Jav TKers getting out of hand, got zero help from staff over an eight hour period.

[blackrazor]

BAMBOOZLED and matlock just torpedoed (literally) a fantastic close series of matches. Before that, it was Dashysta (sp?). All with Javs. BAMBOOZLED is one I already wrote about earlier in this thread, and yes, the team used ?cheater on all three. Funny thing is, half our team instantly knew as soon as BAMBOOZLED and matlock logged on, exactly what was going to happen. Pub is a small world, now especially, it seems. Oh, and BAMBOOZLED had a field day with the word "nig", too.

[blackrazor]

I really like Jason's idea of using TKwatcher to lock-out bomb-equipped ships from problem TKers.

I like it better than the money system (to be honest, sorry Dexter :wub: ), because it's true that money to build up your ship creates a different kind of game that might not appeal to very casual players. There are ways to balance that, of course, but it's tricky, and maybe more than we need, in order to fix the real TK problem.

I also like Jason's idea better than using humans to police Pub. Why? Because while humans are intelligent, certainly, they also attract a lot of drama. Players will rant and rave and be furious if they can blame a human for their ship lock-out. Nobody screams at bots. Also, there is a delay before a human can carefully assess the situation; he has to witness it. Smart TKers have learned to just logout when they think they are being watched by staff, these days. Sometimes bias can factor in, too. I may have seen a problem player TK 100 times in the past, will that lead me to judge accusations against him in a different light? Maybe. We're all human.

That said, I propose some tweaks to Jason's idea:

1) A player's TK status needs to be stored between logins. Jason did mention this, but it's critical for any TKcode to survive even the most mundane of abuses.

2) Players with 100 hours (or more) will start with TK flag cleared, meaning they can jump into any ship, unless of course they later offend the system. Players with less than 100 hours will start with TK flag set, meaning they will have to play for one whole hour, using non-bomb non-mine non-rep ships, in order to unlock the other four bombing / mining / repping ships. After that, they will be forever free to use any ship, unless of course they later offend the system. This is to make it so that TKers with tons of little-used or new alts can't just keep logging them in to cause fresh havoc. At the same time, casual players who have been here even for just a couple months, and like bomb ships, and play them responsibly, won't see any changes to their ship choices when they log on. I prefer this to IP tracking to catch alts, since that also tends to nail family members, and even total innocents, un-necessarily.

3) The biggest challenge will be TK deaths from repels. I have no idea whether the bot can distinguish if a TK death came from a direct bomb hit (including prox), or from a repped mine or bomb. Even if we can distinguish between direct and rep, it's still blurry. On one hand, we DO have griefing sharks that purposely mine the FR entrance on approach, just to enrage their team-mates when the enemy shark just reps it all back at us. Again and again, until the match is ruined. On the other hand, a very expert rep by the enemy can send a hail of stuff at ships that shouldn't be where they are being, killing many team-mates, but really due to their own inexperience or bad fortune.

Also the game is very dynamic and fast paced. Even excellent pub Javs TK occasionally, especially if players are in the wrong places, or it's a fair trade-off. I never mind if I die from a jav or shark, if I'm already low on energy and the shot also killed 1 or 2 enemy.

From all of this, I would say:

use a boolean flag: TK flag to hold the state of whether a player is currently restricted in ship choices, or not.
use a positive integer: TK counter to hold the weighted value of infractions (TKs) minus redemptions.

Add three to TK counter if this player's bomb (not mines) killed a friendly AND didn't kill any enemy AND was a direct (non-repped) shot.

Add two to TK counter if this player's bomb (or mine) killed a friendly AND didn't kill any enemy AND was sent back by enemy repel.

Subtract two from TK counter every 3 minutes of no TK infractions (TK counter can't go below zero).
ELSE
Subtract one from TK counter every 3 minutes even if a TK infraction occurs (can't go below zero).

Subtract three from TK counter every 5 enemy kills of no TK infractions (TK counter can't go below zero).
ELSE
Subtract one from TK counter every 5 enemy kills even if a TK infraction occurs (can't go below zero).

*Why the business of playing with two and threes in TK counter? Because it's easier than dealing with fractions directly, and repped kills should count for less, if they can be detected as such. If it's easier just to make everything equal to +1, -1, instead of twos and threes, that's fine too. Nothing is set in stone, these are just ideas.

If TK counter hits nine or more (this equals three distinct direct TKs or five distinct repped TKs or some mixture of the two) then TK flag is set, and all ships with bombs, mines, and repels are locked from this player for 60 minutes of playtime outside of safe-zones. After 60 minutes, TK flag is cleared, and TK counter starts back at 0.

?tkcount Tells you your current TK counter value, along with a sentence explaining that going above 9 will lock-out certain ships for 60 minutes.

?tkflag Tells you your currect TK flag status, un-restricted (cleared), or ship-restricted (set). If restricted, it also tells you how much time is left on your 60 minutes of lock-out.

====

In this system, nobody gets banned or specced. They just have reduced ship choices until they earn them back.

EDIT (Voting):

Sometimes a good player will get locked, but the team still needs this player in a bomb-ship. Decent, but aggressive sharks come to mind, here. The MVPs on his team that also have TK counters of 4 or less, can have one try to vote him back to un-locked status, which clears TK flag and TK counter, if the vote is successful. The one try at voting immediately expires if the locked player changes freqs, changes arenas, or logs out and back in again. It's majority rules, all players on the team with MVP status and TK counter 4 or less, get one vote each. Team Leader can break ties. If there is no team leader, then a tie is considered as a rejected (failed) vote for unlock.

[kthx]

We just need the upperstaff to do something instead of circling the wagons around one another and saying "that isn't his job" and "he does his job very well" and "hes doing his assigned job to the best of his ability", I don't don't give a shit if its Ara or Vys or whomever the fuck wants to actually DO SOMETHING for this zone. The idea that the dean of staff as one of the highest ranking members of this zone is only responsible for hiring staffers is a joke, upper staff as a whole should devote time into doing meaningful things for the public arenas, and the zone no matter what their position is or what duties they do.

I have been spouting my ideas for years now while the public and zone as a whole has been decaying, maybe instead of wasting time moving threads on the forums and coming up with excused as to why the job isn't getting done, they should just get the job done and they wouldn't have to defend themselves or move threads that wouldn't exist in the first place.

[Jason]

look, to be perfectly honest, i agree with both of you.

i've hated the bot infestation for many, many years now. at this point, i feel like i've just given in, though. we don't have the manpower to properly police pubs every hour of every day, and we never will. we'll never get a perfectly logical idea such as pub helpers to go through. staff is just too exclusive (admittedly for absolutely no good reason) for that to happen.

so in the face of such adversity, i thought, "what the hell, we use bots for EVERYTHING else these days..."

when i'm online, i take every call i can. and i'm more than happy to help out if i ever see anything going down, whether a ?cheater/?help call is made or not. i guess that's all i can promise, as it's pretty clear this is not the right route to take.

[kthx]

If the elim ranking system was done right it might be fun, especially if there was an Elim season that started and ended and the player got his name in the elim arena for instance. But that would only work if elim was hosted during a set schedule instead of 24/7 so that every player got an equal footing. I am sure we could develop some sort of ranking based on kills, deaths, average rank killed, average rank died to, etc.

[Dexter]

Having to buy a jav wasn't the worst idea even though it is a really popular ship (which is why there are so many in pub), the problem was the list of players you had that couldn't use the money system that would never be allowed to buy the jav.

I assume it was good, then, because the list of 1 player was gone after 2 minutes and lets say, it never existed, I just feed ya to keep trash talking.

[Dexter]

I would be pretty happy if we had an active ER base and could just turn on elim/baseelim during weekends or during non-peak hours but that is just me. I figure the less automated events, more the condensed the player base is in certain events,the more population hosts get, the more fun everyone is having.

Yes and thats my opinion too. So, its up just now to Ara/M_M God and to Space/P_L, we need to know their opinion about forcing ERs and Mods to do more things manual. Elim and Baseelim would be the first step.
None cares about rank in elim, baseelim, right? Its not even the same as Robo Ref's. Plus that this is a problem and gives me a lot of head ache (Elim.java).

[kthx]

Having to buy a jav wasn't the worst idea even though it is a really popular ship (which is why there are so many in pub), the problem was the list of players you had that couldn't use the money system that would never be allowed to buy the jav.

[Dexter]

And so, if some people say using Pub money system just bans the others from using jav and etc, we can't forget that it is still a good gameplay, you get better and buy whatever you want. So, I'll see the best way to introduce it. If not in public 1, can be in public 2, maybe. or in other arena, ?go money, like that. I'm not sure, I just want to perfect pub money system and I'll, I'm getting back day by day, I don't want to leave TW alone.

[kthx]

I would be pretty happy if we had an active ER base and could just turn on elim/baseelim during weekends or during non-peak hours but that is just me. I figure the less automated events, more the condensed the player base is in certain events,the more population hosts get, the more fun everyone is having.

[Dexter]

My post from Staff forum:

"So thats why I say, many people enjoyed the way that pub money system has. You buy something, its on the "middle" side, not being unfair with who wants JAV, not being unfair with who doesn't want JAV.
Plus, that, what major said, I'm agaisn't automating everything we want. I can make a MOD-Bot, then we could get ride of all Mods. What if I make a ERBot, to host all the events and get ride of all the ERs? Would that be cool? Yes, of course, we could get ride of some silly people haha. But not a big deal, since the fun of the game would be gone, everyone hosts on a different way, and everyone gives attention as a mod in a different way. Thats the fun of the game, if we automate everything, the fun is gone. Thats why I vote no for automation, takes time to code and people get tired of it after years."

So, I agree with Kthx. This should be taken care of by the own pub players, or by someone that is 24-7 on pub, or why not a ZH, since they're gone. Human intelligence can for sure make the zone better without any kind of bot. We can even get ride of elim and baseelim bot, base bot..and just keep TWD and some events bots. Thats my opinion ( from a bot coder, imagine.)

[kthx]

And this is nothing against you Jason but honestly we need to stop looking to bots and modules to solve all of our problems and go back to way it used to be where players solved their own problems, it helps teach them the game and makes them more useful to the tw populace in the long run.

[kthx]

I know but the solution for tw staff these days is always more modules, more bots, when they just really aren't needed. More bots and more modules and more automation and more this and that has been the problem, not the solution if you haven't noticed.

Instead of constantly relying on a coder to fix things, why not think up better ways to deal with the problem. There are some people who have played pubs for 5 years and never plan on leaving the pub, why not give them powers in public arenas, we could just have <PH>'s (pub helpers) who could watch for this kind of stuff and take actions when needed. Not only would this stop the problem with tking in pubs but would also raise a new generation of staffers who you could actually trust to do things correctly. It would be a precursor to joining staff, or for others a way to keep their public arena fun for basing.

And if you are worried about javelins and sharks TKing just reduce the bomb explosion radius for mines and bombs so that it means that it would be hard to TK unless you were doing it purposefully. This should help get rid of the accidental tk's.

The problem is with automation, and always has been and will be is that nobody is there to guarantee it is doing things correctly. What if a jav makes a shot from the FR to the middle area, and before he shot there was nobody there and his teams terr comes back up the tube after dying with 3-4 people on him and boom, the guy is instantly banned from playing jav for 60 minutes? Wouldn't it make more sense to (I know this is funny for TW) keep the human element involved so that stupid shit like I just mentioned doesn't happen? Who would be in charge with taking care of unjust bans, what if someone pissed me off and I purposefully flew into his bombs to get him shipchanged, and why the fuck don't we just have staffers handle TK's because I know that when a player uses !report to report a tker that it shows how many times they have tk'd.

So basically my question to you is do you want to actually fix the problem and maybe help the zone train some responsible players in the meantime or do you want yet another reason for staffers to not have to do work, talk to the players, and have another avenue of "ban system" that would be relatively ignored much like the current one is.


I think we have had time to see what complete automation has done to our public system and I think it is time to just remove the entire fucking thing and use some common sense, arena settings, a new map, and the people who have been pubbing for 5 years to fix it.

[Jason]

it's not as simple as turning on a pre-existing module. it is a simple bit of integration into the current bot infrastructure, but please kthx, stop acting like we just have to flip a switch.

what i've proposed isn't complicated at all. i get that. making it a reality is the complicated part. need people to be constructive with criticism, and the more public support there is, the less complicated it becomes to make this happen.

[kthx]

I don't see why it has to be this complicated.

There is already a module that does this.