Reset inactivity timer when an attack is blocked

[Malong]

As a preface, prior to 0.3.7 nearly four years ago, items were distributed only to the player that lands the killing strike to a bot. This means that for longer than not in NI, it has been considered that distribution of items should not be determined by killing strikes, and contributions can be made independently of damage. With 1.0.2, the activity tracker was implemented seemingly with the intent to prevent non-contributing players from receiving XP and items. Also, commandos holding shields are necessary to success of higher difficulty servers and games, and it's not necessarily an equivalence that players holding shields and blocking attacks are inactive.

There are also cases where shielders die past the last spawn, and can only get resurrected for the final wave. At this point, it's difficult to deal damage without slashing and shielding on wave 20, which in turn endangers the success of the up to 20 other players. Corner case or not, the spirit of the change seems not to be to exclude these players, nor discount their contributions simply because they don't deal damage.

Given the above considerations, it's logical to consider blocking a hit as being active, or maybe rename the feature to "contribution timer." While some could argue that players could exploit this loophole by inattentively holding their shields up, being inactive for long periods of time would cause their shield to break and them to die shortly thereafter. Changes made out of this fear of players exploiting any loophole penalizes the players that are genuinely actively blocking, and inadvertently punishes a large group of players for a miniscule portion of the player base. This outcome is likely not the intention of the change. The principles of jurisprudence include not overzealously dealing with people for fear of incorrectly penalizing innocents.

Before anyone makes any suggestion that this request is principally for me, it is not. I can certainly play other classes, or simply heal, pick up a weapon and slash, or various other solutions. But that's not the point, discouraging people from playing necessary classes is undesirable, and seems against the intention of the change anyway. It just seems like a change that was made without all forms of contribution being taken into consideration, with significant unintended consequences.

Please provide feedback whether you agree or not. Thanks all for reading.

[Soviet]

Agreed

[Prof_Troll]

that would be nice to have

[Sebas]

Totally agree with you. Had the same with being medic at 20 today. When Ragnar died no xp, gold and possible loot for me

[ON_Glenn]

agree.

[Kip]

I will start off by saying that receiving a hit on the shield is not something I want to see counting as activity.  A Royal Guard with good shields could go AFK for a very long time before having any chance of his shield breaking depending on which mode was being played.

Without getting into exact times for now, I believe we have a quite lenient system setup right now.  Adjustments to the timers have been made since 1.0.0 was first released after there were some initial problems with shielders being marked inactive too quickly.  Dealing damage is not the only way to show that you are active.  Using an anvil or health prop for instance is another simple way to prove you are still active.  Dealing some damage at the end of the wave when the last few bots are getting cleaned up is another option.

What I would like to know is whether this is currently an ongoing problem or whether this is just concern about what might go wrong.  If we get enough feedback and examples of how the current implementation of this feature is creating false-positives, we will look into a way of adjusting the system accordingly.

[Leberkass]

I had similar problems aswell, that sometimes you just don´t get XP, because you do not want to slash-shield or do similar stuff, which might get your team dead.
Especially on Rag this is a big problem, because you should not go outside and try to kill some bots, because ranged may get you killed.

Also about the healing and repairing shields you are talking about Kip:
On the one hand you don´t go healing as a shielder most likely, because you get healed if you type "h" or "heal please". The shields does not need to be repaired, because you are toming for shields(not sure if this counts as being active). With Shield of Kings or similar good shields you don´t need to use the anvil at all, because shielders normally bring in 2 shields at once.
And sometimes you are just too busy doing things for the team, like bringing the cades to the front and help somebody to get the cades where they are needed.

[Sargent Q]

Why on earth are you not repairing the shields you are about to give to someone?  WHY?  If you are really going to be as AFK as possible while shielding,  Don't be surprised if it is picked up by the tracker.

[Malong]

Dealing damage is not the only way to show that you are active.  Using an anvil or health prop for instance is another simple way to prove you are still active.  Dealing some damage at the end of the wave when the last few bots are getting cleaned up is another option.

What I would like to know is whether this is currently an ongoing problem or whether this is just concern about what might go wrong.  If we get enough feedback and examples of how the current implementation of this feature is creating false-positives, we will look into a way of adjusting the system accordingly.

Thanks for the very prompt reply! First, it is indeed an ongoing issue, and a frequent case that seems to not have been considered is shield classes being resurrected for waves 16 and 20, while setup is simultaneously occurring. In this case, you are already between waves before using a tome, so there are no remaining bots to damage, and in the case of wave 16, you may be waiting for the wave the spawn before using a tome to avoid Tricksters. Also, the timer for wave preparation is nearly assured to end, and there is not necessarily enough time to use the non-expedited shield repair or health prop before getting back to the shield wall as needed.

Also, I acknowledged that dealing damage is not the only way to show you are active, but the point of this request is that not all forms of contribution are considered activity, and other forms of "inactivity" are only resolved by endangering the success of the rest of the server. In the end, that seems against the intention of the change:

Before anyone makes any suggestion that this request is principally for me, it is not. I can certainly play other classes, or simply heal, pick up a weapon and slash, or various other solutions. But that's not the point, discouraging people from playing necessary classes is undesirable, and seems against the intention of the change anyway. It just seems like a change that was made without all forms of contribution being taken into consideration, with significant unintended consequences.

[Malong]

Why on earth are you not repairing the shields you are about to give to someone?  WHY?  If you are really going to be as AFK as possible while shielding,  Don't be surprised if it is picked up by the tracker.

Nobody stated either scenario of people asking you for shields, nor going AFK while shielding.

In any case: for the first point, it's a common case that shields are not requested until the bots have already spawned, so you don't know that you need to be dropping one for someone. For the second point, going AFK already has its self-correction measure: you're likely to cause your shield to break anyway, in which case you'll die and not get rewards regardless.

I want to reiterate, if you are considered to be "inactive" in the middle of a wave while shielding, you basically have two courses of action: keep holding the shield and miss out on loot despite contributing, or take steps that endanger the success of the rest of the server.