How "Vote to Dismiss" is designed encourages abuse.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Encourage... people really need to stop using that word. A system within a game is not sentient. It cannot wave its arms and tell you "Hey, do this abusive thing with me! Please?"

A system cannot encourage players to do something. All it can do is possess an option; an option that not everybody is going to take.

It is true that the Vote Dismiss allowing for these kinds of situations is bad. However, the system isn't encouraging players to use it in the manners. The players are encouraging each other to use it in these manners. The offline afker is encouraging his party members to kick him by being absent from the dungeon. The intentional lockout is just being a jerk and would be able to do this whether kicking was possible or not.

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Before you make a grammatical correction to someone's post/topic, you should ensure that you actually read it correctly. The subject is "how the system is designed," not "the system." The OP is arguing that "how the system is designed" (subject) "encourages" (verb) abuse, which is perfectly correct and comprehensible. How the system is designed prevents people from being punished with a lockout, thereby encouraging abuse.

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Originally Posted by Billzey

Before you make a grammatical correction to someone's post/topic, you should ensure that you actually read it correctly. The subject is "how the system is designed," not "the system." The OP is arguing that "how the system is designed" (subject) "encourages" (verb) abuse, which is perfectly correct and comprehensible. How the system is designed prevents people from being punished with a lockout, thereby encouraging abuse.

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My post was in no way an attack on grammar. It was an attack on the use of the word "encourage" to shift blame away from jerks and to the game's developers.

Besides, there is no difference in this case between the "way the system is designed" and the system itself. If a system purportedly is designed to do something then it is also true that the system itself does that thing. A computer does exactly what you tell it to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

But, if you insist, let's look at it from the developer's standpoint. Can you really say that SE designed the system in such a way to intentionally make players want to be jerks with it? Absolutely not! SE has shown a history of looking at us players with rose tinted glasses. They really don't seem to see abusive situations coming. As the players being thrown a bone, it's the least we can do to not be jerks!

Problems aren't with the tools at the disposal, the problem is the gaming community as a whole (or even society in general). As someone else said, the tools aren't sentient. By themselves they work. Replacing an AFK/Offline member is a great tool to have. Abandoning a duty that just won't work given the makeup (gear, skill level, of everyone involved) is also good. DF didn't poison the community. It was done poisoned years ago, even as far back as before WoW came out (2003).

And the problem is with players on both sides not wishing to compromise. As well as ignorance and antipathy. On one side players need to understand that every character is a human behind the computer screen. Some are new, some are not. Some are ignorant and others are not.

I'll use Praetorium as an example. That dungeon is a spark of debate. It has all the nastiness of people coming out. First you have the Speedrunners vs the Cutscene watchers. This is easy for the community to fix. Very easy. If at least one tank and at least one healer wish to speed run it. Then do so. Let the people watching the cutscenes watch the cutscenes as you complete the instance. Its not a hard instance it can be four manned easily. If you're watching the cutscenes, then don't complain as the people complete the instance. Second you have newbies and veterans. Don't pester the newbies for not knowing the fight. Again, unless both tanks and both healers are newbies.. then the instance is 3-4 mannable. If they are newbies, help'm through it. I personally haven't seen both healers/tanks be newbies yet. Not since before 2.1

Next is hunts. I see a ton of drama on these forums and accounts of nastiness on several servers. These need to be treated as first come first serve. No other MMO had mobs like this so there is NO precedence of rules or procedure on them. So why are players being threatened with being blacklisted for killing things? They shouldn't be. Point is... they didn't agree to a set of arbitrary rules that only exist in the minds of those players who feel insulted because they didn't get to a mob in time. This is also easy for the players to fix. If you all wish for there to be a player agreement on how hunt mobs are done. Get your guild leaders from your server's top level guilds to make a consensus about how to approach them. They agree to it, and then hold their members accountable. Other games have done this, FFXIV doesn't have to be different. This way everyone is on the same page and can be held accountable. Right now its on the individual level and is frequently made up by a mob mentality, that's not healthy for a community. A mob is not a community. A community speaks to each other.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Can you really say that SE designed the system in such a way to intentionally make players want to be jerks with it?

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Why are you attributing system malfunction with developer intent? Have you ever written a program in your life? Users can and will do unexpected things to a system after you create it.

Systems are not neutral arbiters. They are a human concept, designed by human beings and created with an intent to produce human behavior. They are almost always methods of control. Sometimes they fail their intent by producing unwanted behavior.

(FWIW - human beings and living creatures in general are hard-wired to be empathic creatures. We don't become selfish until external stimuli motivate us to be. So when players act toxic toward each other - you can almost guarantee it is the fault of game design, not 'human nature'.)

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Originally Posted by Krr

Why are you attributing system malfunction with developer intent? Have you ever written a program in your life? Users can and will do unexpected things to a system after you create it.

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I am a Senior level student in Computer Science, so yes, I have written a program, and I know exactly what I'm saying when I state that "a computer will do exactly what you tell it to do. No more, no less." If a program does something you didn't mean to tell it to do, that's a bug. If it flat out isn't doing something that you wanted it to do, that's because you didn't tell it to do it. What the user actually does with the program has absolutely no bearing on what it has been told to do.

However, this isn't a bug. The Vote Kick system is working exactly as intended and as far we we're aware there are no bugs in the programming here. You vote to dismiss someone, a majority says yes, and that person is gone. If you're in battle, looting, or past the final boss of an instance, you can't initiate a dismissal. In a nutshell, this is what the vote dismissal system does. With the basic rules in place, it's now up to the users to use it correctly. This is why we are capable of reporting people for vote kick abuse and SE will investigate it. If SE wants to add to the system to prevent abusive behavior, it isn't fixing a bug, because nothing is actually broken in the programming. It's adding a feature, because it's attaching additional functionality to an already working system. If you consider "user abuse" as a bug in the programming, then the only way to fix it is to just give up because it's almost impossible to completely stop abuse without attaching so many restrictions to a system that it's either impossible to use or simply not fun anymore. It's better to just leave it alone and let people deal with people.

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(FWIW - human beings and living creatures in general are hard-wired to be empathic creatures. We don't become selfish until external stimuli motivate us to be. So when players act toxic toward each other - you can almost guarantee it is the fault of game design, not 'human nature'.)

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Going by this statement, you appear to have insinuated that it's impossible to avoid people being selfish in a game where they're required to work together because of unavoidable design choices that allow selfishness. Therefore, the only away to detoxify the community is to make FFXIV entirely single player. Congratulations. You've just stated that the design of the entire game, and every MMO in existence, is entirely faulty. Too bad there doesn't seem to be any way to fix this. The simplest stimuli that makes humans selfish is greed: "I want that thing for myself". Pray, do describe a game ,that currently exists, which requires players to work together but does not allow for greed to influence a decision at any point in the game.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

In Syrcus Tower, there was a healer who intentionally locked himself out of the Xande fight. Since when the lockout occurred we were clearly fighting, we couldn't vote dismiss them. Couldn't vote dismiss them after the fight either, because the dungeon had been cleared. So, as long as we win, he gets a free shot at loot without doing anything at all. Does this seem somewhat unfair to you?

The game shouldn't actively encourage poor behavior, and yet it does.

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Was it better when you couldn't even vote to kick people ? Did it prevent them from having "free shot" on last loot ?

And would it be better if you could kick people during fights or at the end or dungeons ? Clearly no almost-formed-party would kick the "other wheels" to ensure the loot...no one would be such a jerk :p

Added to OP:

#3:

I can't believe I almost forgot this one!

There's absolutely nothing to prevent someone from getting dismissed, then queuing back up for that same dungeon/instance, and rejoining your party right after they left (assuming they selected "join in progress" and here's not someone else of that same role who also checked "join in progress" who queue'd before them). I was once in a Stone Vigil (Hard) where the healer refused to heal, and also tried to mpk us by pulling way too many monsters. He was kicked by every single member of the party, and rejoined the dungeon in progress THREE TIMES. We just gave up and abandoned duty.

This will happen a lot with tanks and healers ready to troll your dungeon/primal runs.

If you don't want to get kicked from your party, then don't wear level 50-55 crafting gear and only have 2.5k health in Syrcus Tower.
People actually qeue with high level gear and then switch to low level gear to spiritbind.

If you do this, then you deserve to be kicked IMO.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

Added to OP:

#3:

I can't believe I almost forgot this one!

There's absolutely nothing to prevent someone from getting dismissed, then queuing back up for that same dungeon/instance, and rejoining your party right after they left (assuming they selected "join in progress" and here's not someone else of that same role who also checked "join in progress" who queue'd before them). I was once in a Stone Vigil (Hard) where the healer refused to heal, and also tried to mpk us by pulling way too many monsters. He was kicked by every single member of the party, and rejoined the dungeon in progress THREE TIMES. We just gave up and abandoned duty.

This will happen a lot with tanks and healers ready to troll your dungeon/primal runs.

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Yeah, this can be bad, but it's also allowed for this situation to happen to me: I lost internet connection during a run of the mill Halatali HM and got back in after a few minutes to find that I had been kicked from the party. I queue in progress to the same dungeon and get back in the same group. They say "welcome back" and we finish the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Rivest

If you don't want to get kicked from your party, then don't wear level 50-55 crafting gear and only have 2.5k health in Syrcus Tower.
People actually qeue with high level gear and then switch to low level gear to spiritbind.

If you do this, then you deserve to be kicked IMO.

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SE agrees that kicking someone for this reason is not abusive, as it is considered a form of harassment to spiritbind in this specific manner.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

bugs

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Nobody is saying the Vote Kick system is bugged, they're saying it's flawed. Code wise, yes, it's performing fine; it removes people from the party via democracy. I consider "user abuse" a flaw in the design, not the programming. While you're right that it's impossible to completely stop abuse and you need to draw the line somewhere, I believe they could do a better job than the current Vote Kick, which has a few issues.

You can argue all you like about the human condition and morality, but it's pretty much a given that there's going to be a set of people that raise hell. I feel like Square Enix hasn't been accounting for that group very well.

Problem #3 can be fixed easily (at least logic-wise). Get vote-kicked twice or three times in the same 10 minutes and you get a 15 minute queue penalty.