Apparently, Microsoft vis Activision just slammed several players with a permaban for AFK farming.

This, for those wondering, is a design flaw with how the America's Army* games function.

From a loose understanding, there's a battlepass that you grind experience on via time. And several participants, instead of playing the game normally, are joining matches and becoming pumpkins.

Now, this will betray my age and range of games, but I recall that if you sat around in multiplayer games of my day, the best is that you'd become a pink mist. The worst is that you'd get voted to kick/ban, or otherwise swept out by an idle timer.

Now, I don't know how to fix the exact problem, but I feel any map that is designed where you can set roots and not be affected by a battle is a poorly designed one. I don't seem to recall there being many places to go hide in Facing Worlds.

*Just for anyone wondering, that's my malign pet name for the COD games.

There, I found the design flaw.

Coming from arena shooters I already have an animosity towards campers and people who go AWOL without typing ''/afk'' in chat first, so I find it hard to shed a tear.

That said - the entire ''battlepass via time'' is just stupid game design and a permaban is harsh. If it were an MMO with gold farming - then I would understand it; but I doubt anyone who AFK farms is doing so with intent to sell a high lvl account. You already see both the problem and have experienced solution(s).

When a sytem is exploitable, people will exploit it. The unnwritten rule. Blame the idiots who thought progress by just time was a good idea.

It doesn't matter how many times you get squashed if the only thing that counts is time spent. Players are given zero agency these days, so vote kicking/banning is not an option. AFK detection is easily prevented by a simple macro. Not that many options left. Minimum K/D ratio? That would cause an accessibility fetishist uprising.

I don't think you can type "/afk" on a console though. =p

This should act as a reminder that in a multiplayer-only (or multiplayer-focused) game, you are part of the product in addition to being a paying customer. The publisher sells a game where you, as a player, are provided as part of the experience.

So of course if you don’t play the intended way, you get punished. That’s because you reduced the value of the product (game + players) that the publisher is selling, by refusing to do what was asked of you: to replace the NPC that have been omitted from the game.

That’s why you see so many multiplayer games in the last decades: developing good solo experiences takes time and skill, while a basic multiplayer framework full of empty space that you then fill with paying customers requires much less investment.