Leechers and a solution

[Signs]

Recently, I've seen many salty threads about leechers. And don't get me wrong, there are many reasons to get salty about leechers. They mess up enemy spawns, they get you killed, and not to mention, they.. leech... 

People have tried to address this issue with "vote kick." This solution will not be inplemented because of trolls forming a 2-3 member party and just kicking everyone who joins. This solution has also been looked down upon by DE themselves. 

Of course, what would this thread be without a solution of (kinda) my own.

[Keep in mind the numbers are theoretical]

Put a afk warning similar to league of legends (admittedly a trash game) where after 2 minute of inactivity, you get a warning. After 3 warnings or 8 minutes of straight inactivity, create a kick vote. If ANY player selects yes then the player is kicked from the squad and the player loses all rewards. Because endless missions are long, people need to go to the washroom, get water and food, etc. So past the 1st rotation (AABC), EVERYONE must vote yes because it would be too easy for a troll to just kick some guy after 2 hours in a survival because he had to go get some water or something. After 3 kicks within a week from any squad, they get a penalty. Penalty - the player is forced to complete 3 missions on solo before proceeding to other matchmaking. This further punishes the leecher(s) and promotes a leecher free community.

I purposefully made it 8 minutes, rather than the logical 6 (2 min x 3 inactivities) because long inactivity is usually related to something urgent happening IRL and in that case you can just leave squad instead of being AFK and let someone else join. But hey, maybe you can ask your squad nicely to not kick you because you don't want to lose your rewards. Frequent inactivities mean the player is NOT AFK and is instead checking every few minutes to make sure that they don't get an AFK timer.

Before people say, "WHY DOES THE KICK MAKE YOU LOSE ALL REWARDS, THE PLAYER MIGHT'VE NOT BEEN AFK FOR THE WHOLE MISSION?" Let me say this, do you get rewards if you fail Sortie survival at 9:59? Nope. Do you pass a math class if you are 1% off? Nope. You must stay the entire time to get the rewards. "BUT HEY! A WORKED FOR THAT 49% IN MATH CLASS!" But do you get anything? Nope. Well, a fail.

In summary, this method gives the player power to get rid of leechers when they have triggered several afk timers. If anyone has any concerns or recommendations please leave contructive criticism in a comment.

[Synpai]

The issue here is how you measure inactivity and majority complex. Some people will go to the lengths to cheat the inactivity system.

How does this work if you're in an extended run with strangers vs a stranger in an extended run with your group.

 

The majority can afk and take breaks because at least one person wont vote to kick them.

Some people would gladly deny someone rewards after they've gotten what they need (Just look at Onslaught). So someone in the majority might afk, stranger might need to afk, but they're the one who gets kicked because there are more votes against them.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Synpai

[EDM774]

So waht's stopping said leecher from making a macro that has him moving in one place (or something similar) to avoid AFK detection. I've seen this in many places. We are humans we have brains capable of thinking of workarounds to virtually anything. Mo mater what system is implemented someone will find a way around it eventually!

Typically when I see a leecher I either :
A) ignore him and continue with my mission cuz his contribution doesn't matter when I can finish the mission totally fine on my own.

B) bait the AI to his location and let them kill him so he doesn't disturb the spawns and I continue killing stuff.

Edited July 30, 2018 by EDM774

[Tsukinoki]

Honestly I don't see this solving anything.  The AFK timer rarely comes into play as it is as most leechers put some macro into play that keeps them moving just enough that it never triggers the AFK timer in the first place.

Sadly though its too hard to base the start of the vote kick off of other things, tieing it into damage or kills won't work if you're playing with an efficient nuker frame, or playing a support frame.  Pickups would be a bit harder to leech with but it would just mean that every few minutes the leecher would have to run around with carrier and pick up a few items and then go back to leeching without contributing.

There really isn't any good metrics to highlight and go "This is a leecher" without catching other people in the crossfire way too much, or be completely ineffective due to being easily worked around.

[Uthael]

Leechers happen only in Public. Use recruit chat to avoid them.
The randomness of Public keeps things interesting.
Leechers are often just inexperienced players. I'm willing to help those.
What else to do but AFK if you're not allowed to "mess up spawns"?
What else to do if one "pro" just keeps nuking the map through walls?
As EDM774 said:  ignore him and continue with my mission cuz his contribution doesn't matter when I can finish the mission totally fine on my own.

Any messages popping up on farming runs would be annoying. More annoying than leechers in Public.

Considering Warframe is a non-competitive game at its base, I say: let them have their fun.
Edit: I got "Thanks for carrying" multiple times. Some people bother to write that. That means they're not intentionally being useless.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Uthael

[(PSN)UchihaOfLegend]

11 minutes ago, EDM774 said:

So waht's stopping said leecher from making a macro that has him moving in one place (or something similar) to avoid AFK detection. I've seen this in many places. We are humans we have brains capable of thinking of workarounds to virtually anything. Mo mater what system is implemented someone will find a way around it eventually!

Typically when I see a leecher I either :
A) ignore him and continue with my mission cuz his contribution doesn't matter when I can finish the mission totally fine on my own.

B) bait the AI to his location and let them kill him so he doesn't disturb the spawns and I continue killing stuff.

Option B.  I use to love doing this to people while playing Black Ops Zombies.

 

[ikkabotz]

Why are so many people making apologies for leeching, "let them have their fun"? Have we not thought out how they impact the experience for everyone else? In survival you won't get as many life support pods to drop if you don't keep up or as OP states they affect enemy spawns. In Hydron if everyone shows up to leech then one person has to gimp through it and it can affect their rate of XP. There's an issue with it. I don't see why proposing solutions to leeching are detrimental. It's a casual coop game? There's nothing cooperative about afk'ing the room. There's a tipping point when the threshold for leeching affects the room. Things aren't "totally fine and solvable on my own" in each circumstance or party. Whatever the case, my own solution currently is to bail on the group. There's a difference between getting help and taking advantage of people. Not lifting a finger falls into the later.

Edited July 30, 2018 by ikkabotz

[PatternistSlave]

All you noobs run around like monkeys messing up the spawns, die constantly, want to leave after 5 min and in general make the game a nightmare.  Should I be given the power to kick you?  Here's a solution.  Get over it.

[Tsukinoki]

54 minutes ago, Uthael said:

Considering Warframe is a non-competitive game at its base, I say: let them have their fun.
Edit: I got "Thanks for carrying" multiple times. Some people bother to write that. That means they're not intentionally being useless.

To add onto some of your points:
I don't mind  leechers for one reason: The more players in a squad the more enemies spawn.  In survival this makes the mission easier to do, even with the leecher doing absolutely nothing but occasionally picking up reactant to crack his relics.

So even when they are intentionally being useless they aren't all that useless as they mean more enemies for more affinity for slightly faster forma.

Can they get annoying at times?  Sure.  But its not like its hard to solo anything in this game with trivial effort.

40 minutes ago, ikkabotz said:

In survival you won't get as many life support pods to drop if you don't keep up or as OP states they affect enemy spawn rate.

Here's a very short test you can do:
Do a solo survival mission in an Asteroid tileset.
Then do a survival mission with one or more completely AFK leechers.
See which one will get you more life support faster, and have more enemies for better leveling.

In all my experiences its the one with the extra seats taken, even if they are taken by leechers.

I'm not trying to say "leechers are good!" by any stretch.  I'm just saying that they rarely have a negative impact on the mission and aren't a massive problem.

42 minutes ago, ikkabotz said:

 I don't see why proposing solutions to leeching are detrimental.

And no one is saying that its detrimental to try to propose solutions.
People are just pointing out that the "solution" the OP is suggesting would do absolutely nothing but be a waste of time for DE to develop.

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught it's that we need to be able to leave endless missions when we so choose to. And no timer that shows I'm leaving, it should be instant.

[Uthael]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)Skippy575 said:

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught it's that we need to be able to leave endless missions when we so choose to. And no timer that shows I'm leaving, it should be instant.

NO! Please, no! I'd rather people stay and AFK in my missions than leave on a whim. Leavers cut on enemy spawn and therefore affinity gain and resource drop. In Onslaught however, it's not resources but efficiency.

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught, it's that early leavers should get their rewards cut proportionally to how many players stayed.
So if only 1 out of 4 leaves, he hets to keep only 25% of resources earned (rounded up for rares).
If everyone leaves at the same time, they keep 100%.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Uthael

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

1 minute ago, Uthael said:

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught, it's that early leavers should get their rewards cut proportionally to how many players stayed.
So if only 1 out of 4 leaves, he hets to keep only 25% of resources earned (rounded up for rares).
If everyone leaves at the same time, they keep 100%.

I don't even know how to respond to this other than heck no.

[Tsukinoki]

2 minutes ago, Uthael said:

NO! Please, no! I'd rather people stay and AFK in my missions than leave on a whim. Leavers cut on enemy spawn and therefore affinity gain and resource drop. In Onslaught however, it's not resources but efficiency.

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught, it's that early leavers should get their rewards cut proportionally to how many players stayed.
So if only 1 out of 4 leaves, he hets to keep only 25% of resources earned (rounded up for rares).
If everyone leaves at the same time, they keep 100%.

Hell no.
I'll agree with you that leechers aren't usually a problem, but by no means should rewards be cut just because one person wants to be stubborn and be allowed to troll a group.

Say for example you do an interception to crack relics.  The group has agreed to 5 rounds and you get some duplicate prime parts.
At 5 rounds 2 people want to go to 10 and you don't...if you leave you're now having your prime parts stripped from you just because you want to leave at the original time and the others don't so you're being forced to stay to avoid punishment.  And the other players have the ability to keep you there until they are finished, regardless of what you want to do if you don't want to lose your prime parts.

Even in ESO only I would have to say no with how many relics are there.
Basically you'd be essentially telling the group "Oh yeah, you're being held hostage with me until I want to leave or we fail!" which isn't fun or good for anyone involved.

[---Merchant---]

This thread is why I love that DE does not listen to community more. 
As I go from top to bottom there are worse and worse solutions with more and more flaws. 

Is this competition for worst one?

"if you are not the one with most damage and kills done your account will get deleted after mission" how did i do? 

[polarity]

There are additional and very simple tests that could be done to check for leeching, like distance from the rest of the group, consistently increasing distance from the rest of the group, failure to move in a way that actually covers any distance (for those types of missions that involve moving from the initial spawn, to an objective, then to an exit.  Other metrics could be used for less mobile mission types).

[OneFlyingDog]

2 hours ago, Exitsignn said:

 If anyone has any concerns or recommendations please leave constructive criticism in a comment.

Kick vote is not possible because:

1. If it can be abused, it would be abused.

2. Technology at it's current level, is unable to effective identify leechers with 100% accuracy. Any mistakes will cause more problems than it is worth.

Leaving leechers alone is not possible because:

1. It causes harm to other people's gaming/forum experiences.

2. In the long run, it might cause player outflow (Incidents that go unresolved eventually kills the project).

Solution:

You host, you choose who to block out in your subsequent missions. IE whoever in your block list is unable to join your hosted session.

[Signs]

46 minutes ago, MidoriFuse said:

This thread is why I love that DE does not listen to community more. 
As I go from top to bottom there are worse and worse solutions with more and more flaws. 

Is this competition for worst one?

"if you are not the one with most damage and kills done your account will get deleted after mission" how did i do? 

Another useful comment here. Why even bother posting this comment? Why don't you point out the flaws instead of laughing at it?

 

2 hours ago, Uthael said:

Ignore him and continue with my mission cuz his contribution doesn't matter when I can finish the mission totally fine on my own.

Just because it doesn't affect you, means it's ok? 

A robber steals your money, but it doesn't bother you. Does that justify what he is doing? Will he be innocent just because YOU don't care?

Edited July 30, 2018 by Exitsignn

[Uthael]

1 hour ago, Uthael said:

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught, it's that early leavers should get their rewards cut proportionally to how many players stayed.
So if only 1 out of 4 leaves, he hets to keep only 25% of resources earned (rounded up for rares).
If everyone leaves at the same time, they keep 100%. 

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

Hell no.
I'll agree with you that leechers aren't usually a problem, but by no means should rewards be cut just because one person wants to be stubborn and be allowed to troll a group. 

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

Basically you'd be essentially telling the group "Oh yeah, you're being held hostage with me until I want to leave or we fail!" which isn't fun or good for anyone involved

If 3 people leave, they pull the fourth one from normal endless missions. No change in that.
In ESO, if 3 would leave, they'd leave with 75% earned affinity. Which would be a fair trade for ruining the 4th person's game. If that 4th person needs Wave 9, why not help them?

1 hour ago, Tsukinoki said:

Say for example you do an interception to crack relics.  The group has agreed to 5 rounds and you get some duplicate prime parts.
At 5 rounds 2 people want to go to 10 and you don't...if you leave you're now having your prime parts stripped from you just because you want to leave at the original time and the others don't so you're being forced to stay to avoid punishment.  And the other players have the ability to keep you there until they are finished, regardless of what you want to do if you don't want to lose your prime parts. 

Relic and mission rewards aren't resource drops. Ofcourse, cutting relic rewards would be stupid.

[EDM774]

4 hours ago, Exitsignn said:

A robber steals your money, but it doesn't bother you. Does that justify what he is doing? Will he be innocent just because YOU don't care?

You're comparing apples to oranges here.

Leeching is more like a lasy colleague wanting you to do his work for him and then he gets paid for your work.

Now I'm not defending leeching but I don't encounter it that often and I don't mind helping out a colleague from time to time. For ppl who encounter leechers on a reular basis I see how they'd want to tell the boss and get the lazy guy fired. But let's not forget this isn't a job you don't get paid money to do it, it's a game and it rewards game items which don't matter outside of the game. 

So either ignore the leechers or just play solo all the content in the game is beyond easy anyways.

[W3zeer]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb Uthael:

In ESO, if 3 would leave, they'd leave with 75% earned affinity. Which would be a fair trade for ruining the 4th person's game. If that 4th person needs Wave 9, why not help them? 

Or DE could just fix the damn affinity drop, so you could continue with a reduced squad without having to abuse maiming strike.

[Oreades]

6 hours ago, (XB1)Skippy575 said:

If I learned anything from playing Onslaught it's that we need to be able to leave endless missions when we so choose to. And no timer that shows I'm leaving, it should be instant.

The reason that works in Onslaught is because Onslaught effectively has no failure state. 

If you leave you win

If you run out of efficiency you win

If you run out of revives you win. 

 

In actual missions however if you leave you lose, if the objective fails you lose and if you run out of revives you lose. So having people randomly dip out sets the remaining players in a very possible situation where they now lose all of their rewards while the leaver gets to keep theirs. 

[Nickishero]

I only leech hydron.

 

(sorry)

[AlinaBee]

People go afk because the game is very easy and boring when one player can spam skills the other 3 might as well just sit and do nothing, it doesn't matter. 

Maybe try fixing the game Instead of trying to punish the players?

[Loswaith]

The only real way to fix leeches is to fundamentally change the driving force of the game from loot to playing.  Currently the game sits at a point where loot is the driving factor to play, from leeches to rushers (not to be mistaken for just fast players) it is all about avoiding actually playing the game just to get the loot.  Essentially the loot has become greater "fun" than the game-play for some players.

The only real way to totally fix the issue is to make the playing the driving goal and the loot more ancillary, all in all no simple task to achieve.

Likewise any heavy AFK or ani-leecher is more likely to hurt active or newer players than leechers, simply because the leechers will either find ways around it or not care so much if even 1 in 5 of their leeching attempts is successful as it is still a bonus they wouldn't get over not playing at all.

[(PSN)ZeroSection]

20 hours ago, Synpai said:

The issue here is how you measure inactivity

They could always do the FFXIV method via, FATEs.  FATES are essentially incursions out in the plains.  When doing a FATE your rewarded based on level of participation which is measured by a base line amount of damage that you have to do, healing that your doing, damage that your taking to succeed.  If you don't meet a certain level of baseline you get a reduced reward or none at all.  I'm sure they could come up with some reasonable and fair baseline of contribution for us (that's also fair to newer players), as I'm sure they're probably doing data collection on us anyway, heuristic or otherwise.  I think if you combined that with some kind of range check for the objective you'd be in business as far as encouraging more people to play.  Obviously there would be a certain level of forgiveness like for instance people just zoning into an ongoing bounty etc.  You combine  that also with an avoid player system similar to Overwatch, where you can avoid a certain number of players and it only lasts 7 days max, and I think we might be working with something here.  I would also match that with a sort of "Bounty status effect."  The effect could grant you increased affinity or credits, or give you a certain level of endo depending on if you participated fully all the way through.  At the same time the Bounty status effect would lock you out of fishing and mining gear until all the bounties are done.

I think ultimately if none of that is ever implemented at the very least there needs to be a certain level of in game automation, because if someone is 8-10 minutes in and has no kills and no damage dealt and no damage received I think its pretty obvious whats going on.  We need those systems that don't involve too much player interaction, unless its direct tools like an avoid player system, within the game itself to curb these kinds of toxic behaviors (I would avoid vote/kick system as that's highly abusable in a toxic environment).  Reporting things to zendesk is nice, but it doesn't always go so smoothly for us in console land.  We can screenshot things with the share button, but if your not in possession of a thumb drive to transfer pictures to a laptop its kind of clunky.  And screen shots, even with a cellphone, don't always paint a clear picture for a GM unless its REALLY BLATANT.

Obviously you guys on PC will probably still have issues as you guys can run macros and what have you, but us on ConsoleFrame can't, and this would go leagues and miles to fix the current system.

Edited July 31, 2018 by (PS4)ZeroSection