Yoshi-P, GMs, and mixed signals. Should the ToS be updated?

Hello all, I'm Blue Vann. You may remember me from this thread; if not, nice to meet you.

I bring that thread up because unfortunately, as of today, 17th July 2014, after an adventurous series of 442 dungeon runs, I can no longer vouche for it. Today I received my first kick from duty. Namely, Aurum Vale.

As I say in that thread, I always make sure to keep the best behavior in duty, and this time it was no different. That means, the kick was, to the point of view of the majority of the community (I hope.), an unfair decision.

I'll give a brief explanation of the scenario. It was Aurum Vale, and I was on Scholar. I assume the tank wanted a speed run, because they decided to aggro a good amount of mobs occupying the briefest way through the main room. Before he could get whatsoever form of enmity, his HP had dropped dangerously. Eos healed, Eos got aggro, Eos died, we wiped.

This actually occurred twice, and while I admit it was frustrating, I still kept cool and didn't really point the finger at anyone. All I said was simply "maybe that is more mobs than I can heal for."

Before any ifs or buts or hell, even advice would be offered, I found myself kicked from duty. Of course I was peeved, but I was pretty sure that "indecent healer" is not among the options of party kicking, so I Joined In Progress to return to that group, and I did.

I did not make a scene or anything. I said that it was rude and that I didn't think I deserved the kick. I also took the chance to take note of the names of the party members. I decided to stay though, and I guess, though while on a rather uncomfortable run, we managed to win. During the run, I asked out of curiosity what they had chosen as option to kick me. One of the DPSs (I assume the one of the three who clicked No to the vote to kick me) said the cause of kick was "Offline".

That was enough of a clue for me to recognize an abuse of the kick function. Clearly, I had not been offline.

At the end of the duty I open a case with the Support Desk and explain the situation in detail, along with the names and serves of the other two party members. It wasn't even something personal; I consider myself a rather patient person. But I did want to discourage those people from doing that again to someone else, especially for such a silly reason as a couple of wipes with no questions asked.

I was however rather surprised to receive the answer from the GM, who said "no evidence of violation of the Terms of Service could be found" from my report. What other kind of proof is necessary to demonstrate that you were not offline, but got kicked for being offline, other than the chatlog with timestamps of the whole duty before-and-after kick?

I've inquired about it with my friends, and we checked the Terms of Service. The GM is right. Kicking someone from party for a reason that is not the selected one is not against the Terms of Service; however, I clearly remember Yoshi-P being questioned about this behavior in a Live Letter, and his advice was to report players that would abuse of party kicking for reasons different than the selected one.

So this brings us back to the title. Maybe the Terms of Service are a little out of date; after all they were written before party kicking would be implemented in duty. Would the Developers be so kind to give me an enlightenment on the matter?

I'm sorry for the long post. I decided it was not worth the hassle to press further with the GM by replying to their mail, because again I don't think I should take this personally. That is why I am now addressing to the developers, for a more concrete answer that may be in the interests of many, and not just myself.

Have a good playtime, and keep looking at the bright side of the community! Unfair kicking is not as horribly common as some people make it sound, and we're not all rude players. ;)

I agree with you, but I don't see a change being made.

Funny, any time I have ever put in a ticket on anything, in their response they state that due to their privacy policies, they cannot tell me the outcome of anything.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

Funny, any time I have ever put in a ticket on anything, in their response they state that due to their privacy policies, they cannot tell me the outcome of anything.

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This. The response is always that they're reviewing the case, and appropriate actions will be taken. Thanks for contacting us and please don't hesitate to contact again if you have any other questions or concerns etc.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

Funny, any time I have ever put in a ticket on anything, in their response they state that due to their privacy policies, they cannot tell me the outcome of anything.

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I think that occurs when the GM decides to actually investigate on the matter; meaning, the evidence you provided was good enough for them to recognize that there may be an issue to be addressed. I didn't get past that point.

Honestly, I've always felt the implied rules for what constitutes vote kick abuse were using it to obtain loot (for example, kicking someone before a specific boss to try and get a different job as replacement). I'd like to see a staff response about this too.

From OP post I got that party didn't like how he does or doesn't heal. Not sure if SE should update ToS especially for Bluevann to not get kicked again.

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Originally Posted by Adler

From OP post I got that party didn't like how he does or doesn't heal. Not sure if SE should update ToS especially for Bluevann to not get kicked again.

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There's no kick category for "bad player" or "messed up and caused a wipe", and it was previously stated that people using vote kick for reasons outside of that scope would be punished.

Edit: Too tired to be coherent apparently... for reasons outside of its intended scope*

The GM response was correct. It's not against the ToS to do things like that because, the GM's lack the manpower to police every single encounter for every single player, whenever they may come across a random butthole who is just in a bad mood that day or whatever. What is against the ToS though is harrassment. Say those same guys vote kicked you every time you came across them, then that would be reportable, and identifiable by the GM's. Another thing Yoshi has said a couple of times is, you can report anybody for anything you want, if you feel it should be reported such as for win-trading or an instance like yours, that however does not garuntee that the GM's will do anything about those reports.

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Originally Posted by Adler

From OP post I got that party didn't like how he does or doesn't heal. Not sure if SE should update ToS especially for Bluevann to not get kicked again.

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I am not sure what you mean exactly, but I am not posting this to be special. It is not my specific case (not meeting the tank's expectation without being even told I had just embarked on a speed run). What I would like to be addressed is these mixed signals coming from Yoshi-P and the Terms of Service. As of now, the ToS say nothing about being kicked for a different reason than the one selected in the game, while Yoshida instead says that is reportable.

Maybe the ToS should be updated, or maybe more options should be added to the kick window.

Personally I would prefer the first option, because a game where you can be rightfully removed for not being able to read people's minds would be very sad. I don't know about yourself though.

EDIT: As much as I promised myself that I would not open this thread to stand up for my case, I would like to point out to you (maybe you didn't read all of my post) that I returned to the same party, and took it all the way to the win. I believe that is enough evidence that their judgment was rushed and uncalled for. And with that I would like this trivial matter to be at its end.