Moochers on bounty missions?

[captainHalide]

So, having run a fair number of bounties on Cetus, I've noticed an annoying trend - moochers.  People who sign on for one of Konzu's bounties, join a party, and then spend the entire mission either fishing or mining very far away from any of the actual objectives.  It strikes me that, if someone's going to do that, they absolutely should not be rewarded for their lack of complete participation with that bounty's payout.  Since these players are actively doing something, they're not going to trigger the AFK timer, but it's still very frustrating to have two or three squad members doing the work while another squad member goes fishing in some distant part of the map.

Would it be possible to implement some form of distance-based exclusion from a bounty's rewards?

Edited January 30, 2018 by MisterDre
Somebody apparently needed clarification

[xXHobbitXx]

so when you do missions/bountys and come in as the player with least kills that must make you the moocher right?

 

Just as an example i can do bounty 5 and do entire thing without seeing a single other player in a group of 4 players, so because im fast at it, does it mean they are mooching? how about if i mine some gems on way to a target point? does that mean im mooching? How about if me or someone logs in plains and gets put into a bounty group? does that mean they came to mooch or that they came to plains to do as they please? I suggest you play solo or just learn to "live with ÿou cant change what others do"

Edited January 30, 2018 by xXHobbitXx

[captainHalide]

Please read what I wrote.  I'm talking about people who select one of Konzu's bounties, then go out of their way to spend the entire time being literal kilometers away from any of the objectives whatsoever.  Most of the random (if not impossible) tangents you've brought up have nothing to do with this issue.

Seriously though, if a player is never within 500m of an objective for a bounty, or within the area for the bounty itself for longer objectives, the rewards should not be given to them, as they clearly aren't involved.  The only exception to this might be the rescue objective, which is already in need of some fine-tuning. 

It only hurts the gameplay experience to have a player join with what is clearly a complete lack of intention for assisting the squad they're on.

 

Edited January 30, 2018 by MisterDre

[Pykefish]

Would be nice to disincentivize people from doing this, currently they are able to get the unique plains rewards with no participation.

[Pyradus]

The simple, sensible thing to do would be to disable fishing and mining during bounties. Perhaps make it so you can only mine/fish in the currently active mission circle. This would avoid punishing players who do the mission normally but may want to pick up a quick gem or two.

[El_Lokiet]

On 2/11/2018 at 3:14 AM, CapnToaster said:

The simple, sensible thing to do would be to disable fishing and mining during bounties. Perhaps make it so you can only mine/fish in the currently active mission circle. This would avoid punishing players who do the mission normally but may want to pick up a quick gem or two.

I agree with the fishing part, but many of these missions bring you across minable materials, and between waves, it is simple to pull out your mining tool and mine a resource and then use your uber prime powers to club everyone to death for three minutes again.

[Skaleek]

On 2/11/2018 at 3:14 AM, CapnToaster said:

The simple, sensible thing to do would be to disable fishing and mining during bounties. Perhaps make it so you can only mine/fish in the currently active mission circle. This would avoid punishing players who do the mission normally but may want to pick up a quick gem or two.

Great idea, but it wont get rid of the people who literally just afk at the front gate.

[Siilk]

Well, even with fishing/mining disabled, you can still walk around and farm grokdrul/radite/mapricos, look for glass fishes or otherwise muck around. OP's point is active non-participation in bounties should be discouraged. I agree with the idea however I'm not sure if it's possible to automatically track this. "Distance from the group" is a rather ambiguous term when you think about if form a formal logic perspective. Distance from the objective, however, can be a decent participation metric. As objectives are not activated until the group moves within objective range, in between objectives individual tenno should be free to roam around as they please. But as soon as an objective is activated, all tenno must come within range and stay within range or they be barred from receiving the reward & standing for this mission. If a tenno was absent from, say, more than 70% of missions in a bounty, they should not receive the final reward & standing and should have the bounty failed for them personally. Additionally, a person who is tracked as having several bounties failed that way, could be banned from public group queueing for PoE bounties for a while.

[Ethorin]

On 1/29/2018 at 6:43 PM, megalomaniacalHalide said:

So, having run a fair number of bounties on Cetus, I've noticed an annoying trend - moochers.  People who sign on for one of Konzu's bounties, join a party, and then spend the entire mission either fishing or mining very far away from any of the actual objectives.

how about when the other three are a Slowva, a WoF Ember and a Spore Saryn.

 

If I have nothing to shoot I am going to go do other things.

[captainHalide]

On 2/12/2018 at 7:05 PM, Siilk said:

Well, even with fishing/mining disabled, you can still walk around and farm grokdrul/radite/mapricos, look for glass fishes or otherwise muck around. OP's point is active non-participation in bounties should be discouraged. I agree with the idea however I'm not sure if it's possible to automatically track this. "Distance from the group" is a rather ambiguous term when you think about if form a formal logic perspective. Distance from the objective, however, can be a decent participation metric. As objectives are not activated until the group moves within objective range, in between objectives individual tenno should be free to roam around as they please. But as soon as an objective is activated, all tenno must come within range and stay within range or they be barred from receiving the reward & standing for this mission. If a tenno was absent from, say, more than 70% of missions in a bounty, they should not receive the final reward & standing and should have the bounty failed for them personally. Additionally, a person who is tracked as having several bounties failed that way, could be banned from public group queueing for PoE bounties for a while.

Technically, one might rely on tenno affinity range for whoever initiated the bounty objective, but that is an enormous mess just waiting to be exploited in strange and hilarious ways.  I feel like 'player must be within 300m of the objective at some point' would be clean and straightforward.  It would take a little more thought on DEs part when it comes to certain extremely fast / soloable objectives, namely capture and rescue, but just having a cut-and-dry metric would at least keep people within the general vicinity of the objective itself.

Edited February 14, 2018 by megalomaniacalHalide

[IllegallyHuge]

Had this happen 4 times today. People just fishing or mining not participating just reaping the rewards.

[333_]

If they were to change this, i can already imagine it backfiring somehow and having active players being excluded from the rewards. 

[Siilk]

6 hours ago, ZeoNal.Prime said:

If they were to change this, i can already imagine it backfiring somehow and having active players being excluded from the rewards. 

Every automated participation tracking system is exploitable, it all comes down to having a good balance of false positives and false negatives. The systems doesn't have to be perfect, it simply have to make participating in unrelated activities risky enough for a party member to make them stick around the objective. If players will know that the rick is high that they will be penalized if trying to slack off on a bounty, most people would either actually focus on the objective or avoid joining the pub bounty queue unless they are willing to be a teamplayer. The key here is to make system robust enough to avoid "false alarms" with the penalty harsh enough to make it work as a deterrent.