Purpose of this blog

Dmitry Yudo aka Overlord, jack of all trades
David Lister aka Listy, Freelancer and Volunteer

Thursday, September 25, 2014

[WoT] Ensuring Fairplay

Hi again! 0.9.3 update for World of Tanks is now live.

Your feedback on the new things is welcome. Especially interested in the following this time:

A new automated system to ensure fair play

With this update we will be introducing a new feature to deal with unsportsmanlike behavior, such as:

  • Frequent AFKing 
  • Leaving the battle


23 comments:

  1. My only feedback:

    Yes.

    (more seriously - I like pretty much everything in the new patch. Kinda sad some things had to be delayed and hope they'll come soon).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I mostly agree with that guy. 9.3 seems solid cept for lag isues around patchtime and the typical related stuff to that. Content of the 9.3 seems good tho. And i love the new IS7 look (all tho takes/took a bit of time to get used to the missing machine gun and odd looking mudflaps).

      Delete
  2. Some Ideas:
    - There is this button where you can suppress invitations by non-friends. Its great, but it also hides invitations from clan-members not on your friend list. Not so good.
    - I love the new little number showing the number of friends online. What I would love is a way to see that without starting the game. Best were on Windows, but more easily implemented in the WoT Assistant; who is online, who would be interested in playing if only somebody was online...
    - Tickets for AFKing were issued to players who were kicked by busy servers and never saw the map

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @- Tickets for AFKing were issued to players who were kicked by busy servers and never saw the map@

      Any details on that? Kicked from where?

      Delete
  3. Why don't you address the reasons people quit the match or afk in the first place?

    I've afked plenty of stock tanks until I had the top modules unlocked, because the stock grind is so miserable in most tanks. I read the entire Lost Fleet novel series while afking stock British heavies, for instance. Compared to a tank like the Foch, which I never afk'ed because it's completely playable stock.

    Alternatively, if you don't want to make this element of the game fun in order to motivate people to pay to convert XP (which never worked on me, but I guess it can on the whales), just remove the economic incentive to afk in the first place. Look at War Thunder's solution to afk'ing. AFK'ing is rare there because afk'ing will earn literally 0 XP so there's simply no point to doing it. People afk in WoT because it works.

    As far as quitting the battle at the start goes, I used to do this as well. I kept a tally of games that I subjectively felt were not fun or enjoyable to participate in. A strong majority of these matches were games where I was 2 tiers below the top (tier 8 in a tier 10 match, e.g.). Very rarely did I enjoy these games, and yet they constitute a significant proportion of all matches. Once I started exiting out of all +2 tier matches I found I enjoyed the game much more. I really don't know why WG is so reticent about reducing the spread to +1 tier difference, but this has pushed away a lot of people. Once people reach the endgame it no longer motivates people to pay to reach higher tier tanks anyway (the obvious motivation for putting people 2 tiers below); at that point it's purely punitive.

    I'm not an active player anymore so these measures won't affect me, but it's hard to see that they'll really have the desired effect. You might reduce the activity, but that's because people aren't logging in at all or using a different approach to get around it. I already know that if I still played I'd just suicide into the enemy team with these penalties. Doing that has all the same negative effects on your own team that afk'ing/quitting does but won't trigger the new penalties. It might take 60-90 seconds longer than simply quitting did, but that's still better than sitting around a +2 tier match for 5-10 minutes not having fun. The bottom line is that you really can't force people to play in a fashion that they don't find fun and trying to penalize people into doing so is fundamentally misguided.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. I realise this is a little late but I feel it needs to be said, your attitude to team play is toxic, and only ever detrimental to fair online gamesmanship. It has no place in online gaming, you would try and justify extremely poor behaviour in the same way those who resort to using hacks do.

      The behaviour you would condone is commonly called leeching, you are prospering from the efforts of your team mates while making it harder for them to secure a victory. It is not only cheap, frankly it is the move of a deadbeat.

      Quitting at the start of a battle is no better either, running away because something is going to present a challenge; again your team mates are left in the lurch and 14 players who had the misfortune of being teamed up with you suffer. Many of my best games have been as bottom tier, if I were a quitter my team mates would likely have suffered defeat instead of my being able to contribute to victory, even when the supposed chance to win has been sub 40%.

      Bottom line, anything that can be done to remove players with your attitudes can only ever be a good for the long term health of WOT,and online gaming in general. feel free to come back to wot once you have matured a bit, hopefully by then you will understand why the behaviour you would embark upon is so reprehensible.

      personally I feel the latest punishment systems are still not harsh enough, continual offenders should receive bans, in the same way other bad behaviour is penalised, first a one day ban, then a week, finally perma ban; the entire community would be far better off for it.

      Delete
    2. He has a point though. Starting tier 8 the stock grinds of some tanks are su utterly horrible in such an unforgiving environment that all people I know skip them with free exp.

      Working as intended but still leaves a sour aftertaste.

      I can only imagine the levels of frustration that a bad player must feel - basically the difference between afk and taking part in the game are not justifying the time spend...

      Delete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I very like this update, but sometimes i have problem with textures on HD tanks. It's happening since 9.3, i have Radeon 4850, newest drivers.

    http://i.imgur.com/jThToPj.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  6. Best update since month thanks to the punishment for AFK players and rage quitters.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love your punishment for quitters and afk'ers! Now a good implementation of suiciders and tanking and you are you can't do much wrong in the next weeks in my eyes!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is a great step forward to prevent some ppl from failing their way up tier 10. Nothing to say about it except it should have come sooner.

    The next big thing imo is to to the same (at least in XP) to 0dmg/0kills/0spotting guys.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The trouble with that is that not everyone who gets 0/0/0/ is not trying, e.g the other day In my AT15 I went to cover one flank with a T8 medium, whilst the lemming train went to the other flank, minutes into the game we were faced with 2 T10 mediums and an AMX50B, I couldn't out maneuver the mediums and the 50B plowed 4 shots into me whilst my 3 return shots all bounced of him, end result 3 minutes into the game the T8 medium is dead having run slap bang into the 3 of them and I'm left with a big fat 0/0//0.

      Delete
  9. While server can recognize that player is disconnected, warning system doesn't take this into account. I got d/c'd twice during one battle, had to restart the whole game and when i finally connected i was dead - and i got a warning.
    Obviously i didn't contribute to my team but this shoud be insta zero-xp and zero-credits for that battle instead of some unjustified threat for future. I understand that d/c can be abused but it's better to resolve such cases instantly, because if someone has numerous connecion problems (provider fault) or multiple crashes, he may exeed the limit and be punished for something that is not done ON PURPOSE.

    Also, new interface tank companies is buggy:
    1. Once you create your company (or join) you cannot open comapnies list and see who else is there.
    2. Even with full point company you get “incomplete” confirmation message
    3. Once company is in queue, noone form reserve can leave it and commander cannot exclude them either.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I couldn't load into a game and got an AFK warning that match.

    ReplyDelete
  11. It's not changed my style of play. If my team die leaving me to a certain loss, I quit back to garage. I have left regardless of damage/potential XP earned and have left several times with *a lot* of damage done. I really couldn't care. The XP gain by staying is really not worth the soul destroying wait for you to be surrounded by 10 tanks and shafted up the exhaust pipe.

    As a change to quitting back to garage, I sometimes just charge the enemy if my team has decided to have gone in 60 seconds. I sometimes zig-zag, and just point the gun at the enemy or face the turret behind me as if I am as clueless as the team that died without offering a good account of themselves. I have seen other people doing this too.

    As the original respondent posted, you need to address the reasons why people quit back to garage. In my case, if you want people not to quit back to garage, you need to offer better incentives for people to stay alive in the losing team.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Another thought.

    When you introduce Havok. If someone rolls over onto their turret. Do you think they are going to wait 10-15 minutes for the game to end or do you think it is more likely they will quit back to garage?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it will be handle the same way as a drowning or when your tank is rammed/driven over (hp beeing drained).

      Delete
  13. My game crashed on loading screen yesterday (as it does once a day or two - btw: i'm not using ANY mods) - when I managed to restart the game it logged in and ... black screen (all sound was on), so I restarted again only to see a WARNING after being AFK the entire battle.

    Maybe WoT should be made more stable first? I am running a fresh Win8.1 (maybe 3 months since clean install) with most up to date nVidia drivers and no background browsers running etc. with a small exception for teamspeak. You would think that well maintained system will allow You to avoid such situations but when a random crash happends why should I risk getting a BAN for WoT instability?

    Also a clan mate of mine got pushed off a bridge on Mountain Pass map by his teammate, but was warned anyway and just quit playing for that day as he was worried he will get banned if anything random happens.

    So in general the entire system is heading in the right direction, but sometimes there are some weird situations. In case that my buddy had probably He would not quit playing if there was any "Waring bar" on his garage that would make it CLEARLY VISIBLE if we are "totaly fime" or in "in danger of ban" zone. Such a tool would allow us to get some more confidence in launching next battle without wondering what would happen if we would fall of a cliff because of a lag spike (and these are common as well on EU servers), game crash of some teammate BS. I'm not saying that the system should be removed or significantly reworked, but it should be much clearer to check if we are fine at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm still waiting for the ultimate fair play mode: Where the victory is determined by skill. And not the size of your wallet

    But I guess we'll never see possibility to opt out of gold ammo. Wargaming cherishes the idea to sell victory too much.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You already have it, you just don't want to admit your results are your own fault.

      Delete
  15. AFKs still happen but the amount of terribad players (tier 6+ WN8 < 100) not moving for the entire game has gotten less.

    FPS also went up for me but there still is the stuttering upon first spot issue (even with SSD).

    Also I have micro freezes/warps since patch about once or twice every few games.

    All in all nice patch.

    ReplyDelete