Duty Finder trolling: acting AFK to force people to vote kick.

[Aleczan]

Today I got into one hell of a duty party in Ifrit hard. I was in there as a DPS replacement, so I don't know the whole story. But upon arriving, people were discussing battle plan. They said to slowly kill Ifrit until we build up enough Limit Break bar, so that a DPS mage can LB on all the nails when they spawn.

Everyone engaged, except a WHM, whose name I refrain from specifying because there are many of them on different servers and I do not want the other innocent ones to be misunderstood as the offender in this scene. The WHM didn't buff and didn't move. Even while we were fighting, the WHM just stood there at the start spot, never healing anyone, and never dodging any AoE.

The tank was complaining that the WHM was AFK. Other healer said "he's not AFK" and I never realized what that meant until after we voted dismiss.

After we wiped, the party voted to kick the "AFK" White Mage. But other members didn't want to stay so people started leaving.

Just then, the rest of party discussed and the other healer said the kicked person said something like bye and then stopped moving without leaving duty. They speculated that the WHM was just pretending to be AFK. I then concluded that the WHM did it so that other members will be fed up and start to vote kick them out, so that they would not face the Duty Finder cool down penalty.

Now this is one flaw of the penalty, or more specifically, the flaw of penalty exception.

I heard of stories when people would fake disconnect so that they won't get duty finder penalty. But this is even worse. The abuser would just sit there and watch the party die. It is horrible that the party is vulnerable to this kind of trolling and is forced to suffer the fake AFK (and go die in vain.)

I know that if people get penalty for being vote-dismissed, the system can be abused by the voters. But this reversed abuse is NOT OK either. I know it is impossible to make every game function flawless, because most of the time the flaw stems from the users, or players. But if there could be some improvement or prevention of such abuse, it will be greatly appreciated.

[Worm]

Would be so horrible if the kick incurred the same penalty? What are the reasons again? AFK, Harassment, and Disconnected? Obviously it will be a bit bad for unwarranted kicks, but those are reportable. Is a person faking AFK?

[Aleczan]

From what it seemed, the person wanted to stop trying to fight Ifrit hard and wanted to leave, but didn't want to leave the duty due to the penalty, so they just stood there and not helping the party, in order to make people angry and vote dismiss them.

Vote kick = free leave without penalty. ><;; It seems.

[Megido]

I wonder why AFK votekick doesnt give deserter, since if the guy was really offline or disconnected and unable to get back in it shouldnt affect him, only the fakers.

There's still unwarranted kicks for CT loot for instance (which happened to me) but a person needs to be really evil to start using AFK votekick just to give someone deserter AND kicking to keep loot to himself.

[Aleczan]

That's an absolute douchebaggery, to kick a person in order to prevent them from getting the item. Sorry you were kicked Did you report the assholes? Even though you can't know who initiated the kick, the GM might be able to see who did.

I wonder why AFK votekick doesnt give deserter, since if the guy was really offline or disconnected and unable to get back in it shouldnt affect him, only the fakers.

I totally agree to this. It shouldn't hurt the victim of the vote kick if they are really AFK or offline. Still, it will leave the system vulnerable to unwarranted kicks such as to troll, or just being random. Yesterday I saw a person (sub tank or off tank) who got vote kicked after Atomos room with the reason "AFK" when apparently he wasn't AFK! I clicked no, but the person still got kicked. I was totally confused. No one in the party said anything both before and after the vote. Maybe he did something wrong in tanking the adds so someone got mad and started a vote kick, IDK.

Also, in patch note 2.15:

To prevent abuse of Vote Dismiss when casting lots on items, the Vote Dismiss function can no longer be used when an item is in the loot pool.

Yay!!!!

[wicked-one]

Well, if you Kick the Guy (no Penalty) and then Leave (no Penalty for not leaving first) ... everyone should be fine, no?

[RinKaen]

OHHH I'll start doing this, no more low level duties for me!

[waca]

New Abandon Duty feature in patch 2.15 - problem solved.

And yes, he's probably not afking - if you inactive (read: do not move, type in chat, turn the camera angle, etc) in dungeon/duty for a few minutes, autokick will kick in, the system will kick the "afking" player automatically.

[Aleczan]

Well, if you Kick the Guy (no Penalty) and then Leave (no Penalty for not leaving first) ... everyone should be fine, no?

No.

The point is, it is lame, extremely selfish, and very evil that instead of eating the 30 minutes penalty, the person who wants to leave duty can just be a douchebag and make the whole party suffer their misbehavior JUST BECAUSE THE SYSTEM HAS A HOLE IN IT. If you don't want to continue, fine, just leave and face the consequence.

It is not fine.

[Viridiana]

Report for harassment.

Even with a common name, you should be able to get enough info about them from within a group to accurately narrow it down for reporting purposes.