How to deal with non contributing players

So you need a few xp, or a last couple tomes so you head into path of the dead, or heaven on high and there he is. The guy who runs like his ass is on fire to the transfer point. Fighting only whatever is in his way. Then he parks himself in the transfer circle, activated or not. He does not fight, he does not pick up silver boxes. Sometimes he even idles on the floor ten boss. He basically soaks up levels and weapon / armor upgrades and gives you nothing. Yet everyone accepts these guys. Sometimes there is two of then, or god forbid three and you are the only one fighting or getting the upgrade boxes while they just stand there.

It irritates me greatly. So I thought of a few solutions to this.

1. If you are in the room with the transfer circle and others kill something / loot a upgrade you get nothing. Orignally this was the circle itself, but then they would just park themselves right outside it and idle there.

2. If you are more then a room away you get nothing. KR - ER - FR Bob kills a minotaur in KR if you are in ER (Empty room) You get the upgrade or 2/3 xp if you are in the far room you get nothing.

3. Attack / contribution timer. If you have not gone into combat, or picked up a box in a certain amount of time you get an increasing penalty to xp and no upgrades at all. Go long enough and you start to loose weapon /armor points, XP is really rather meaningless down there as much as they hand out.

I am sure there will be people who whine about having run both places til their eyes bleed and they are bored with it so they idle. So what? If everyone helps clear a floor it goes a lot faster then you sitting there like a lump. We -all- hate it at this point, but we do it for whatever reason.

How many times have you done your roulettes and went oh my god Satasha AGAIN!? Do you stand at the entrance and just soak up tomes and xp? Of course not. You kill / heal / tank so everyone can get through this hellish nightmare and move on. Same with PotD and HoH. Help us all get on with our virtual lives just a bit faster will you? Thanks.

1:- just have it work on whether a mob is tagged by them in any way. (this is actually a bad idea because of casters but could probably be tweaked somehow) failing that just kick them or stand next to them till they get the hint.

2:- I wouldnt like this personally and i know a lot of my friends would hate it. maybe in matched groups it'd be acceptable. But in fixed parties definitrely NO. when my friends and I group together we usually split up and head in different directions to grab chests and clear a floor faster round up any aggroing mobs and melt them on the portal once weve got the chests. . so it would suck if i've gone south and got a silver and the guys that went north dont get it... because there more than one room away.

3:- same deal here as with number 1. stuff in potd hoh generally melts so fast casters would be at a continuous disadvantage... even with insta cast dots mobs would be dead befroe they even land a tick of damage..

My solution is to generally call them out and see the party reaction. If the others agree that the guilty person is not contributing (and they keep doing barely little), I launch a vote kick as soon as I'm able. If I see the party sticking up for such a person, then I don't take chances and I'll either leave or have them kick me, also as soon as possible.

If players behave like bots, that is making a beeline to an inactive portal and then ceasing all activity, I have no qualms about kicking them or leaving the group myself if the former fails. That's just sabotaging the run and borderline griefing in my opinion.

If it's people making a beeline for the portal once it's activated we're back to the old deep-dungeon discussions that boil down to differences in playstyle, both sides have their arguments. In that case I'll just follow along with what the majority of the other three players want.

I've been in a party with three of these types people before and quite suddenly I developed an interest in exploring every single room, getting every single chest, and killing literally everything on the floor taking as long as possible each floor. lol...

Vote Dismiss

And if they're the particularly mouthy sort, I may wait until the last floor or two before that kick.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

I've been in a party with three of these types people before and quite suddenly I developed an interest in exploring every single room, getting every single chest, and killing literally everything on the floor taking as long as possible each floor. lol...

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That's diabolical.




I love it :)

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Originally Posted by Corvanther

So you need a few xp, or a last couple tomes so you head into path of the dead, or heaven on high and there he is. The guy who runs like his ass is on fire to the transfer point. Fighting only whatever is in his way. Then he parks himself in the transfer circle, activated or not. He does not fight, he does not pick up silver boxes. Sometimes he even idles on the floor ten boss. He basically soaks up levels and weapon / armor upgrades and gives you nothing. Yet everyone accepts these guys.

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Because if you don't, then you don't get any reward either.

It's a fundamental design problem with PotD/HoH. The portal is unlocked by the party killing X many monsters rather than each player killing at least 25% of the HP of the monsters need to unlock it, or simply don't make a "key" pop out until that much is done. The reason there is no actual key, is again an abuse issue, where one person might pick up the key and then not stand in the portal. The solution more or less is to make one key per party member show up, that only shows up after their target contribution happens, and until then, the portal won't allow anyone without a key to pass.

However much like other oversights in the game, the game doesn't consider that a player might be intentionally griefing the party or a bot. So another solution is to actually pull the mechanic from WoD that where Cerberus uses Ululation, and any player that is more than two rooms away from the party gets a fear debuff and can't move further away unless they're the last one not KO'd.

the last time the devs tried to fix player behavior, they gave you Pagos which you all hate. Either talk it out with the guy, kick him or get used to it. There's no way they can mechanic proof people to do what you want.

You're in your right to kick a player that doesn't want to contribute.

This is a very coddle toxic game where the community is perfectly fine with calling out people that demands competence from the rest of the party and are also very protective of players that are lazy and/or lacks basic understanding of their job and game mechanics and is in content where they shouldn't be. Due to this reason, the only options left to you are either try to vote kick the leeches, which is on a 4 hours long cooldown. Vote abandon, which isn't likely to go through. Or just leave by yourself, in which case you'd have to eat a 30 minutes penalty for.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

I've been in a party with three of these types people before and quite suddenly I developed an interest in exploring every single room, getting every single chest, and killing literally everything on the floor taking as long as possible each floor. lol...

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Ive done this. It's quite effective at making some of them leave. But I also like shiny so that doesnt hurt XP

Refusing to participate in content (as in, bolting straight to the portal and not doing anything other than self-preservation) is against ToS. It won't help YOU while it happens, but reporting that player may help people in the future.

If such actions would be properly reported and ToS properly enforced, people would stop doing such stupid things. If you're bored of the deep dungeon then don't use it, simple. Normal dungeons offer perfectly fine experience as well at all levels. Just go for the highest one available and you'll be able to switch em every four-six runs, I reckon.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Normal dungeons offer perfectly fine experience as well at all levels. Just go for the highest one available and you'll be able to switch em every four-six runs, I reckon.

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..and when you get reported because 3 people want to speed run it for exp and you keep straying off to other rooms to get chests? You have to be careful not to weaponize reports too much; they should only be a last resort after actually talking to a person then kicking them, i.e. using the tools at hand.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

..and when you get reported because 3 people want to speed run it for exp and you keep straying off to other rooms to get chests? You have to be careful not to weaponize reports too much; they should only be a last resort after actually talking to a person then kicking them, i.e. using the tools at hand.

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Indeed. Too much of the game already allows people to troll others, especially since that one GM said "playstyle differences" were a legit reason to kick someone. The problem is that the decisions that go into kicking are often not about completion but because of a desire to speedrun or some irrelevant rank on a statistics site.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

..and when you get reported because 3 people want to speed run it for exp and you keep straying off to other rooms to get chests? You have to be careful not to weaponize reports too much; they should only be a last resort after actually talking to a person then kicking them, i.e. using the tools at hand.

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My only idea why you would say that is:

1) You didn't pay attention while reading.
2) You are actually doing it.

I specifically said that not participating in content is against ToS (if it's a group content you signed up for). And I specifically said that it means going to the teleporter and idling there.

What you posted is the equivalent of you saying that one should be careful when reporting someone for severe case of verbal harassment because someone may report that person for a harmless joke.

If it's against ToS, it's against ToS. Simple as that. "Gameplay difference" is not against ToS. Refusal to participate in content is. There's nothing there to be "careful about". It's a clear difference that no one should have an issue with discerning.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

some irrelevant rank on a statistics site.

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It's only ever a post away with you, huh?

But to be fair I think the best option available to us at this point is just kicking when you can and leaving when you can't. It sucks and I would love if SE implimented some kind of gated reward structure but there are issues there too. The safe option would be perhaps the ability to leave one PotD or HoH run per hour or so, that way people could abandon the leeches more easily with less penalty.

Why not just kick the person?

Some of these are ok and others will just hinder people for no good reason.

I'm a person that kills what's needed until the portal is open and then I go in the portal. There's literally no reason to kill everything on the floor and get every pom. Especially when people get the poms and then don't even use em, it makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

It's only ever a post away with you, huh?

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Doesn't change the fact it's true. Let's not dwell on that here though.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

But to be fair I think the best option available to us at this point is just kicking when you can and leaving when you can't. It sucks and I would love if SE implimented some kind of gated reward structure but there are issues there too. The safe option would be perhaps the ability to leave one PotD or HoH run per hour or so, that way people could abandon the leeches more easily with less penalty.

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Honestly the simplest solution is to just integrate some generalized anti-carry/anti-leech mechanic where the entire duty is considered a fail if either:
a) A player is "KO" longer than 60 seconds/fails to revive within 60 seconds of a revive cast.
b) A player is "auto-following" or standing still without being in combat stance once another party member is in combat stance. If a (trash) fight ends without the player doing anything, then they become subject to auto-kick.
c) A player (specifically in 24-player content and frontline content) that "camps" in the zone-in/spawn location without moving after the first player KO's.

This would create an "auto-kick/auto-fail" without penalty prompt. For PotD/HoH, it would eject the player and not replace them.

If a player is "carried" it would not count as a clear.

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Originally Posted by OurMom

Why not just kick the person?

Some of these are ok and others will just hinder people for no good reason.

I'm a person that kills what's needed until the portal is open and then I go in the portal. There's literally no reason to kill everything on the floor and get every pom. Especially when people get the poms and then don't even use em, it makes no sense.

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Because you make PotD/HoH 33% harder without a 4th player. Unlike most 4-player content where you can usually sideline one player and it just takes longer, if you sideline someone in PotD/HoH, and the other three players KO, the dungeon is effectively a fail, and you have to go back to floor 20 or 50. One bad player can put you back 50 floors for PotD.

There are two specific playstyles for PotD/HoH, one is "kill everything, get all the chests" and the other is "kill things till the portal opens and then make a beeline to the portal, killing things that engage the party as they go. What is being complained about here is the player who goes to the portal, without even fighting anything, which I've seen happen when the exit portal is within two rooms of the entrance. Sometimes entire parties make a beeline to the exit portal once it's unlocked, and that's usually when someone accidentally trips the spawn trap.

It's not reasonable to ask parties to "not open chests" when they aren't at 99/99, they will because they're not at 99/99. If that triggers a trap, then you're just going to have to deal with it. If you don't want PUG's doing this, form a static.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Because you make PotD/HoH 33% harder without a 4th player.

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Can't speak for HoH but for PoTD that is absolutely not true unless you all are close to the worst players in this game. I practically live in potd and have to kick 1-2 other people and ended up trioing or duoing the place just fine. If you guys are that bad where losing one player sets you back, that's not the game nor the community, that's you.

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It's not reasonable to ask parties to "not open chests" when they aren't at 99/99,

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Good thing I specifically mentioned killing everything and getting poms and nothing about those silver chest for a non capped player ;)

I don't want people to get every box, every silver box maybe, or kill everything, especally past floor 50. I do want them to at least help a little, not just be lazy and let the rest of us power level them.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

My only idea why you would say that is

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The OP's example read a lot more like a speed runner versus an explorer/weapon leveler. Not someone idling 100%. Because if your 99/99, you tend to run to the exit, and you don't need 4 people killing mobs in 21-30. The titan thing, yeah thats not good but he is down often in a minute.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Honestly the simplest solution is to just integrate some generalized anti-carry/anti-leech mechanic

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these don't work. Like beyond a point, you cannot make an anti leech thing. Player will rubberband a controller to go in circles to prevent an idling. You have to empower the player to deal with them, vote kicking does that. reporting is there for times vote kicking cant work or help, or for much more heinous stuff. it's sad but you cant fix people that way, and you can actually make something worse by doing it.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

these don't work. Like beyond a point, you cannot make an anti leech thing. Player will rubberband a controller to go in circles to prevent an idling. You have to empower the player to deal with them, vote kicking does that. reporting is there for times vote kicking cant work or help, or for much more heinous stuff. it's sad but you cant fix people that way, and you can actually make something worse by doing it.

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I'm not talking about "anti-idle" stuff. I'm talking about actually counting the interactivity... the same kind of thing could detect bots too. If players will not kick an abusive player because it will cost them time, the system should go "hey is it okay if I kick this guy?" and not penalize the players who want to complete the content for it. As it is, you can't kick players at the beginning of a dungeon, and if you leave the loot window open, you can't until everyone rolls, so you're stuck waiting at least 5 minutes doing nothing just to kick someone.

I agree there will be people who flaunt any loopholes the game creates, but they would be doing that anyway, so let's not pretend that "there may be a legitimate player" that might be impacted by auto-kick rules and instead make it the party decision to early vote kick based on specific anti-leech/anti-carry rules. That at least move the goal post from "the player is doing nothing" to "the player is forced to participate or be ejected"

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Originally Posted by OurMom

Can't speak for HoH but for PoTD that is absolutely not true unless you all are close to the worst players in this game. I practically live in potd and have to kick 1-2 other people and ended up trioing or duoing the place just fine. If you guys are that bad where losing one player sets you back, that's not the game nor the community, that's you.

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1-50, you can solo/duo/trio just fine at 50/50, 50-90 you can typically solo/duo/trio if already at 99/99 or near it. 90-100 is harder without the pomanders, and if your party won't open the chests, then the boss is just harder. The levelsync on the items typically runs near to the level of the dungeon, so if you've outleveled it, it's really of no consequence, but you could previously spend 90/90 to pull the weapon out to use on the field, so you may end up with a party of 99/99 + three 10/10's if you're unlucky, and they will feel like dead weight.

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Originally Posted by OurMom

Good thing I specifically mentioned killing everything and getting poms and nothing about those silver chest for a non capped player ;)

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Personally, I assume that if everyone is at 99/99 we can skip the silver chests. This is usually made obvious by the color of the weapon. But you're going to have players who want to pick up every chest, no matter what. Even when I play PotD/HoH I head to the exit teleport if the party has split up and it's unlocked, because unfortunately you will get players who do all split up, either to do it faster, or because that's just how they've been zerg'ing it the entire time.

I rarely see any party head straight to the teleport before it's unlocked, though sometimes players will head to the teleport and then realize someone got left behind, because they either hit a spawn trap or opened a mimic chest.

If the floor ends in nine, it's kicking time.

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Originally Posted by AppleJinx

This is a very coddle toxic game where the community is perfectly fine with calling out people that demands competence from the rest of the party and are also very protective of players that are lazy and/or lacks basic understanding of their job and game mechanics and is in content where they shouldn't be. Due to this reason, the only options left to you are either try to vote kick the leeches, which is on a 4 hours long cooldown. Vote abandon, which isn't likely to go through. Or just leave by yourself, in which case you'd have to eat a 30 minutes penalty for.

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Yup. Should've been the first post.

People go along with it because the only way they get anything done is by carrying people like that, or by becoming one themselves and having others still carry them. "Difference in play style" allows for so much covering it's kind of hilarious.

Alternative solution is to just never play with randoms and only with friends, which is sort of contradictory and also kind of out of sync with the concept of an MMO. But y'know.

When it comes to ppl who don't fight and just sneak through to idle at the portal before its unlocked I always seem to get the itch to unlock the entire map, kill every mob, get every single chest and sometimes when I am on the far side from the portal my finger slips and I hit the / button by accident reducing me to a slow walk and heck if I can ever remember how to turn it off before I am in visual range. Then for some strange reason the vote kick somehow gets activated and they disappear but always at the floors that end in 9. It's strange how this happens every...single...time.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Doesn't change the fact it's true. Let's not dwell on that here though.

Honestly the simplest solution is to just integrate some generalized anti-carry/anti-leech mechanic where the entire duty is considered a fail if either:
a) A player is "KO" longer than 60 seconds/fails to revive within 60 seconds of a revive cast.
b) A player is "auto-following" or standing still without being in combat stance once another party member is in combat stance. If a (trash) fight ends without the player doing anything, then they become subject to auto-kick.
c) A player (specifically in 24-player content and frontline content) that "camps" in the zone-in/spawn location without moving after the first player KO's.

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Less dwelling and more just pointing out how deep and creepy the obsession with 'some irrelevant statistics site's goes for some. Almost like you want to discuss it...

I think the issue with creating a new system like that it's not really a very common problem so the likelihood of SE directly addressing it seems slim. Don't get me wrong, I would be in full support of changes like the ones you proposed... I just think we're unlikely to see them.

I'd rather give actual, helpful advice to people on how to handle these problems within the toolkit that we have now than spin a pipedream about entire new anti-botting initiatives.

There's another botting problem that we can all see after all - there's one that's been reported on Cactuar literally hundreds of times by dozens of people and yet SE has taken no visible action. This isn't the only case of bots being mass reported with no consequence. Surely SE could make some kind of program to deal with these people but they haven't. Expecting them to alter their established behaviour seems a little bit unrealistic.

Then again on the OF unrealistic ideas are sort of the norm. Carry on all \o/

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

1-50, you can solo/duo/trio just fine at 50/50, 50-90 you can typically solo/duo/trio if already at 99/99 or near it. 90-100 is harder without the pomanders, and if your party won't open the chests, then the boss is just harder.

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Me and a buddy duo'd to 150, again if you're struggling pre 150, that's a player problem. Also not opening chests at all is not what most parties do, people just dont like it when someone goes out of the way to get chests even when the portal is up. Most people grab coffers on the way no problem.

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I rarely see any party head straight to the teleport before it's unlocked

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I don't really see this happening either.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Refusing to participate in content (as in, bolting straight to the portal and not doing anything other than self-preservation) is against ToS. It won't help YOU while it happens, but reporting that player may help people in the future.

If such actions would be properly reported and ToS properly enforced, people would stop doing such stupid things. If you're bored of the deep dungeon then don't use it, simple. Normal dungeons offer perfectly fine experience as well at all levels. Just go for the highest one available and you'll be able to switch em every four-six runs, I reckon.

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What rule is it breaking? From what I can recall, this behavior doesn't break ToS; it's just a really scummy thing to do and rectified with a vote kick. Nothing that requires a GM's intervention.

The closest thing that it could fall under would be "disruption," but as you're still actively able to clear the floor if they bee-line for that portal, it's actually not disrupting your gameplay - just making it take longer. In that event, they are retarding your run, not disrupting it.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Refusing to participate in content (as in, bolting straight to the portal and not doing anything other than self-preservation) is against ToS.

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Mind linking to the section of the ToS where this is said? Because last I checked that would be considered a "difference of playstyles" and is a player moderated behavior, not an official one.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

..and when you get reported because 3 people want to speed run it for exp and you keep straying off to other rooms to get chests? You have to be careful not to weaponize reports too much; they should only be a last resort after actually talking to a person then kicking them, i.e. using the tools at hand.

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It's exceptionally rare that you and I agree on something or that you compose a legitimate point, but I don't think I could have said it better. Kudos.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I'm not talking about "anti-idle" stuff. I'm talking about actually counting the interactivity... the same kind of thing could detect bots too. If players will not kick an abusive player because it will cost them time, the system should go "hey is it okay if I kick this guy?" and not penalize the players who want to complete the content for it. As it is, you can't kick players at the beginning of a dungeon, and if you leave the loot window open, you can't until everyone rolls, so you're stuck waiting at least 5 minutes doing nothing just to kick someone.

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So to be clear, you want the dev team who designed LoV, Eureka, Diadem, can't stop pvp wintrading, and can't deter bots, etc. to try and design a robust anti-leech algorithm that detects and punishes players, and have it pass QA with minimal false positives?

As if.

Last time I had someone refuse to participate in HoH, I looked for a luring trap and dragged half the floor to them. That woke 'em up.

So, I can't tell: Are we talking about players sitting on a locked transporter or an unlocked one?

Sitting on a locked transporter deserves a kick.

Sitting on an unlocked transporter: why aren't you already going to the next floor?

Here's an idea, how about you stop dragging ass through deep dungeons and just get through the floors? The content is boring as all hell and the only reason to do it is to grind quickly. Most people at least help kill mobs until the transport activates but when it does quit clearing all the rooms for pointless gold chests. Or at the very least stop whining on the forums about people who would rather wait at the activated transport than waste time.

I dunno, I tend to go for chest cause I need the upgrades. I haven't done either one in a while tho cause all everyone wants to do is sonic they way to the end. :/ And noone joins PF's for it in my experience so yeah. I just stopped doing it.

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Originally Posted by ChewieFlakes

Here's an idea, how about you stop dragging ass through deep dungeons and just get through the floors? The content is boring as all hell and the only reason to do it is to grind quickly. Most people at least help kill mobs until the transport activates but when it does quit clearing all the rooms for pointless gold chests. Or at the very least stop whining on the forums about people who would rather wait at the activated transport than waste time.

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This is just whining on the forums too though. It is simply whining about the opposite end where people are being ...well I guess 'too active'? Killing more enemies than necessary instead of OP's issue of people AFKing and not helping to kill enemies at all.

This content isn't some sort of "do it my way or the highway" thing. When queuing into DF content solo it ends up a majority rules type thing and/or if that isn't working then someone has to speak up and a compromise has to happen.

When you join PoTD/HoH with randoms through DF you have to expect possible conflicts in goals. If you are standing alone at the activated key and the 3 others are killing stuff still and getting boxes/exploring then sadly you are the minority. So, you have some options: adjust, ask them politely if the group could go quicker, or leave. You could attempt to continue to idle at the key, but this may result in you getting kicked if the other 3 don't like you idling.

Same thing with the opposite situation. If 3 people are waiting at the active key and you are still trying to explore, kill, and get boxes, then you are the minority. You should either adjust, ask them if it is okay for you to explore while they wait, or leave. You could attempt to continue doing it with no communication, but again it might result in a kick.

You have to employ some conversation and compromise skills when dealing with a group of people who might be in there for different reasons. You can't just join PotD/HoD solo queue and then demand that the 3 others you get paired with do the content exactly how you want it done.

The OP said the person parks on the key of passage even if it isn't activated and just AFKs there and also talks about players even idling and doing nothing on boss floors. I am assuming you missed that, because I am sure you wouldn't defend such behavior, right? A good idea would be to read the OP thoroughly.

While I don't necessarily agree with the OP's penalty ideas, the idea that a player would go to the inactivated key and simply wait for others to open it for them is definitely not something that should be tolerated. If you want to AFK then don't queue for any group content.

Here's an idea: when you step on the unlocked portal you get transferred to the next floor without having to wait for people. Problem solved

I'd rather that guy over someone who walks into every room and makes a 8 min HoH run into a 35 min snooze fest. Main reason I generally ignore this content. Obviously you need to unlock/find the portal first, but if that thing is glowing I'm not helping you look through the 3 other rooms we don't need.