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

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[Pressure Drop]

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.
.

thats the thing though in an ideal world we would have a good staffer watching pub all the time and banning proper tkers but that is always unfeasible and if we are going to spend man power coding, rather than code a pretty system attempting to change something that isn't broken, implement a workable anti-tk system which incorperates a little player regulation. It's something that would actually be a big improvement for alot of ppl in pub that are frustrated at getting tked and ?cheater isn't a help. I've seen games ruined entirely by tkers and ?cheater didn't bring anyone and the whole freq is doing them ... frustrating.

i'd think about it more if one was going to be designed for pub but a quick guide for key features would be
- player getting tked has the opportunity to interact with tkbot
- bot would have preset quota's different for jav shark if possible and quota is over a set time and decays
-player logged -i.e. if repeat offenders need to be banned /ship locked for progressively longer etc

there would be alot of room for manoeuvre in the best way to implement it i've some ideas if it is going to be tried.

also this should be an assist to ?cheater not replace it entirely and staff should be told if they witness purposeful tk's to still ban and not go use the bot dummy

[Jason]

both you, pd, and blackrazor seem to be on the same brainwave with me. and i like your ideas. i would rather see more player interaction than have the system be fully automated. and i also would insist that staff still get involved as much as possible.

i'll keep batting around ideas within staff and keep everyone posted as far as where this is going to go. just be forewarned, dev has a lot on their plates right now so this might take some time.

[Doc Flabby]

What do people think of a counter-strike style teamkilling system?

Where the player who is teamkilled gets to punish the teamkiller.

The person whos go teamkilled (serveral times in a row) can choose the punishment for the teamkiller.

Instead of just !report they get these 4 options.

1. do nothing/default
2. Warn player
3. Call staff (availble on 2rd teamkill)
4. force ship change (availble on 3rd teamkill)

[kthx]

Oh man doc, that opens up a whole new range of ideas, because that is badass. I love the idea and where you got it from but you are forgetting some of the more fun functions when you get TK'd.

you can Poison someone, Beacon someone, Kill someone, Blind someone.. :P I wish we could do some of that.

[roxxkatt]

Oh man doc, that opens up a whole new range of ideas, because that is badass. I love the idea and where you got it from but you are forgetting some of the more fun functions when you get TK'd.

you can Poison someone, Beacon someone, Kill someone, Blind someone.. :P I wish we could do some of that.

this is commonplace in distension, the event you have never played and hate so much

[kthx]

Really, I don't remember any of that from Distension. Hilarious.

[Malladrin]

Please people, think KISS - keep it simple stupid. Some of the posts and systems suggested here are so complicated I didn't even finish reading them.

IMHO, the only pragmatic (simple) and "fair" system for and against teamkillers has been the one Doc Flabby suggested. Minus the warning thingy, warnings ought to be left for staff to handle. To get the option to have someone locked out of jav is a really good idea (say after a handful of tks). The shiplock does not have to be that long, say 30-60 min, to have a deterrent effect.

[blackrazor]

The counter-strike TK system:

It's a good idea, although nothing stops the TKer from carefully counting his TKs, and logging out before the one that would give him reprisals. If he has a bunch of alts, he could cycle through them, basically allowing him to grief indefinately.

I'm all for KISS .. but it has to be fault-tolerant, also. Much of the so called complication you sited is moot, because the code runs automatically and you never see it. If you saw the code that makes TW or pubbot work, it would look complicated as all heck, but that's fine, since we don't have to see it when we play. But we do have to see some details during any meaningful discussion of design.

Anyways, it's still a good idea. Basically if one player's TKs accumulate, the player that was TKed to overflow the TKer's counter, i.e. the TK "that breaks the camel's back", gets to choose ignore / ship-lock. You still need a redemption method, such as time or enemy kills, that removes TKs from his counter over time. You need persistence of data, so relogging doesn't erase his misdeeds. You need some basic AI filtering, such as: "If enemies died too, then it's not a TK".

Still this might be a more player-controlled implementation than "auto-lock", and I like that. I would still want to keep "redemption voting" though, in case the team as a whole feels they need the player in that ship more than the TKs are costing them.

You can't do a tracking of TKs per individual player persistently though, imagine how huge every player's file would be, if it had to track every TK against every other player in the database. That's why it has to be an aggregate number (counter), but still allowing the player that he goes over with to have a big choice in his ship-lock fate.

There is little point in auto-reporting to staff, either. Staff is stretched too thin, and smart TKers just log off when they see a staffer looking their way. Don't get me wrong, I like staff. I know they try. Sometimes they catch the guy. But it's a big drain on their time and energy, for small effectiveness and reward, relatively speaking.

As for the negative buffs about which kthx was writing, EMP comes to mind.

[the_paul]

gr8 idea here

shut the fuck up cheese

[PH]

how u fuks leave me? im only 1 on butterfrees chat now

i retire and ride off into sunset like a true champion

sry 4 this

[blackrazor]

Today I reported Dr. Block for excessive (way way excessive .. as in "art form" excessive) TKing. It got looked into by an ER who tells him to change ship. Which he does ... to a shark. I explain how that won't work, and the player leaves, returning as Doctor Block. He continues to TK, so I ?cheater again. When he is watched, his TKing smooths out to only the occasional accident. Still, we lost our match on account of this dude, and worse still, excessive Jav TKs demoralize the team. Many players then teamswitch, or log-out, or go in Javs themselves, to join in the mayhem or seek revenge.

Later this same evening, innovate and Zr, both Javs on our team, got into a Jav TK pissing match with each other, taking out our flagroom defenses with them. If you need to kill someone that badly, what ever happened to the good old fashioned teamswitch and kill them properly?

Anyways, I know staff tries. But, the TKing players have evolved to make it hard to really punish them before the damage is already done, if at all. I hope TKWatcher (or Dexter's Money System), when it arrives, will curb these game-ruining antics.