Welcome to Alterac Valley, you can go AFK now.
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 17th 2007 at 9:10AM
If you don't often visit the PvP battleground Alterac Valley, then you may not know what I'm talking about. But AV seems to be the best place for people to go and collect honor points while safely sitting AFK in at the battleground's starting point. Why Alterac? Well, Alterac offers great honor returns for anyone -- and most of the honor is given out zone-wide, regardless of whether you're near the rest of a group when an objective is captured or a boss is killed. It's just too easy to collect large amounts of honor by just sitting around without doing anything -- much to the chagrin of players who are out there fighting and trying to win the battleground.And while Blizzard has shown themselves quite eager to rid people who are botting or hacking to prevent their AFK flag from coming up when they're not at their keyboard, there's not much they've been able to do about the people who sit in front of their computers watching television and occasionally hitting the space bar. So what's Blizzard to do? There are plenty of suggestions on the PvP forums, though I can't say many of them seem practical. They could remove honor gain from the starting point -- but then players would just learn to idle elsewhere. They could alter the battleground's honor mechanics to give out honor based on a player's range to the objective giving honor -- but this would likely gimp players playing defense by limiting their honor gain (despite the fact that defense makes an important contribution to a match). They could somehow tie honor gains to overall damage or healing done -- though such a change probably isn't a quick fix.
What's your solution to the AV AFK problem?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
JaaroZ Jul 17th 2007 9:32AM
Give it the normal honor gain rules, but hand it out only if a certain distance is traveled within the course of the bg. (Afk-ers mostly don't run around, and thus don't travel much)
Kire Jul 17th 2007 9:34AM
Im unfamilar with the AV battleground, so I may not be the best to comment on this.
It seems like Blizz could add a certain area on the map a player must visit to be "marked" to receive honor. After that the player must do X amount of damage to recieve full honors for the map. Im not sure if that would even be possible but it looks good on paper. :)
Whitburn Jul 17th 2007 9:34AM
Well, how about adding a minimum healing and damage threshold which players must surpass in order to gain honor points.
The system would work like this:
Player A gains honor throughout the match by leeching but he recieves no honor because he has not reached the minimum damage/healing threshold.
Player B, our dashing pvper, gains honor throughout the match smashing faces and such and passes the minimum damage/healing threshold, and so gets to keep his honor at the end of the match.
Elbows Jul 17th 2007 9:35AM
I wonder if this will be the post the finally get AV honor nerfed. Look, I understand how broken the current system is, but for people like me with a limited amount of time to play AV is really the only way for me to gear up fast enough to keep up.
Personally, I think that the other BGs should award more honor. A 20 minute AV loss still nets me much more honor than a 30 minute AB win. Just as a comparison, I needed 40 AB marks for my PVP belt, which means that I had to PUG about 20 AB games. After playing about 8 matches I had netted around 1100 honor. If I had devoted the same amount of time to AV I would have come out with around 3k. Yes AV sucks, and yes it's PVE that awards honor, but I have a feeling that instead of increasing the honor that you get from the other BGs, Blizzard will just nerf AV honor like they did in 2005.
Personally, I love the other BGs and would love an excuse to play them, but right now AV is just too sweet to ignore.
Sirg Jul 17th 2007 9:41AM
Honor should be awarded based on the amount of damage/healing done by your char and by capturing/defending objectives (towers, graveyards, npcs).
Viet Jul 17th 2007 9:42AM
OOOOOO mememememe!!
Allow players in a match to vote off a player. It would show us as a ready check asking to boot a player, also showing their stats for the fight. We all know the afkers... the ones that have 0 across the board. You would only have 10 seconds to vote and if a majority of the voters (50%), not players, said yes then the game would kick the player, deserter and all. If 50% sounds too low, make it 75%. I'm not sure of exact numbers.
John Jul 17th 2007 9:43AM
Leave the current honor system the way it is, where everyone in the map gets a certain amount of honor points, then on top of that, add in a "bonus" honor system, which encourages pvp and player interaction.
For instance:
Increase the honor givin by killing enemy players. And take away the deminishing returns - this is an epic battle and deaths should be a frequent occurance. You should get honor for killing your enemy in a Battle Ground, even if you have done in 4 times over. This would encourage PVP in AV while at the same time making people more involved. To help healers and support classes, you could recieve honor by being in the immediate area of the action. Yes, you could go afk in this area too I suppose, but at least the AFK people near the battle may serve as a meat sheild for those playing.
Another idea I have is for a corpse looting system where every player drops an item that can be turned in for honor points. This item would remain on the corpse for everyone in the area to loot it. But, you have to manually loot it. This way everyone can get extra honor points by looting fallen enemies so that both healers and DPS can get honor for killing the enemy, but people who are AFK will not.
Just some thoughts. If you notice, most of my ideas focus around having players kill each other..,. this requires interaction and insures that you at least have to be near a pvp battle to recieve the bonus honor.
james Jul 17th 2007 9:43AM
I agree totally with #4. You really cant get the honor you need in a reasonable ammount of time running the other bg's.
Shadowisp Jul 17th 2007 9:46AM
a) Reduce the AFK auto-timer down to like a minute or two.
b) Pedometer. A player must move X amount of distance, and must get at least X distance from entrance
c) zero damage/healing = zero honor.
If AFKers are going to do nothing, they get nothing... even if they do the bare minimum, at least they are moving. Even cannon fodder has a use... hiding in the cave is worse.
---------------------------
A Coward Reporting system. Like a Report Spam, a Battleground group can report people they believe is AFK. If a majority of a team reports them in a run (say 60%) they get auto-booted from the BG.
If someone keeps getting "Coward" reported, then Blizz can have them on a watch list, so the next time they enter a battleground they can inspect them closer. If the reports are fair, and the GMs witness this in action, they can bann the person from BGs with something stonger like a 24 hour Deserter Flag.
Also if someone keeps making false reports of "Coward" Blizz could also punish them. That way it keeps the system honest at least.
Elbows Jul 17th 2007 9:56AM
More on topic, the problem with most of the solutions mentioned is that for the most part, any measures they try to take to prevent people from AFKing will most likely be ineffectual or even worse penalize players who are actually making an effort.
For instance, let's take the idea of having to do a certain amount of damage or healing. Most matches, I guard towers while they cap. I play a very important role in my team's victory but lots of matches I don't see much action. I could end up not getting any honor even though I was filling one of the least desired but also critical roles in the BG.
At the same time, if something like this was put in place, eventually AFKers from boths sides would find an area where they could just meet up and do damange/healing to each other while not participating in the BG's objectives. The main problem is that most of the people who are AFKing are doing so because of the inordinate amount of honor that AV awards, coupled with the fact that most of the have played thousands of AV matches since the BG was released, getting exalted in 1.0 and then grinding again after the honor system change.
Bottom line is that the other BGs need to be made more attractive, which will lure people away from AV and into a BG where individual effort counts for more.
Drewid Jul 18th 2007 9:24AM
Here is a radical idea, Fix the damn MAP so Horde feels compelled to actually play.
That would improve things quite a bit in my estimation.
myalternateaccount Jul 17th 2007 9:57AM
[1] Add a debuff to the starting caves, so that if you are in there longer than a certain period of time [not counting while respawning at spirit guide] you will be kicked out. Yes, people can just run outside and afk somewhere, but at least they can't bot and if they get killed they end up right back in the cave.
[2] Vote/kick option, as some other people have said.
[3] Points based on performance, e.g. if you have 0 damage / 0 healing / 0 flags you get squat. This one would seriously motivate people if you earned more points based on how well you did compared to others.
jess Jul 17th 2007 10:29AM
I like to kill Afkers. I'll even stealth through the cave to do it. But of course while it's an easy kill for me it's likely to end up helping the other team becuase they now have a player who isn't AFKing.
But almsot as bad as the AFkers is the "let's just give so we can get a free mark" Uhhhh hellls no. I don't know how you farm honor but for me I came in there to at least try.
Elbows Jul 17th 2007 9:57AM
@8
While I like your idea of awarding more honor for kills and removing diminishing returns there is one problem with that solution. Both sides farming each other indefinitely, with the objectives left alone.
Tusca Jul 17th 2007 10:14AM
You people do know that you can get around your little rules if you are a healer by riding 10 feet down the path and jumping off the cliff to the GY then healing yourself to full and going AFK after that, right?
I have seen many people do that, just to hide the fact that they are AFK, so people don't report them...
Elbows Jul 17th 2007 9:59AM
In response to the vote/kick system, imagine the propensity for griefing. I'm not trying to be a dick I'm just saying, a system like that screams abuse.
RogueJedi86 Jul 17th 2007 10:00AM
I still say no honor in the starting cave. Sure they could idle elsewhere, but nowhere else in AV is safe from enemy attacks. If they learn to idle elsewhere, where they're attackable, we'll just have teams going to kill the Honor Leechers for easy kills. Their only way to escape is to be constantly moving between areas to idle/leech, and thus they'll be "playing". And there's nothing wrong with that. If they're gonna leech, they're gonna risk dying, or risk playing.
Shadowisp Jul 17th 2007 10:01AM
The best/worse case I had in AV though. 28 people fighting, 12 afkers... it was one of those 2 hours AVs really bad. One of the AFKers got on the BG channel and started to bitch about how long it was taking. WTF the gaul of an AFKer to say AV is too slow.
It errupted on the chat channel in abuse. Most of the AFKers who were still sitting at thier computers (but still in the cave) were trying to defend thier actions of doing "nothing for honor". Like a battle of wits with unarmed opponents.
1 Alliance Player said "Next time I see you AFKers, your dead" and left the battleground. About 20 minutes later... his Horde rogue snuck into the cave, killed all the Alliance AFKers, repeatadly. :P
Thats what to do... if you hate AFKers, level a Horde, kill them when your angry at them :P
I think AFKers should lose honor.
They wouldnt do it if they got less honor at the end.
Viet Jul 17th 2007 10:09AM
Yea, good point about the abuse for vote/kicks. I used to understand afks in games back when they were 8-12 hours long per game, but now that games are so quick, afkers really have no legit reason. I still can't believe Blizz has not tried to do something about it. There are a million ideas floating around, just use one.
James Jul 17th 2007 10:11AM
Send GM's in to look at the afk'ers. Do a full on assault across all BG's, focusing on a couple of BG's for a specified amount of time, say 24 or 48 hours. Ban anyone they find afk'ing in the starting areas for, say, 30 days, or whatever. Flag their account as well, and in the future, if they are caught again, they are perma-banned. Take GM's off of other things, or whatever. It'll hurt customer service, but then again, some of the GM's seem barely able to understand the game anyway, so telling them to look for players not doing anything in a BG should be simple enough even for them.
Why so harsh? Blizzard does not have the resources to constantly monitor these nitwits and slap them on the wrist with little bans, so their best option is to do the equivalent of what law enforcement does in problem crime or traffic areas--focus on the area for a specific amount of time with extra resources from wherever you can get them. Blizzard has an extra luxury though in that people they bust can be gone forever, or at least until they can get another account.