Add Report Idle Play to Challenge of the Celestials

[heffermax.9064]

Gotta be honest, it really grinds my gears that there are so many AFKers in the Celestial Challenge. 

I think it would go a long way to be able to report idle play. Don't really see any cons to it either.

[Solvar.7953]

The problem is that Anet won't do anything with just reports - they would actually need to witness it (or perhaps look over logs and verify that the person was AFK, but know the person was AFK vs a bad player may not be totally evident from just the logs).

The only way for Anet to catch these people is if they had people watching the events and then pinging the players to make sure they are really AFK, because per agreement, playing the game but not doing anything is within terms as long as you are at your keyboard.  So per those rules, someone can be doing nothing in those events, but as long as they are at their computer (perhaps watching videos or doing something else), that is allowed per rules.  Perhaps those rules should get changed (at least for instanced content, though for the annoying daily activities, a frequent suggestion is to just AFK it, so if terms were changed, that might now end up being in violation of those new terms.)

 

 

[Ariurotl.3718]

I wish there were more AFKers, then maybe I'd get the additional contribution reward more often than once in a hundred attempts! 😉

[Urud.4925]

ArenaNet can't ban people for being AFK in a non-competitive event. Same reason why they can't ban necros and engineers farming in some open world spots. They can only reduce the drop, as they already did with the C.Celestial. If you stay AFK you get no small chests and if you stay AFK for the whole event, you don't even get the big chest. In the past it was even worse.

The reason why people AFK, despite they know that they won't be able to farm keys, like in the past, it's because there aren't many events that contribute to the weekly. The Dragon Ball gives 0 contribution (and if it gave even 5 points, there will be less people quitting when their team is losing), even if players would play it for more than 2 daily battles. Spamming the race is boring and the adventures are too long and not fun. I think that players would avoid to AFK the Celestial if we had more ways to get contribution for the weekly. The loot/keys doesn't even matter.

Edited February 20 by Urud.4925

[Luthan.5236]

In open world there afaik it is bannable to farm fully afk. Person probably would need to be in a spot where they obviously made a build and placed the char there to farm - to avoid mistakes when someon just normally goes afk in a place that seems empty. (When another player killed mobs there before.) Most probably are semi-afk which is allowed - to let the char placed there but staying near the comuter to react if a gamemaster messages you.

PvP: Who cares? Unless it is obvious win trading at the top - to farm for special titles (I think some people have been banned for stuff regarding tournaments as well - and regarding rewards there) I doubt anyone cares. The normal pips and chests ... not a big deal and some just decide to surrender early.

Now the challenge has the mechanics that tries to improve participation: Giving an additional stack of the buff (for the chests) to the highest-performing player. (Which leads to the contrary effect: If you notice someone is too good you just do the bare minimum each round since you won't win the additional stack anyways. Easiest to notice in racing events and when 3+ times in a row someone is at the top.)

And no participation at all should give no stacks. (And player not being allowed to loot the big chest.) They could add an afk timer (or making an existing one stricter) to really kick fully  afk players. Won't prevent players to go the legit way of farming the weekly points: Doing the bare minimum to be able to loot the big chest. Then being afk (if necessary moving the char to not get kicked) and doing other stuff close to the computer or at the computer alt-tabbed to something else.

This thread is no surprise. Since we are at the last "week" (1-2 days) and that stuff is painful (running the races even more boring) most people probably trying to finish their last weekly. I have noticed more low performers yesterday and today. Proud to say that I did not perform that much less than usually (still a bit less - only a bit). At 200/200 with a mix of race/firestarter adventures and the challenge.

Challenge should get tweaks for the next year. Imo either a hard tracking of participation (fixed values scaling with the number of players) - gold event medal awarding the +1. Maybe a check to not give it at the last challenge when the overall bar is almost filled and the first person could just easily trigger the end of that round without others being able to participate.

Preferrably: Checking a bit things like mean contribution and mabe a median ... to filter a bit there. Too lazy to think about how the actual implementation should be. I am sure the devs can to something about it. Should be easy mathematics. In maths/statistics the English term is "outlier" I think. If you have one player doing like 90 percent of the whole thing and the other combined only about 10 then only that 1 player should get +1. Others none.  If all are close to each other in the amount of participation. Then award everyone the +1.

[Shikigami.4013]

2 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

In open world there afaik it is bannable to farm fully afk. Person probably would need to be in a spot where they obviously made a build and placed the char there to farm - to avoid mistakes when someon just normally goes afk in a place that seems empty. (When another player killed mobs there before.) Most probably are semi-afk which is allowed - to let the char placed there but staying near the comuter to react if a gamemaster messages you.

There are countless topics on this for a decade but many people still do not know the actual ruling. And no, going afk anywhere is not against the rules as long as you are actually afk and did NOT automate your character to perform any action, including setting up any skill as autocast like many of those afk farmers do, for example necro greatsword skill 4.

AFK doing nothing = always ok. However if your character takes any action while you are AFK, that is where it can enter the forbidden area depending on the other circumstances.

 

Quoting a post by Chris Cleary, Game Security Lead in 2016:

Quote

1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMs

If all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.