The state of AFK Checking and Zone Caps in 2025?

[mechahamham]

People AFKing in outdoor zones, mothership raids, and the like in order to soak up passive rewards is a thing that happens:

 

After all, if it's allowed inside the AE building why wouldn't it be allowed everywhere else?

 

Going into October, AFKers are lining up... okay not lining up, but rolling up in their RVs to Murder Motel so that they and their pets can begin camping out.

 

As much as possible, I try to avoid the Peregrine and Kallisti Trick or Treat leagues for a few reasons, lag and rubberbanding being the largest. (I also like being able to contribute to events, and trying to compete with Judgement blasts set to auto is difficult.) But that's okay because I genuinely enjoy soloing My ToTing. However, having the zone population ballooned out makes trying to do even non-Halloween stuff in Peregrine painful. I'm not sure how having Kallisti populated with real content is going to affect that this year.

 

As mentioned in that CoC I linked, the GMs reserve the right to boot people who go AFK in situations like that. Is anything different being done this year in order to keep the rubberbanding to a minimum?

[Snarky]

i'm not afk.  i am dead.

[Lunar Ronin]

If you want rubber banding to a minimum, play on a shard other than Excelsior.  People have been complaining about massive lag and rubber banding on Excelsior on the City of Heroes sub-Reddit, and... the other shards have been fine.  No lag whatsoever.

[Glacier Peak]

Play on Indomitable, Reunion, Victory, or Torchbearer.

[TauntingMonk]

Devs up to their tricks again trying to get unwanted players off their shard. 

 

[Xalon]

I'll never understand how players can be so lazy in an mmorpg game. It's sad.

Edited yesterday at 12:14 AM by Xalon

[GM Impervium]

3 hours ago, mechahamham said:

As mentioned in that CoC I linked, the GMs reserve the right to boot people who go AFK in situations like that. Is anything different being done this year in order to keep the rubberbanding to a minimum?

This is a bit of a tricky situation, as afk farmers generally aren't doing anything that the base game doesn't allow them to do. However, if someone seems to be multiboxing more than three accounts, or multiboxing at ALL when the server is at three red dots, we would definitely appreciate a ticket detailing the names and globals of all involved so that we can double check, and take action if needed.

As for addressing the lag, that's also a population issue. Even without the AFKers, ToT tends to attract over 100 people at a time to the Murder Motel, all activating powers and killing hundreds of entities at once all in the same place. We've aware of the issue and have been discussing methods to reduce the strain/lag.

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, GM Impervium said:

We've aware of the issue and have been discussing methods to reduce the strain/lag.

I’ve come up with a solution.

No Trick or Treating!

Thats right all you lazy AFKers and players who participate while simultaneously complaining about farmers….no more ToT for you!!!

 

GiantMonster Impervium, you can thank me later.

 

Edited 23 hours ago by Ghost

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, GM Impervium said:

As for addressing the lag, that's also a population issue. Even without the AFKers, ToT tends to attract over 100 people at a time to the Murder Motel, all activating powers and killing hundreds of entities at once all in the same place.

After repeatedly getting door missions across the street from it, I posted a suggestion to turn on ToTing in Dark Astoria so the murder motel there could be used to spread out the mobs at the Peregrine Island site. It wouldn't be as popular, since a) low-level characters would have to be able to make their way across an Incarnate-level zone to get there, and b) it's a fair distance away from the hospital, unlike the 'out the door and across the street' return from the PI hospital, so it would presumably be less heavily-swamped. But I don't know whether the HC staff will be doing it; I'll have to wait and see.

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, GM Impervium said:

This is a bit of a tricky situation, as afk farmers generally aren't doing anything that the base game doesn't allow them to do.

And it's likely way too late to do anything about it this year even if it's considered a sufficiently big problem to warrant addressing, but putting down a block Group Fly suppression field at the murder motels could kill off the 'flying AFK Bots MM' crowd in the middle of the courtyard that I've seen so many complaints about, as the bots would all remain on the ground where they're continually vulnerable to attacks from the ToT mobs, and the AFK MM player could come back to find that their pets have been dead for an hour or more, and they haven't been getting any XP.