"Inactivity" in defense mission

[CruelScorcher]

New to making forums so apologizes but, was farming resources on Jupiter and by the end of the rotation i didn't get anything because of inactivity even tho i had over 300 kills. I wanna say it could've been cause i was standing still and throwing my Cerata to kill everything next to the objective. Not upset that i didnt get the reward cause my main objective was the resources but, thought this should get some attention for people who might get the same issue but DO want the reward at the end. Don't know how to upload screenshots of it but, it was on Senai, Jupiter if that matters and will try to keep tabs on people who know why and such.

[Pakaku]

Sounds like you were too stationary

[FulfillMyWill]

This is one of several anti-AFK systems. Basically if you stay still for about 40-50 seconds, you'll enter the "AFK state" during which you won't give/recieve buffs to/from your teammates and won't recieve mission/rotation rewards.

Making a few steps (jumping in the same spot won't work) will make you leave this state and you'll start recieving your buffs again.

[MaxTunnerX]

Yeah stuff like this happens and its terrible. One of the most user unfreindly things there are in the game. Who the hell cares if you move and shoot every 30 seconds or not? Nobody. All your teammates care about is if you contribute or not, end of story and thats what anti-afk should be about.

[Traumtulpe]

That's some great design right there; A game mode that forces you to stay in one place and wait for enemies to come, but if you stand in one place killing enemies you get flagged as AFK.

I think it's time to retire defense, especially the 10 wave per rotation version. Leading cause for players falling asleep as far as I'm concerned.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

Honestly, they really need to apply 3 wave defense and 3 minute survival rounds to the entire starchart already... And stop any 10/20 waves gift of the lotus alerts against lvl 12 enemies that pose zero challenge. I spend the entire 20 minutes playing shawzin on the cryopod and spamming fireworks every gift of the lotus alert,.

[MaxTunnerX]

On 2023-09-18 at 12:13 AM, (PSN)Stealth_Cobra said:

Honestly, they really need to apply 3 wave defense and 3 minute survival rounds to the entire starchart already... And stop any 10/20 waves gift of the lotus alerts against lvl 12 enemies that pose zero challenge. I spend the entire 20 minutes playing shawzin on the cryopod and spamming fireworks every gift of the lotus alert,.

Dont touch my lvl 12 enemies. Its the only level of enemies I can AFK kill with my equinox :D

[NineChameleon]

I had this in interception once. Except I was solo and it was on steel path so i was indeed kinda upset I didn't get the rewards XD Except in my case I couldn't possibly have been too stationary because I needed to run to all the points. I think it's a bug personally. Although I haven't encountered it since. DE never got back to me on that support ticket so I never did get the rewards. 

sadge. 

EDIT: Arbitration sorry, not steel path

[Pakaku]

On 2023-09-12 at 6:51 PM, Traumtulpe said:

That's some great design right there; A game mode that forces you to stay in one place and wait for enemies to come, but if you stand in one place killing enemies you get flagged as AFK.

I think it's time to retire defense, especially the 10 wave per rotation version. Leading cause for players falling asleep as far as I'm concerned.

Keyword: "Stand". Walking around the defense objective once in a while takes little-to-no effort and will satisfy the AFK timer

[Traumtulpe]

2 hours ago, Pakaku said:

Walking around the defense objective once in a while takes little-to-no effort and will satisfy the AFK timer

So you have to metagame the AFK timer in order to not get punished, natural play will have you flagged. That was the whole point.

[Pakaku]

3 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

So you have to metagame the AFK timer in order to not get punished, natural play will have you flagged. That was the whole point.

Well, you could avoid the whole "metagame" entirely if you didn't play as an AFK turret. It's not complicated...

[Traumtulpe]

8 hours ago, Pakaku said:

Well, you could avoid the whole "metagame" entirely if you didn't play as an AFK turret. It's not complicated...

You don't get the point - there is no reason to go anywhere in defense. What the mission expects of you is to wait at the objective, and to kill any enemy that tries to attack it. There is no reason to move aside from metagaming the AFK timer, the mission makes you play like a bot - moving every once in a while, just enough to not get flagged as afk, is exactly how bots operate,

I don't enjoy playing like a bot, I've literally been dozing off while waiting in a 10 round defense. So I take it you think defense is a very engaging mode that is well designed to the point it deserves an award then? Care to elaborate instead of attacking strawmen?

[(NSW)Greybones]

On 9/25/2023 at 8:33 PM, Traumtulpe said:

You don't get the point - there is no reason to go anywhere in defense. What the mission expects of you is to wait at the objective, and to kill any enemy that tries to attack it. There is no reason to move aside from metagaming the AFK timer, the mission makes you play like a bot - moving every once in a while, just enough to not get flagged as afk, is exactly how bots operate,

I don't enjoy playing like a bot, I've literally been dozing off while waiting in a 10 round defense. So I take it you think defense is a very engaging mode that is well designed to the point it deserves an award then? Care to elaborate instead of attacking strawmen?

One of the core ideas behind defense (and mobile defense and anything where we defend an objective) is that we’re forced to keep close enough to the objective to keep an eye on it and defend it, but keeping too close is typically a bad thing so we have to keep far enough to help stay alive, and then balance that distance according to how the fight is playing out.

As with most things with an element of nuance to it though, many players opt to simplify it as much as possible by doing things like building way beyond what the mission asks for (regardless of how little variety they can leverage to do it) and thus enable the ability stand around, and thus butt up against the AFK measures. Helps keep the grind consistent when you don’t need to worry about things like distance or whatever a mission would normally ask for, and sometimes players would never ever learn in the first place, so if you’re going to ask “How is a mission supposed to play out”, you’ll often find answers lacking