Trick-or-Treat Leeches

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, GM Crumpet said:

The main problem I think is the motel. If people ToT elsewhere I haven't seen the same problem. Kallisti Wharf does it at a building with 8 doors and there are normally enough players and enemies that moving from door to door doesn't really hurt with the door cooldown too much.

It's a question of laziness; with the murder motel building, all the doors face into the courtyard, so ranged ATs can park in the middle and be able to reach out to spawns from virtually every door.

 

Turn the building around (using the PI building as an example) so that the inside of the 'C' faces the AE building, move the upper level walkway to the outside of the 'C' along with all the doors except for one in the middle of the 'C' (for people parking behind the motel to get inside and to the front), and it's still a tight location with lots of doors, but you have to move around to get all of them — park in the courtyard, which is now facing the AE building, and you've only got the 'back door' to spawn ToT mobs from; it reduces the 'accessible' doors from 16 to 1 for someone parking an AFK MM in the courtyard. With their pets on Aggressive, assuming that there were enough people hitting that one door, they would see their XP drop by more than an order of magnitude, and parking on one of the outside faces would cut the accessible doors by more than half. But for the active players, the experience would change very little, as they're already moving to whichever door is spawning mobs.

[lemming]

Could always turn off the motel doors for next year and see how that works.

[arcane]

10 hours ago, kito said:

Stop nerfing farming and people won't use the event to farm. I agree it's annoying but you tell farmers every patch it's bad to strong the wrong way to play w/e. Then hold massive events that give better rewards more exp and inf and encourage you to make as many alts as posssble so you are always making new low LVL toons who can't help with the event but if you want that particular whatever (btw got up to 80 of them now after however many years playing 🙂 ) or want to LVL fast you can jump into a League and LVL much better then you can in a farm.  

 

Just my two cents. 

Farming is fine. I did hardly anything but fire farm in the month of October and I’m golden.

[Ghost]

11 hours ago, kito said:

Stop nerfing farming and people won't use the event to farm. I agree it's annoying but you tell farmers every patch it's bad to strong the wrong way to play w/e. Then hold massive events that give better rewards more exp and inf and encourage you to make as many alts as posssble so you are always making new low LVL toons who can't help with the event but if you want that particular whatever (btw got up to 80 of them now after however many years playing 🙂 ) or want to LVL fast you can jump into a League and LVL much better then you can in a farm.  

 

Just my two cents. 

Think you may have missed the point.

No one cares about farming the ToT event.  What they care about is uninvited, lazy, selfish people soaking up the XP/Inf without adding anything.

 

Think of it like this - what if you were farming in AE, and everyone who spams “sitter looking for farm” could suddenly join your team, without your approval and without you being able to stop/kick them.  Thus “stealing” from you.

 

Edited November 3, 2023 by Ghost

[Clave Dark 5]

12 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

I think everyone is just used to the motel as it's a convenient spot everyone knows.

I can generally agree with this, but it does fall into the similar "why don't people play red side?" problem, which is that "everyone plays where everyone else does" and trying to make that change is mighty hard.  It's a tradition at this point...

[GM Crumpet]

6 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I can generally agree with this, but it does fall into the similar "why don't people play red side?" problem, which is that "everyone plays where everyone else does" and trying to make that change is mighty hard.  It's a tradition at this point...

I know what you mean. I had so much trouble when I was leading leagues in the Mapserver event. One league, great fun and everyone was having a blast and getting amazing rewards. More than one league, so much lag you'd be lucky to get a couple of bars of XP. Despite me telling new leagues to go elsewhere on the map everyone insisted on staying at the spawn point near the base portal as that's where they zoned in. A soon as I used incan on my league to go to the other side of the map it was awesome again. Eventually with 2 days to go people finally listened, but it was like herding cats for the first few days. Even then, "Everyone concentrate on the GM please" fell on deaf ears half the time. I know debt badges don't earn themselves, but there's a time and a place 🙂

 

[Clave Dark 5]

Jack The R(edacted) one time was leading a league at the hotel and because it was full, I ended up going over to join the KW one, and ended up running that league, while Jack was sending the excess LF ToT'ers to me.  Someone being ready and willing over there would probably help spread out people, but to end up ignoring the hotel?  Man, I dunno...  I guess I'll need to start doing that myself and broadcasting in the LFG channel or something next time.

[tidge]

I held off commenting in this thread until after the event. I'm going to springboard from a recent post, but what I write is not directed at any individual player.

 

19 hours ago, srmalloy said:

It's a question of laziness; with the murder motel building, all the doors face into the courtyard, so ranged ATs can park in the middle and be able to reach out to spawns from virtually every door.

 

I think the tenor of this thread is akin to "someone else is playing in a way I don't like", and while I don't mind folks venting about a set of peeves I don't think there is an actual problem here that needs to be fixed. Bluntly: "XP Leeching", "Kill Stealing", "Drop Stealing", "Door Stealing" barely rise to the level of a thing. It reminds me too much of the early live days of "someone kill stole my 10th 5th Column while I was patrolling Steel Canyon!" complaints. I'll post my own Halloween playstyle preferences later so folks can take shots directly at me.

 

I think there is a case to be made that every character below level 40 that is side-kicked in PI is "XP Leeching" (if anyone believes that is a thing). It's not like those unslotted attacks are doing much for the league, and it is rare that I witnessed freshly-minted  characters training up and taking powers from the Leadership or Teleportation pool to improve the QoL of the higher-level characters who are doing most of the work. I think I had one freshly-minted (i.e. sub-level-50) character this year, but when I am accumulating levels quickly I try to take pool powers to benefit the league/team, because respecs are a thing.

 

I don't AFK while on a league... yet I have trouble imagining that some non-league "AFK Mastermind" is really 'stealing' anything from a league. As an aside: there are any number of shared builds in the MM subforum such that it would be legitimately hard for me to tell if the MM player isn't playing the game differently from how they normally play... especially if the MM player doesn't need or want anything specific from clicking on doors. Any MM that can AFK solo the level 54s at 'Murder Hotel' can do much better (in terms of XP, reward drops, Inf) from other content... so as far as I'm concerned such a player is basically gimping themselves more than they are possibly hurting a league. Is it a MM soloing the minions for badges that has got everyone upset? I know that TRICK spawns can also drop event salvage, but that is already somewhat rare and anyone who damages an enemy gets in the pool for a potential drop. Is it this low-level drops and defeat badges that folks are sweating?

 

My Halloween playstyle:

 

I join PI league with 'fresh' level 50s. I want the prismatic aether badges. I also want a costume so I can get the tip mission. I don't mind anchoring a team and try to make sure when I drop that the team has another level 50. Once I have the badges I want... I don't need a league to get the tip mission (or XP, or drops, or costumes), but if I feel like leaguing I switch to GM hunting. As was written above: it is trivial to have Incadescence once the slot is unlocked. I feel like I was teleporting leagues around PI for the first two weeks of the event!

 

I definitely league for zone events. I've been on banner teams that either weren't capable of doing damage or were otherwise disengaged such that I missed out on banner badges.

 

Most of the time I solo for tip missions. I find it to be too much effort to get a ToT team all on the same page for running the tip (for salvage, badges) and coordinating how to play the mission... if everyone even wants to play it. Depending on the character, when I am soloing doors at x1 I may or may not fight the enemies that result from 'TRICK!'... eventually I'll have enough of them around to want to deal with.

 

I prefer to solo the GMs outside of the high-level zones. I am often finding leftover Unseelie Court in places where I think there is no reason for them to be left behind... but the spawn times are fast enough that (until now) I haven't publicly complained about this level of sloppiness. AFAIK, there is only one commonly used spot that is particularly easy to never aggro an Unseelie spawn, so I don't judge folks on that spot. In order to make sure the entire spawn is cleared: all you have to do is "count to seven" to make sure they are all defeated, and if that is too much effort the pumpkins are a dead giveaway that there is probably a leftover spawn to be dealt with... eventually they come back.

 

As an aside: IIRC, a league member who is on GM patrol can still get credit for "defeat X" (e.g. for prismatic aethers) but won't get XP or reward drops... so are they "leeching" or are they being taken advantage of?

 

 

[srmalloy]

25 minutes ago, tidge said:

Bluntly: "XP Leeching", "Kill Stealing", "Drop Stealing", "Door Stealing" barely rise to the level of a thing.

You're missing the point; the objection is directly over none of these things, and only peripherally over XP leeching. The people parking AFK MMs in the middle of the murder motel are earning XP off the efforts of the other players in the courtyard without contributing. They're earning XP from attacking mobs that would not be there without other players knocking on the doors. Park an MM all by themselves in the middle of the courtyard and go AFK, and they get nothing; there are no spawns for their pets to attack, because no one is knocking on doors.

 

To make an academic analogy, you're part of a team of researchers publishing papers, and your supervisor, who had nothing to do with the research that led to these papers, adds their name to all your papers before they're submitted for publication, and then gets a better job on the basis of all their published papers. Having their name on the papers doesn't diminish your work, but they're 'stealing' reputation that wouldn't be there for them to arrogate to themselves if you weren't doing the work they're getting credit for.

[tidge]

42 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

You're missing the point; the objection is directly over none of these things, and only peripherally over XP leeching. The people parking AFK MMs in the middle of the murder motel are earning XP off the efforts of the other players in the courtyard without contributing. They're earning XP from attacking mobs that would not be there without other players knocking on the doors. Park an MM all by themselves in the middle of the courtyard and go AFK, and they get nothing; there are no spawns for their pets to attack, because no one is knocking on doors.

 

If a players is truly AFK, they will get logged out from the open world zone. Otherwise it can be very hard to tell if the player really is AFK or just playing their MM in a very disengaged way. The MM subforum has no shortage of players recommending against MM powers that require active play. That is: very few attacks, spamming things like Twilight Grasp, etc.

 

My point stands:

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 Any MM that can AFK solo the level 54s at 'Murder Hotel' can do much better (in terms of XP, reward drops, Inf) from other content... so as far as I'm concerned such a player is basically gimping themselves more than they are possibly hurting a league.

 

A disengaged Mastermind is, at best, insta-killing the minions. They won't be directly engaging with the 'highest reward' enemies, certainly not at the level of more active players. XP and Inf is proportional to the amount of damage done. The only thing I see a disengaged (again, can't really call them AFK in an open zone) MM's squad of henchmen impacting might be is the reward drop rate, but AFAIK who gets drops is affected by teams... again AFAIK, drop rates for defeating spawns are spread among team members not by rando damage by a solo player.

 

This hypothetical 'AFK MM' is missing out on GM Merits and TREAT rewards. I don't see this as something to get that upset about. If anything, multiple henchmen have a bigger effect on FPS than on XP.

 

EDIT: Let's not kid ourselves that Murder Motel in Peregrine was chosen because it adds some arbitrary level of difficulty or 'extra engagement' that makes it more deserving of a certain style of play. It's literally the easiest place for teams (with a level 50) to ToT:

• many doors, with easy lines-of-sight
• hospital is right across the street
• it's in a zone that allows 50s (with or without Incarnate powers) to click doors
• It's close to zone travel options (helipad, base portal, to some extent travel from TUNNEL, Ferry, Ouroboros can all be risk free)

 

At some level this feels to me like a complaint that 'someone else is taking advantage of the thing I want to take advantage of'. If the MM really wants to defeat mobs (for better rewards, XP and INF) and be truly AFK the AE is literally just behind the PI motel.

 

Obviously the answer is to move ToTing to a PVP zone, and allow player kills of those who are judged to be playing in a completely inactive way.

Edited November 4, 2023 by tidge
Spirit of the staircase

[Bionic_Flea]

48 minutes ago, tidge said:

If a players is truly AFK, they will get logged out from the open world zone.

 

Not if they are in TF/Ouro/AE mode.

 

And while an AFK MM may not get as much stuff as an active player, they could use multiple accounts to have an MM in each servers' Murder Hotel 24/7, reset on Tuesdays, for the entire event.  Or have an AFK MM at the hotel while they run whatever other content they enjoy.  Or attach a level 1 to their AFK MM while they go to work and find two characters with a bunch of stuff and a brand new level 50 (or close).

 

Personally, I don't care if people do that.  It's technically allowed, so play as you will.  But I do agree that it is lazy and feels like cheating.  If you aren't at the keyboard, you aren't playing, IMO.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Bionic_Flea

[Shred Monkey]

I'd go another direction to solve this.  I'd deactivate the doors at the PI motel.  I might even put the Trick or Treat doors on a longer timer so you benefit greatly from constantly moving.  The goal would be to make trick or treating require active participation and movement around the city.

 

The hard truth is, while AFK-farming isn't playing as intended, I don't think full leagues of players clicking the same handful of doors 24/7 is either.

 

 

[Neiska]

Personally, I'm on the fence on this one.

 

I wouldn't call it stealing, because stealing implies ownership. Leeching would be more appropriate, IMO. And I have nothing against people being on autopilot, I do it myself... when I am playing by myself. I do consider it a bit rude to do so when other people are involved. But on the other hand, it's a public space, not a private one. Which means no one owns it, and anyone can play as they like.

 

There is a difference between being on a private team running missions, and going afk to leech, than park in a public area and going afk to leech. Just because you are in a league or team, doesn't make it "your" area any more than the person leeching can claim ownership.

 

My advice?

1. Use tools already available. Remove leechers from your team/league. If it bothers you that much, you can ban/ignore them, or go do something else. Or possibly wait and see if the leecher gets their due comeuppance. If their minions die.

2. Honestly, I think my free time is far too precious to me and life is far too short for me to fret about what others may or may not be doing in a video game. I have found if I focus on myself, and not what others may or may not be doing, things usually work themselves out, and I don't end up stressing over things I have zero control over in the first place. But that's just me.

[nihilii]

2 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

I'd go another direction to solve this.  I'd deactivate the doors at the PI motel.  I might even put the Trick or Treat doors on a longer timer so you benefit greatly from constantly moving.  The goal would be to make trick or treating require active participation and movement around the city.

 

The hard truth is, while AFK-farming isn't playing as intended, I don't think full leagues of players clicking the same handful of doors 24/7 is either.

This makes sense. Conceptually it's silly for us to bang at the same door every minute (? or whatever the timer is on a single door). And in gameplay terms it's also dumb, it encourages filling up the team or league and staying at the very same spot spamming clicks.

 

It might sound extreme but I'd love to see a 1 hour timer on clicking the same door, to try and see what dynamics emerge.

Intuitively, you'd expect heroes scattering through the whole map.

 

If it turns out to be too much hassle for too little enemies, why not crank up the spawns.

The immobility is basically the bad part here. We see AFKing and leeching because any scenario where you can stand still and have XP bags delivered to you is bound to encourage the lowest level of player activity.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

This makes sense. Conceptually it's silly for us to bang at the same door every minute (? or whatever the timer is on a single door). And in gameplay terms it's also dumb, it encourages filling up the team or league and staying at the very same spot spamming clicks.

 

It might sound extreme but I'd love to see a 1 hour timer on clicking the same door, to try and see what dynamics emerge.

Intuitively, you'd expect heroes scattering through the whole map.

 

If it turns out to be too much hassle for too little enemies, why not crank up the spawns.

The immobility is basically the bad part here. We see AFKing and leeching because any scenario where you can stand still and have XP bags delivered to you is bound to encourage the lowest level of player activity.

In whatever the game it is. WoW had a PvE battle ground thing, and, of course, all you had to be was in there to get the reward if the map was won (because why do more than the minimum lazy coding, amirite?). Guess what happened? People would find little corners of the map away from prying eyes and without mobs to press space every once in a while as they watched netflix.

Your suggestion hits it in the head: increase the timer means groups will move around the map. Will it be one ginormous blob that does not need to move for the next two hours? No. Will this nerf the immense profit drop once people are no longer getting X rewards per SECOND? Yes.

It could be countered with bigger spawns to rebalance the rewards, as you said, but it would still encourage spreading around. Or the blob moving together.

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, nihilii said:

Conceptually it's silly for us to bang at the same door every minute (? or whatever the timer is on a single door).

I think there is a ten-second timer for clicking on any door, and a two-minute timer for clicking on the same door, with the timers being character-specific, so you could theoretically have the entire league click on a door, then move to the next after clearing all the trick spawns.

[Clave Dark 5]

14 hours ago, tidge said:

A disengaged Mastermind is, at best, insta-killing the minions. They won't be directly engaging with the 'highest reward' enemies, certainly not at the level of more active players.

Their pets fire at whatever gets nearby, not only minions.  And please don't characterize this as "how MMs play" in the first place, because you're suggesting every person who plays an MM plays this way (not true), and it's also not a related topic.

 

Now listen: one of the leeches that I kept reporting would often have what I would assume were alt account characters (they were all members of the same SG, all) parked up in the AE building; usually four of them.  My guess is they were on the team with the MM down in the parking lot (who wasn't in league), and were leveling up and catching drops without doing a single thing, while the MM below let his pets do the work.  Meanwhile, I was down there clicking doors and targeting mobs, rezzing others and serving as anchor - even with one of my MMs.  Now tell me who was doing real work and who was leeching.  Exploits are expressly disallowed in the rules.

 

But hey, once again, let me extend an invite, please invite me the next time you play, so that I can tag along behind you to demonstrate what I'm talking about.  😃

[Clave Dark 5]

13 hours ago, Neiska said:

in a public area and going afk to leech. Just because you are in a league or team, doesn't make it "your" area any more than the person leeching can claim ownership.

It's not the space we're worried about, it's the XP and drops.

 

I'd also point out that "go do something and wait for them to be gone" wasn't effective as they were literally always there, unless they'd just been reported and removed.  "Whack-a-mole" and "they always come back" were two ways a mod put it in replies to my reports.

 

I'd be up to see the door timers get extended though, although it's always sad to see the group get smacked in some way because a few bad actors.  I'm not a huge fan of that sort of response, I feel the ones doing the bad things should be the ones to be affected.

[Neiska]

5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It's not the space we're worried about, it's the XP and drops.

 

I'd also point out that "go do something and wait for them to be gone" wasn't effective as they were literally always there, unless they'd just been reported and removed.  "Whack-a-mole" and "they always come back" were two ways a mod put it in replies to my reports.

 

I'd be up to see the door timers get extended though, although it's always sad to see the group get smacked in some way because a few bad actors.  I'm not a huge fan of that sort of response, I feel the ones doing the bad things should be the ones to be affected.

 

Not to downplay your stance, but when playing a large mmo with many different people from all walks of life, you are almost mathematically guaranteed to run into a few people whose playstyle differ from yours or who are "bad" players. Am I excusing it? Not at all. And I am not saying they shouldn't try to fix things either. But this does kind of fall into "them's the breaks." If someone could figure out something that was fair to everyone that didn't unfairly punish others in some way, well they could probably be a systems admin professionally. Unfortunately, most of the fixes are either/or. And if they flip the switch to "off" that unfairly hits everyone, and sort of falls into "this is why we can't have nice things" territory. I mean, what realistic options are there? I confess, I don't have the programming skills to make a guess. It's unfortunate, but that's kind of the nature of the beast. Sometimes we need to overlook the small things. Of all the things on my wish list, fixing this precise thing would be somewhere around #1062. But that's just my take on it.

[Ghost]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It's not the space we're worried about, it's the XP and drops.

 

I'd also point out that "go do something and wait for them to be gone" wasn't effective as they were literally always there, unless they'd just been reported and removed.  "Whack-a-mole" and "they always come back" were two ways a mod put it in replies to my reports.

 

I'd be up to see the door timers get extended though, although it's always sad to see the group get smacked in some way because a few bad actors.  I'm not a huge fan of that sort of response, I feel the ones doing the bad things should be the ones to be affected.

“Whack A Mole” and “They always come back” sounds like something that could be fixed with being kicked out of the game for 1 hour - or you could generic the name and send a message out that it’s now available.  😈

[Bionic_Flea]

Before anyone goes on a crusade to burn the witches that take the form of AFK MMs during Halloween and otherwise labeling them as bad, evil, or whatever other negative adjective one could come up with, it's not against the rules to go AFK, as an MM or as any other AT.

 

While it may not be the case here, there are numerous reasons why someone might go AFK, from getting some obnoxious badges, to real life work, to family emergencies.

 

So I'd prefer if we discussed ways to fix Halloween at the Murder Hotel and not ways to punish AFK MMs.

[srmalloy]

11 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

So I'd prefer if we discussed ways to fix Halloween at the Murder Hotel and not ways to punish AFK MMs.

There's always the nuclear option of razing the murder motel and replacing it with a parking lot, or a warehouse type building with one double or quad door. No murder motel, no league spawning mobs in a tight area from a dozen doors, so no target-rich environment for an AFK MM to park in and take advantage of other players' activities.

[tidge]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Their pets fire at whatever gets nearby, not only minions.  And please don't characterize this as "how MMs play" in the first place, because you're suggesting every person who plays an MM plays this way (not true), and it's also not a related topic.

 

I'm extremely far down the list of believing that there is a single play style for any AT (or player). I personally play a very engaged MM, I witness other MM players who are clearly not AFK but play very differently. For some content, my "most active" MM will become rather passive (zone invasions, mothership raids) because the henchmen AI is better at targeting enemies than I am!

 

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Now listen: one of the leeches that I kept reporting would often have what I would assume were alt account characters (they were all members of the same SG, all) parked up in the AE building; usually four of them.  My guess is they were on the team with the MM down in the parking lot (who wasn't in league), and were leveling up and catching drops without doing a single thing, while the MM below let his pets do the work.  Meanwhile, I was down there clicking doors and targeting mobs, rezzing others and serving as anchor - even with one of my MMs.  Now tell me who was doing real work and who was leeching.  Exploits are expressly disallowed in the rules.

 

Those characters (multi-boxing?) would have gotten better XP and drops by simply going into the AE and running a farm. Even with a single MM's 6 henchmen getting kill credits from Murder Motel spawns, they aren't getting most (or even very much) of the XP... assuming that the players clicking on doors are actually doing damage to the TRICK spawns. The Bosses/Elite Bosses may or may not affect the XP math (compared to a straight AE farm) but I doubt that henchmen from an "AFK MM" are specifically shifting attention to focus fire on elite bosses.

 

This past season I anchored a few teams at the PI motel, and occasionally the XP-per-unit-time was carp... even with everyone on my team clicking doors. I don't think it is possible to demonstrate regular "XP harm", even if it is possible to imagine "hypothetical XP harm." When I regularly see multiple characters in the league gaining 20+ levels in a sitting, I am having a hard time seeing how much any non-league player is actually hurting league players.

 

I understand the feeling that someone else appears to be taking advantage of a situation that some "in-group" of people are already taking advantage of... and so this feels to me like a "get away from my always-restocked fishing hole" situation.

[Jetpack]

On 10/30/2023 at 11:49 AM, srmalloy said:

So are midges in the Scottish highlands; it doesn't mean that I'm happy putting up with them.

 

This sounds like North Carolina as well.

[Ghost]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Before anyone goes on a crusade to burn the witches that take the form of AFK MMs during Halloween and otherwise labeling them as bad, evil, or whatever other negative adjective one could come up with, it's not against the rules to go AFK, as an MM or as any other AT.

 

While it may not be the case here, there are numerous reasons why someone might go AFK, from getting some obnoxious badges, to real life work, to family emergencies.

 

So I'd prefer if we discussed ways to fix Halloween at the Murder Hotel and not ways to punish AFK MMs.

We fix the issue by banning all MMS from the game forever and ever.

Oh, and banning fleas!

Just cause

 

😈😈😈

 

Tommy Doyle (Halloween Kills) : Flea Dies Tonight!

Edited November 5, 2023 by Ghost