AFK-Valley

[Xanthippe]

I've been in games lately where as many as half the alliance players are afk, and even more horde-side.  When only a few afk, it's not a problem, but with this many, it's ridiculous.  At least my battlegroup has < 1 minute queues (some, I've heard, have half-hour queues).

I'm one who actually enjoys AV.  I liked it back with all the mobs, before it became a 20 minute race to the boss.  I like it now, although I tend to defend towers and graveyards more than lead the charge because I get to pvp more that way.  I don't farm it for honor; I enjoy playing it.  I'd play it for no honor.

(I reached exalted in AV on my lock before hitting friendly on any other BG.  My hunter still isn't past honored with any other BG faction, but exalted in AV very quickly).

I can't figure out where Blizzard stands on this.  They're clearly against afk-botting, but the fix for cave-dwelling seems somewhat easy (remove all honor for people who don't leave the cave) - why don't they implement it?

I've asked GMs about it, and their stock response - report cave-dwellers.  I don't, because that means I have to stop playing myself so that i can make a list of who has no honor, no damage, no healing, no captures, no defends, and who haven't moved, and then submit a ticket.  There's no easy way to copy the names-servers over to a ticket, so it's a real pain.

The Blizzard pvp forum is ablaze with complaints and suggestions, but no blue responses. 

I had a point but I've been interrupted so many times writing this that I've forgotten it... just venting now, I guess.

[Trippy]

Maybe somebody should write a mod that makes it easier to report them? Also, why would you go AFK in a Battleground?

[Merusk]

Maybe somebody should write a mod that makes it easier to report them? Also, why would you go AFK in a Battleground?

In AV you get Honor & tokens no matter who wins. The amount you get is determined by the success of your team in capturing certain goals/ killing certain NPCs.   If you're AFK in game the whole time you still get the honor, even if you haven't gotten a kill.   Honor is, as you know, the PVP currency.

Even though Honor & token gear are < arena gear, it's easier to get them while /afk at work or something then pick up stuff to do 'real' pvp later.  It's a pisser and happening in a lot of BGs, which is why I don't bother other than on my twink these days.

[Chimpy]

The original design of AV was great, if a little too big and Korrak was a dumb idea altogether. They ruined the zone when they took out join as group, and the way people play now (if you get a side all playing) to see who can defeat the other side's general first and the "gentleman's agreement" to not contest anything except the final graveyards/generals is dumb as hell.

We used to really piss people off in my alliance guild as 10 of us would all queue up at the same time, and usually get the same AV. Then we would spend the entire time defending the "LET THE HORDE TAKE THAT YOU NOOBS!!!!" graveyards and towers. The matches would last about an hour and a half, but we actually were doing something other than rushing the boss that was more fun and was within the design parameters of the zone.

A friend of mine AFK bots in AV now all the time, because he wants one piece of gear. I think it is stupid, personally, but I think the whole PvP rewards system has been all kinds of borked up in every iteration. People don't PvP for the fun of it, they PvP for the pruplez. Any time it is possible to get those purplez without doing anything but queing up, tabbing out, and turning on your windows script that sends the equivalent of "hit the turn right key" every 20 seconds a lot of people will do that.

[Xanthippe]

The original design of AV was great, if a little too big and Korrak was a dumb idea altogether. They ruined the zone when they took out join as group, and the way people play now (if you get a side all playing) to see who can defeat the other side's general first and the "gentleman's agreement" to not contest anything except the final graveyards/generals is dumb as hell.

I've noticed lately that, of the people who do play, whatever agreement people had to not take Stonehearth graveyard has disappeared when it's not AV weekend.  On my battlegroup, horde is defending more, and alliance is too. It's not just a race.

Maybe they should just take the guards out of the caves so that the other side can farm the AFKs.

[Fordel]

The Original AV design would have been great, if they went ahead with that they originally planned. Having the zone be a open PvP zone for all comers, instead of instancing it. The Original AV was built around a hundred people per side, with everyone spread out doing all the little side quests. It was supposed to be a real zone. Then someone at Blizz HQ realized PvE servers have on average a 2:1 Alliance population advantage and went "quick instance this!". The zone wasn't built for 40 vs 40, and it was reflected in how abysmally long the games were. Things like Land mines didn't make sense in a 40 vs 40 instanced scenario, now in a persistent zone shared by everyone, the time needed to deal with land mines would pay off. All the side quests, the PvE camps etc... they make no sense for something designed to be instanced, but plenty of sense of a 24/7 zone .


As to why Blizz doesn't do anything about the AFK'ers in the cave? They can't. If someone wants to stand in the cave like a douche bag the entire game, as long as they aren't using third party software, it's legit. Just lame. Force them out of the cave, they just move to their general, or to a tower, or to any random out of the way spot in AV. Tether the honour bonus to a certain range and you fuck over the people legitimately defending things or capturing out of the way but vital objectives.

I often stay behind to defend snowfall against that random horde that goes to contest it, the only difference between the AFK Caver and myself is location 90% of the time, but if no one watches snowfall, some horde takes it then the alliance is all rezzing back at Stormpike. Same thing with towers, most of tower defense is standing around waiting, but if no one does it, your team is out 20 honour and has 1 extra Warmaster to deal with.

The best way to remove AFK'ing would be to reduce the cost of the Honour items 10 fold. They just cost *way* to much for what they're worth. 14k honour for some crappy PvP blue armor piece that is practically 'useless' outside of PvP/Arena's. Lets say Average Joe gets 1k honour a night, that's 2-4 AV games, that is roughly 1-2 hours of PvP. Two Hours a night, Two weeks later he gets his shitty item (assuming it uses AV tokens, that's another issue if it needs something like WSG tokens) hurrah! Now he needs another 14k for his next piece. Then again, and again. Average Joe is going to either tell the game to fuck off, or he's going to idle in the cave mashing the jump button every so often while watching Dancing with the Stars on TV.


 

Maybe they should just take the guards out of the caves so that the other side can farm the AFKs.

You can farm them WITH the guards there if your stubborn enough  :-D

[Chenghiz]

AV is broken, as other have said, because the Battleground concept as a whole is broken. People play them not to have fun but because they expect material return on the time they invest, and the time spent is to them simply a barrier between them and the new shiny.

With that mentality of course people are going to avoid spending more of their attention on it than they absolutely must. Why do you think the outdoor PVP objectives in Azeroth never caught on? Because the reward was minimal at best. The time spent versus reward ratio was just too small to satisfy WoW players who have become used to quick gratification.

Note that I'm not saying people should have to get used to working longer to get new stuff but the whole motivation that most people have when playing the game is just wildly off from the reason people play a lot of games - to have fun. I'm not sure that it's possible to work around this in any MMO game where character progression is important. GW was close to the idea but then you have people complaining that there wasn't enough advancement.

[Fordel]

That's it in a nutshell, people are gaming the system. I'm sure the Dev's intended for us to trade towers for tokens with the horde in hellfire 


Little incentive, combined with little reason and less actual fun. The only world PvP objective that might actually be PvP'ed with any regularity is Halaa, because bombing never gets old.  That too has it's issues though, the wonderful 2:1 A/H ratio destroys the fun there pretty quick, at least on my server.


To be fair though, one paradox of the PvP system is while people play it to get the new shiny instead of having fun, you don't really have fun in the PvP system unless you have a fair bit of 'pvp shiny' to wear. Other wise, your just a target. I know my enjoyment goes up several levels when my actions in a BG include things other then "Being Two Shot" and "Farmed for Honor".


ps. In a Nutshell? What does that even mean!

[caladein]

GW was close to the idea but then you have people complaining that there wasn't enough advancement.

Even in Guild Wars you had leeching in the objective-based scenarios. (That said, I liked the GW system where Faction gave you additional breadth, not depth of abilities.) If you allow people to get something for little to no work, they will. With the Veteran's pieces being on-par with anything pre-Prince for PvE it is definitely a case of something very nice for possibly little work.

The thing I don't understand though is the problem some people have with "the shiny" and PvP. Over in what has become the Diablo 3 thread, the important thing they use to differentiate WoW and Diablo is the speed of shiny acquisition. It doesn't make sense that you would want to remove something that people say the game is lacking in the first place though.

[Chenghiz]

The thing I don't understand though is the problem some people have with "the shiny" and PvP. Over in what has become the Diablo 3 thread, the important thing they use to differentiate WoW and Diablo is the speed of shiny acquisition. It doesn't make sense that you would want to remove something that people say the game is lacking in the first place though.

It's not a matter of whether there is shiny or not, it's a matter of whether the shiny compels people to play the game or to play the system. In WoW it compels you to play the system because playing the game isn't fast enough.

[Zetor]

In my battlegroup, people (even high-end arena players) AFK in AV because they believe the outcome is already predetermined and/or they 'hate the battleground'. AV is really the only battleground you can AFK in and get good honor -- if you do the same in WSG/AB/EOTS, your team is going to lose, especially if you have more than one AFKer. And unlike AV, the other battlegrounds don't reward you for losing.

There used to be a way to get rid of AFKers, Blizz patched it out though. :P


-- Z.

[Jayce]

The thing I don't understand though is the problem some people have with "the shiny" and PvP. Over in what has become the Diablo 3 thread, the important thing they use to differentiate WoW and Diablo is the speed of shiny acquisition. It doesn't make sense that you would want to remove something that people say the game is lacking in the first place though.

It's not a matter of whether there is shiny or not, it's a matter of whether the shiny compels people to play the game or to play the system. In WoW it compels you to play the system because playing the game isn't fast enough.

I think the thing is that it's both.  Clearly some people (like Xanthippe) like it for the game itself.  But with the shiny attached to it, even people who don't like it will play.  Those are the ones who will game the system if they are of low enough moral character and they think they can.

[Xanthippe]

I'd play AV if there was no honor because I enjoy the pvp.

I'd be happy if Blizzard gave people honor for doing nothing - I don't care.  But I don't want them doing nothing in AV, because it screws up AV.

[Azazel]

I enjoy AV, or did when I was 60, anyway. But it's also a pretty unpleasantly long grind to extract the shiny out of it.

[Dren]

So why is it bad to just kick them out if they haven't made a kill in the last 10 minutes, or healed somebody, or ...   There has to be a way they can at least make it harder on these lazy asses than just turning right constantly.

Force them into having to use a botting program and then you have the excuse to ban them.  It seems to me that if you haven't done damage or healed in the last 10 minutes, you aren't playing the game.

[Arrrgh]

You can guard a grave yard or tower till it flips and not get attacked the whole time. That's 5 minutes. Then move up and guard different  tower or  grave yard and not get attacked for another 5 minutes. It's rare but it happens.

Just making the cave a no honor gain zone would fix the problem. Once the slackers moved outside the cave they could be farmed and thus be of some use.

If you solo an enemy player you get 21 points so killing a few is a nice boost to honor gained per AV.

[Jayce]

That definitely seems like a good solution.  Conceptually, why should anyone gain honor from a position of perfect safety anywhere?

[Simond]

The main problem with AV - Horde-side at least - is that the map itself had a slight-but-significant bias in favour of the Alliance. So it's nearly as effecient for Horde players to idle in the entrance cave as to actually take part: if Horde manages to win - great! If not, well...you didn't waste any effort in actually fighting and you got almost the same honour anyway.

[caladein]

The main problem with AV - Horde-side at least - is that the map itself had a slight-but-significant bias in favour of the Alliance. So it's nearly as effecient for Horde players to idle in the entrance cave as to actually take part: if Horde manages to win - great! If not, well...you didn't waste any effort in actually fighting and you got almost the same honour anyway.

Having played as both (recently as Horde though) sides in AV about the only real advantage I can give the Alliance is bunker/archer layout only allows an easy solo-cap of say... Stonehearth versus almost all towers being solo-capable with a Fear. The valley right by Stormpike can be completely negated by the high-road out of their cave, but people rarely do that. Maybe that it's easier to zerg-defend Aid Station then Relief Hut, but that plays both ways if the Alliance has to zerg Drek.

On the other hand you can also contend that Stonehearth GY has significantly easier access to Lieutenants then Snowfall GY which is honestly a lot more important since they're the main drivers for raw Honor gain. A few games that we lose, Horde will come out with more Honor then Alliance simply because we actually killed all their Lts.

You can guard a grave yard or tower till it flips and not get attacked the whole time. That's 5 minutes. Then move up and guard different  tower or  grave yard and not get attacked for another 5 minutes. It's rare but it happens.

Actually, that's what my guildies and I do all the time, a usual AV for us is:

• Cap Stonehearth Bunker and kite Commander to Stonehearth GY.
• If we have more then say, three people, a few will guard SH Bunker while the rest help kite Lts to SH GY.
• Cap and guard Icewing Bunker because no one ever takes it.
• Hopefully by this point, Stormpike GY is in transition... and we guard that.
• Once it's capped and Alliance aren't actively trying to take it back, we go harass the cave. Kiting the guards out you're able to take out quite a few guys if they don't have decent PvP gear . Surprisingly enough though we can usually provoke a decent fight out in front of their cave most days.

[Polysorbate80]

I'll play along with the zerg-the-general game once or twice, then I get bored and just charge my paly into groups of Horde and spam consecrate/shield throw/whatever's up until I croak.  I consistently have the most deaths of any player on the scoreboard :P

[Threash]

Just making the cave a no honor gain zone would fix the problem. Once the slackers moved outside the cave they could be farmed and thus be of some use.

That will just make them move somewhere else, die once and then afk as ghosts.  Being farmable doesn't help their team in the least, and they were already helping the other team by being afk in the first place.  Theres no solution to afk botting that does not involve a complete redesign of the zone or a rule change followed by a massive enforcement campaign.

[Koyasha]

Well, since there's NO legitimate reason to be a ghost for more than a couple minutes, at most, just throw a 5 minute timer on you if you're a ghost.  Been a ghost for 5 minutes, you get booted from the zone.

But even that wouldn't help really, since they would just move to another safe location like Drek'thar's room.

In my opinion, the solution would be to make better use of NPC's.  Anyone who hasn't gotten an HK or died to an enemy within X amount of time (several minutes) gets a 1 minute debuff on them called something like 'Frostwolf Spirit Trackers' or 'Stormpike Nature Trackers'.  If they get an HK or die, then the debuff goes away, if they don't, a small group of NPC's spawn and attack.  The NPC's can only be seen by the person they came to kill, and they can be defeated solo with relative ease, if you fight back.  If you don't, and they kill you, then they materialize as full-strength NPC's and guard that point (or engage in combat with anyone else nearby, if there is anyone).  They could even add a counter in there too, making it so that if they kill you X number of times in a single game, you get dumped from the game.  2-3 would be enough.

As for AV's layout....Horde actually has the defensive advantage in terrain, however it requires intelligence and strategic thinking to take advantage of it.  A well-organized Horde team is much better at defending than a well-organized Alliance team because the terrain gives them far better advantages - more chokepoints and the like.  However, since the removal of the majority of the NPC's, the Horde has no one to defend these chokepoints, because players typically don't use these strategic locations.  Alliance locations have better 'automatic' defense, as in, their graveyards are placed at better points for people to spawn and charge in to defend from.

And for anyone who hasn't gone out there and done the quests, or read about them, I find the quest text from Wing Commander Ichman and Wing Commander Mulverick to be awesome on Netherwing Ledge.  Ichman: "Three years I spent in that hell hole. Three years a prisoner of war to the damnable Frostwolf Clan. Made to sit in their tower and listen to them endlessly whine about the bridge to Dun Baldar. About how it's "unfair" that blah, blah, blah, blah... War isn't fair! To hell with 'em all!"  Mulverick: "Three years of blood, sweat and tears. Mostly tears... The amount of crying that a hardened soldier does when it comes down to all-out war is amazing!  "They're jumping into our tower with their horses!" "Why is their base so well defended?" "They're taking our relief hut, I'm going A.W.O.L.!"  Wimps..."

[Bstaz]

Instead of penalizing and trying to kill off those that AFK, they need to add bonuses to those that play.

Track mutli-game accomplishments in a time frame, day / week / hours.  Then award extra honor.  It might even be done something like the arena, for those that only play one game then do something else.   Accomplishments per game, instead of per rate of time.

Capping flags, defending flags, time spent near a flag waiting for it to cap. There is a bunch of stuff you could track over many games then give a bonus.  Those that just stand in the tunnel won't get any bonus honor.  You could  then raise the prices of goods. 

That should cover the majority of the player base actively playing, people would just have to be aware that "yes" the can stand and watch that flag all game doing "nothing" but really helping defend, they just can't do it each and every game and still expect a bonus.

edit: grammar and stuff

[Morat20]

Instead of penalizing and trying to kill off those that AFK, they need to add bonuses to those that play.

Track mutli-game accomplishments in a time frame, day / week / hours.  Then award extra honor.  It might even be done something like the arena, for those that only play one game then do something else.   Accomplishments per game, instead of per rate of time.

Capping flags, defending flags, time spent near a flag waiting for it to cap. There is a bunch of stuff you could track over many games then give a bonus.  Those that just stand in the tunnel won't get any bonus honor.  You could  then raise the prices of goods. 

That should cover the majority of the player base actively playing, people would just have to be aware that "yes" the can stand and watch that flag all game doing "nothing" but really helping defend, they just can't do it each and every game and still expect a bonus.

edit: grammar and stuff

They should just give us snowballs back to knock the fuckers out of the instance.

[Dren]

How about, not only having rewards for good behaviour, but being able to tag afk'ers.  Instead of the old snow ball routine, make an option that allows you to tag an opponent or somebody on your side through a menu pick.  If the tagged person doesn't get rid of that "tag" within something like 3 minutes, they get booted.

Make it so it is easy to get rid of, but difficult enough for a macro program to automatically get rid of.  Of course, you could only tag characters that are *AFK* so it couldn't be used as a way to screw you up during combat. 

This way even if you are in a protected spot, your own players could rat you out, basically.  Yes, macros could be made to fix this, but you are driving the lazy ones deeper into banning territory at that point.  Plus, 90% of the people out there are just not going to go to that extreme (total strawman of one --->me.)

[Jayce]

Make it so it is easy to get rid of, but difficult enough for a macro program to automatically get rid of.  Of course, you could only tag characters that are *AFK* so it couldn't be used as a way to screw you up during combat. 

If you actually go AFK you get booted.  Hence the term "afk out".

The macroers send a command once every few minutes so that afk does not kick in.

[Threash]

How about, not only having rewards for good behaviour, but being able to tag afk'ers.  Instead of the old snow ball routine, make an option that allows you to tag an opponent or somebody on your side through a menu pick.  If the tagged person doesn't get rid of that "tag" within something like 3 minutes, they get booted.

Make it so it is easy to get rid of, but difficult enough for a macro program to automatically get rid of.  Of course, you could only tag characters that are *AFK* so it couldn't be used as a way to screw you up during combat. 

This way even if you are in a protected spot, your own players could rat you out, basically.  Yes, macros could be made to fix this, but you are driving the lazy ones deeper into banning territory at that point.  Plus, 90% of the people out there are just not going to go to that extreme (total strawman of one --->me.)

That would only get rid of the people who are really afk and using a bot to stay in the bg, and Blizzard already suspends/bans those so they are a minimal problem.  The problem is most of the afkers are actually at the computer, usually browsing the forums, if a GM shows up they talk to them and then go on their merry way since they are actually semi there even if they are not contributing.  This wouldn't do anything to get rid of those guys.

[Xanthippe]

The worst ones are the assholes who sit in the cave and crititique the play.

Makes me wish for an open pvp server.

[Fordel]

Essentially, it isn't against the rules to suck.

[Kail]

Capping flags, defending flags, time spent near a flag waiting for it to cap. There is a bunch of stuff you could track over many games then give a bonus.  Those that just stand in the tunnel won't get any bonus honor.  You could  then raise the prices of goods. 

You had me up until the "raise the prices" part.  That stuff is already overpriced, in my opinion.  You'd have to give a lot more honor for that to make it worth it (since if my team has two towers and a graveyard going at once I'm only going to get the bonus honor for one, correct?  So each of those objectives would have to be worth a significant chunk of the price increase or else the increase in honor is not going to match the increase in item prices), and if you did that you'd be penalizing players who prever Arathi or something to Alterac, since they'll be getting the same honor they always have... you could just raise the honor for everyone, but why bother, when you could just lower the "base" honor for running Alterac?

I personally think the best solution (as others have mentioned) is to lower the honor cost of the items.  Keep the victory token cost; that way you've got some incentive to win, but the honor cost is the big reason you see so many people in AV: because it's the best Honor/Hour ratio of all the BGs by a long shot, and usually your Honor is the limiting factor in what items you can buy.  Take away either of those issues and people won't have a reason to camp AV anymore.

[Sogrinaugh]

I'd like to see performance-based que's implemented in all BG's.

Add a few new metrics to the character sheet, each associated with desirable actions by players in a given BG.

For the monkies in AB that run from node to node and never protect anything, we subtract points from their "AB Quotient" for lacking "time spent guarding capped/capping node that has 2 or less players of your faction within X distance of it".  Needs to be scored on a bell curve so that people dont spend TOO much time gaurding.

Score also on damage & healing done, nodes capped (or being present when capping begins), games won/lost ratio (only begin this metric after player has played X # of games).  Im sure developers who are getting payed for this shit could come up with more ideas.

Could do the same thing with AV, WSG, and EotS, with different metrics that compose the respective BG Quotient.  When queing, the system sorts people based on their respective bg quotient, resulting in all afker's being lumped together and getting virtually no honor (and remove ALL honor from simply losing, increase honor gained for various objectives in AV to compensate, just to really stick it to the maggots).

Your score for each of the respective BG's gets re-averaged daily (unless of course you dont play that bg that day), with one caveat.  Since the best way to "game" this new system would be to play very well one day, then afk the next, penalties for poor performance should be far greater then bonuses for positive.  Furthermore, if someone shows they are capable of a very high play level (which they use to dig themselves out of an afk or stupid-playing rutt), the resultant score penalties become worse, making it increasingly difficult to "dig" yourself out each time you do it.  I also like how this simultaneously screws people who buy the accounts of good players but suck, they will be stuck playing bg's with nothing but human refuse.

I really dont see why Blizzard can take the time to program and tune black temple but can't attach a few new BG scores to character sheets to improve the gameplay experience of PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY PLAY.  The most time-consuming part of this would be determining how much to weigh each of the metrics to encourage halfway competent gameplay, or in the case of AV gameplay period.

[Simond]

Instead of penalizing and trying to kill off those that AFK, they need to add bonuses to those that play.

Simple, brute-force fix: Nerf the crap out of the winning/losing honour, boost all other AV honour gains through the roof.

[cmlancas]

Instead of penalizing and trying to kill off those that AFK, they need to add bonuses to those that play.

Simple, brute-force fix: Nerf the crap out of the winning/losing honour, boost all other AV honour gains through the roof.

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of trying to gain/lose things in AV to win?

[sinij]

How about making AFK code a bit more intelligent? Exclude repetitive actions from AFK code - get a script that looks for repetitive action while characters remain at the same X,Y coordinate. Exclude all players with 0 damage done, 0 damage taken from getting any honor. Exclude all players that spend more than 5 minutes in a row dead from getting any honor while dead. Exclude all players that spend more than 5 minutes in a row at any given 'resurrection spot' or cave from getting honor until they move on from that spot.

Add valuable PvP loot - instead of 'gag' drops players should be able to loot tokens that can be redeemed for honor.

Allow Raid Leader to initiate 'ready check' every 10-15 minutes, if you miss 2 checks in a row you get booted as an AFK. Introduce individual honor bonuses for reaching objectives - honor bonus to players that captured or defended tower or graveyard, turned something in, summoned LOK/Forest Lord, rescued wingmaster or participated in killing elite NPC.

[bhodi]

beefing up afk code is treating the symptoms. If you're forcing players into a situation where they need to afkbot to get to where they want to be, the shiny or whatever, you need to reexamine your reward path.