Taming Leaching

[Krimson]

If you are in an MSR and not getting any decent returns, nothing stops you from leaving and finding something more productive.

[Excraft]

On 6/10/2024 at 2:55 PM, MsSmart said:

This post is to solicit suggestions, on how to curve the leaching.

 

If this is a concern for you, form your own teams and set expectations for everyone on the team on how you're going to run the team.  Problem solved. 

[FupDup]

I came into this thread expecting complaints about actual leeching, like people who go AFK and set a T1 attack to auto-cast and auto-follow the tanker or something. 

 

Joining teams within the accepted level range, like level 35's joining an ITF, is not leeching. Admittedly a sub-50 might not be able to do much damage if the enemies are level 54, but that's not the same as purposefully not contributing. 

Edited June 11 by FupDup

[Krimson]

11 minutes ago, FupDup said:

I came into this thread expecting complaints about actual leeching, like people who go AFK and set a T1 attack to auto-cast and auto-follow the tanker or something. 

 

Joining teams within the accepted level range, like level 35's joining an ITF, is not leeching. Admittedly a sub-50 might not be able to do much damage if the enemies are level 54, but that's not the same as purposefully not contributing. 

A while ago, even instanced MSRs were modified to allow players of all levels to join, and some players are bent out of shape over it. For some reason, those same players don't want to form their own leagues, they want someone ELSE to do it for them.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

No one speed-runs SBB nor farms it, so they must have been doing something right  ha ha  😃  (here come the downvotes again; go ahead Cyberdroid, I'm sure you'll feel better afterwards) AFAIK, no one's speed-running the new Striga missions either, which fall in the low 20s range, although of course SBB have a better reward.

 

Well, can't really speed run an SBB

 

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

SBB tops off your level at what is it 35?  You must be at least 15, but no higher than 35, or it restricts you down; your plethora of IO sets will still have their effect of course, but your nuke and Scorpion Shield and Incarnates grey out.  Playing under these conditions means you have to have a better idea of how to play your partial build.

 

15-50 in the lfg, but wiki says 15-29

 

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

But they do get speed-run, their structure's still pretty primitive that just sort of opens up the door and say s "go have fun kids!" and let's that one guy with Stealth zip to the end, TP everyone and kill the one target in a minute.  It's basically farming them too, where lowbies can stand around doing little other than leeching (although usually by consent in both places; consent was OPs real point right?). Maybe we need to aim for shorter, smaller mission maps overall instead of bigger maps of kill-alls or something?

 

Heck. There have been plenty of times when I was on a tf that turned out to be a speed run that we could barely get in the door before someone stealthed the mission to completion.

 

The "kill alls" are there to stop the speed runs.

 

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I've wandered off topic here a bit, I haven't had my coffee yet.   I'm sure this clarified nothing ha ha 

 

All good, enjoy your coffee.

 

Sounds good. Maybe I should go get some myself.

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

And if you aren't the team leader? Then you can try politely (as best you can manage) asking the individual to contribute, join the fight, or whatever. And if they still don't and the team leader doesn't kick them? Then either accept it and try to ignore them or quit the team and join/form another.

 

I ask and then quit if the leeching is acceptable to the team leader. It may very well be one of their alts that isn't even on /follow for some reason.

[biostem]

Not a perfect solution, but I wonder if they could implement some sort of "tags" system, where a team leader can indicate certain characteristics of their team, (such as "Speed running", "Power-leveling", "Farming", "Door-sitters OK", etc).  These would just be informational, but it'd at least give some indication of the team leader's intent.  And if they really want to make it full-featured, players could have the option to filter for or against certain such tags.  The only caveat would be that they may have to provide some recourse if, for instance, a leader set the "Farm" and "Door-sitters OK" tags on, but kicks someone for doing just that...

[Triumphant]

5 hours ago, biostem said:

Not a perfect solution, but I wonder if they could implement some sort of "tags" system, where a team leader can indicate certain characteristics of their team, (such as "Speed running", "Power-leveling", "Farming", "Door-sitters OK", etc).  These would just be informational, but it'd at least give some indication of the team leader's intent.  And if they really want to make it full-featured, players could have the option to filter for or against certain such tags.  The only caveat would be that they may have to provide some recourse if, for instance, a leader set the "Farm" and "Door-sitters OK" tags on, but kicks someone for doing just that...

I like this idea, for the most part, though I don't know it would solve the problem.  Newer players would have to understand what the tags mean.  Experienced players would have to use them, etc.  Anything that has a chance to make communication clearer sounds like a good idea to me, though.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

Bring the old 6-7 level bridge sidekicking system back

that'll show those darned leechers lol

 

Edited June 12 by Saiyajinzoningen
im joking obviously

[Ukase]

On 6/10/2024 at 3:52 PM, Triumphant said:

Right.  If you're running at +4/8, and you can't carry the team on your own (not too hard to do, if you have a well built combat-focused AT), you need to specify that anyone joining needs to be lvl 50+.

In all seriousness, this term you use "well built combat-focused AT" that can carry a team on a +4/8 ITF. 

What do you mean by "carry" ? Are you essentially taking out all the surgeons and managing aggro at the same time? And dispatching with all the npcs while the other 7 are spamming you with Adrenaline Boost, speed boost and fort and overgrowth and fulcrum shift? 

You're right in one respect, if you can't do it, recruit more wisely. But, I like to think my characters are well built and combat focused - but I cannot carry 7 other players in +4/8 ITF - not that I've ever tried. That would so be out of character for me to even do an ITF in the first place at any setting. (I intensely dislike the yelling, but I love the crunch of my mace knocking heads, so turning off the volume isn't an option. I should really use the city modder!)

Can you humor me and just elaborate what you mean by carry, so I don't suffer from inadequacy issues? 

 

[Ukase]

11 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

All good, enjoy your coffee.

 

Sounds good. Maybe I should go get some myself.

Damn, I already had one cup, now I want another! 

[Ukase]

On 6/10/2024 at 4:01 PM, Shin Magmus said:

     Players of any game, will literally always try to find some way to get the most reward for the least effort: this includes "farming" and "leeching".  You could play cat and mouse all day trying to add things to the game to curb this and you'd never actually win.  Can't beat human nature.  It's like they already said, just lead your own teams and kick players who don't meet your standards: you can control who joins your team.

I agree.

Any of you read through the Q & A from the Paragon Studio devs? 
One of them quoted/paraphrased Positron (Matt) as saying players are always going to find a way to get as much as they can with as little time investment as possible. Something like that. 

Lower level players are always going to find a way to get more/faster xp. Higher level players are always going to find a way to get more/faster rewards. If the lower level player with speed boost can help the higher level stone tank who loves granite, then they're going to team up. What's that 10 dollar word...symbiotic? 

Now, I was in one of the fancy, schmancy Instanced MSRs the other day. And a level 2!!!! was in it. My greedy for VG Merits mind said, "Glad they're not on my team!" 

But, you know what - they died at least half a dozen times -which tells me they were trying, at least. (tho, I'm still glad they weren't on my team) 
If I want to run an MSR that's 35 and up, which I've done...the result is you only get about 20-30 players interested. It's enough, but the rewards aren't as good when you have a full league. So, there is an element of symbiosis there in allowing the lower level players, not so much leaching. 

And in the case of MSR - don't kid yourself - there's a number of level 50 players who openly (and proudly) confess to dropping their HVAS, targeting their HVAS and putting an attack on auto fire and coming back 29 minutes later. Are they leaching too? 

There are some ideas in this thread worth looking at and considering. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. 

First - we need to make a choice - do we want to be "City of Options", or "City of Equitable Contribution"? 

(truth be told, we're really City of Procs & Fold Space. Anyone not using both is just doing it poorly. Not wrong, just poorly. I AM KIDDING. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT. Just a joke, folks) 

[Triumphant]

47 minutes ago, Ukase said:

In all seriousness, this term you use "well built combat-focused AT" that can carry a team on a +4/8 ITF. 

What do you mean by "carry" ? Are you essentially taking out all the surgeons and managing aggro at the same time? And dispatching with all the npcs while the other 7 are spamming you with Adrenaline Boost, speed boost and fort and overgrowth and fulcrum shift? 

You're right in one respect, if you can't do it, recruit more wisely. But, I like to think my characters are well built and combat focused - but I cannot carry 7 other players in +4/8 ITF - not that I've ever tried. That would so be out of character for me to even do an ITF in the first place at any setting. (I intensely dislike the yelling, but I love the crunch of my mace knocking heads, so turning off the volume isn't an option. I should really use the city modder!)

Can you humor me and just elaborate what you mean by carry, so I don't suffer from inadequacy issues? 

 

I mean that if you can solo a +4/8 mission chain, there's no reason you can't do it with 7 lower level buddies.

[tidge]

23 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

This. This right here. This is the mistake that's behind 90% of the problems in any relationship. Whether it's a teammate, a boss, or a spouse, stop thinking people already know. They don't. Tell them. Succinctly. No one wants to hear your 20 minute long story about how your neighbor killed a squirrel and how that made you feel. Just say "I don't like it when you do that. Please do this instead."

 

Ever since my neighbor killed those squirrels I've been compelled to click on all the computers at the conclusion to the Penny Yin TF. It's a 20 minute long story, but so is the Penny Yin TF.

 

Slightly more on-topic: I thought of one other in-game example that borders on leeching... On event leagues, I feel like I've occasionally been on teams where the teammates weren't doing enough damage to whatever to get rewards (for example, not enough damage to Halloween banners) and also weren't really helping with damaging spawns for XP/drops such that I felt like I was being held back. Some of this could be play choices, but much of it is simply not having AoE attacks. I know that when I run leagues I try to make sure that the teams have a balance of both DPS and levels to smooth out rewards for everyone.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Again, just because people act badly doesn't mean we have to tolerate and just throw up our hands and do nothing.  Crimes IRL are still punishable by law even though we know people will steal steal, for instance. 

Agreed, but the main question is how do you do that without stepping on/punishing others? Shotgun resolutions are always bad in my experience and implementing something via code is always going to be a shotgun fix to the problem. Make it so players can only sidekick up x number of levels? Then you are punishing players that make new characters but want to run around with their friends/family that don't want to make new characters, unless that 1st player abandons that new character to play a more established one, which may be going against what those players (as in the group running together) want. Enforce mission level minimums? Well, that kills the entire purpose of the sidekick system and brings you back to the previous problem. Reduce awarded xp/inf' by x% based on how much lower level your character is than the team leader? That punishes everyone on the team that isn't at least the team leader's level even if they are only 1 level behind. This is made worse by when they started out the same level but since they had different xp levels, now the newly lower level character is suddenly getting less rewards through no fault of his/her/their own. There is no mass resolution I can see that isn't more punishing the player base than a player that may not be contributing enough in the opinion of another player.

 

And that is another concern. What actually constitutes leeching? I've read posts in this thread that called others leeches because they weren't contributing enough damage. From an Empathy character. (Edit: Admittedly because the Empathy character wasn't using their buffs instead of attacking.) Just because an Empathy player isn't using their buffs does not mean they are leeching. That player may not see the point of their buffs given how the team is performing and may start to use their buffs if the team starts actually needing them. Or the Empathy player may be new to support characters and so not be thinking much about their buffs. Neither of these cases are leeching, at least not to me. The first example is a pragmatic approach, why use powers the team doesn't need? The second example is lack of experience. So what actually constitutes leeching in an objective rather than subjective capacity needs to be established before any resolutions to it can even be drafted. And even if it is objectively defined within the context of the game, it still isn't something that can be remedied without unwarranted consequences via code alteration. So it still comes down to the players resolving the situation themselves when they encounter it.

 

Edited June 12 by Rudra
Edited a few grammatical mistakes.

[Ghost]

Putting too much thought into this.

If you don’t like leachers - don’t keep them on the team.

If you’re not the leader, let the leader know that you won’t be sticking around.  Give them a chance to address the leacher.

 

No need for a “fix” when it’s something you can control.

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I also saw more than one old Dev regretting what AE has become too ha ha

 

Again, just because people act badly doesn't mean we have to tolerate and just throw up our hands and do nothing.  Crimes IRL are still punishable by law even though we know people will steal steal, for instance. 

 

This is a game. In order to keep people paying $15 a month, there was a variety of gameplay options added to grind for things. 

I don't know in what context Matt said "players are always going to find a way to get as much as they can with as little time investment as possible" but to see someone quote that and then start talking about people acting badly is hilarious. What Matt is describing there is a good capitalist. Or simply anyone who values their time. If you're a developer for an MMO and that is some sort of major revelation--maybe you should be working on a more linear, story driven sort of game?

 

Maybe after all these years the solution to the concerns about things like leaching is for a portion of the Homecoming budget to be spent on mailing Xanax to the people who can't seem to let things go.

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Lower level players are always going to find a way to get more/faster xp. Higher level players are always going to find a way to get more/faster rewards.

 

"Always?"

 

You sure about that? Pretty sure there are some holes in those blanket statements...

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Crimes IRL are still punishable by law even though we know people will steal steal, for instance.

 

 

Sitting on your ass and collecting a paycheck isn't criminal activity.  It's not punishable in any way unless said paycheck is a result of fraud or theft, and players who don't participate in team activities to your satisfaction aren't engaging in fraud or theft.  Don't try to equate door-sitting with criminal behavior.  It isn't.

 

And we aren't going to start treating it like criminal activity, either.  There will be no "Work, comrade, or else" policies implemented, there will be no keypress quotas, there will be no thought police patrolling the servers in search of malingerers.  NC is a South Korean company, South Korea is not friendly to communism and I guarantee that they'd yank the license and cram a C&D order up the HC team's collective ass so hard and fast that they wouldn't be able to sit for ten years if there was even a whiff of that kind of nonsense.

 

You have the freedom to not play with people who don't play the way you want them to play.  Take joy in knowing that you have that freedom, and exercise it.  Leave everyone else's freedom alone.

 

[Bionic_Flea]

23 minutes ago, Luminara said:

There will be no "Work, comrade, or else" policies implemented, there will be no keypress quotas, there will be no thought police patrolling the servers in search of malingerers. 

 

MARTY would like a word with you . . .

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/MARTy

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

32 minutes ago, Luminara said:

There will be no "Work, comrade, or else" policies implemented, there will be no keypress quotas, there will be no thought police patrolling the servers in search of malingerers. 

 

MARTY would like a word with you . . .

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/MARTy

Except MARTy is the opposite of what is being discussed. It doesn't look for players not doing enough in the eyes of other players, a purely subjective thing to evaluate. It checks to see if players are doing things that exploit the game to egregious levels. The examples given include impossibilities (to the best of my knowledge) like killing every mob on the entire Perez Park zone map at the same time.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Sitting on your ass and collecting a paycheck isn't criminal activity.

Can confirm!  😁

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

And we aren't going to start treating it like criminal activity, either.  There will be no "Work, comrade, or else" policies implemented, there will be no keypress quotas, there will be no thought police patrolling the servers in search of malingerers.

I agree with you on this.

 

And, after checking my guidelines and rewriting my post about 5 times, I've realized that's probably all that I can say on this.

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

You have the freedom to not play with people who don't play the way you want them to play.  Take joy in knowing that you have that freedom, and exercise it.  Leave everyone else's freedom alone.

Yeah, I really don't understand why so many people spend so much time trying to control what other people are doing. So many suggestion threads essentially boil down to the OP wanting the devs to create a system to force other players to play the way the OP wants them to.

 

[Shin Magmus]

     I think this thread is just going in circles now and will keep looking back around to the "lead your own team, kick people if they're bothering you" part and the "just ignore it" part.  But it definitely seems unlikely that the devs would ever add anything to the game that would be a real system which punishes any level of "leeching", relegating that to something that players police (or ignore), for themselves.

 

     Unrelated, just finished a PUG TF with an Empath with the Medicine pool and 0 set bonuses.  If they had stayed at the doorway the entire time, their level of contribution would've been about the same.  That stuff ends up basically being leeching and I just tolerate that I run TFs a with 6 or 7 people sometimes: c'est la vie.

[biostem]

16 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

finished a PUG TF with an Empath with the Medicine pool and 0 set bonuses

So they weren't buffing or healing anyone else?  They weren't using *any* of their attacks?  Even a level 1 player can contribute "something" if they're willing to put in a little effort...

[Krimson]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

 

Sitting on your ass and collecting a paycheck isn't criminal activity.  It's not punishable in any way unless said paycheck is a result of fraud or theft, and players who don't participate in team activities to your satisfaction aren't engaging in fraud or theft.  Don't try to equate door-sitting with criminal behavior.  It isn't.

 

And we aren't going to start treating it like criminal activity, either.  There will be no "Work, comrade, or else" policies implemented, there will be no keypress quotas, there will be no thought police patrolling the servers in search of malingerers.  NC is a South Korean company, South Korea is not friendly to communism and I guarantee that they'd yank the license and cram a C&D order up the HC team's collective ass so hard and fast that they wouldn't be able to sit for ten years if there was even a whiff of that kind of nonsense.

 

You have the freedom to not play with people who don't play the way you want them to play.  Take joy in knowing that you have that freedom, and exercise it.  Leave everyone else's freedom alone.

 

This is why I solo Giant Monsters. I find the idea of forming a giant league so that players can hold hands and boot stomp Giant Monsters with zero effort to be abhorrent. If I need to be part of a collective to get a badge then I have no business being there.