Assisting

Hi, my name is Mabathon. I am sure that some of you have seen me play in the XN server a bunch of times. I registered onto the XN websites a few days ago to make this post. There has been a particular issue occurring on the server that not many people are talking about. My issues is with !assist. Now, I am not calling for the removal of !assist nor I am saying that !assist ruins everything. I don't mind !assist if it is used properly to counter horrible balance. What I have a problem is with players abusing !assist to switch from a "losing" team to a "winning" team. What do I mean by this?

For example, for the first 15 minutes of a game, RU team is likely to hold objectives A and B. Let's say rushers from the US team have infiltrated A and taken it, thus forcing RU players retreat from B and lose it to Team US. At that turning point, Team RU is still technically winning by having more tickets than US. It is a common occurrence for RU players to use !assist to switch to Team US which has the momentum. I would consider Team US to be the "winning" team, even though they have less tickets than RU at the moment. In my mind, this is clear abuse of the !assist system which I have a huge problem with.

This has a few negative impacts: 1) The player switching can create imbalance if the teams are even before the switch. 2) The "losing" team is losing a player when they are in need of one to defend A and recapture B. 3) Encourages other players to do the same, either during the match or in matches in the future.

Now, I understand that there are limitations to !assist. One of them is "The other team is losing, but is gaining momentum" or something like that. This limitation only occurs long after the team with less tickets have captured C and B. People tend to abuse !assist right after the momentum shifts. Let's understand that when people do this, they are not assisting the other team. The other team does not need assistance after they captured B. And I don't care what anybody else says, regaining B after you lose it is incredibly hard to do as a team. People understand that a team with momentum that just took B has the bigger chance to win the game, so they use !assist to end up on the winning team.

I have asked the admin in previous matches about this issue but I never got a clear response. I mostly blame the fact that game chat sucks when it comes to conversations. I made this post so that the admin can hopefully see my concern and maybe address it. The way that I look at it is that the abuse of !assist should be a kickable offense. Just the other day, I caught one of the RU players on my team switch to US when the circumstances that I mentioned above had occurred. I started a votekick, stating my reasons. I got about 7 !yes before the guy just quit from the game. Honestly he wasn't going to get kicked, there weren't enough !yes votes. However, I am glad that some people are seeing the abuse of !assist as an issue.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I hope I don't look like I am ranting. Overall, I wish that the admin would consider adding the abuse of !assist as a thing that violates the rules of the server and earns a !votekick.

Thanks,
Mabathon.

We have all seen this happening lately.
Thinking about just disabling the assist function.

We'll decide on something soon.


Ruk

Thanks for the reply, Ruk. I'm glad to know that the admin also see this as an issue.

I understand that, in the past two or three months, the issue of !assist has been brought up in the forums, particularly by FatCracHo. From what I saw, there was great deal of tension between the admin and FatCracHo when !assist was discussed. I don't want to add fuel to the fire when I'm talking about !assist. Some players see the issue of balance and how waves of skilled players may use !assist to help the losing team and cause great imbalance in the process. I acknowledge this issue, along with the issue that I brought up. However I don't admonish the !assist system. I said this earlier in my post that I don't mind it as long as people actually use is to help weaker teams.

Now, I can see the admin being frustrated with the complaints regarding the !assist system, whether by FatCracHo himself or other players during gameplay. But I sincerely advise the admin NOT TO DISABLE !ASSIST. I know, one post I am sorta attacking !assist and now I am defending it. I think disabling !assist would be overreacting. I am not an admin of anything, so I can't really understand how hard it can be to make decisions and implement changes on a technical level. I don't know how the !assist system works or any other system for that matter in BF3. But I am only asking for the admin to spread the word among the players in the server, that switching from "losing" teams to "winning teams" is unacceptable and could earn a kick from the game. I think that is a more simpler solution to that particular issue.

Unless, admin have other plans for !assist, something that I am not aware of. If there are other issues with !assist, besides the ones that I mentioned, can you please explain? What exactly warrants having !assist disabled? I ask because I don't really want to see !assist gone without a good reason. I don't think the !assist system deserves to be disabled for the 2 flaws that I mentioned.

Mabathon.