Autoflag Issue?

[merrier]

Autoflag is fine.

If that's the case, why did I get flagged over and over on a PvE shard with my flag off? I'm just trying to figure out if I'm missing something.

[EranB]

Merrier, go to Settings > Interface> Combat.
One of the possible tick boxes is called PVP Auto Flag.
Is it ticked? That is why, untick it and it won't happen again.

With this box unticked, even if you try to attack an enemy guard, it will not let you.
It will not let you attack players either and will not let you heal flagged friends.
You can still type /flag, or right click your portraite and change pvp flag to always on, and then you'll be able to pvp.

This is only relevant to PVE servers.

[merrier]

Merrier, go to Settings > Interface> Combat.
One of the possible tick boxes is called PVP Auto Flag.
Is it ticked? That is why, untick it and it won't happen again.

With this box unticked, even if you try to attack an enemy guard, it will not let you.
It will not let you attack players either and will not let you heal flagged friends.
You can still type /flag, or right click your portraite and change pvp flag to always on, and then you'll be able to pvp.

This is only relevant to PVE servers.

No, it is NOT ticked. I've played since Beta 2. I know how it has worked before. I am on a PvE server.

This issue just cropped up for me recently. Here's my flag

[EranB]

Alright, with it unticked, and with your flag set to Default, go and try to attack a defiant guard somewhere.

If it lets you, it is bugged.

[the_real_seebs]

Autoflag is fine.

Got a purple name post saying that?

I have had at least one Trion employee tell me that they believe it is a bug if you can take an action which causes you to get flagged when you have auto-flag disabled. (Other than obvious stuff, like entering a WF, or typing /pvp.) The documented intent is that if you have auto-flag disabled, any action that might otherwise flag you should fail (single-target) or pick other targets (AoE).

[the_real_seebs]

Alright, with it unticked, and with your flag set to Default, go and try to attack a defiant guard somewhere.

If it lets you, it is bugged.

Why, yes! Yes it is! And that's what I've been saying for like two months now.

[Naesraen]

The PvP auto-flag option will only protect you from flagging due to accidentally attacking players.

Even with the auto-flag option unchecked, you will still be able to hit flaggable NPCs - faction guards near porticulums, mostly. Hitting a flaggable NPC will cause you to flag for PvP, regardless of your auto-flag seetings (as these only apply to players).

If you are using a target-centred AoE skill (Storm Shackle, for example), it will find available targets within its AoE range - including flaggble NPCs, regardless of auto-flag state. This is the main cause of accidental flagging; it is particularly common defending Zareph's return, as the porticulums, and thus the flaggable NPC guards, are very close together.

If you are doing zone events in Stillmoor and defending Zareph's and don't wish to flag, it is advisable to fight near your faction-entrance, not the main, central entrance to Zareph's Return - doing so will prevent almost all accidental-flagging events.

tl;dr: auto-flag off only protects you from accidentally hitting players; it does not protect you from accidentally hitting flaggable NPCs.

[the_real_seebs]

The PvP auto-flag option will only protect you from flagging due to accidentally attacking players.

Even with the auto-flag option unchecked, you will still be able to hit flaggable NPCs - faction guards near porticulums, mostly. Hitting a flaggable NPC will cause you to flag for PvP, regardless of your auto-flag seetings (as these only apply to players).

This is a change from how the feature worked at launch, and so far as I know, it is an unintentional change. It has never been in patch notes, and people seem surprised to hear that it appears to work that way.

tl;dr: auto-flag off only protects you from accidentally hitting players; it does not protect you from accidentally hitting flaggable NPCs.

And it is fairly obvious that this is a bug. First, because it wasn't true at launch. Second, because that would be a completely pointless feature. The entire point of the feature is to make it so you don't get flagged without consciously choosing to flag. If there are things you can do that could flag you when you did not intend to flag, whether they are typos or misclicks or simply using a power near an enemy you didn't notice, the feature is not working.

I don't know when this got broken. If you wanted to search my posts you could find my first encounter with it (happened in IPP, a few months ago). At launch, I know one of my guardians got killed near the bridge by Scion by a flagged NPC, and attacks at the NPC got the "target not flagged" message. Which was the documented behavior, and the only behavior that is consistent with the described purpose of the flag.

[Naesraen]

And it is fairly obvious that this is a bug. First, because it wasn't true at launch. Second, because that would be a completely pointless feature.

I have zero contact with developers and have no idea if it is a bug or not. Equally, I have no idea if it was there at launch - it has been there since 1.3, when I started, as I can clearly recall it happening to my Warrior in Fortune's Shore >< .

What I can do, however, is make a case for it being a useful feature: all of the NPCs in this game are killable; it is one of the features of Rift that mobs can take over quest hubs, etc.

• If all NPCs are killable AND killing faction NPCs near porticulums didn't flag a player,
• Then it would be trivially easy for a very small number of players to keep the other faction's porticulums and quest hubs inoperable.
• Thus, in order to prevent this sort of gameplay - and the T&C state that it is not possible to grief the other side, because all actions against the other side are legitimate - it becomes necessary to
• Either - prevent certain NPCs from dying, like in other games - removing that level of dynamic content that is a signature of Rift;
• Or - players engaged in killing/attacking the other faction's quest and/or porticulum NPCs must be flagged if they do so.

The other solution of course IS the 'if auto-flag is unchecked, no interactions with the other faction's quest and/or porticulum NPCs is possible', as has been suggested. The argument against this is a lot weaker, but it nevertheless has some validity; it goes something like:

• In games with the possibility of PvP, it is necessary to introduce the player base to this activity, often not by initial choice, in order to have a sufficiently large and diverse population of people to PvP;
• Otherwise the PvP population will be a small, self-selected group of psychopaths and anger-management cases (or Killers, in Bartle's typology). This group will naturally eat itself and then ragequit, so it is necessary to keep introducing new blood into the population in order to keep it viable.
• As most people who aren't Killers naturally enough wish to avoid the psychos and anger-management children, it becomes necessary to introduce the new populations to PvP types *against* their (current) wishes - a non-consensual introduction to consensual PvP.
• After which point a certain percentage of those so introduced will discover that it's not JUST the angry children and the griefers engaged with PvP, and will continue to partake themselves - thus keeping the population viable.
• The consequence for those who wish to refuse any PvP is that they will have to take additional care to do so.

The latter argument is not nearly as strong, I accept, but it is nevertheless not immediately obvious that flagging from NPC-impacting attacks is necessarily a bug.

[Cikala]

The other solution of course IS the 'if auto-flag is unchecked, no interactions with the other faction's quest and/or porticulum NPCs is possible', as has been suggested.

As far as I know, this isn't just a suggestion, this is how the feature is intended to work, and at least for me, does currently work. I can not attack an NPC that would flag me with the auto-flag option unchecked, even if said NPC is attacking me. I get a message stating that my pvp state is incompatible with target.

[merrier]

I never used to have to worry about getting flagged. With the flag unchecked, I just could not affect PvP flagged players or opposition NPCs. Absolutely couldn’t do a thing, no effect whatsoever. For whatever reason, this is no longer the case.

The first time I got flagged, it was near Zareph’s, so I didn’t think too much about it. I’ve picked up aggro from the guards there before, but I’d always just keep running and all was well. Anyway, I ported to Sanctum which instantly unflagged me.

The second time I was flagged was closing a Rift so not really near the shared area of Zareph’s. A couple other times were not at Zareph’s, but up the road from it. It seemed like every time I did anything I was flagged. I’ve never run into a situation like that before. I spent a fortune porting to Sanctum and back to get that blasted flag turned off so I could finish up the zone event.

I guess I’ll play very carefully for a while and see if I can figure out what triggers it.

This is a rather big deal to me. Actually, it’s a huge deal. I hate it when people call things game breaking, but for me, this issue is completely a game breaker.

[the_real_seebs]

What I can do, however, is make a case for it being a useful feature: all of the NPCs in this game are killable; it is one of the features of Rift that mobs can take over quest hubs, etc.

But they don't have to be killable by unflagged players, and indeed, that's exactly how it worked at launch, and that was fine.

The other solution of course IS the 'if auto-flag is unchecked, no interactions with the other faction's quest and/or porticulum NPCs is possible', as has been suggested. The argument against this is a lot weaker, but it nevertheless has some validity; it goes something like:

• In games with the possibility of PvP, it is necessary to introduce the player base to this activity, often not by initial choice, in order to have a sufficiently large and diverse population of people to PvP;
• Otherwise the PvP population will be a small, self-selected group of psychopaths and anger-management cases (or Killers, in Bartle's typology). This group will naturally eat itself and then ragequit, so it is necessary to keep introducing new blood into the population in order to keep it viable.
• As most people who aren't Killers naturally enough wish to avoid the psychos and anger-management children, it becomes necessary to introduce the new populations to PvP types *against* their (current) wishes - a non-consensual introduction to consensual PvP.
• After which point a certain percentage of those so introduced will discover that it's not JUST the angry children and the griefers engaged with PvP, and will continue to partake themselves - thus keeping the population viable.
• The consequence for those who wish to refuse any PvP is that they will have to take additional care to do so.

The latter argument is not nearly as strong, I accept, but it is nevertheless not immediately obvious that flagging from NPC-impacting attacks is necessarily a bug.

I disagree. That's a horrible argument, as is any argument that comes down to "we have to force players to do this unwillingly because otherwise they won't". There's plenty of enticements on offer.

Here's the thing. My brain is defective. I can't process certain social things correctly. The net result is that being flagged freaks me out. Badly. I cannot enjoy the game, at all, if I'm flagged. I absolutely, unconditionally, hate being able to be attacked by any other player, for any reason, period. It does not matter whether they are a credible threat to me. It does not matter whether I could in theory have avoided it.

What it comes down to is that either this will get fixed or I will eventually quit because being accidentally flagged even once makes a several-hour play session as a whole highly stressful rather than relaxing.

Assuming you have reasonably ordinary social instincts: Imagine that instead of "be flagged" the outcome that occasionally happens by accident is "someone twice your size is suddenly six inches from your face, visibly enraged, and screaming at you, and you cannot respond to this".

I know a lot of the militantly non-PvP people are that way, not because they are idiots who don't know what they enjoy, but because they have real objections to PvP. Trying to trick people into accidentally PvPing is highly offensive and flagrantly stupid. You do not win players over by treating them like small children.

That's not a "weak" argument, that's a pale shadow of something that couldn't even pass the most basic sanity tests for being an argument. A company that adopted a policy like that would be a company that could not possibly have made intelligent decisions about player preferences. And we know Trion's smarter than that, and we also know that this behavior is apparently an unintentional change.

[merrier]

They moved my thread to the PvP forum?! Worst place ever for it. *sigh* Note to self: Don't put PvP in a thread title when it's about not PvPing.

Anyway, I went into another Stillmmoor invasion. Still getting flagged. Still not happy.

Seriously, the thing I truly loved about Rift's flagging system was I never had to worry about it. It was almost bullet proof. Now it seems to riddled with bullet holes.

I really want to play my 50 mage, but this is totally killing the fun. I've been playing alts since I just do not want to be flagged.

One odd thing is the last time I did an invasion, although it appeared I was flagged, no one insta-killed me. Maybe there's some display error? Even if there is, it's not totally display issues since somewhere along the way I got favor during the first invasion that triggered my post. Favor? Blech, ptui. Do not want.

[Mordim]

yesterday i got flamed because i killed my teammates in codex , was tab targeting and brain afk killing while listening to music , than i read the warfront chat and i thought it was a joke but than i tab target and had a green cleric i rift jumped on him and almost killed him before i noticed that he was on my team .
I have no idea why this happens but pls fix it . It happened now a couple of times for me in different warfronts .

[the_real_seebs]

One odd thing is the last time I did an invasion, although it appeared I was flagged, no one insta-killed me. Maybe there's some display error? Even if there is, it's not totally display issues since somewhere along the way I got favor during the first invasion that triggered my post. Favor? Blech, ptui. Do not want.

Huh, that's an interesting thought -- I don't think players have attacked me, so it could totally be a display error. That would be a fascinating bug.

BTW, you get favor just from being in a group with people who are getting favor, so you tend to end up with some over time. (Also BTW, I sent the community folks a note pointing out that threads about the autoflag system aren't really threads about PvP.)