Countermeasures against automatic play in naval battles

[__sparrow__ 167]

AFK players aren't really getting an unfair advantage (as you would when using aimbots or wall hacks or whatever). They are easy targets that you can kill way easier than an actively played ship. In a way they are boosting the RP/SL income for everyone, by providing easy to kill targets.

 

That being said, I still think that it's getting problematic for the game experience. I mean the game isn't ALL about the meta game. In the end it's the matches itself that should be fun, not the progress through the research tree. And the matches get more and more bizarre. When both teams consist of zombies that are just driving in straight lines, half of them crushing into islands, the matches are not atmospheric or fun at all.

Especially since the zombies often aren't equally distributed over both teams. If you end up in a team with 12 zombies, while the enemy team is mostly playing manually, than you lose without a fraction of a chance to win. And what's even worse: The zombies always leave after getting killed once. So when the zombie horde is killed, you basically face the whole enemy team alone (or with 2 or 3 other players). Then you get targeted by 5 or more enemies, which makes it pointless to continue.

 

Yesterday afternoon I ended up in a match, where almost all players of both teams were playing manually. And the enemy team used up almost all of their spawns, including many planes. It was a really close and long match. The enemy team was in the lead for most of the match, but in end we turned it around and managed to win. It was in that match that I realised, how much fun Naval RB matches can actually be and how much damage the zombies do to the game.

[Kernow1346 1,847]

3 hours ago, __sparrow__ said:

In the end it's the matches itself that should be fun

If only Gaijin saw it that way too…

[[email protected] 1,771]

3 hours ago, __sparrow__ said:

AFK players aren't really getting an unfair advantage (as you would when using aimbots or wall hacks or whatever). They are easy targets that you can kill way easier than an actively played ship. In a way they are boosting the RP/SL income for everyone, by providing easy to kill targets.

 

That being said, I still think that it's getting problematic for the game experience. I mean the game isn't ALL about the meta game. In the end it's the matches itself that should be fun, not the progress through the research tree. And the matches get more and more bizarre. When both teams consist of zombies that are just driving in straight lines, half of them crushing into islands, the matches are not atmospheric or fun at all.

Especially since the zombies often aren't equally distributed over both teams. If you end up in a team with 12 zombies, while the enemy team is mostly playing manually, than you lose without a fraction of a chance to win. And what's even worse: The zombies always leave after getting killed once. So when the zombie horde is killed, you basically face the whole enemy team alone (or with 2 or 3 other players). Then you get targeted by 5 or more enemies, which makes it pointless to continue.

 

Yesterday afternoon I ended up in a match, where almost all players of both teams were playing manually. And the enemy team used up almost all of their spawns, including many planes. It was a really close and long match. The enemy team was in the lead for most of the match, but in end we turned it around and managed to win. It was in that match that I realised, how much fun Naval RB matches can actually be and how much damage the zombies do to the game.

 

Well said. I can handle 75% of both teams being "bad" players, that's normal in Air and Ground. But 75% of the players being literally AFK is not at all acceptable. It's absurd that it's been allowed to go on for this long, and even more absurd that we have people around the forums either defending it, or trying to argue the problem is something other than the game literally playing itself (regardless of "how well").

 

This gets especially bad at higher BRs, where the 6.0 cruiser spam, combined with battleships, combined with everything at these BRs being much further apart, slower, and harder to turn around matches by yourself or maybe with one to two teammates, has pushed me to the point where I may take a break from Naval entirely until the devs fix this.

 

Being AFK needs to either be a bannable offence, or the game needs to auto-kick people from the match after ~2-3 minutes for being AFK. Or both.

[原来尼也玩海战 152]

Thinking about those pathetic 4v4 top BR naval battles in old days, the bot functions exactly same as those wandering AI ships, filling the empty slots. Killing bots, however, gives much higher reward than those pathetic AI ships and the naval queue is almost instant now.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Math3matica

[Anzio_Supreme 26]

I'm gonna assume reporting isn't retrospective.

This guy was one of the OG AFKers, but he doesn't seem to queue as often anymore. Anytime I saw this guy on my team and it was an uptier, I knew for sure we were gonna lose. He'd have the luck of being the only cruiser on our team while the enemy had a couple Helena free to roam unchecked and claim their SL. Of course this was back when Helena was at 5.7 and people still actively played naval.

[Bruce_R1 2,092]

15 hours ago, [email protected] said:

I may take a break from Naval entirely until the devs fix this.

Just play a lower BR, man. I'm sitting at 3.7 til they sort the economics on the higher BRs, which they will. Pretty much every game is really good these days. Yes, there are the original farm zomboats at that BR in RB, but I'm used to them now, and cause they aimbot they're not totally horrible to have on your own team. I'm having a great time

Edited May 10, 2022 by Bruce_R1

[Tokusa 105]

By killing BOT players, manual players can easily get more rewards. However, BOT players get much more reward for playing dozens of matches a day than manual players get for playing several matches a day. It is really stupid.
Most matches are won or lost not by the skill and effort of the players, but by the number of BOT players. It is really stupid.
Isn't WT a game where players compete with each other for skill and effort?
BOT players destroy WT from its very core.

 

Thank you all for your many opinions.
There are a number of countermeasures against BOT players and it shows that gaijin can counter them if they want to. What is the best way to communicate this to the developers of the game? I have posted on the forum suggestions page but that did not work. I would like to ask for your help.

[DirtyOldCommie 39]

 

On 10/05/2022 at 03:06, Anzio_Supreme said:

I'm gonna assume reporting isn't retrospective.

This guy was one of the OG AFKers, but he doesn't seem to queue as often anymore. Anytime I saw this guy on my team and it was an uptier, I knew for sure we were gonna lose. He'd have the luck of being the only cruiser on our team while the enemy had a couple Helena free to roam unchecked and claim their SL. Of course this was back when Helena was at 5.7 and people still actively played naval.

That name rang a bell, so I checked my recent replays- I encountered him just once a few days ago on the enemy team on a Black Sea Port Encounter map. He was using a Pola, immediately switched to AI main guns, plowed straight ahead and beached himself on an island, causing his vessel to get wrecked, and then he left. He didn't cause any damage at all and amassed a total score of 43 points...

 

Edit: As luck (?) would have it, he was also in my very first battle after having posted the above, with predictable results:

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by DirtyOldCommie

[kkang2828 1,435]

19 hours ago, Tokusa said:

Thank you all for your many opinions.
There are a number of countermeasures against BOT players and it shows that gaijin can counter them if they want to. What is the best way to communicate this to the developers of the game? I have posted on the forum suggestions page but that did not work. I would like to ask for your help.

The devs never look at the international forums themselves. The forum staff try to pass on as much feedback as possible(or so they say) but the language barrier is a much larger hurdle than most people think, from what I’ve heard. The suggestions section is heavily moderated and it takes ages to get them passed for consideration, and even then there’s no communication about what the devs are doing with the suggestions. 
 

Gaijin’s customer communication is exceedingly poor and the best we can do is to keep talking about it wherever we can. They are most probably already very well aware of the AFK-bot situation in naval. It’s just a matter of how and when they’ll decide to do something about it, the process of which will never be shared with us until it actually happens.

 

That is the unfortunate truth.

[Tokusa 105]

On 11/05/2022 at 19:55, kkang2828 said:

The devs never look at the international forums themselves. The forum staff try to pass on as much feedback as possible(or so they say) but the language barrier is a much larger hurdle than most people think, from what I’ve heard. The suggestions section is heavily moderated and it takes ages to get them passed for consideration, and even then there’s no communication about what the devs are doing with the suggestions. 
 

Gaijin’s customer communication is exceedingly poor and the best we can do is to keep talking about it wherever we can. They are most probably already very well aware of the AFK-bot situation in naval. It’s just a matter of how and when they’ll decide to do something about it, the process of which will never be shared with us until it actually happens.

 

That is the unfortunate truth.

I know that the only way for players to communicate their opinions to the developers is through the forum suggestions page, and I know that that mechanism is not working.
The other place to be visible would be to respond to the changelog.

[Pleskac 223]

3 hours ago, Tokusa said:

I know that the only way for players to communicate their opinions to the developers is through the forum suggestions page, and I know that that mechanism is not working.
The other place to be visible would be to respond to the changelog.

The only way and the best way to get you message to devs is through https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder
Its saves a lot of time to everyone, for sure devs dont check new forum threads.
I still dont understand the issue of many people here, naval does not have enough players, stop whining. Queue is very long compared to ground. Some players play this in "afk" mode, that is not optimal, but they mostly get what they deserve. They do get some rewards, they are abysmal when they are truly afk as stated before. Even he say he got 43rp for 10min crew lock or 30 min match? If he play just one premium ship, he maybe break even or made few sl and rp. People who think this is working like magic, its xxxx to think it is. These afk matches give you 50-1000rp, game is 10-30min or more. So if we assume the guy who does this is not a chinese bot, but a normal player running script. He makes maybe average 10-20k rp per day, he does not make sl even with premium ship or makes very little. If you have good game with premium ship and premium account you make 10k rp or more in 10-30 min or more, thats how it is. For me with premium account the worst games are like 6k rp, the good games are 2x or even more, that is with premium account.

1. afk/bot players are easier to kill than gaijin bots
2. afk/bot players give better rewards than gaijin bots
3. afk/bot players make queue faster

4. afk/bot players make me research tree faster
5. afk/bot playes have really very little to gain from this

BTW, because of how *AMAZING* the economy algo is, the afk players playing helena etc. they have very bad score == lower price, because of gaijin economy balance. It wont change, dont even think about it, this is the most ***** up thing about this game showing in full force here, I remember some tanks cost like 30k because only good players played them while similar tanks at same br from other nations cost like 3-6k. This is the most xxxx thing in this game and here it shows, Helena is good ship intentionaly played by afk(nobody) repair cost is so low its worth to just log in and run it into a shore and leave game. This is the game.. where Maus and E-100 still cost like 20k sl while its one shoted by its enemies with apfsds,heat,rockets this game is so amazing really.. cant wait for the future of naval where Russian ships from 2000s will attack battleships from WW1 with cruise missiles. Thats is WT, a game that started so nice and turned to **** after they added british tanks or IT-1. Sorry for this rant, this game was so good when there was just GER vs RU. GER vs RU vs US was still ok, but after that it went to ****. The devs should look back what was the game back then. I still remember the times when you saw IS-4 and it was indestructible beast or you heard jagdtiger gun over entire map, it was sick. Today today both of these vehicles sucks **** and are yeeted by vehicles from 1970s that ignore armor across map (say hello to israel tree).

 

Just keep in mind, if afk players are removed, they will be replaced by gaijin bots or queue will be much much longer. Also equally big issue is that many players join game with just one spawn, probably they bought a premium and skilled just one crew, now they play just Arizona, Hyuga, Sharnhorst. Die and leave after single death, that is yet another issue that affect pretty much every game. I look at score board and I see half of team left after one death.

[[email protected] 1,771]

26 minutes ago, Pleskac said:

naval does not have enough players, stop whining. Queue is very long compared to ground.

 

People keep parroting this, but it's very much not true anymore. I've been playing mostly Naval for the past several months, and my average queue time is maybe 10-15 seconds and instant joins are very common. And that's with only NA servers selected.

 

 

28 minutes ago, Pleskac said:

Some players play this in "afk" mode, that is not optimal, but they mostly get what they deserve. They do get some rewards, they are abysmal when they are truly afk as stated before.

 

I don't care whatsoever what they do or don't earn, I care that slots on my team are taken up by literal worthless AFK players who have no ability to actually contribute to playing the objective and winning the match.

 

Why are we even debating this!? Being AFK is universally unacceptable in online multiplayer games, and in most gets you a swift boot from the match. It's embarrassing that anyone is attempting to defend the status quo.

[Pleskac 223]

8 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

 

People keep parroting this, but it's very much not true anymore. I've been playing mostly Naval for the past several months, and my average queue time is maybe 10-15 seconds and instant joins are very common. And that's with only NA servers selected.

 

 

 

I don't care whatsoever what they do or don't earn, I care that slots on my team are taken up by literal worthless AFK players who have no ability to actually contribute to playing the objective and winning the match.

 

Why are we even debating this!? Being AFK is universally unacceptable in online multiplayer games, and in most gets you a swift boot from the match. It's embarrassing that anyone is attempting to defend the status quo.

There are afk players in every single ground battle, you just dont see them mostly, because you dont push enemy to their spawn very often. Here in naval the maps are very open, you can see all enemies from start many times. IDK really, reporting bad players, afk players etc. its just xxxx, but do whatever you like. I doubt gaijin will ban players because they need to pick up phone or take **** in middle of match, because that is what you are asking for it seems.
Tell me what do you want? Do you want the game to kick all afk players after 2min and leave your team at 2/3 strenght? or do you want to connect to a "fresh" game and get into a lost match where your team has no players? what will you do? play it, do 3 spawns and get focused by 10 enemy ships, leave with 0 kills and 50k repair cost? Do you want to ban players and make then leave for good or what?

[Daffan 6,157]

8 hours ago, Pleskac said:

 
Tell me what do you want? Do you want the game to kick all afk players after 2min and leave your team at 2/3 strenght? or do you want to connect to a "fresh" game and get into a lost match where your team has no players? what will you do? play it, do 3 spawns and get focused by 10 enemy ships, leave with 0 kills and 50k repair cost? Do you want to ban players and make then leave for good or what?

 

Do you do you do you do you do you 

 

 want to stop making up extremely fake scenarios

 

[kkang2828 1,435]

9 hours ago, Pleskac said:

There are afk players in every single ground battle, you just dont see them mostly, because you dont push enemy to their spawn very often. Here in naval the maps are very open, you can see all enemies from start many times. IDK really, reporting bad players, afk players etc. its just xxxx, but do whatever you like. I doubt gaijin will ban players because they need to pick up phone or take **** in middle of match, because that is what you are asking for it seems.
Tell me what do you want? Do you want the game to kick all afk players after 2min and leave your team at 2/3 strenght? or do you want to connect to a "fresh" game and get into a lost match where your team has no players? what will you do? play it, do 3 spawns and get focused by 10 enemy ships, leave with 0 kills and 50k repair cost? Do you want to ban players and make then leave for good or what?

 

Your sheer inability to understand the issue and the possible solutions simply amazes me.

 

Even the trolls seem to understand this issue perfectly.

 

And of course you only have 199 naval battles under your belt.

Edited May 13, 2022 by kkang2828

[Bruce_R1 2,092]

14 hours ago, [email protected] said:

Why are we even debating this!? Being AFK is universally unacceptable in online multiplayer games, and in most gets you a swift boot from the match. It's embarrassing that anyone is attempting to defend the status quo.

No one's saying AFK'ing is not a problem. At least no one I can be bothered to read.

 

Pointing out why this is happening now, because the economics reward it, does not mean anyone condones it.

 

Some of us just see the proposed solutions as worse than a problem that's largely limited currently to one premium ship and one BR range. Forcing people to click occasionally to prove they're not AFK is just as easily scriptable/bottable and would only annoy real players if it wasn't. Removing the ability to auto target only from main armament would significantly disadvantage a large number of ships whose secondaries are better than their primaries. And given that the problem is mostly noticeable when the AFKs are on your team, putting in new rules that disadvantaged your team further (for instance, by autokicking them instead of letting them play AFK) isn't actually that helpful to you.

 

So, in the interest of constructive feedback, here's a realism-based change you could do that would go a long way toward fixing the Helena AFK issue, if you really needed one, that doesn't require turning off auto-targeting, but adds to the skill required of the naval player (to a manageable degree). Modify the current fire control toggle for ships with a main armament larger than 5.25 inch (135mm and up; 5.25" being the largest practical AA dual-purpose weapon in WW2*), so that you can select either main+secondaries, or secondaries+AA. But not all 3: in either case one set of weapons is manual and one auto-targeted. You still pick which of the two is manual through the current weapon type selection keys. And you would still keep the current toggle for fire control between AA, surface, none, or both for all ships up to 5.25 inch main guns, whereas those above 5.25" would have a simplified toggle with no "both" state, which could help control this choice.

 

This reflects the accurate situation with ships where the muzzle blast of large guns in action necessitated prior clearing of the decks. We have AA guns on top of some turrets in game, for heavens sake. That would be an impossible station to man if the main guns were active. In game, toggling between the two states would be instantaneous, but if your main battery is firing your AA would be quiet. The 5.25 inch line would allow the exclusion of the dedicated AA cruisers from this rule.

 

This would have the advantages of making all the large capital ships somewhat less likely to address small boats and planes in general, which would probably also be a good thing. Right now high-tier naval is stagnant in part because the air threats aren't particularly threatening in the face of massed AA. It would increase the value of escorting smaller ships generally, since they're your AA cover in large part.

 

Another thing you could also do as part of this is say you could damage AA weapons, when main guns were selected, but you couldn't drain AA crew (cause they're not actually on deck) while the guns were set for surface action. This would have the effect of making these larger ships slightly more survivable, so the net effect on BRs might then basically be a wash. If they switch to secondaries plus AA, then they deck crew would become vulnerable again (simulating them running up to re-man their stations).

 

In terms of the Helena AFK situation, the AFKer would have to set their ship under these conditions to surface targets only. They'd still have AI main guns, but their 5" secondaries would be quiet (because they'd be the ones set to manual while AFK) and their AA would be as well unless the player came back. This would make them significantly more vulnerable as targets and less capable of doing damage and thus decrease their relative earnings to the point where AFKing became significantly less viable. If you were opposing a fleet of likely AFK Helenas or farmed zomboats, you know they're all ODLs, so make enough with your first life to spawn a plane, finish them off cause none of them can fire back much and they'll leave to their next match as soon as they die, come back in your second ship spawn and win the match.

 

*You could make individual exceptions for guns that were truly dual-purpose larger than 5.25", like the US post-war 6 inch DP. But there aren't a lot of those. Basically 5.5"/140mm and up you're killing boats.

 

Here's a graphic to show the full proposal and how it could be controlled with existing buttonology.

 

Spoiler

Currently there's no distinction for calibre (gray columns and none). With this proposal, nothing would change except for those ships with a main armament of 5.5 inches or greater, which would use the settings in the new Surface/Air columns.

 

Edited May 13, 2022 by Bruce_R1

[kkang2828 1,435]

11 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

No one's saying AFK'ing is not a problem. At least no one I can be bothered to read.

 

Pointing out why this is happening now, because the economics reward it, does not mean anyone condones it.

 

Some of us just see the proposed solutions as worse than a problem that's largely limited currently to one premium ship and one BR range. Forcing people to click occasionally to prove they're not AFK is just as easily scriptable/bottable and would only annoy real players if it wasn't. Removing the ability to auto target only from main armament would significantly disadvantage a large number of ships whose secondaries are better than their primaries. And given that the problem is mostly noticeable when the AFKs are on your team, putting in new rules that disadvantaged your team further (for instance, by autokicking them instead of letting them play AFK) isn't actually that helpful to you.

 

So, in the interest of constructive feedback, here's a realism-based change you could do that would go a long way toward fixing the Helena AFK issue, if you really needed one, that doesn't require turning off auto-targeting, but adds to the skill required of the naval player (to a manageable degree). Modify the current fire control toggle for ships with a main armament larger than 5.25 inch (135mm and up; 5.25" being the largest practical AA dual-purpose weapon in WW2*), so that you can select either main+secondaries, or secondaries+AA. But not all 3: in either case one set of weapons is manual and one auto-targeted. You still pick which of the two is manual through the current weapon type selection keys. And you would still keep the current toggle for fire control between AA, surface, none, or both for all ships up to 5.25 inch main guns, whereas those above 5.25" would have a simplified toggle with no "both" state, which could help control this choice.

 

This reflects the accurate situation with ships where the muzzle blast of large guns in action necessitated prior clearing of the decks. We have AA guns on top of some turrets in game, for heavens sake. That would be an impossible station to man if the main guns were active. In game, toggling between the two states would be instantaneous, but if your main battery is firing your AA would be quiet. The 5.25 inch line would allow the exclusion of the dedicated AA cruisers from this rule.

 

This would have the advantages of making all the large capital ships somewhat less likely to address small boats and planes in general, which would probably also be a good thing. Right now high-tier naval is stagnant in part because the air threats aren't particularly threatening in the face of massed AA. It would increase the value of escorting smaller ships generally, since they're your AA cover in large part.

 

Another thing you could also do as part of this is say you could damage AA weapons, when main guns were selected, but you couldn't drain AA crew (cause they're not actually on deck) while the guns were set for surface action. This would have the effect of making these larger ships slightly more survivable, so the net effect on BRs might then basically be a wash. If they switch to secondaries plus AA, then they deck crew would become vulnerable again (simulating them running up to re-man their stations).

 

In terms of the Helena AFK situation, the AFKer would have to set their ship under these conditions to surface targets only. They'd still have AI main guns, but their 5" secondaries would be quiet (because they'd be the ones set to manual while AFK) and their AA would be as well unless the player came back. This would make them significantly more vulnerable as targets and less capable of doing damage and thus decrease their relative earnings to the point where AFKing became significantly less viable. If you were opposing a fleet of likely AFK Helenas or farmed zomboats, you know they're all ODLs, so make enough with your first life to spawn a plane, finish them off cause none of them can fire back much and they'll leave to their next match as soon as they die, come back in your second ship spawn and win the match.

 

*You could make individual exceptions for guns that were truly dual-purpose larger than 5.25", like the US post-war 6 inch DP. But there aren't a lot of those. Basically 5.5"/140mm and up you're killing boats.

 

Here's a graphic to show the full proposal and how it could be controlled with existing buttonology.

 

Hide contents

Currently there's no distinction for calibre (gray columns and none). With this proposal, nothing would change except for those ships with a main armament of 5.5 inches or greater, which would use the settings in the new Surface/Air columns.

 

A very interesting solution. But I can see some downsides. WT naval battles are too unrealistic for this kind of realistic system to work very well. IRL ships were very rarely attacked by surface vessels and aircraft simultaneously. In cases where it happened, it usually meant a lot of confusion and reduced combat efficiency for the receiving side, resulting in their defeat. So the main guns and the secondary/AA guns were very rarely required to fire at the same time. 

 

But in WT naval, simultaneous surface and air attacks happen all the time, and it is necessary for your AI gunners to fire at small boats and aircraft whilst you manually fire the main guns. Limiting this capability will cause some frustrating situations when you are attacked from multiple directions by both ships, boats, and aircraft. And as always, you can never depend on teamplay(AA cover in this case) in random PvP battles. 

[Pleskac 223]

On 13/05/2022 at 12:31, kkang2828 said:

 

Your sheer inability to understand the issue and the possible solutions simply amazes me.

 

Even the trolls seem to understand this issue perfectly.

 

And of course you only have 199 naval battles under your belt.

You may be right, I am starting to think that this issue is mostly on US servers, I play on EU mostly or RU when queue is too long. The amount of bots or xxxx playes is problaly much less in these locations than in US. I never said anything that suggest I dont understand it, I simply said that the rewards for afk playes are next to nothing compared to normal play and not all of them are even bots. Its funny, with 199 games I have Sharnhorst and I have unlocked Hyuga few days ago, I can tell you this ship is the most ***** up thing in wt. This game mode cannot be saved as it is now, doesnt matter if there are bots or not.

[Bruce_R1 2,092]

21 hours ago, kkang2828 said:

A very interesting solution. But I can see some downsides. WT naval battles are too unrealistic for this kind of realistic system to work very well. IRL ships were very rarely attacked by surface vessels and aircraft simultaneously. In cases where it happened, it usually meant a lot of confusion and reduced combat efficiency for the receiving side, resulting in their defeat. So the main guns and the secondary/AA guns were very rarely required to fire at the same time. 

 

But in WT naval, simultaneous surface and air attacks happen all the time, and it is necessary for your AI gunners to fire at small boats and aircraft whilst you manually fire the main guns. Limiting this capability will cause some frustrating situations when you are attacked from multiple directions by both ships, boats, and aircraft. And as always, you can never depend on teamplay(AA cover in this case) in random PvP battles. 

Seriously, you've got to play more destroyers. A good player in the mid BRs in RB is working those two fire control toggles constantly. If you aren't switching up your fire control scheme as soon as planes are near and back when they're gone to watch for sneaking boats, then you're not playing at anywhere close to maximum efficiency. Works great. Requires skill.

 

All I'm saying is ask the high-BR players to use the same level of skill and number of keyboard inputs as the mid-BR players. Which is, of course, the real problem the AFKers are exploiting, isn't it? If play outside the destroyer BRs wasn't braindead easy right now, this wouldn't be a thing.

[Daffan 6,157]

17 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

Seriously, you've got to play more destroyers. A good player in the mid BRs in RB is working those two fire control toggles constantly. If you aren't switching up your fire control scheme as soon as planes are near and back when they're gone to watch for sneaking boats, then you're not playing at anywhere close to maximum efficiency. Works great. Requires skill.

 

All I'm saying is ask the high-BR players to use the same level of skill and number of keyboard inputs as the mid-BR players. Which is, of course, the real problem the AFKers are exploiting, isn't it? If play outside the destroyer BRs wasn't braindead easy right now, this wouldn't be a thing.

Lol

 

[kkang2828 1,435]

On 15/05/2022 at 08:31, Pleskac said:

You may be right, I am starting to think that this issue is mostly on US servers, I play on EU mostly or RU when queue is too long. The amount of bots or xxxx playes is problaly much less in these locations than in US. I never said anything that suggest I dont understand it, I simply said that the rewards for afk playes are next to nothing compared to normal play and not all of them are even bots. Its funny, with 199 games I have Sharnhorst and I have unlocked Hyuga few days ago, I can tell you this ship is the most ***** up thing in wt. This game mode cannot be saved as it is now, doesnt matter if there are bots or not.

 

Sorry for disrespecting your naval experience. The stats on the 'Search players' page can be very misleading sometimes. I'm starting to think it counts only coastal and destroyer time.

 

The rewards for AFK players are nowhere near that of a decent proper naval player, but they earn enough to make it absolutely worth running it 24/7 while doing IRL stuff. Just check out this video: 

 

I'd much rather have on my team a bunch of Gaijin bots that at least somewhat try to play the objective and use all their spawns, instead of player AFK-bots that play extremely passively and always ODL(One-Death-Leave). When AFK players are kicked, they can simply be replaced by Gaijin bots that are more beneficial to the team. As for the rewards, the reward for killing Gaijin bots should be raised for naval, maybe 60~70% of a player kill. Bots are encountered much often in naval than in air or ground, and naval bots are not easy to kill RP/SL piñatas as are air or ground bots.

 

On a side note, you should try playing more destroyers. Destroyer games are much more balanced, engaging, and fun than cruiser or capital ship games. It is the general opinion of the naval community that 3.7 ~ 5.0 is where the most fun is at for naval.

 

On 15/05/2022 at 09:02, Bruce_R1 said:

Seriously, you've got to play more destroyers. A good player in the mid BRs in RB is working those two fire control toggles constantly. If you aren't switching up your fire control scheme as soon as planes are near and back when they're gone to watch for sneaking boats, then you're not playing at anywhere close to maximum efficiency. Works great. Requires skill.

 

All I'm saying is ask the high-BR players to use the same level of skill and number of keyboard inputs as the mid-BR players. Which is, of course, the real problem the AFKers are exploiting, isn't it? If play outside the destroyer BRs wasn't braindead easy right now, this wouldn't be a thing.

 

What fire control toggles do you mean exactly? If you mean the 'target type for AI shooters', than I already actively manage that. I do think your solution could be worth a try. I was just trying to think of the possible downsides. 

Edited May 17, 2022 by kkang2828

[Bruce_R1 2,092]

2 minutes ago, kkang2828 said:

What fire control toggles do you mean exactly? If you mean the 'target type for AI shooters', than I already actively manage that. I do think your solution could be worth a try. I was just trying to think of the possible downsides. 

So I was proposing a modification only to the two toggles that exist now only for 5.5" and higher capital ships (see the table I included): the one that toggles which armament is manual between primary/secondary/AA and the one that focusses AI targeting on surface, air, both or none. A slight modification to the logic on those two buttons for the larger ships with gun mounts that were primarily surface oriented by design would greatly diminish current and future situations like the OP's current Helena AFK problem and overall tweak the meta to make the big cruisers and BBs (who can right now do everything with little skill) require slightly more skill and take slightly more interest in keeping their own destroyers alive, I suspect. I think this would be a net positive, as well as being more realistic.

 

I take your point on how you can't count on your teammates to know their jobs in a rando team game, but you could say the same thing about any specialist role in any online game really. AA people in ground, bombers in the air... don't get me started on how no one on my team ever knew their roles in TF2 or FFXIV. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever do roles though, and can have mechanics that tend to reward good play in those roles.

[kkang2828 1,435]

8 minutes ago, Bruce_R1 said:

So I was proposing a modification only to the two toggles that exist now only for 5.5" and higher capital ships (see the table I included): the one that toggles which armament is manual between primary/secondary/AA and the one that focusses AI targeting on surface, air, both or none. A slight modification to the logic on those two buttons for the larger ships with gun mounts that were primarily surface oriented by design would greatly diminish current and future situations like the OP's current Helena AFK problem and overall tweak the meta to make the big cruisers and BBs (who can right now do everything with little skill) require slightly more skill and take slightly more interest in keeping their own destroyers alive, I suspect. I think this would be a net positive, as well as being more realistic.

 

I take your point on how you can't count on your teammates to know their jobs in a rando team game, but you could say the same thing about any specialist role in any online game really. AA people in ground, bombers in the air... don't get me started on how no one on my team ever knew their roles in TF2 or FFXIV. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever do roles though, and can have mechanics that tend to reward good play in those roles.

 

Good points. And I also already actively manage which armament is on manual control as well as the AI target types.

[Bruce_R1 2,092]

1 minute ago, kkang2828 said:

 

Good points. And I also already actively manage which armament is on manual control as well as the AI target types.

Right, but if you go by the table I put up:

 

Spoiler

The Helena AFKer no longer has a really good option for invoking AI for their primary armament and AFKing. Their best bet for their "universal setting" would then be Surface/Secondary, which shuts their AA and secondaries down. This will inevitably cut down on damage done and earnings and decrease their survivability to smart attackers without disadvantaging active players who can sense what's going on in the battle like you and I do and react and toggle appropriately.

 

(The zomboat script the farmers are using is actually smarter than this: if you line up your aircraft on them and they get the warning they react by toggling to turn the AA on and primary or secondaries off. That script also has some aimbotting in it and is a clear TOS violation, though. But I don't think the AFK "scripts" in most cases are anything much more than a mouse macro to start the game and set a few parameters. They'd have degraded effectiveness as a result, in a way that also happened to make the naval sim more realistic).

[kkang2828 1,435]

12 minutes ago, Bruce_R1 said:

Right, but if you go by the table I put up:

 

Hide contents

The Helena AFKer no longer has a really good option for invoking AI for their primary armament and AFKing. Their best bet for their "universal setting" would then be Surface/Secondary, which shuts their AA and secondaries down. This will inevitably cut down on damage done and earnings and decrease their survivability to smart attackers without disadvantaging active players who can sense what's going on in the battle like you and I do and react and toggle appropriately.

 

(The zomboat script the farmers are using is actually smarter than this: if you line up your aircraft on them and they get the warning they react by toggling to turn the AA on and primary or secondaries off. That script also has some aimbotting in it and is a clear TOS violation, though. But I don't think the AFK "scripts" in most cases are anything much more than a mouse macro to start the game and set a few parameters. They'd have degraded effectiveness as a result, in a way that also happened to make the naval sim more realistic).

 

Yeah I get you.