Griefing by AFK (Scarlet Spear)

[Badger]

The Flotilla is NOT a social space. It shouldn't be promoted as such. If you afk or just linger around in a Flotilla, you are griefing. You're taking slots that could be filled by people who will actually help finish the Flotilla.

I just got out of a Flotilla that did 77/100 Murex. My squad did 24 of them alone. There were only 5 ground teams and 5 space teams, but the Flotilla was full. People were AFKing in it, preventing all the very hardworking squads from getting the bonus they worked their asses off for.

You need to add a very strict afk kick timer, or give people bonuses regardless of whether or not the Flotilla finishes. If you don't, you are willingly admitting that people are griefing and that you're fine with it. 

[GKP_light]

If you didn't had new player to finish the 100 murex, it is may-be because of the hour : 

if there is more player at the start than after, lot of Flotilla start, and most of them don't reach 100.

[13374RCH3R]

I've seen a few flotillas fail solely because of AFK's. There's no other reason for them to fail when the flotilla is full. Scarlet Spear is so easy that even an MR 6 can do their part to be useful.
If the AFK's weren't there, we could be inviting more active people to join from places like the recruiting chat. I see HUNDREDS of people looking to join active lobbies in recruiting chat, but they can't because all the flotillas are flooded with inactives who won't leave. 
 

[Hobie-wan]

There's the problem with not being able to get back into a flotilla you've made some progress on if you want to take a break. So that means idling in it while you go the restroom, eat, or deal with life things. Hopefully most people come back before too long to contribute again, but things happen. Really to me the problem is the strict 3 hour blocks that all are aligned with. If they were all rolling or at least if there were chunks of offset ones so they didn't all end at the same time, it would be better IMHO.

[m0b1us1]

They might not be fully AFK-ing. The way it works, once you get a 5k score in either mission, you can't gain any more bonus. The mission types provide extremely little credits, so once you hit your 5k points, why even bother?

Also, an AFK timer would be a horrid idea in the current state. If you leave the relay before the 3 hours ends, you lose all bonus credits. So if you start it at the very beginning, your suggestion would mean players would have to play for a continuous 3 hours. Forcing players to do that is beyond unacceptable.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

2 minutes ago, m0b1us1 said:

They might not be fully AFK-ing. The way it works, once you get a 5k score in either mission, you can't gain any more bonus. The mission types provide extremely little credits, so once you hit your 5k points, why even bother?

Also, an AFK timer would be a horrid idea in the current state. If you leave the relay before the 3 hours ends, you lose all bonus credits. So if you start it at the very beginning, your suggestion would mean players would have to play for a continuous 3 hours. Forcing players to do that is beyond unacceptable.

u dont have to stay, that's misinformation, they addressed it in a patch and gave eveyrone that had left a relay erly the creds they were meant to get 

[m0b1us1]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

u dont have to stay, that's misinformation, they addressed it in a patch and gave eveyrone that had left a relay erly the creds they were meant to get 

No, they simply gave everyone double the credits they had already gotten.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

39 minutes ago, m0b1us1 said:

No, they simply gave everyone double the credits they had already gotten.

so no lost ceds?

[Fire2box]

They might not be AFK they might be be staring the the score board seeing what needs help to futher progress the murex driven away. 

 

Some also might be taking a well deserve break like my team did after we did something like 4-5 full space runs. 

[Juuyon]

7 hours ago, m0b1us1 said:

No, they simply gave everyone double the credits they had already gotten.

As has been stated, the issue you brought up has been adressed in Update 27.3.4. You are thus free to leave and even join another flotilla and will still gain the victory payout once your previous flotilla completes. No reason to clog up flotillas.

 

But all in all, this event is structurally flawed. The instancing and time limits both cause issues, that intersect to become even worse. Unless you have at least half an hour left on the clock, there's little point in trying to complete a "full mission", because you are forced to leave mid-mission otherwise. Combined with the 10 minute break, that's a time window of 40 minutes where there's no reason for people to play the event. And that's not even factoring in the futility of completing flotillas for victory payouts towards the end – so the time window for "efficient play" is actually a lot smaller.

Killcodes should be global, as should the matchmaking. If you start a mission, you shouldn't be forced out of it if the time limit runs out and instead still be able to increase your score. Also make payout for full space and full ground missions the same – as it is the space side is expected to sacrifice their credit gain for the good of the flotilla while being forced to play the less fun mission type.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Juuyon

[Steel_Rook]

6 minutes ago, Juuyon said:

As has been stated, the issue you brought up has been adressed in Update 27.3.4. You are thus free to leave and even join another flotilla and will still gain the victory payout once your previous flotilla completes. No reason to clog up flotillas.

I can confirm this from experience. I've been leaving Flotilla instances long before they conclude and logging off entirely. When I come back into the game, I have multiple e-mails with Scarlet Credits waiting in my inbox. You don't need to stay in a Flotilla instance to get your rewards any more than you need to stay in an Invasion mission to get your rewards.

 

7 minutes ago, Juuyon said:

But all in all, this event is structurally flawed. The instancing and time limits both cause issues, that intersect to become even worse. Unless you have at least half an hour left on the clock, there's little point in trying to complete a "full mission", because you are forced to leave mid-mission otherwise. Combined with the 10 minute break, that's a time window of 40 minutes where there's no reason for people to play the event. And that's not even factoring in the futility of completing flotillas for victory payouts towards the end – so the time window for "efficient play" is actually a lot smaller.

I think this may be technical limitations on the Squad Link system. The entire event seems to be one giant Dojo, with each instance of that dojo hosting one never-ending Railjack mission with the capacity to load different people into different "parts" of it. That's why you'd initially see people from the relay onboard your Railjack. My suspicion is that the timer is needed because the overall Railjack mission needs some kind of end point where everyone's progress is saved and rewards are distributed. That's likely also why we have bonus rewards for event participation, rather than just getting rewards as we play.

The more I play around with Squad Link, learn about it and think through its logistics, the more it feels like a nightmare of logistics and stacked implementation on the back end. Steve Sinclair talked about on-stream the other day about how Squad Link is one of these things that sounds simple, but gets progressively more complex once you actually try to implement it. Putting a system in a fake trailer is one thing. Actually dealing with the reality of making it work mechanically and ensuring there's enough participation to support its functions is quite another.

I don't think DE are dumb in this case. Scarlet Spear is a really awfully structured event, but I believe that's a result of the compromises needed to make Squad Link work at ANY level.