Better solutions to AFK in Pub?

[kevwest]

Is there something more that can be done about people repeatedly going AFK in freq 0 or 1 and imbalancing an otherwise good series of pub matches?

Example: 6v6 is fun, 6v4+2afk over and over is imbalanced and becomes boring, especially if the next ship that logs in ends up on the more active freq, effectively making it 7v4.

Shuffling often just results in a different imbalanced scenario (or because the AFKers don't vote, a shuffle doesn't happen), people leave or pub fractures into 1-ship frequencies, and the game slows down.

It's often the same handful of people who sit afk (not mentioning names, would like to keep this constructive).

I know afkcheck exists, but it takes 90 seconds, and for some reason won't work if the person has been killed recently (if they're not afk in safe, they're going to die now and then). And, in the middle of a close game who wants to go around the map figuring out who is afk and doing clerical work to get rid of them?

Would it be possible to just freq-change somebody after 30 or 60 seconds of inactivity during a pub match? Spec them or move them into a neutral frequency and warp them to safe?

It could replace afkcheck and eliminate the possibility of afkcheck abuse.

[Rab]

Finally someone else speaking up about this. 100% agree.

[Poseidon]

SHOUT TO MARCOLA! my man spends 4 hours a day playing and manages to sit in safe on a pub freq for 2 of them. good shit!

[Leland]

play or gtfo
afk check needs to change

[qan]

BIET has been working on AFKcheck improvements. I think we might have enough of a system together to just be able to auto-spec someone for being idle now.

Agreed that forcing players to have to run the check manually isn't ideal. Like most of our systems (coded by volunteers) they evolve slowly and iteratively with time. The bot also runs automatic checks, but I think the newer system is able to account for things such as no change of position including deaths.

[Roger Rabbit]

Does anyone want to address why so many people are going afk or do we want to keep coming up with half assed “fixes” without actually tackling the issue

i mean for fucks sake it’s so frequent they’ve had to make a joke system so people could “self police” and have had multiple topics of people bitching about it but let’s just tweak the policing lol

[Rab]

sometimes they do it to evade stfu

sometimes they're legitimately afk and expect to be removed, but the afkcheck criteria suck, e.g. if they die the timer resets, if they get repped they are permanently moving.

sometimes they're multitasking, so play for 1 minute, troll for 3 minutes, repeat. So they're a useless player, but not actually afk.

I mean... look at this shit..
TW-PubSyst> They made a kill within the last 10 minutes. Please wait 3 minutes, and 56 seconds and try again.

[EvilX]

Get rid of safe zones then. If I need a to take a dump I'm not going to go into spec

[rothe]

Ok come on now please don't take away at least bottom safe I have some many fond memories of duels there before there was an official dueling area and that's where ya went to prove your chops in pub. Just please... Please.. Take the gold mine don't give me the shaft..

[SpaceShark]

seems to be a rash of players getting on the pub freq and then just wondering aimlessly in spawn, like they want to handicap their team from winning , its why spawn killers are gaming scum trying to puff up their win loss ratio like a peacock

[Lizzo]

Spawners on pub freq ruin base game. Spawners on priv freq are generally vulchers. Some are on priv freq dueling other wbs and leaving people who just spawned alone, but very few. Usually it is like you say to peacock