An Examination of "Vote to Kick"

[Elegance]

First use of vote kick will probably end up being somebody kicked for watching the cut scene.

Then change the way skipping works, honestly gw1's was perfect in that regard.

[Avengedangel]

You make a lot of good points! I'll have to admit, I was one of those "this will most likely be abusedd" people, but taking into account all the trolls we've got right now, I wouldn't mind having the kick at all. Sure it's gonna be abused, but I believe having SOMETHING that allows us to take action against all the annoying behavior that's going on in the DF right now is better than having nothing at all.

[amnie]

it's fairly easy, really.

if a group doesn't WANT you in the run (skipping scenes, speed runs) then you won't ENJOY it anyway. so, they kick you. is that nice? absolutely not. and I'm fairly sure you'll have a right to report that.

but NOT being able to kick anyone... well we KNOW the consequences for that.

heck, the other day I hat a BOTTING tank in a Sastasha run.

[Roaminggnome]

Curious how did GW1 do it?

Then change the way skipping works, honestly gw1's was perfect in that regard.

[Marael]

- For whatever reason, somebody decides to go. Rather than simply leave the party, they intentionally "disconnect." They are still technically "in" the party, so the party can't even attempt to find a replacement. Everyone is forced to leave, even if they want to continue.

Actually, this is wrong. After someone has been disconnected for a certain amount of time, I forget how long, it's like 5 or 10 minutes, the game gives the party leader a prompt asking if they want to kick the party member and seek another. Have been kicked by pt lead and been pt lead and kicking more than once due to DC.

[Alyko]

One thing to consider is that any NA joining a JP run will instantly be votekicked. Just another argument against votekick.

[Asael]

Would a vote kick system be convenient for giving those nasty players the boot? Yeah it definitely would. Would a system likes this be abused? Sure to some extent although rare it may be (experiences seem to vary here). But the question for me is, are there other viable alternatives that could be implemented to work around all these issues? Another feature that is less likely to be abused and works under more controlled circumstances.

Rather than a vote kick system try implementing cross server black lists. Once blacklisted and you either finish or leave the instance you will never have to see that player again. Sure you might have to suffer that player's crap for awhile, but again once all is said and done it's over. In this situation such a feature works for the community as a whole. A player who continues to be a schmuck is going to slowly but surely alienate themselves from the community at large, and will eventually find themselves with longer and longer queue times. Secondly, if a particular player has been black listed multiple times with in a given time frame it's a cue for a follow up investigation as to why said player keeps getting blacklisted. I'm sure many have heard this idea concerning RMT shout spam and tells.

The odds of this being abused are few and far in between. You would need hundreds if not thousands of people to screw up such a system. Not to mention the amount of communication and coordination such a group of this size would need in order to pull that off (good luck with that). Even then, if such a thing ever happened by whatever miracle, there are thousands upon thousands of players game wide, and more likely than not the group in question would have only alienated themselves. The odds of abuse are virtually zero. Ultimately, does it stop them? No. But it does prevent YOU from ever having to deal with them again.

Though what else is in our arsenal of weapons to deal with these individuals? Well we have one that already exists. The report system. You can find it under the system menu > support > contact us > player harassment, cheating, bots, etc. Now some may already be saying, "But Asael, that will never work. GMs never address these issues because they're too busy/have better things to do." No, they do. The problem is people seem to apply this logic in the same manner as, "my vote doesn't count." Next thing you know, X person doesn't get elected because they were thousands of votes short for a win due to multiple people using this nonsensical logic. If someone is doing something they shouldn't be doing then stop and take a minute to report it. If multiple reports continuously keep popping up on a particular person it gets noticed. The problem is people grin and bear it then say nothing.

My only issue with this is that I would like an augmentation to the report feature. It should be made to where you can right click on a person (either through the party roster or on the character themselves) and have a report option. This makes it easily accessible for players to utilize. Also this should attach a ticket directly to the player in question, and the ticket stays attached until a reviewing GM can close it. In this way the GM will know the character name, the date and time of the report, the home server the player is from, etc. along with a very brief synopsis of the discrepancy. Will this be reviewed immediately or anytime in the near future? Unlikely. It may take days or even a few weeks, but it will be addressed at some point as it must be viewed by a GM at a moment of their convenience in order for the ticket to be closed. Again, the system must be utilized for it to have an effect. The more tickets that are opened the more likely it will be taken seriously and actually receive attention.

As far as the vote kick system itself is concerned; I have played many games with a VK feature, and in my experience very rarely have I ever seen it being abused. Frankely, it's a lot easier for one single individual to be a schmuck than entire groups (especially if the group is indeed random). As others have pointed out as well there are also countermeasures that can be put in place to help reduce the likelihood of said abuse. To top that off, abuse of a VK system is reportable and bannable. If such a feature is ever implemented I would have to have VK abuse reports take a high priority in order for me to be fully on board with it.

Beyond this, as others and myself have stated, the best answer is always going to be to find a LS/FC that you can group with for these events. With that, all these other things really won't even matter.

[VahnValbosce]

Hey guys I thought of a great solution.

How about we all grow up and stop being mean to eachother...?

That works, right?

[lauraash1h]

Reading everything that has been posted, after 3 weeks of being on this game, please tell me what I can do better. So I'm a noob to all the dungeons......tell me what to do...it's not wow where I can take an overgeared person in there that can solo it due to the sync............there is a learning curve and everyone (apparently not from the posts) understands that to get good people you have to teach them and not tear them down

[Altheras]

Vote To Kick is a necessity in any game that tosses random people together via a dungeon finder system. period.

I would like to see it implemented sooner rather than later. I have noticed that it is rarely abused in WoW or ToR and far more often is used to remove trolls and AFKers from dungeons.

Some things that could be added with this feature to help it be even better:

-First timers cannot be vote kicked. Period. They could still be auto-kicked by the system for AFK or DC. This would ONLY work their first time through a dungeon. That way they could watch their CS without being punted by a group too impatient to let them do so, as that would be a bad use of the Kick feature.

-Add a substantial bonus for people who are NOT first timers for completing an end game dungeon WITH first timers. Perhaps a multiplying bonus added for each new person in the group like additional tomestones. Make it worthwhile for them to take the extra time for the new people by giving them some extra tomestones for their extra time spent. Not everyone is motivated by their own personal kindness, so perhaps some extra shiny will make some of those less nice people out there a little more content and help them to feel like they are not 'wasting time'.

-Also perhaps add a check box to the duty finder menu just under the 'join in progress dungeons' that is something like 'run with first timers'. This way those who are going to be absolutely unwilling to run with new people can just never check this box.

-AFKers are auto kicked from the dungeon after 10 or 15 full minutes of total inactivity.

-If you get too far away from a group, you stop getting credit, so those who stand around at the start of a dungeon cannot just leech after others finish the run without them.

-Disconnected people, whether logged out or error 90k are allowed 10 mins to get back in, then are auto booted from the group.

-The group is auto-queued for replacements once someone is auto-booted or vote booted, except in the case of a full premade group where the leader could then invite someone from their own server or choose to queue instead.

-Once someone has been kicked from groups over X amount of times, they get banned from using Duty Finder ever again. (I realize this may sound harsh, but I'm talking about a really big number here, maybe 10,000 or some such.) Odds are if someone gets kicked that many times, they just really do not play well with others.