Cats vs Dinos mode and more (lazy/afk players) rant

I just experienced this last night in my first Cats vs Dinos game. I noticed halfway through, after checking the scoreboard a few times, that this one player had absolutely no kills and no score. I didn't think too much of it, that can happen. It's a new mode, and points aren't auto-awarded as far as I can tell. Can be difficult to get a score if you're out after being killed once. After a frenzied match, we tied it up and it came down to the final round. All of my team (cats) died, so we were spectating on the remaining player... was just sitting behind a block somewhere. It doesn't even look like you would start there, I think this player literally nestled up against it. There was no movement, and the player name on that cat matched up with the player on our team with no score at all.

I was peeved. I guess he wasn't idle long enough to be kicked off the server? Which sucks, because I've been idle while sitting at a character select screen (chose to choose character instead of respawn, playing Turf Takeover) looking at phone. The second I picked up my controller, after what felt like 5 minutes, I got booted for being idle. This Cats vs Dinos game took longer than 5 minutes! Where was the timeout? Get out of here, no stars for you!!!

I share your frustrations though. I have seen this occasionally.

Happens on Xbox too. It really pisses me off when I'm playing Turf Takeover and see 2 or more players chilling in a corner or right by a teleporter just trading endless taunts with each other. It's like they have no idea there's a game going on, and they have a responsibility to help their team win. I think to myself, if our side loses, they're a major reason why....I honestly feel like quitting when I see that, but I don't.

If you want to acknowledge your fellow team mates, that's fine...even beneficial to building cooperation, but you should be doing it right at the start of the game, or between rounds, not in the heat of battle!!

It is a problem on the PS4 for sure.  We need the option to vote to kick out players.  There are way to many freeloaders in the game.  

I've seen this sort of thing myself.

In Garden or Graveyard Ops I would occasionally find a player far away from the Garden or Graveyard we were supposed to protect and their character would be one with a good jumping ability and they'd be at the far end of the map up in or on some extremely difficult to reach place sitting out all 10 rounds of play and possibly even the evacuation phase just to get credit for being present in the game because of a Quest requirement.

In Multiplayer I think everyone has seem that one Player on the team sitting idle, which is to be expected as sometimes Real Life demands your attention, but what is worse than that is the fool dong nothing but spinning in place or shooting the wall, or team mates, or otherwise not playing to the objective.

In Cats vs Dinos yesterday I wound up on a team with at least one Player who simply either sat out play entirely until an opponent noticed him and took him out of play or who just mashed their face up against a chunk of rock and wiggled back and forth occasionally waiting for the timer to run out.

The former two situations I don't encounter too often because outside of Ops when it's just a maximum of the four of you it's not really all that easy to keep track of what teammates are doing, but in Cats vs Dinos because you get forced into Spectator Mode after you're vanquished it's easy to spot the people who are simply handicapping their team by taking up a slot without participating.

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@ILLINOIS1977 wrote:

It is a problem on the PS4 for sure.  We need the option to vote to kick out players.  There are way to many freeloaders in the game.  

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the vote to kick bs is * in many games people will vote to kick out ANYONE for ANYTHING such as if someone is getting sick of a troll on a team do they kick the troll? * no they kick out the guy getting rightfully salty cause they dont wanna listen to his *ing until they get trolled by the same idiot 

what needs to be done in a game is a no damage auto boot timer basically after about 5 minutes give or take if said person hasnt done even a single point of damage to any player or ai depending on the mode they are booted from the game for being obviously idle but to keep that system from being fooled you need to be doing more then 50 damage in a 2 to 3 minute span or the counter wont restart to keep people from just pecking at an ai opponent every 4 minutes

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@nightshadow989 wrote:

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@ILLINOIS1977 wrote:

It is a problem on the PS4 for sure.  We need the option to vote to kick out players.  There are way to many freeloaders in the game.  

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the vote to kick bs is * in many games people will vote to kick out ANYONE for ANYTHING such as if someone is getting sick of a troll on a team do they kick the troll? * no they kick out the guy getting rightfully salty cause they dont wanna listen to his *ing until they get trolled by the same idiot 

what needs to be done in a game is a no damage auto boot timer basically after about 5 minutes give or take if said person hasnt done even a single point of damage to any player or ai depending on the mode they are booted from the game for being obviously idle but to keep that system from being fooled you need to be doing more then 50 damage in a 2 to 3 minute span or the counter wont restart to keep people from just pecking at an ai opponent every 4 minutes

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I agree about how poorly people use kick in another games.

I don't agree with "boot after no damage to another player after 5 minutes". My Engineer says hello. Granted, it's not the same as in GW1 where I could spend a couple of minutes just on building turrets (since you could upgrade each three times), but what if all I am doing is trying to find and open a portal and don't care to shoot anyone, KO after KO? Everyone has different play styles. But what about poor aim, or getting killed right before the garden/graveyard is taken, and there is no portal left? Say you get distracted for one or two minutes with Real Life(tm). You've got precious little time to book it across what could be a very large map, and you don't know you're down to the wire, what if you're a super slow moving Pirate and taking time to aim at fast moving targets if you do get up to the action? I'd be pissed if I got booted while actively moving toward my goal.

There may not be a good solution to those who just "do nothing" but aren't necessarily idling. Keep in mind that there are also golden gnomes hidden in every single multiplayer map. On Zen Garden during a multiplayer match, I got knocked over a ledge and somehow had maneuvered to the point where I stumbled into the secret area behind the waterfall. I then decided to try and hunt down some more for a bit.

I feel like idle is the only way to solve this problem, which kind of leaves us where we are right now :/

The mode is TERRIBLE. I don't like players boosting but it took everything I had in me not to just sit there like the others. This is embarrassing.

This mode is an embarrassment to popcap EA. 

Please don't be so quick to judge those with zero scores.  Some of us are just not very skilled players!  In some games I've made several vanguishes and assists, but in others I've tried my best but not scored.  It's easy to get a zero score in this mode if you're green.

The idiots we have to watch sitting in the corner at the end of rounds deserve a special place in hell, though.  Once I got so annoyed I turned on my mic so I could rant at them.

Unlike many, I am rather enjoying this mode and have already banked 50 stars for the next round.  Though I have to agree that it seems the game mode could have been a lot better than it is.