backseatdev

People afk’ing in scenerios continues to be a big topic on the forums. Just like my previous article on this issue, I need to push that “afk’er” is not the right term, the correct term should be non-participator. Most are at the keyboard, but just are not participating for whatever reason.

Too many people assume that some magical solution to this exists out there, and perhaps there is, but I have put a decent amount of thought into it and there really are only options where compromise (lose-lose) will work to correct it. Something will have to give, and I very much doubt that players will be able to agree on the course of action.
At the very core of this issue is the fact that rewards are being given out for participating (or not) in certain content, where players have no choice in who joins them on the content. This has gone a long way in getting people to solo queue more and pre-made less, but has introduced the new problem of people not having to participate to get rewards.

Here are the possible options you could consider to fix the issue:

Option 1: Group Only Queuing, see my April fools post as an example. While it was a joke that Mythic was implementing it, imo, it is a very valid option to solving some current issues around scenerios. REF: http://www.backseatdev.com/2010/04/scenerio-queue-changes-in-1-3-5-warhammer-online/

PROS

-Will stop almost all scenerio non-participators

-Ups competition level of scenerios, possibly reducing the amount of spawn camps.

-Forces people to get to know and group with more people on their server

-People that cannot find a scenerio group may move into the lakes

CONS

-Loss of solo queueing is HUGE. It is the quickest/easiest way to make tokens and requires little interaction between other people to jump into the action.




Option 2: Remove Participation Rewards (Scenerio tokens would be only given out for winning)

PROS

-Could force people to put together better groups and create more competitive scenerios.

-Slightly less worthwhile for afk/non-participators.

CONS

-Most implementations of this will put emphasis back on winning, which puts the emphasis back on running premades all the time.

-Increased time/effort to get rewards for those solo’ing or without a powerful premade.

-Players might still afk (not participate), and just take their chances at winning tokens.

-Will cause additional rage at non-participators because winning becomes hard-linked to progress.




Option 3: Player Moderation

PROS

-Fixes a lot of problems players see with people not participating if they are able to flag/remove those people from scenerios.

CONS

-Players cannot be trusted. The PRO of fixing problems players see will make for a LOT of trouble  eg. WE DONT NEED A DPS HEALER. FLAGGED

Option 4: CSR Monitoring/enforcing people not participating (Not really an option)

Let me explain why this isn’t really an option:

1) Mythic doesn’t want to have to have CSR’s monitoring and reacting in real time to a single aspect/feature of their game. I think everyone can see the logic in that.

2) YOU don’t want Mythic trying to find a line for what is participating enough in a scenerio. That is a slippery slope. You can easily think of examples of where people are not putting up good numbers or may be guarding a point validly or executing a certain strategy etc.. Creating a baseline for participation in a scenerio as part of your account agreement just sounds like trouble.

As always, would love to hear everyones thoughts on this.