teammates unannounced. Being shot in the back is a two-way street; Someone had to have their back to a teammate and the shooter had to be taking a shot, either already commencing or lining up the shot.

Keeping clear of your teammates field of fire will be a nice challenge to look forward to.