Longshot Ravenwood wrote:If CCP wanted to stop abuse of their game mechanics in this way:
- Flag matches that show signs of abuse based on set criteria (we would never be allowed to know what those criteria are or people would work around that to exploit).
- Manual review in real time.
- Disconnect both teams in the event that abuse was found, invalidating the match & forcing a reconnect.
- Log the incident including the involved parties.
Alternatively they could add in new SP bottlenecks for diminishing returns on a match level:
- after 10 kills per match.
- after 10 vehicle or structure damages per match.
- after 5 structure destruction per match.
- after 5 vehicle kills per match.
- after 10 hacks.
- after 10 vehicle kill assists.
- after 15 resupplies.
- after 15 team spawns.
- after 15 repairs.
- unlimited kill/hack assists.
Cut the value of the actions in half after hitting the match limit, then half again after doubling the limit.
Additional automatic adjusted returns:
- Killed within 5 seconds of spawn. 1/2 current value.
- Kill assist for enemy killed within 5 seconds of spawn. 1/5th normal value.
If someone was sniping it'd cut their participation base score on a 30/0 game from 1500 to 875. While another player who received 15 kills w/ 2 vehicle kills would get closer to 925 (instead of around 1050). This kind of change should make it more difficult to farm on a more extreme scale as it would require more diversification. Additionally it provides better incentives for providing support.
Oh, and that same sniper, if they went 47/0 instead on a match where they had 5 kills before spawn camping the enemy for the remaining 42 kills he'd only receive ~800 points depending on if he had to chase after anyone for more than 5 seconds before killing them.
A more streamlined approach would probably involve writing a script that calculates the average cumulative of SP given to players in a match, as an example: 5,000,000 SP. Should a server exceed that amount by, let's say 100% or more (in this case that would be 10,000,000 SP) a warning would be issued to the players in that server that they're currently under review. CCP could then conduct their own investigation and should they find a clear evidence of farming, penalties could be administered to those players at CCP's discretion.
Of course, this is just a layman's approach. I'm sure CCP has access to plenty of metrics to determine a more accurate criteria for what would or would not warrant investigation.
As you indicated in your post, there should be a lot of red flags in cases such as this.
Another point worth mentioning is that EVE players could also play a role in being watchdogs for Dust matches and nuke us all from orbit. I don't think they would appreciate Dust players screwing with their bottom line.