How to stop AFK Faction Leeching.

A vote kick would be perfect

People tried that, it does not work and you still get the boot. A single key being held down for a period of time does not count as game movement. Developers are smarter than that.

The votekick option could be a nice feature just for the competitive missions (Fort Aspenwood), Alliance Battle areas, and maybe RAs/TAs as long as it does not bleed over to the PvE side of the game.

Votekick system can be abused in a PvE environment. Usually, this is a majority vote by the team. What if you are on a team, who all appear to be a PUG, but the majority are friends or you could be in a guild group as a PUG?
There probably many examples how this can be abused, but these are a few off the top of my head:

• You get a nice drop in the middle of combat, they want it, give you the boot, and take the reward for themselves.
• The party will to get to a certain area/zone, boot the PUGs that are not needed, just so they have better odds on farming rewards.

i agree with the earlier comment, i always ask a question of each player before we enter mission, judge response and time to determine if they stay in group. You control the group and if you dont get the right 'vibe' kick...

afk'rs seem to be increasing in number, is this people who are doing survivor and dont want to lose a title but also want faction etc?

it is very irritating and if there is software that sees that there has been no movement, then that seems like a good approach too. however when we are doing long runs, fow/uw we often take a 15 minute break, so that might not be the best idea when there are areas that to clear can take 4-6 hours.

another simple approach is that if you dont leave the bunker, you dont get the rewards.

on missions if it happens we just lure a mob to the leecher, always fun...infact immense satisfaction.

/against votekick for the same reasons as Chief

I have a suggestion for faction leechers in the Aspenwood/Jade Mines missions (don't know how foolproof it is, but I'll throw it out there anyway).

The first thing: Unless there's a way to limit the reward on the losing side to only those who participated, get rid of it entirely. :/ As nice as it is, it's a massive lure to leechers. Even if their side doesn't win they gain. This will not prevent faction gains from killing players on the other side, etc.

As for the winning side: Rather than faction simply being issued at the end of the match (when the other team all dies/vanishes, before the cinematic), make it so that the winning team members must speak to an NPC. This NPC can award the players who speak to it the appropriate faction/experience, and extra 'Return me to Fort Aspenwood/The Jade Mines' and 'Play the cinematic' option can allow individuals to leave the mission or even explore if they're so inclined (however, I'd put a short time limit on claiming the reward so leechers have less of a chance to run and claim it once a match is over).

I'd spawn this rewards NPC *away* from the winning team's starter area and res areas, so leechers/bots can't use some program to home in on the NPCs name and autorun there when (s)he appears. EG. The Luxon rewards guy might appear where the Kurzick Architect was killed. The Kurzick rewards guy could be at the refined amber mine.


1. This method will not stop leechers, but it might seriously reduce the benefits of trying to be one... so in theory, it might reduce their numbers.

2. I'd love for rewards for the losing side to be kept, but am at a loss as to how to award the faction in a way similar to what I've outlined for the winning side.

There is another way to stop leechers: change them to the same as AB's, you have to choose a party before you enter, that way if there is a leecher they can be kicked when the game ends.

I dislike the /kick idea, because it could be used to kick anyone, so if a player held a grudge against another player, they could just do /kick, and its possible they would be.

I hate leeching with a passion.

The only solution I think would work is /votekick.

It'd need to have features like:

* PVP-mission only
* only kick the player on getting a simple majority (i.e. more than half) /votekicking
* Only players from your team can /votekick you
* Give the player a "time-out" where they can't re-enter any pvp mission for 1 hour after two consecutive kickings

I do not belive that /kick can work: if you are slight offensive to a teammate, saying after they run of and kill themselves and then say its your fault, etc, he can just got /kick and you could get kicked. You have to remember that 95%+ of the population of Guild Wars aren't nice, helpful and friendly.

i have always felt, best screening around is making team.... if person doesnt reply, then boot them...

random arenas for small 4 man pvp's, not for aspenwood and such...

and i have always, always, always wanted the /votekick idea....

nothen like half way through a mission and someone goes afk <- but do see major flaws in this idea for pve...

I personally belive /kick is open to too much abuse to be considered a viable option.

If there was /votekick, I'd probably get kicked out of 3/4 the alliance battles I join I can be one hell of a drill sargeant... but it sometimes wins the game.

I agree with Raiin about the problems of a votekick.

Not all faction leechers are AFK'ers, sometimes they set up a character with only run buffs and evasion stances and run around the map doing nothing. Or they could merely keep throwing themselves at the enemy base defender.

I think Shadow of Light's idea about going up to collect your reward is good. Maybe for the losing side, you'd have to target a random party member and control-space him/her. It would be like "Playername Here, please target Playername Here and press control-space." The losing party would be gathered up in the base or something, and you'd have to target with your mouse. The players would be spaced out evenly, and the person you must target won't be anyone next to you (Prevents "target nearest ally") You would have 10-20 seconds to find them before you lose your chance at the reward.

My point exactly.

I went to Fort Aspenwood to witness any "leeching of faction" and spent an hour or two, at various times, during the double faction event weekend and I did witness a player consistently "leech" during the mission. A great number of players complained during the mission and in the town. Evidently, based on what people were saying, is this individual was here all weekend "leeching".

I decided to document the incident and report it via the Guild Wars Support System. If you feel there is a player conducting a scam, leeching, etc. within the game, take the time to document the location (town - district), times, and name(s) then report using the link above. The Support Team does listen and help.

Hello

I'm fairly new to Guild Wars PvP but I love it, especially Fort Aspenwood. I was thinking that another good way to remove inactive players, or leechers, would be to make the initial spawn pad auto kick players that haven't moved off of it in 60 seconds, then bring in replacement players as needed, or if that's not possible, at least spawn NPC replacements of the same profession of the player that was removed. You would have to separate the respawn pad for active players of course.

To further discourage particularly abusive players, a tally of number of the number of times they were removed this way could be recorded and they would be prohibited from that mission for a specific amount of time.

Thanks for reading this and see you in the Fort.

Any technical proposal to solve a social problem by advocating a hard limit of some kind WILL NOT WORK. The person/bot will always adjust, and a lot quicker than the dev team will. You'll end up in an arms race. The only technical way to stop this and other problems such as spam is an evolving system where the masses define what is or isn't leeching/spam/whatever by flagging it when they see it, and letting the system statistically compare as many measurable points as possible and then automatically punishing people when it sees it. And that probably won't stop the problem either. Maybe doing just enough to hit the ever-moving goalposts might become too difficult and they'll leave. But maybe the ever-moving goalposts get too close to what is considered fair-play and legitimate players start getting punished too.

I highly doubt a kick option would ever be implemented, but who knows.

Well... kick by votation is something that an be done in random enter places, but not something you could do in places where you can form the party before entering.

In the case of the two Competitive challenges in Cantha, there they could add that.

Maybe a puzzle that pops up at a random time in a mission, and boots you if you don't complete it within a certain time frame (of course it should be solvable within ~10seconds, but it should stop AFKers and Bots)?

/notsigned on vote kick, very abusable.

Don't you think.

The only possible abuse that could be is people of the other side getting into yours to try ti kick your own people...

But not many people would support the kick, if they see the character moving around.

Do it like the way you have to type the character name everytime you wanna delete one.

But in this case, type something else perhaps.

EDIT: sorry for double posting