AFK the Exploit

PVP Battlegrounds
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So I’ve been playing since BC with a few periods in between where i’ve left the game mostly on account of frustration. Additionally, I pay to play PVP, which is pretty much entirely random BG’s. The trend and correlation i’ve seen over the years is somewhat ironic. The number of people who are being AFK’d in BG’s including myself is off the charts and funny thing is the alliance win percentage is getting drastically worse. I went from almost 50% at one time to around 26% now.
My point behind the AFK exploit is exactly what seems to be happening now, A feature exploited and misused. If you say something, do something that someone doesn’t like you get targeted and are AFK’d. This also seems to carry from BG to BG. In most BG’s its not an issue, because you can run a short enough distance and engage to remove the debuff, but in AV and WG, you could be maintaining an objective point, get AFK’d and have no time to engage to remove it. Honestly, this is ridiculous and is becoming more and more prevalent and more and more abused. I think that if you are AFK’d and you prove otherwise anyone who voted you AFK should be given a hefty penalty. And yet still on the other hand i see people who are really AFK and you could mark them AFK the entire BG and they will still be there at the end, so I have no idea how this system works and the criteria required, but it is not consistent and seriously flawed.

Then we have another scenario, whereby people are exploiting the AFK feature due to an emotional response when the BG has absolutely no hope of winning, which primarily occurs in long epics such as AV and WG, and admittedly i’m also guilty at times, not often though i have done it, but people start ranting about reporting people AFk. Well this is also ridiculous, first the BG is over, its just a matter of running out the clock per say and, second, its very selfish and inconsiderate. You got wrecked, which seems common as alliance these days, and now you are going to kick people so you can bring in some innocent victim to join the mess you created and make them wait it out. To top it off, what are these people most likely going to do…hmmmm… AFK thats what, they mainly sit and chat but aren’t participating because its pointless. I’ve raised this in a number of BG’s and most people completely agree accept for the “reporters”. They live for kicking people regardless of legitimacy. Its entertaining when Blizz puts a limitation on trade chat, well how how putting a limit on how many times you are allowed to report people and if you persist then slam a ban on them. This would help stop the reporting addicts out there.

Bottom line, is the AFK feature cons are far outweighing its pro’s in the game today and is completely counterproductive by allowing it to be used as an exploit to exact “revenge” on other players to make themselves feel better.

More and more aspects of a game that I once loved to play, in spite of any faults (nothing is perfect), are becoming more and more intolerable. “puts on tinfoil hat” if this is a ploy to push players into Classic, well i would have to say brilliant, because i will most likely make the shift in hopes that I can recapture the feeling of a game that was once great. At the same time it is maddening that all the years and countless hours which i can never get back lol, will just get flushed down the drain in one fell swoop. I would have liked to think that a better strategy would be to keep people wanting to play WOW and play Classic doubling revenue at the same time.

Anyway, exploiting seems the way of society, invent the gun to hunt and make life easier, and we use it to wage war.

And thats my rant!

Take Care All!

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“as long as you are getting in combat, this shouldn’t be an issue” They clearly don’t know.

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TL;DR of that Twitter thread from Blizzard:

Just go with the flow and deal with it.

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Well yea, but not much they can do with that tbh. They gave the right idea about making a suggestion at least.

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Well someone who twitters can give them mine. Up the number it takes to kick someone so a single 5 man group can’t do it. And make it more for bigger bgs.

So 6 for 10 mans, 8-10 for 15s and 15+ for epics.

QueenOfIdeasRightHere

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Yup was just paraphrasing

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I’ve noticed this AFK-report griefing (?) on alliance side in epic BGs. IMO this is a bigger problem than the fact that some people will choose to AFK out on their own volition. Like Squeek mentioned, there are fixes that could pretty easily (?) be implemented to start with. If blizz is choosing to shrug at the issue, I can tack on yet another reason to spend $0.00 on this game.

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I think the AFK abuse thing can mostly be avoided by keeping your head down, just not talking much. All of these systems (bogus AFK flag, dungeon deserter, silence, etc) are 100% automated… so the best defense is being invisible and not drawing attention to yourself in the first place, considering how toxic randoms can be.

Personally I’ve never been falsely accused of AFK in any Alliance epic, and I’ve played on both Alliance toon and merced extensively… never been kicked out by false AFK reports. I’m actually kinda surprised lol, because I witness other Ally getting false AFKed somewhat regularly :sweat_smile:

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I got vote kicked out of Wintergrasp once. :thinking:

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AFK does not necessarily just hinge on combat
I see many times people say “he is in combat, we cannot kick him” and they clearly don’t know how it works.
if more than 5 people report you within a 60 second duration, YOU ARE GONE.
it does not matter if you are in combat.

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lol i forgot to mention the AFK exploit targeting of “under geared” players also. My perspective on this is simple. People pay to play and sometimes that exclusively encompasses PVP aka randoms. I use the example that no one says for PVE "go gear up in PVP and then PVE. Its just my opinion but its not the people its the system thats the problem. From the balanced grouping formed in queues or imbalance i should say right to the gear acquisition system. Right now, someone who PVE’s and has never PVP’d can gear up to the max and walk into a BG and wreck people.. It just doesn’t make sense.

However in saying that, I do not want this reply to overshadow the AFK exploit and turn it into a gearing debate as that could go on forever lol. The point is people are also being targeted for gear and abusing the AFK feature to do so. I don’t see a flag for “under geared” in the options so yet again people doing this should be met with hefty penalties.

IN short, we are talking about a piece of software and the underlying code that drives the software, which is mostly module design and therefore adding, changing and removing “automated” rules in the AFK system is 100% possible and not that complicated. Adding a rule to prevent people from being report addicts is probably the simplest. “You’ve reached the maximum number of reports you can submit for a day and if you use the reporting system again you will receive a 24hr ban” and make it like 3 for a 24hr period. Anymore and you obviously are out looking and targeting people for any reason which means over 90% of the time it will be an illegitimate one.

Cheers!

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I was wondering about that and of course this just compounds the issue. Thanks for the insight.

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If 5 players report at the exact same time it kicks them. Nice try.

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Umm, none reports exactly at the same time, he said 60 seconds, however the time frame may be shorter but the point is there is a window whereby if 5 players report you within that window then you will be kicked. its not possible for 5 people to hit the Afk button simultaneously (that in itself would require a hack of some kind)
SO no need for your sarcasm when what your saying is impossible lol…check the Database timestamps on the transactions, you will see that there is no simultaneous actions occurring and this is also due to a number factors such as latency. The odds of this occurring is astronomical and literally would have to be scripted using the same PC with 5 accounts, almost like the multi boxer principal. But even in this case the timestamps will be different but will be reduced to micro seconds.
SO maybe not 60 seconds but there is a guaranteed window my friend.

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Its really simple to do a countdown in voice. Like this, “report the idiot warrior in 5,4,3,2,1 report”. (idiot warrior has left the bg).

2 Likes
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^ this is exactly how it plays out, Afks is right.

Such is the flaw of these 100% automated systems (AFK flag, dungeon deserter, silence, etc)… they can be abused by “the majority” against players they simply do not like.

Has nothing to do with whether the victim was actually AFK or not, they just get automatically kicked from the bg once a certain threshold of false reports are made against them.

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Well this falls in line with DC’s and why I said it should be a 3 strikes you’re out type of deal. I suppose this thread isn’t about the deserter, but I’m guessing it will be used as justification to not increase it somewhere down the road.

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Ok dont want to argue the “technical” as this only deviates from the problem.
Again the point is that the system is being exploited and abused in a number of ways and there are a number of remedies that could be quite simple overall to implement.