AFK and Disconnected Players

Battleborn Open Beta Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#1

Currently, you can only report players through Steam for cheating, being offensive, threats, etc.
There needs to be a dedicated, cross-platform function to report leaving and AFK team members and a punishment system. Just putting players back into the game they left does not help. It, in fact, hurts their teammates because that player will not be replaced by another.

Either that or there needs to be a way to reward players on the leaver’s team for playing down a player and losing (so long as they were randomly matched with that player so that there isn’t an exploit to rewards).

#2

I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to be able to report players that leave or go AFK. Sometimes you just can’t help it. Maybe your dog needs to go out, or your controller died, or any number of things. Plus, vote-kicking and reporting will almost certainly lead to trolling or revenge reporting, and no-one wants that. I also like the option to jump back into a game if you d/c, so you actially have the chance to come back and help. While there DOES need to be a way to deal with AFK or troll players, I don’t think actual reporting is the way to go. As far as the reward system goes, I do like that idea, but no matter what the rewards are, they’ll eventually become useless. Just some things to consider. I know this has been a pretty hotly debated topic here, and this is just my two cents.

#3

Right now, disconnected players presents the biggest issue hindering Battleborn. AFK players unfortunately are a staple to any multiplayer game, and can’t be “punished” and rarely controlled. Disconnects, however, need to be addressed. it is a 99% guarantee that someone quits during the game. I don’t have the data to understand why, but I it seems to be because of being placed on a poor team and not wanting to lose. I purpose that if you quit through the menu (rather than your wifi going down, or a lag-out), a player can’t earn rewards or XP for 45 minutes. This might be enough to deter most quitters. Close the gap on the XP bonus for winning, and increase credit gain for the winners. The “Surrender” option is a fantastic welcome to console multiplayer games that already is in place for those who don’t want to suffer the long game, so in the final game it would be nice to have a multiplayer tutorial on how to do this (a lot of players don’t know that’s there). Don’t boost the team who lost a player, that is a frustrating thing for the team with no disconnects. I love the game and it promises a long shelf life for me, but if I can’t count on consistent matches it’s going to be rough to stay enthused to play.

#4

People will disconnect their internet.

Reporting is the way to go for an AFKer. I just lost a game due to one. Guy called CrazyMonkey0707 was AFK for the entire match. I know he was there at some point since he moved a couple times in the spawn room. We lost 459-500.

Last night a streamer got salty and left the Incursion when all we had to do was turtle for 3 minutes. He sucked at getting kills. He didnt understand the point of the mode.

There needs to be a way to severely punish people who leave in the middle of a match or go AFK. Got bad internet? Tough crap. Got a computer that crashes a lot? Tough crap. Got animals that need a lot of care? Tough crap.

#5

But realistically, what’s to stop people from reporting for no reason, or just because you killed them multiple times? Would you have to suffer some form of penalty for getting on someone’s nerves? What if a person reported their entire team because they lost? How would you implement the system of player-based reporting so that it dealt with real issues and not just frustration or what have you?

#6

Each match has a unique identifier. People who report for no reason can be punished just as easily.

#7

That’s fair, I suppose. My only question to that is to how the system would decide what was fair or unfair? If you report someone for unfair reporting, is their initial report against you removed until the system decides whether or not it was fair? Do you continue to be locked out until some sort of decision is made? A system is not going to be able to look at empirical evidence and make a fair decision, but on the flip side of that, having an actual person would we totally unreasonable. I’m not trying to say that something shouldn’t be done, believe me, I hate when someone goes AFK or disconnects just like everyone else, but I think a system like that would be a logistical mess, or else somewhat stringent.

#8

Good point, I agree. In my time of gaming, I can’t think of one time I started up a mulitplayer game knowing I might not play it through. What do you think about prompted reporting? When someone idles for 60 seconds, or quits, the game asks you if you would like to report? Maybe that way the community knows it’s really easy for that to happen to you?

#9

For AFK, the system checks to see if the character had any use, such as moving, taking or giving damage, building, etc. If the character was labeled as [inactive] as it does when someone AFKs then that helps as well. If there are significant numbers reported back it gets sent for review by a human and that character gets audited.

Disconnected is easier. It just checks the match to see if the character was DCed and a pull of that characters info will show how often. Send info to human for review. Repeat offenders can be flagged.

If any reports are made for the above situations come back as false reports, the reporter gets flagged.

All punishments are something the Devs would have to discuss and get feedback for.

1 Like
#10

I have to admit, that DOES sound like an effective system. It concerns me to have an actual person involved anywhere in the process, just because I don’t want something like that to decrease how long the game’s server stay active however many years down the road because the process requires retaining a person beyond just maintenance.