Is being intentionally and repeatedly fully AFK in BGs allowed?

monkidb16_ESO · August 19

During the recent Midyear Mayhem I have encountered the same player repeatedly queuing for BGs on different characters, then going fully AFK the entire match.
My guess is that person was fishing for a free dailies/wins, switch character and repeat.

I have reported them in-game, and since in past reports of AFK players the support had asked for further proof, I took multiple screenshots this time and provided them in the ticket.

On August the 11th support finally answered and their conclusion was:
"it was determined that no violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct occurred."

So, should I even bother reporting AFK players at this point or is this just allowed now?

Deimus · August 20

Yes it is allowed. There are a couple of players that I have reported and have video footage from multiple matches that shows them intentionally finding a corner to stealth in and afk battleground matches. From the very start of the match too not from being spawn camped and going afk.

Every report I've made comes back with "It was determined that no violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct occurred. As a result, no action has been taken against the reported account(s)."

So yeah intentionally going afk and shafting your team is fair play by ZOS standards.

MincMincMinc · August 19

monkidb16_ESO wrote: »

During the recent Midyear Mayhem I have encountered the same player repeatedly queuing for BGs on different characters, then going fully AFK the entire match.
My guess is that person was fishing for a free dailies/wins, switch character and repeat.

I have reported them in-game, and since in past reports of AFK players the support had asked for further proof, I took multiple screenshots this time and provided them in the ticket.

On August the 11th support finally answered and their conclusion was:
"it was determined that no violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct occurred."

So, should I even bother reporting AFK players at this point or is this just allowed now?

Yes zos intentionally made a system that enables players to join bgs and afk. Not only that but they are incentivized to do so. If you do not want to participate, but want rewards you will farm rewards faster by afking. If you are on a losing team, just afk and let the match end faster so you can reque and hopefully get on a winning team.

What can you expect when they designed bgs to make it hard for new players to succeed, so why bother trying. MMR resets and places new players against 10 year vet players so 90% of the time the game is won by someone like me who goes 40/0 against pugs. Spawn points are designed such that the losing team has an even harder time leaving spawn and enables spawn camping. To top it off, certain gamemodes end so quickly that pvp players have to ignore the objective or else they have to go back to sitting in que.

MMR needs to be detached from the leaderboard and be based on KDA
MMR needs to never reset and should be account bound.
Spawns need to level with the ground to avoid falling
Spawns need to have one way walls that push players out after a 15s grace period
Spawns need to be on a group timer to artificially regroup players together.

Chrisilis · August 19

Why bother? Near as I can tell communication re: anything Battleground related doesn't exist so reporting is pointless.

And there's lots of reasons for people to afk so its hard to tell if its...malicious. The guy did die twice so he participated enough for that at least. Or participated enough not to violate terms on purpose. Anyway, if it were me I'd let it go, they dont care.

monkidb16_ESO · August 19

MincMincMinc wrote: »

If you are on a losing team, just afk and let the match end faster so you can reque and hopefully get on a winning team.

I get that some people stop participating in an already lost match, but in this specific case the player in question was AFK from the very start and didn't even use a single skill the entire time. In the second example provided we even won the match by a big margin.

Chrisilis wrote: »

And there's lots of reasons for people to afk so its hard to tell if its...malicious.

In this case it is however pretty clear cut intentionally, notice how the player did, as you can see on the scoreboard, absolutely zero damage or healing (i.e. he was fully 100% AFK).

And it is also malicious, since to prevent the auto-kick, you have to move which this player did by wiggling around every two minutes or so.

Chrisilis wrote: »

The guy did die twice so he participated enough for that at least. Or participated enough not to violate terms on purpose.

The two death were because the game ports you out from spawn after a few minutes of being on spawn.

CameraBeardThePirate · August 20

There were players in the old BGs that repeatedly exploited broken geometry on the maps, glitching the chaosball through walls that were supposed to be solid, and were never banned despite numerous reports with picture and video evidence.

You actually think ZOS is gonna ban AFK players if they never banned the players actually exploiting?

xylena_lazarow · August 20

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

old BGs

Players would repeatedly queue in perma AFK to 3s until they got their 2nd place daily rewards. The format was so incoherent that nobody would even notice. AFK'ers are much more noticeable in 2s where every player matters.

MincMincMinc · August 20

monkidb16_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

If you are on a losing team, just afk and let the match end faster so you can reque and hopefully get on a winning team.

I get that some people stop participating in an already lost match, but in this specific case the player in question was AFK from the very start and didn't even use a single skill the entire time. In the second example provided we even won the match by a big margin.

Chrisilis wrote: »

And there's lots of reasons for people to afk so its hard to tell if its...malicious.

In this case it is however pretty clear cut intentionally, notice how the player did, as you can see on the scoreboard, absolutely zero damage or healing (i.e. he was fully 100% AFK).

And it is also malicious, since to prevent the auto-kick, you have to move which this player did by wiggling around every two minutes or so.

Chrisilis wrote: »

The guy did die twice so he participated enough for that at least. Or participated enough not to violate terms on purpose.

The two death were because the game ports you out from spawn after a few minutes of being on spawn.

Again what do you think when matches at that entry level are randomly won because the dysfunctional mmr system gives new players a 50/50 chance of being on the pugstomper team.

If a new player participates while on the pugstomp team the match ends in a min and they get rewarded
If a new player doesnt participate the match still ends in a min
If a new player is on the unfortunate team the match ends in a min

The afk timer is so long it doesnt even come into play here. Even the hide in spawn mechanic that auto teleports players down is far too long that the player only died twice.

Major_Mangle · August 20

Had another "problem" that I´ve encountered the last few days connected to the long respawn timer. When doing 4v4 deathmatch and the other team has a lead, they simply refuse to jump down and fight since if we can´t attack them, they´ll avoid dying and potentially losing the game. They need to reduce the timer before you get ported down significantly. 2 minutes is way too long, should be 10-20 seconds at most. So many "non-PvP:ers" ruining BG´s by just straight up griefing.

monkidb16_ESO · August 20

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

There were players in the old BGs that repeatedly exploited broken geometry on the maps, glitching the chaosball through walls that were supposed to be solid, and were never banned despite numerous reports with picture and video evidence.

Yes, I had the exactly same happen as well, back then the support basically said to me "pics or it didn't happen".
Good to know it wouldn't have made a difference if I had taken pictures/videos.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

When doing 4v4 deathmatch and the other team has a lead, they simply refuse to jump down and fight since if we can´t attack them,

I can at least somewhat understand the psychological aversion of willingly jumping into a 1v4 (i.e. your certain death), especially if you have multiple lives left.
But the port -down timer should definitely be shortened to 10-ish seconds, along with a group respawn so people don't just get farmed 1v4 in sequence.

Thumbless_Bot · August 21

I don't understand why it matters to you or why it should matter to zos.

It doesnt matter to me and it is hard for me to understand why anyone would care. This is why I ask.

If it is because you want to win, the likelihood that the afk player, or someone else who took their spot because they were banned, would have an actual impact on the outcome of a bg is very near zero. 99.9% of these new bgs are signed sealed and delivered before the matches start. I was in a 8v8 the other day that had me and five of my fellow bg guildies on one team and a bunch of pve players on the other. It went 500-0 in about 90 seconds. Anecdotal. I know. But this pattern is very consistent in bgs.

Even if mmr was implemented in an effective way it wouldn't matter because high mmr matches wouldn't have afkers and you'd quickly move out of the afk bracket if you were actually playing. Also, those sweaties that have high mmr are not afk and the placement of these sweats is what determines the outcome of almost every bg. Not for nothing, the team that has 7, or 6 people usually see the other team and log out or go afk.

Wasn't like that before. People did go afk, but not like they do now.

Lastly, bgs now start without full teams, so consider your team down a person.

Just reroll the queue and hope the cards fall in your favor next time. Or dont do bgs.

The real problem here is mmr...

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Is being intentionally and repeatedly fully AFK in BGs allowed?

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