Votekick and automatic kick for AFKs
nawoa
Join Date: 2012-12-11 Member: 174777Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2012-12-11 Member: 174777Members, Reinforced - Gold
Nothing reduces my enjoyment of a highly-competitive multiplayer game like NS2 more than long-duration AFKs and trolls. This game NEEDS a votekick function.
Whether my team's winning or losing, having the question in the back of my mind "is [team] winning because of the AFK(s) on the other team or did they have a better strategy?" really cheapens the whole experience. AFKs remove skill from the equation and and the game becomes simply a matter of numbers, especially with smaller teams.
I love this game and I'm going to keep playing it and telling people about it, but this really reduces my enjoyment. Of the 150 hours I've logged since beta, I can confidently say I've spent more time frustrated with AFKs and trolls than with (perceived) balance issues. Balance issues can be planned for and worked around but dead weight on your team can't be. Even newbies can at least find simpler stuff to do while they're learning, like harassing RTs. Some idiot who didn't have the courtesy to quit the game before he went to bed, he's just being a dick.
Another thing votekick is needed for is the trolls. When you're spectating, your chat is limited to other spectators. When you're on a team, actively informing the other team of your team's movements and strategy (not to mention taking up a player slot), your team is simply going to lose. It's not a frequent thing but when it happens, it makes me feel really frustrated and ruins my night.
What I propose:
- "Vote kick" function, a nested GUI alongside the "vote concede" and "vote eject commander" functions. You select "vote kick", which opens a submenu with all the players names, divided into multiple pages if necessary. Players who have been idle for more than 2 minutes are highlighted in both the "vote kick" list and in the main player list, and must have "(AFK)" next to their name... this is very important.
- Automatic kick to the ready room for anyone who's been idle for more than 5 minutes.
- Automatic kick from the server for anyone who's been idle in the ready room for more than 5 minutes. In other words, you must be idle for 10 full minutes to be kicked from the server.
- A player idle for less than 2 minutes (or being kicked for another reason) requires two-thirds of their team's votes for them to be kicked.
- A player idle for more than 2 minute requires only half the team's votes for them to be kicked.
- A kicked player can't reconnect for 5 minutes. If you attempt to re-connect, the server informs you that you've been kicked and tells you how long until you'll be allowed to re-join.
- If a player is kicked from a server twice in a 60-minute period, their kick cooldown period increases to 24 hours.
This sort of thing is a standard feature in most multiplayer-focused games and NS2 needs it.
Whether my team's winning or losing, having the question in the back of my mind "is [team] winning because of the AFK(s) on the other team or did they have a better strategy?" really cheapens the whole experience. AFKs remove skill from the equation and and the game becomes simply a matter of numbers, especially with smaller teams.
I love this game and I'm going to keep playing it and telling people about it, but this really reduces my enjoyment. Of the 150 hours I've logged since beta, I can confidently say I've spent more time frustrated with AFKs and trolls than with (perceived) balance issues. Balance issues can be planned for and worked around but dead weight on your team can't be. Even newbies can at least find simpler stuff to do while they're learning, like harassing RTs. Some idiot who didn't have the courtesy to quit the game before he went to bed, he's just being a dick.
Another thing votekick is needed for is the trolls. When you're spectating, your chat is limited to other spectators. When you're on a team, actively informing the other team of your team's movements and strategy (not to mention taking up a player slot), your team is simply going to lose. It's not a frequent thing but when it happens, it makes me feel really frustrated and ruins my night.
What I propose:
- "Vote kick" function, a nested GUI alongside the "vote concede" and "vote eject commander" functions. You select "vote kick", which opens a submenu with all the players names, divided into multiple pages if necessary. Players who have been idle for more than 2 minutes are highlighted in both the "vote kick" list and in the main player list, and must have "(AFK)" next to their name... this is very important.
- Automatic kick to the ready room for anyone who's been idle for more than 5 minutes.
- Automatic kick from the server for anyone who's been idle in the ready room for more than 5 minutes. In other words, you must be idle for 10 full minutes to be kicked from the server.
- A player idle for less than 2 minutes (or being kicked for another reason) requires two-thirds of their team's votes for them to be kicked.
- A player idle for more than 2 minute requires only half the team's votes for them to be kicked.
- A kicked player can't reconnect for 5 minutes. If you attempt to re-connect, the server informs you that you've been kicked and tells you how long until you'll be allowed to re-join.
- If a player is kicked from a server twice in a 60-minute period, their kick cooldown period increases to 24 hours.
This sort of thing is a standard feature in most multiplayer-focused games and NS2 needs it.
Comments
I personally think 5 minutes is a bit long. Maybe 5 minutes total AFK till kick. 5 minutes is a pretty fair amount of time to be down a player due to AFK.
Votekick would help though if people kept track of who's afk. It could simply be imbedded in the scoreboard like the mute player function. If memory serves it's on the dev to-do list.
"It's open to abuse"
So is this game being a mod, as Hugh has pointed out. A votekick option will bring more good than bad.
I think a player vote kick option (activated by server config) can be good in some instances. It was used a lot on the UT2004 server I ran when no admin was around so suspected botters and AFK peeps could be booted. There was even a choice where they could ban the player for the next round too before it even started. Even if they just kicked the player for that current round, they were not able to re-join the server for the rest of that round saving aggravation on the server and people could just play and enjoy themselves.
The auto kick function was implemented but turned off by default IIRC, it was upto server admins to turn it on and edit the time parameters, I believe the majority haven't touched it.
2 mins is plenty of time, if people are waiting out the round they can press a button in spectate or something.