WTB spam = ban; leeching = promote?!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3072386

Quote from link:

Nope, because it's still much, much easier to leech.

A better step in the right direction would to be remove rewards for losing, period. What does a leecher have to lose, anyways?

@ Arcane: That quote is so depressing...I hate how she dismisses it so simply, like it's totally unimportant.

Question- Is there anyway possible Devs can overlook AB matches at all, like an observer modes just for devs? If not, then why not make one and once in awhile check in of a couple matches here or there? When you see someone standing around, PM them and if you get no response or they still don't move, /temp ban or something. Won't completely solve it but it would be nice to know that Devs are looking out for those looking to enjoy the game.

That's bad because then you're punishing plenty of real players who aren't winning for whatever reason. It's never fun to watch somebody else get all the rewards and nothing for yourself, especially in a team game where you aren't necessarily responsible for your defeat.

The only suggestion I can think of for Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry that's even mediocre is to deny Faction from kills for players in their main base. Since you have to exit the base in order to be useful, the impact on real players is minimal (a couple faction points lost here and there due to respawning at the wrong time and that's about it). Of course, that's not a whole lot of faction denied even for the leechers, so it may not be significant enough to be worth the effort.

Yep, that's what I said, but if you read it, that sure doesn't say that we don't feel that leeching is a problem, or that it's ok! All is says is that Support cannot handle reports of leeching. It's true that we weren't, and still aren't, taking action, but I still think that at some point we might. (And because it is a continuing issue, I know it's still being discussed in the designer room.)

I personally agree with you. We don't give points to those who lose in other situations. However, I don't know if that's a choice that the designers will or would make, but I'll ask.

Do you think that fewer people would play if they didn't get points for losing? Don't most people go into a match expecting to win? Anyway, the outside-main-base idea seems like a "can't hurt, might help" idea.

Extra faction to those who participate may make the actual "players" happy, but I don't think it will stop or even reduce the leechers. It's obvious that in places like Fort Aspenwood that if you win, you gain more faction. These leechers don't care though. They are lazy and their main purpose is simply to farm faction for their alliance without putting any effort into it at all. Well at least it was until the new skills came out. Now you have more leechers that are farming faction for those skills.

Honestly while I think extra faction for those who participate would be great, I don't think it's the solution for leeching. However if this extra faction idea were to be added to the game, at least the people playing would be rewarded for it. Which in my opinion is better then nothing at all.

EDIT: Oh by the way I don't think granting the losing side no faction at all is a good solution either. It's like punishing both the leechers and the real players. That just wouldn't be right. If you were to do this, I would at least increase the faction you get for kills during the match to help balance it out some. However since everybody on the team gets faction for each kill, the leechers would still gain something. I'm not sure if it's possible, but if you made the faction only count for the players who were attacking the opponent, that would pretty much make leeching useless if the losing side gains nothing idea was added.

No, it's not fun, not at all...But if you will always benefit, even if you lose, then how do you learn?

It might take a bit of coding work, but this is an idea that me and my room mate came up with that would probably help with the leeching/leaving problem without being too unfair to those who might have emergencies for whatever reason:

1 - If a person is afk in a PvP instance for 3 minutes or more (for longer matchers like AB/FA/etc.), they are kicked out into the lobby of that area and are not allowed to join another match again for ~5 minutes. Anyone who winds up scripting something that uses a skill/skill combination at regular intervals without moving can be banned for botting.

2 - If a player leaves a PvP instance before the round is over, they won't be able to join another PvP instance for a set period of time. This, of course, can scale so that people leaving from those never-ending RA battles won't be punished nearly as heavily as those who leave before the round even starts.

3 - For areas like FA, add another join button in the lobby. With this we will have a "Join New Battle" button and a "Join First Available Battle" button. If a member of a team is kicked or leaves early, this will still give that team a chance at a fair fight by giving them a substitute player. If a player wants to play a full battle and not risk coming into a half-over match, they can just hit the "Join New Battle" button. For players who are disconnected, the game will wait until their reconnect timer runs out or they confirm that they don't want to re-enter the instance when they reconnect.

While this may not completely remove leeching, it will definitely require leechers to pay more attention to the game and not just leave it up in the background or go afk. Implementing a system like this would basically make successful leeching more of a bother than it is worth, which is all that really needs to be done.

For those who might bring up the old arguments about D/C's and emergencies, I offer these rebuttals:
*You weren't playing, and therefore deserve no reward.
*If it truly was an emergency, chances are it will take longer for you to sort it out than it will take for the punishment timer to hit zero. If you are trying to take care of both at once, it either wasn't an emergency or you have seriously screwed up priorities.
*If you get D/C'd and can't log on again to reconnect, chances are that the punishment timer will hit zero by the time you can reconnect. If you are still on a timer when you reconnect, I'm sure you can find something useful to do in the few remaining minutes of time-out.
*If you left because of a never-ending battle, chances are that you will still get into another match much sooner than if you were to fight it out.

Also, if workforce is the only thing holding something like this back, hire my room mate. He's almost graduated with a major in CS and often finds better and more efficient solutions to programming problems than his professors can. On top of that, he's interested in going into game development when he graduates

I'll pass this along. Oh, and tell your roommate to appply -- we're always looking for exceptional programmers, and if he is one, well...

Sorry, I thought the original quote was saying that you said it wasn't a support issue, which you did. Nice to know that you're at least considering it. Some kind of automatic function or active banning of repeat offenders, like what's in place for spammers. I personally feel it's a bigger issue, thus my first post about priorities. I don't personally spam (in local or trade - ever), and I'm not a leaver/leecher, but of the two problems, leaving/leeching is by far worse for the playability of the game of others, IMO.

The only place where leeching would be a problem is AB.
AB has much greater concerns at this time than leeching.
Good Luck getting Gaile to come comment on why the AB maps havent been updated since Factions preview or why the AB Kurzick to Luxon Ratio for either side can be completely skewed by guest invites. The real concerns of AB have never been addressed....I posted about it & we got an AB weekend & an update to Faction workings. Leeching....man Its not even a problem. btw Its Grenz Its about a 50 to 1 ratio right now.

Well, i think the only solution to this is organized groups, that way you remove the the random player factor.

I remember AB's when in beta were groups of 12, which i think was allot better, but broke the skill mech's at the same time, if you could combine groups to 8/12 before entering but still keep a 4/4/4 setup it would drop the ratio of leechers, or at least you would find out if someone is leeching or afk/brb.

Sadly thou i don't think AB will get a change.

Hmmm.

Around 3 weeks ago, I got a call that my mother-in-law had a stroke and was in ICU, in mid-game. The phone call lasted about 30 minutes, in total, as I was on the phone with my wife, waiting for her to arrive, and together we would leave for the hospital.

I apologize. During the conversation in which I was nervously wondering if my MIL would live through the night, I selfishly made GW suddenly my second priority, and somehow finishing, typing, quitting, etc... became of lesser importance.

My bad. How terribly inconsiderate of me. We'll all try terribly not to let things like sudden death and tragic accidents interrupt your GW experience.

Nice to hear, though, that from your point of view, as an otherwise long-time, upstanding, exemplary member, I should have returned home from the hospital to find myself banned, along with the ton of other crap placed suddenly atop me. Lucky me, that there are kind-hearted souls like you ;-)

/unsigned

They can't ban or punish people for leeching, as standing around doing nothing isn't against the rules.

No rewards for losing wouldn't really help, as you can still win with one man down, for all you know, the other team might have one too.

The only solution I can think of is to have the players talk to a NPC after a battle to get a reward or something like that.

A solution could be an image with a short random word or code that you have to enter in a text box in order to join. Similar to the anti bot protections some websites use.

This will instantly disable any button click macro's. You can still leech manually, but if done manually you can rather play the mission to have a better chance of winning. I think this will fix the whole problem. And players with 'heart attacks' while playing aspenwood will not get banned for afking.

Having to put that in each time would be annoying, and bots can get around those things anyway.

Sadly, I don't think leeching can be detected by coding. Most people just load into the map and stand at the spawn point, but others are rather more cunning about it.

There is however quite an easy method for solving the problem.

Day 1: Advert in local paper. "Local computer games company has game policing position - 2 Month contract - Minimum Wage". Read as summer-job for high-school chess club captain.

Day 8: Interview some candidates, explain what the job is about.

Day10: New employee starts playing FA/AB, every time he spots a likely leecher, he notes the time/map/character then plays the rest of the game as usual. At the end of the day they wander down to their bosses office and present the list. Boss says "Wow, this Xx Leecher Xx character seems to be trying to leech faction in 15 games today. I've no idea how we didn't spot that before"

Day11: Boss spends a little time checking the logs to check that our leeching friend is indeed leeching. Adds them to the banstick list.

Day14(end of week): The temp-banstick is wielded and the people of AB/FA rejoice.

This is simple to solve. Have a function that checks location every 60 seconds or so. If you haven't moved, boom, you get kicked right out of that AB. No faction for you. Right there, that becomes a major pain for leechers as they can no longer just go afk. Will some people be upset that they get kicked because they had to go afk for legit reasons? Yeah but they'll get over it. As long as they're not going afk every other time, it shouldn't be a big issue. If they ARE going afk every other game, well now they'll have to be ready like everyone else when they decide to play. Some may whine but they'll have to learn to suck it up. For those who sit there and move a step or two every now and then to evade being kicked by the timer, add a votekick function if it becomes necessary. Again something that might be abused somewhat, but it's a better option than we have now, which is being able to do absolutely nothing.

VOtekick will get abused, teams of "kurzicks entering on a luxon invite, sabotaging players from the luxon side to give wins to kurzicks. Nah can't do.

Leechers are a very difficult problem, like "(rage)quitting" in RA.

You mean, unlike WTB WTS spam which only affects people in a district? When i play PvE spamming in no way decreases my ability to find a group and get "help". I use party window, and find groups if possible, or by other means. We get out to instanced zone and have fun.
Leeching on the other hand makes the game UNPLAYABLE. Sure, i can chat in district without spam, but oh wait, isnt the point of the game playing instead of chatting? Chatting is just a side-effect. People who only want to chat use MSN ICQ Skype or whatever is popular nowdays.

Seriously, i cannot believe in my wildest dreams that someone like you would come up with an argument such as "..it's only bad in mission and pvp area". And what is outside of missions and pvp areas? Nothing. People leech missions, they leech pvp areas etc.

Yup. Im actually not annoyed that much if someone leeches one game. OK. It sucks, but i can live with it. What im annoyed with is when the same people leech whole day, week, months. I can name some, but it's forbidden and besides ANet wouldnt do anything. Now, i dont even have to wait for timer to run out to see who is leeching, i login, see the name of a guy(s), sigh, and leave.

Im sorry, come again?

You do understand that WTB WTS spam *only* impacts the group in that district which is spammed, and it's usually one of the few game towns. Considering that i dont linger in those game towns, WTB WTS spam is totally irrelevant to me, just as leeching is irrelevant to you.

Let's be blunt. Your comment shows you know nothing about leechers but you do like having an opinion about it. I suggest you go to YouTube, search for "Talking to Americans", to see how it looks like when people talk about stuff they know nothing of.

To the audience: you CANT leave if you dont like it. Why? Because almost every game has at least 1 leecher. What am i supposed to do, restart a game all the time? What if i said that PvE missions needs to be re-entered 10x each time? Would that be ok? Of course not, everyone would complain and say it's silly. But when someone says login 10x to PvP, that's suddenly ok because hey, it's not you playing there so who cares.

Another person who has no clue about the issue. See above.

1) You cant resign regroup, leechers are in 95%+ groups.
2) Making their name known solves.. what? It's not like they need your promision to leech, they just hit Enter Mission button.
3) Spare me.

And those methods are...? Come on Sherlock, tell us.

Of course one should ban people for doing idiotic things. That's how life works. In real life you get either beaten on the street if u do idiotic things, or you get put into mental institution, or you get put into prison. Or you're left to dig channels with a shovel while others go to cinemas.

Let me get this straight, you're saying none should be banned in GW, not even bots, because then there would be no people in GW? Wow incredible, well guess what, bots and leechers dont contribute to the gameplay anyway.

To someone who doesnt play the game where people leech, it's entirely possible that these people are ..lagging, emergencing, scratching their n*** or digging their nose

To people who do play with leechers, it's quite obvious when you see a guy named "Leeching for Faction", standing idle at spawn, that he is really leeching for faction. You know what i mean?

Fort Aspenwood
Alliance Battles
Random Arena (when they used to leech for balth faction but less so because they moved)
PvE missions where players go AFK waiting for others to do the mission, and you can't kick them, so you either have to do the mission for them, or restart which is tedious. Yes i play the whole game so im well aware of problems everywhere


Yes you're right, not a lot of people are annoyed with leeching to make a difference. Still it's nice to see that design team had time to make "cancel button" in last update. If someone can tell me how huge was a GW population which wanted that button, i'd appreciate it..

Yes, I know, and that's what I meant.. but it's still a better option than having 2 or 3 leechers cost an entire team a match, and knowing they get their faction either way. Something should be done about this, and that's the best idea I can come up with. Votekick gets abused by some bad apples in any game, but ya know what, it's better than having no option at all. I speak from experience on that. If anyone has better ideas, feel free to share them. Taking away faction for losing will cause another uproar because people will yet again be slowed in gaining their titles. Keep that in mind.

And I hope this discussion doesn't take away from the fact that the spam initiative was nothing but a great thing for this game. Anet deserves credit for that, and I'll give credit where it's due. That was a problem I didn't think I'd ever see addressed.

First I agree you but anet doesnt care people hardware problem cause once some guys account stolen buy a malware and they told him that we should be responsible(they gave his account after a week or two).

Second if its only a hardware problem the guy would dissconnect everytime cause those leechers are allways entering another party and continue leeching. And they do absulutely nothing. They absulutely nothing to people scam. They absulutely do nothing to bots. They absulutely do nothing to leeching. They absulutely do nothing to people buying gold(I know this cause once in allience chat someone talked alot about this and some people bought gold with him and they werent banned or anything.)

Besides the leechers I've been noticing alot of people getting disconnected before the battle begins. Sabatage? I dunno, but with those and adding in the leechers doing FA has become a waste of time.

I'm glad they added faction rewards for kills in pve. Maybe this was a way to gives those who want faction, but don't want to deal with the bs of AB and FA, another choice.

I made my choice, I go out wit a full party and get more faction then before and have less headaches from all the abuse thats been going on since its creation.

Man the suggestion to define leeching by skills used will really all the kids who just c space 1 through the game...

On the US servers during the day leeching is not so much of a problem as early dropping.

The people who mid match that leech most of the time will talk, and just stop trying due to inept teams. Like breaking down the green in on the Kurizick side then seeing none of your team try to enter and instead almost all be off trying to kill the other team instead of winning. Or in AvA when your team does not understand capping at all.

It is more of a salvage the time you wasted because your group sucked thing, rather than just enter and walk away.

Spamming is easy to see and react to, but leeching is a little more difficult. I think if a player has not moved for a specified amount of time that player gets no reward at the end. It would also be nice if an NPC of the same type takes the place of the leeching player and follows the group leader. I know the first suggestion is the easier of the 2, but the second would at least give you a full team.

i agree but move the time up - people get important phone calls, the washer floods, anything can happen

Gaile, if you're reading this, can you suggest to the staff the following thing, which proved effective with WTB WTS spam.

So, all im asking is that ANet *addresses* the issue of leeching. On a login screen (similiar to current WTB WTS spam warning) state that leeching is a problem and will result in a ban.

Even without banning anyone at all, even without doing absolutely anything else, i assure you that the number of leechers will drop a lot.

Yes, intimidation works. As you can see, this approach doesn't require ANet resources spent, it doesn't require programming efforts, it doesn't require absolutely anything else. Actually, even to stop people from reporting leeching if you dont intend to actually ban then, you could word the warning message like this:

"Starting missions for the sole purpose of standing idle and thus receiving the benefits earned by others, commonly known as "leeching", is hereby forbidden, and will result in a short temporary ban. Repeated frequent leeching, which practically does not differ from botting, may result in a permanent ban. Players who have to go AFK for a few minutes will not be affected, laggers will not be affected, while players who have to go AFK for a longer period of time are advised to exit mission area since they are in no way contributing to the team in the first place. Leechers are not to be reported in the same way as other offenders are, because they are monitored in a more direct ways to avoid mistakes.

Take out the "team rewards" and only reward players that are "nearby" for enemy kills or whatever distance sounds good. Give a team (group of 4) points when one of thier members capture a control point. Do away with the xxx points even if you lose...let it be only points that you earned...

Wait, did your mother-in-law have a stroke, or you? What exactly prevented you from exiting the mission area or closing down GW?

Or, if you were in a state of shock, wouldn't 3day ban help you to get to your senses? I mean, if you're in a state of shock and cannot play GW, im sure you won't even notice 3day ban.

Gaile, trust me, when people see your login window msg that "spamming results in ban", over 50% of them will stop spamming even if they did not hear anyone being banned. Why? Because people have too much stuff on their characters to be able to afford ban. And those who don't they don't really leech.

So anyway, my point is that taking a firm stance (like with spam), the problem will solve quite a lot.

I am strongly against artificial solutions such as these, because they simply don't work. What if im a monk bonder on purple and my whole team is killing on orange? Basically, i get no rewards, even though im doing 50% of the work.

The first step for leeching is ***addressing*** the issue. And stop listening to leechers in this thread. Just look how many people fear anti-leeching methods in this thread. Why? Yea i wonder why, really. Sometimes i go afk for 2min, yet i don't have a fear. Why do they fear then?

Ya know what, he's right. Just the notice about spamming has shifted about 95% of people to the trade channel. I've said this about other games in the past, but the threat of consequences is a deterrent in itself. This proves it. I still think there need to be consequences instituted to make sure that any rule is taken seriously, but just a threat of consequences will have more of an impact than most people think. Those trade spammers didn't need to sit around and make sure people were being held responsible. When the message being sent is that nobody is watching, the inmates run the asylum. Something as simple as saying "We're watching" changes everything.

to the OP: how do you define leeching? (I'm personally interested and the question is also rethoric since I think this is not as easy at it seems to define)

1) Bad idea. I can get lag spikes where I cant move or press any skill buttons for over 5 minutes at a time, so I should get penalised because either my internet connection or Anets servers bugger up?

How to fix leeching - Play with a guild group or with your friends.

2) So if you go into RA and get a team of four monks / four mesmers, or if someone else rage quits first, you should be penalised?

These are stupidly lame suggestions to be added to the game. Right now, RA is the only thing left in the game that im playing and enjoy. Yes I do rage quit, if I end up in a group I doubt is going to have any chance of scoring a 10 win victory.

Yesterday I tried a new approach, I would stay for the first full round regardless of whether or not we won. I would leave after winning if the team did not have a monk, giving them the chance to get one, or would leave if our group was clearly losing (e.g. no one using res signets). However, this takes too much time when I am trying to grind 6 more glads for Glad rank 3.

In a first person shooter I play there's this system where players take damage for camping, was wondering if something similar could be done,for example a player being kicked out of the game when inactive for more than 3 mins during an AB match or the missions like aspenwood/jade quarry, your thoughts about it.

- Ganni

Just a bit of a note: Please stay on-topic. It's pointless to debate 10 issues in one thread because it reduces the chance of any of em being solved. Quitting , griefing etc belongs to another thread. Artificial solutions to leeching belong to another thread. Thank you.

I already defined it in the above post

I'll repeat though:
Leeching: "Starting missions for the sole purpose/intention of standing idle and thus receiving the benefits earned by others".

Please note: running around and doing nothing is not leeching. It can be griefing, yes, but it's not how i would define leeching. I don't think we should go to very broad definitions of leeching at this point. If we get rid of the most narrow aspect, we've done a lot. The main point of leeching is that you're roleplaying a bot. You press Enter Mission and go afk or do a macro which does the same. Essentially, you're a bot. You don't do anything yourself, yet you reap the benefits.

I'm sorry but no.

Do you know what Fort Aspenwood is? what Alliance Battles are? these are the places leeching affects most. How exactly do you play with a guild group or your friends in a CM that takes 8 people selected at random? how do you make sure that the other teams in AB take full guild groups?

Taking a full guild group or friends may work in PvE missions but it isnt going to solve everything leeching affects.


Leeching needs to be taken a look at instead of being tossed aside as something " unsportsmanlike,irritating but deal with it".

Hi guys, i had a thought about an auto-AFK addition to the game (which im sure is old hat, but i cant find the old suggestion thread) and wondered if it could then also maybe go some way towards helping the leeching problem that you are facing?

Feel free to add comments and/or agreement/disagreement of the idea itself on the thread.

Auto-AFK after x mins (possible solution to leechers?)

Basically if there are no inputs from you after x mins (say 1 or 2 mins) then you are flagged as 'away' in your status.
When you input again, you are auto flagged back to 'online'.

Using this concept and tweaking the faction gained (in fact you could do it with exp and gold and all rewards as well...) so that reward gained simply adds a condition to the code argument -

IF 'status = away' THEN 'reward' = zero

Its less of an aggressive method ie wont kick/ban etc, but remove the incentive to leech..?
Cheers

one of the common problems with leachers in missions, is that the group can't resign as long as the leacher doesn't.... ending a mission if everyone but one player enters resign, will allow the groups to end the mission, kick a leacher, and pick up someone new.

allowing a group to resign when a leacher still refuse's too, should take care of it everywhere it happens in PvE missions... apsenwood and AB are the only places that would still be bad with them, if kick voteing is out of the question, then a no faction voteing is about the only other idea i think could have an impact in these area's.

You shouldn't be criticizing anyone's ideas when this is your solution:

If you have something real to contribute, then go ahead, but until you do, I don't see what gives you the right to call anyone else's ideas stupid. At least most of the other people here are actually trying to contribute to a solution.

Personally, I want a votekick option. If implemented correctly it would not be possible to overabuse. However, Gaile has already said that idea is off the table.

So how about this? If a player is idle (no movement and no skills used) for X minutes in AB/JQ/FA they are kicked back to the lobby area and their accumulated Balt/Kurzick/Luxon faction is reset to 0. (Not the title, just the unspent faction in the first Hero window.) I think this is fair. No need for bans. Bans are overkill for something like this anyways. Just remove the rewards for bad behavior.

I don't know how hard this would be to code into the system. If it isn't too difficult it sounds like it could be the ideal solution. No need to pay an extra employee to monitor the battles. It's all automated.

Now for the rebuttals:
1. "No fair! What if I have an emergency!?" - This isn't a ban. All you lose is what you would have gained from the battle. Perhaps instead of wiping Balt faction, the penalty is instead -5,000 Balt faction. That way someone with a lot of accumulated faction saved up wouldn't be tremendously hurt. If you have a true emergency you can exit the game quickly and deal with the problem. If the problem is soo severe that you have no time to exit then losing faction should be the least of your concerns.

2. "No fair!! I was lagging and couldn't do anything!!" Ok, from my perspective as a fellow teammate, laggers ruin my team just as much as leechers. If your connection is so bad that you are always lagging then you should really think about upgrading your PC/Connection before trying to participate in PvP activities.

3. "You're just gonna turn people away from the game with unnecessary punishments, you Nazi!" - Actually leechers have driven away a lot of players from AB and FA. If we solve the leecher issue, some players will return to these areas.

about the auto kick, i do not agree, at least for certainly not in PvE environment. He my heroes and henchies can wait, they even seem to like it, ebing able to do their own thing.

Lag spikes can be pretty serious, i never have it very long, but it can go over a minute.

How to solve it? Rate people? SO they dont get access in groups. That works only for AB, RA and FA are solo access, so no option, then a human cop only remains. And who is gonna check him for powerabuse? I think they are and remain a problem. In missions u can turn back and dump the guy, In AB u dump em after the battle, RA and FA are just lost cases, enter try again.