Vote kick abuse and no way to properly report it

So for the first time ever I was vote kicked from an instance. The only message you get is that you were removed from the party, and removed from the instance. No message about who initiated the vote kick, nor the reason selected from the list of options.

As for my particular instance, I was in Frontlines, and my group (C) were getting owned hard at markets. Rather than continue to feed points to a group with 3 healers that my group clearly stood no chance against, I left and went to cap the Serpent OP. About 2 minutes later, one party member quipped "Nice of you to abandon us Doki." I didn't feel it warranted a response to be honest, as usually the vitriol in Frontlines is already bad enough. One minute later I was kicked from the instance.

The whole battle would have been over in a few more minutes, and overall it only wasted about 6 minutes of my time. Regardless, I was not cheating, afk, harassing anyone, nor was I offline. Since I know neither who initiated the kick, nor the reason selected for my kick, I fail to see how we are supposed to accurately report an abuse of the vote kick system...or if SE feels this sort of behavior do NOT constitute vote kick abuse.

You report the details you do know. Time of occurrence, instance you were in, any names you do happen to have. GMs look up anything else they need to know.

Well... I have a chat tab that has alliance and party chat turned off. I use it for Frontlines and Syrcus Tower.

I've found it's best to just avoid talking in those areas; it only gets negative attention and people don't use the chat modes to coordinate. If someone occasionally kicks me for being silent or because something goes wrong and they decide to play blame the healer... so be it. Doesn't happen often though.

It keeps my mood a lot higher when I don't have to see all the toxicity though. Either at other players or "OMG why didn't that stunlocked with 2-melee-and-a-bard-attacking-him healer heal me?? Best WHM 2014" type comments. If you can do that and steel yourself against the odd kick now and then, you're golden.

Edit to add: Unfortunately, SE isn't going to do anything about the vote kick. They'll say it if you file a report and GMs on the forums have come out saying basically "differing playstyles is a valid reason to kick".

Welcome to PVP. Personally I think it was a bad idea to introduce more PVP into a game that already has a fairly toxic community, but they did it.

Vote kick isn't being abused, it's being used in ways you don't agree with. Your party felt your actions weren't aligned with the group, and they removed you. It's really that simple. If you didn't think that an explanation of your actions was warranted, why are you surprised they removed you? A simple "capping xyz" would have sufficed, although an announcement that you were going to leave the team and do your own thing in the first place would have been better.

More people look at the vote kick button before they push than you give us credit for. I'm not sure that you were the victim of an abuse, from your explanation, however wronged you may feel about it.

That's very interesting. Because, normally when you know you aren't going to beat a group for Manor or Markets, etc. the smart thing to do is to try and take other flags like the opposing teams OPs.

The only thing I could say that may have prevented that from happening, was maybe telling everyone in party chat, "hey this isn't working, let's go check out the ____ OP."

My point is, in order to kick me, the person had to decide to use the given options of afk, offline, harassment, or cheating to kick me and I wasn't doing any of those. If the devs want to go ahead and add "wasn't a team player" or "because they weren't doing what I told them to do" that's one thing. Either way, I feel that the person being kicked, at the very least, should be told the selected reason for their removal from party & instance.

If someone isn't responding to something you are saying in any particular chat channel, you can't automatically assume they are afk. They might be in the middle of trolling 5 members of the opposing team running circles around the cabin by their op with SCH and not have time to validate your need to control everyone that randomly queue with you. Hell... if the vote kick option is afk, it should ASK a yes no prompt to the person about to be kicked at the very least (nevermind that it already has a 2 minute auto-kick for afk so why have that as an option in FL at all), and offline shouldn't even be an option when they are still online. That just leaves cheating & harassment, which should link directly into opening a support ticket explaining what the user was doing to warrant it.

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Originally Posted by Doki

My point is, in order to kick me, the person had to decide to use the given options of afk, offline, harassment, or cheating to kick me and I wasn't doing any of those. If the devs want to go ahead and add "wasn't a team player" or "because they weren't doing what I told them to do" that's one thing. Either way, I feel that the person being kicked, at the very least, should be told the selected reason for their removal from party & instance.

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Well, about that:

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

However, there is one topic in this thread that seems to be an underlying point of contention: reasons for dismissal that are not strictly "AFK", "Offline", "Harassment", or "Cheating". I would like to address this.

The response from the GM touched on this, although it was missed due to the focus on the first part of that sentence. The reasons for dismissal are not all encompassing, which means that there may be valid reasons for dismissal outside of those four examples. Good examples of this that have been provided in this thread are the refusal to fulfill one's job function. Because of this, it is possible that the reasons provided for dismissal may be found to be accurate if they are used against you. As well, the feelings one may have about the reasons may differ from the feelings of those who voted to dismiss. For example, cultural differences in language may have one person using language they find fairly benign while another person takes great offense to it.

Because of these subjective discrepancies, the final decision on if a violation of the use of the vote dismiss feature is left to a GM after an investigation. In general, abuse of the vote dismiss feature is considered to be a grief tactics violation, which falls under section 3.2 in the Final Fantasy XIV User Agreement. However, it is only after a GM investigation that it can be determined to be a violation of the rules. If you feel that the vote dismiss feature has been abused, please do report it to the GMs through the Help Desk in game, and we will investigate.

LGM Enkrateia

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Originally Posted by Doki

My point is, in order to kick me, the person had to decide to use the given options of afk, offline, harassment, or cheating to kick me and I wasn't doing any of those. If the devs want to go ahead and add "wasn't a team player" or "because they weren't doing what I told them to do" that's one thing. Either way, I feel that the person being kicked, at the very least, should be told the selected reason for their removal from party & instance.

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For better or worse, they've pretty much come out and said the reason doesn't matter. You can kick someone for having a different playstyle or basically any reason, as long as you're not griefing them out of loot or similar.

If I had to guess, you were probably dismissed for AFK. Typically if a person is far away from the rest of the party, and is unresponsive after being spoken to, I would assume they're afk rather than intentionally ignoring the group. Although, it could have been harassment if the group felt that you were intentionally trying to inhibit their play. Like that healer on coil T1 who insisted on soloing mobs for SB while the rest of our party was trying to kill Cadeucus.
But you didn't respond , so a GM will look at the chat logs, and IF they decide to question the poeple who voted you, can only take their word for it if they said they thought you were afk.
So no proper way to report this, but no real purpose in doing so either :(

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

they decide to question the poeple who voted you, can only take their word for it if they said they thought you were afk.
So no proper way to report this, but no real purpose in doing so either :(

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You really need to read carefully.

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Originally Posted by Doki

My point is, in order to kick me, the person had to decide to use the given options of afk, offline, harassment, or cheating to kick me and I wasn't doing any of those.

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You weren't with the group, and you weren't talking in chat. AFK sounds plausible, but in the end, you were harassing the group by not playing with the team. Harassment is an all-encompassing reason. It doesn't just mean you are verbally abusing someone. It can also mean that you are inhibiting gameplay in other ways, such as MPK, willful afk (not participating, as in this case), monopolizing a spawn area so that another player cannot complete a quest... It's intentionally broad so that the players can make decisions that make sense.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

AFK sounds plausible, but in the end, you were harassing the group by not playing with the team. Harassment is an all-encompassing reason.

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LOL, this is one of the most dramatic statements I've read on this forum. Saying someone was harrassing the group because he/she decided to take another flag to try and earn her team more points, which happens in every single instance of Frontlines I've ever played. WOW.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

LOL, this is one of the most dramatic, exaggerated statements I've read on this forum. Saying someone was harrassing the group because he/she decided to take another flag to try and earn her team more points, which happens in every single instance of Frontlines I've ever played. WOW.

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Except in this case, the OP didn't communicate that to the rest of the team and refused to reply when someone addressed him by name. In the end, it's another situation where we just don't have enough information to determine whether or not it was intentional abuse, or a team getting rid of a non team player. Judging from the OP's comments, I don't think this was vote kick abuse. They weren't trying to keep him out of something; they clearly expected him to play with the rest of the team or at least communicate what he was doing, and he didn't.

It sounds like a simple case of someone with an over inflated ego. Kicker kicks because kickee isn't responding to orders or questions in their idea of a timely manner.

If you've ever played Frontlines, or know anything about it, sometimes it's extremely difficult to type. Why? Because enemies could catch sight of you and try beating you down, especially if you're alone. Not exactly the right time to stop and type a message.

In PVP there's plenty of times where it isn't convenient to type, there's also plenty who might be on console without a keyboard. If they thought I was afk they could have seen my dot moving around the map in enemy territory fairly easily. It's a real stretch to call it harassment, and by that arguement I could say that them kicking ME was harassment against MY play style.

I appreciate the repost of GM response on the issue. Can't say I'm too thrilled with the response, but I'm not surprised either. I'm not really trying to overly focus on my one instance of being kicked. I'm trying to point out flaws in the given options and how they are executed and can easily be abused.

I feel that for the person being kicked, there should be more information. I can kind of understand a hesitance towards naming the person that kicks you, as that would open the door for retaliatory harassment. I do not see any harm in telling the player the selected reason for the kick though.

There's little reason to even report my case. IF it went anywhere they'd say "We though he was afk so we kicked" which in frontlines is DUMB... if you're afk for 2 minutes you are AUTOKICKED. In the amount of action required to kick me, they could have looked at the map and saw me moving. This of course assumes that is the reason they chose for the kick as I have no idea which was chosen.

Again, it is not possible to encompass all reasons for a kick
http://s7.directupload.net/images/140813/h299ln6g.jpg

A simple "different play style" can justify a kick. Yes, it is a dick move to kick people over this, but they can do it.

But really, you don't win frontlines solo, if you took the 10 seconds to just tell them what you are doing, you would probably not have been kicked.

Maybe not, but he said that a minute elapsed after that message before the kick happened. There's no stealth currently in this game, so he can see if there's enough of a lull to type out a quick "capping xyz". Another good reason to be with the team instead of running around the map alone - you are less likely to be sniped in the way you described.

Frontlines, like it or not, isn't 1v1 where you can do your own special thing and to heck with the rest of the group. It's a team sport, and should be treated as such. If you are playing any other team based content and decide that you are going to do your own thing instead of what the rest of the group is doing and no one knows what you are up to, the team may remove you.

This happened to me just now. I got 90k'd from front lines and I was gone for 15 seconds.... The voted kick on me for being gone for 15 seconds.... wtf???? I understand why I would get voted it if I was gone for 2 minutes or if I was just plain terrible but kicking someone for being gone for 15 seconds because they were disconnected is just plain rude!

Unfortunately 20 sec can sometimes be the tide to change the match. I've seen several hundreds lead in points even out in 20 seconds. It's unfortunate that you were dropped but that 20+ seconds costs the rest of your team and GC in the match possible points.

How odd. I see so many people go off and do their own thing to the detriment of the team, but I've never seen somebody get kicked from frontlines

That being said, I'm more of a casual PVPer, so I've only ran about 80-90 of them.

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Originally Posted by Doki

I do not see any harm in telling the player the selected reason for the kick though.

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There probably wouldn't be much harm, but it probably wouldn't achieve that much, either. At the end of the day, the reason listed is pretty much moot anyway. How often would it really make someone think "Hm, yeah, that's a valid reason, they should have kicked me," when they wouldn't think that now? It just shifts things from "What? Why was I kicked?" to "What? Why was I kicked? I wasn't offline!"

I think it'd just lead to more confusion and more GM time spent explaining that the listed reason isn't everything.

I do think they ought to make their policy a lot more clear. Only half-serious, but maybe an active help window or something that pops up on your first kick and explains things a little better. :P