Trick-or-Treat Leeches

[Bionic_Flea]

28 minutes ago, Ghost said:

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!

 

Oh, yeah?

 

It's on Ghost boy!

 

Cue fight music:

 

Come at me Bro!

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Bionic_Flea

[Ghost]

9 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

Oh, yeah?

 

It's on Ghost boy!

 

Cue fight music:

 

 

Come at me Bro!

 

Wait.  I was hacked.  I was talking about a different flea.  I’m on medication.

 

I sorry 😞 

[Skyhawke]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

 

 

 

Next costume set, please!

 

[Herah]

On 11/4/2023 at 12:02 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

why don't people play red side?

 

I did once this season. I wouldn't be against doing it more often Redside (or other zones). Until it gets a little more customary, it'll be difficult to fill to decent size. Again, because we've always done it in PI.

 

On 11/4/2023 at 6:31 AM, GM Crumpet said:

I know debt badges don't earn themselves

 

No, they sure don't. But I am trying my damndest. I aspire to a level of debt heretofore unseen. 

 

For me it boils down to one thing, at the core. Taking and never giving. Whether that is standing there not actively participating or coming only for what you need and not contributing back. And for that reason, I'm out.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 11/4/2023 at 8:58 AM, Shred Monkey said:

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.

One gets Mod intervention, one doesn't.   You know which one does.

[Clave Dark 5]

14 hours ago, tidge said:

Those characters (multi-boxing?) would have gotten better XP and drops by simply going into the AE and running a farm.

 

Probably true, but it didn't stop them, did it?  Presumably multi-boxing and then going AFK (much like Ada campers) is more convenient because you can do it when you're asleep or at work, whatever.  Free leveling and drops for literally nothing, not even having to be there to click and restart your AE farm arc.  Why not do both then?

 

I doubt that henchmen from an "AFK MM" are specifically shifting attention to focus fire on elite bosses.

 

As I just said, they just shoot at whatever stands nearby, which could include bosses, I dunno how you misread that.  I know you've played MMs so this should be self evident to you.

 

I don't think it is possible to demonstrate regular "XP harm", even if it is possible to imagine "hypothetical XP harm."

 

I could turn that around (not possible to prove it either way), but fair point.  How about those drops though, recipes?  The occasional purple?  I am still offering again to come shadow you through your game play to demonstrate this effect but sadly no one's taking the suggestion!  😃

 

 so this feels to me like a "get away from my always-restocked fishing hole" situation.

 

Well... maybe don't skip over issues I've covered above (again) and you might have a better understanding of the viewpoint.

 

[srmalloy]

15 hours ago, Jetpack said:

This sounds like North Carolina as well.

Or like Alaska, except that there they've figured out how to capture the mosquitoes and use them like helicopters to airlift supplies to remote communities...

[Skyhawke]

Just have Manticore pop out a random door, yell "Get the hell offa my lawn!" and insta kill everyone with Rain of Arrows. Afterwards, all doors in that area cease to work for 20 minutes because he called his neighbors and told them to turn their porch lights off.

 

Leagues have to keep moving, AFKers are left dead on the sidewalk (while Manticore smiles as he drinks his coffee),  MMs just hanging out from afar lose their gravy train, it adds a sense of suspense/danger and the event becomes more dynamic.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Skyhawke

[Crysis]

On 10/29/2023 at 4:45 PM, SquidVicious said:

Trick-or-Treat is a fun event. It helps foster some genuine comradery, some fun banter, lots of interesting costumes and of course, XP and loot! For the most part, it brings the community together and is a fun time for all. However, some folks really aren't obeying the spirit of the law, if you'll forgive the pun.

 

So, of course any time one can find a way to get something for nothing someone will try. Case in point: Halloween leeches. These come in a variety of forms - Those that join a team or league and simply sponge while mostly or completely AFK for instance.  There's one guy, who has been reported multiple times, who is on, presumably, 24 hours a day (I play A LOT) and he is always in the corner of the motel in PI. Sometimes he is auto running, always activating powers the . He's clearly not playing the game as intended. Then there are the Masterminds that just stand or hover in the middle of the parking lot or toward one of the sides or corners where the biggest spawns occur. Their minions run around grabbing aggro and casting subtraction on everything.

 

Why does this matter? Trick-or-Treat involves one simple mechanic: click a door. Anyone not clicking a door isn't really participating. The 1st type of leech is easiest to cure; you simply kick them from your team or league. The other two types are more difficult to deal with. Someone AFK scripting and hanging on 24 hours a day shouldn't be that hard to notice and ban. Yet in the case I have mentioned, after multiple reports by multiple people, the character is still there.

 

As for the MMs, again, they are not actively participating in the single mechanic of ToT and yet they are reaping the benefits of everyone else's efforts. Not to mention the MM pets can clog doorways making it difficult to move around and can actively prevent you from clicking a door, again the sole mechanic.

 

I have a very simple suggestion to remedy this. As simple as the solution is, it may be difficult to implement. I have no experience coding for CoH so couldn't tell you. My suggestion, however, is this: if you, a teammate or league-mate did not click the door, the spawns don't give you XP or inf. This encourages everyone to actually Trick-or-Treat and prevents mechanics abuse. 

 

I've been doing solo ToT today to see how bad my XP took a hit. The fact is, it didn't. In fact, I have been on some teams where it took over an hour to gain a single level. Today I can easily get 2 in an hour; keeping in mind these are level 50 characters I am referencing. So, clearly, it isn't forcing anyone to team in order to participate. I believe CoH is at its best when it brings the community together. Hopefully the few bad actors I have run into could be encouraged to join in the fun of actively participating in the wonderful event with this change. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

 

I won’t say who as it was actually several, but I repeatedly watched “leechers” standing around by the terminal directly opposite the entrance to the apartment complex.  They were close enough to earn XP, but far enough away to stay out of the melee.  Pure leeching.  I’m assuming most were alts to others actively playing in the TOT league as a couple showed up in my Global Friends as new alts while their owner also showed up on their primary accounts as being in-zone on a team of 8.

 

But more than a few times, I watched “leechers justice” kick in when people would deliberately pull aggro onto the leechers from either nearby street trash and/or (more often) directly from the apartment spawns.  It was clear to see the leechers weren’t actively played as they’d just die and their bodies would lie there for some time before the account owner came back and rezzed them at the nearby hospital.

 

Leeching has always been part of this game, door-sitting or otherwise.  I even see it in the Hive during Hami raids or the RWZ raids.  Leechers gonna leech.

[tidge]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I don't think it is possible to demonstrate regular "XP harm", even if it is possible to imagine "hypothetical XP harm."

 

I could turn that around (not possible to prove it either way), but fair point.  How about those drops though, recipes?  The occasional purple?  I am still offering again to come shadow you through your game play to demonstrate this effect but sadly no one's taking the suggestion!  😃

 

 so this feels to me like a "get away from my always-restocked fishing hole" situation.

 

Well... maybe don't skip over issues I've covered above (again) and you might have a better understanding of the viewpoint.

 

"Shadowing" me in open world zones is going to have a negligible effect on "occasional purple recipe drops". I can't think of a single time when I've gotten a Purple (or PVP) from open-world defeats. I fight a large number of even-con critters when cleaning up Kings Row and Croatoa too. Most of those spawns are minions, so if you want to go ahead and clean them up for me (and reset the events) don't wait... just go and defeat them yourself please! Set yourself up as a multi-box in those spawn areas (pick Grim Vale in Croatoa) to get that "AFK feeling".

 

Nearly all my Purple/PVP drops come from running solo missions at x8, with occasional (PVP) drops from low-level teamups. My crude estimates are that it takes about one hour of "defeating all"  (solo) fully-stocked (x8) 'regular' missions to have a 50-50 chance of getting a Purple (or a PVP) recipe. I mention this because while (actively!) playing in a PI league I get very few recipe drops relative to what I get solo even when there are no 'leechers'. I saw someone say they got a Purple Drop, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility... but such a drop is already highly improbable.

 

The demand for actions seem to come from a place of entitlement, I'm not skipping over any rationalization; I am recognizing that this level of upset from "X is more entitled to fight enemies at spot N than anybody else."

 

If the ToT leagues would move to different places these "issues" wouldn't exist.

[Clave Dark 5]

25 minutes ago, tidge said:

"Shadowing" me in open world zones is going to have a negligible effect on "occasional purple recipe drops". I can't think of a single time when I've gotten a Purple (or PVP) from open-world defeats.

 

You're deflecting from what I'm saying.  I never said "open world."  As I've detailed before, please call me next time you start a mission - farm, story arc, AE mission, etc. - and let me come along, I can bring an MM.  Pretend you can't get rid of me while I stand around with my pets set for Aggressive, maybe I'll auto fire a heal or something...  You won't do this of course because that's allowing me to reap from some of what you sow, or "leeching."

 

Nearly all my Purple/PVP drops come from...

 

Doesn't matter here.  I do get them once in awhile from ToT activity, meaning leechers do too, from the work I and other players are putting into the game

 

If the ToT leagues would move to different places these "issues" wouldn't exist.

 

Oh those dismissive quotes!  😄  How many did you use in this post?   Anyway, we already know the Mods frown on leeching (which you seem to keep ignoring) so that's not "quote-worthy."  One final time, why should I or anyone else have to alter my play to stop a bad actor?  They're the ones who should have to alter their play, not us.

That's all from me on this topic, see y'all next year!

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, tidge said:

If the ToT leagues would move to different places these "issues" wouldn't exist.

The ToT league(s) in PI fixate on the murder motel because it's a nice, tight cluster of doors, and members don't have to move around much between the doors. Because of the layout of PI, it's the only place in the zone for this; if you want to ToT in the other areas of the zone, you're moving around an extended area due to the paucity of doors — the brownstones have the closest array of doors, but you're still moving down a row with only a sprinkling of doors as you work back to the start. Kallisti Wharf has clusters of buildings to use, along with several buildings that have enough doors that you can just work your way around the building again and again. Elsewhere, except in Grandville, you have to worry about outleveling the zone, which cuts off XP and forces you to go to another zone. So the PI murder motel became what it is because it's the most efficient ToT location in PI.

[tidge]

10 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

You're deflecting from what I'm saying.  I never said "open world."  As I've detailed before, please call me next time you start a mission - farm, story arc, AE mission, etc. - and let me come along, I can bring an MM.  Pretend you can't get rid of me while I stand around with my pets set for Aggressive, maybe I'll auto fire a heal or something...  You won't do this of course because that's allowing me to reap from some of what you sow, or "leeching."

 

If in invite a player on a mission arc, which is giving me pretty much all the agency... which is not nearly as applicable to what the title of this thread implies. But hey, if the MM wants to join an Aaron Thiery arc and knock out cell doors to help me get doorbuster they are welcome!

[Ghost]

11 hours ago, tidge said:

 

If in invite a player on a mission arc, which is giving me pretty much all the agency... which is not nearly as applicable to what the title of this thread implies. But hey, if the MM wants to join an Aaron Thiery arc and knock out cell doors to help me get doorbuster they are welcome!

You’re missing the point of what he is offering.

He is saying invite him, so he can do nothing and get rewards, while you do all the work.

Just like the AFK MMs 

 

[tidge]

19 minutes ago, Ghost said:

You’re missing the point of what he is offering.

He is saying invite him, so he can do nothing and get rewards, while you do all the work.

Just like the AFK MMs 

 

 

An AFK MM won't be able to get into a mission and get rewards if I don't invite them. How is this situation analogous to a player that doesn't join a ToT league?

[Ghost]

3 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

An AFK MM won't be able to get into a mission and get rewards if I don't invite them. How is this situation analogous to a player that doesn't join a ToT league?

He is/was saying for you to invite him so you could see how it feels to do all the work, while he gets equal rewards for doing nothing.

It was in response to you seemingly being okay with the AFK MMs doing the same thing (minus the invite).

[tidge]

If a player is following a team into missions, then they literally are not being AFK. It is a mental stretch to equate a team member not contributing in every mission (and somehow getting into all of them) with the behavior attributed to MMs parking henchmen in the PI parking lot.

[Ghost]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

If a player is following a team into missions, then they literally are not being AFK. It is a mental stretch to equate a team member not contributing in every mission (and somehow getting into all of them) with the behavior attributed to MMs parking henchmen in the PI parking lot.

Not sure why you are struggling to understand his point.

Quit focusing on the AFK part.  It’s the part about NOT CONTRIBUTING that he is referencing.

 

He is saying that since you are OK with people earning rewards for no effort, you should have no problem with him joining your team.  You do all the work, while he sits back and reaps the benefits.

 

 

[tidge]

55 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Not sure why you are struggling to understand his point.

Quit focusing on the AFK part.  It’s the part about NOT CONTRIBUTING that he is referencing.

 

He is saying that since you are OK with people earning rewards for no effort, you should have no problem with him joining your team.  You do all the work, while he sits back and reaps the benefits.

 

 

The thread title isn't about players not contributing to teams it is about ToT leeching. These are not the same, as described in this thread.

[roleki]

Or, everyone could tuck away their delicate sensibilities, accept that not everything in life can be exactly as we want it to be, and trudge forward like we always have despite the crippling unfairness of sometimes having to suffer only 1.98x XP.