So votekick >abuse< is practically allowed?

[Enkrateia]

Greetings!

To begin, I have removed several posts commenting negatively about the company or the service itself, as well as a side discussion about the use of spell checking. Those suggestions have been heard, but take away from the concerns in this thread, which is a criticism of policy and confusion resulting from a message sent by a GM.

I have escalated several of the concerns with the messaging to the appropriate group for review and ways to improve their messaging to prevent confusion like this.

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

[Amberyl]

Good examples of this that have been provided in this thread are the refusal to fulfill one's job function.

Hope you've got the manpower to cope with the ambiguity that statement entails. Because the amount of misuse reports you're gonna get is going to skyrocket when wind of this hits the servers, lol.

[Enkrateia]

Hope you've got the manpower to cope with the ambiguity that statement entails. Because the amount of misuse reports you're gonna get is going to skyrocket when wind of this hits the servers, lol.

There is not much ambiguity to that sentence. If a person is intentionally acting in a manner that is detrimental to the completion of the duty, then the use of the vote dismiss feature is unlikely to be a violation. If the concern is that this will be used as an excuse to abuse the feature, if our investigation determines that they did perform their duties in an appropriate manner and were kicked due to unrealistic expectations, then it could be found to be an abuse of the vote dismiss feature. A GM investigation will make the final determination about if the feature was used appropriately.

LGM Enkrateia

[Amberyl]

If a person is intentionally acting in a manner that is detrimental to the completion of the duty, then the use of the vote dismiss feature is unlikely to be a violation.

When playing as a DPS, I regularly see DF players attempt to kick-vote inexperienced or under-geared tanks and heals and use words very much akin to the above as their justification. This happens most in non-levelsync'ed content, where players are new to the game, and may not even understand how to lodge a grievance with a GM.

Your acceptance of kick-votes deviating from the specified text in the client encourages a kick-now-and-see-if-it-comes-back-on-us attitude. If you're going to allow such terminology in the justification of kick-votes, then it should be a written option in the client.

[Enkrateia]

When playing as a DPS, I regularly see DF players attempt to kick-vote inexperienced or under-geared tanks and heals and use words very much akin to the above as their justification. This happens most in non-levelsync'ed content, where players are new to the game, and may not even understand how to lodge a grievance with a GM.

Your acceptance of kick-votes deviating from the specified text in the client encourages a kick-now-and-see-if-it-comes-back-on-us attitude. If you're going to allow such terminology in the justification of kick-votes, then it should be a written option in the client.

This does leave us with 2 possible options.

Option 1: We only consider reasons for dismissal that are specifically stated to be an abuse of the vote dismiss feature. On the plus side, this does provide a clear and definitive set of guidelines for the use of the feature. On the downside, it is limited by the creativity of customers to find ways of disrupting a run outside of what is listed. Otherwise, the list of possible violations will be too extensive to be used efficiently or will be too vague to provide a definitive set of guidelines.

Option 2: Commonly reported reasons for dismissal are listed, although the tool can be used to dismiss anyone for causing a disruption to the duty. On the plus side, the feature can be used to remove disruptions and increase the chances that the duty can be completed. On the downside, it means that there is not one definitive list for reference on when the use of the feature is justified.

Neither option actively prevents abuse of the feature. Abuse of the feature is prevented due to account actions taken by GMs after an investigation to encourage customers who do misuse the feature to discontinue that behaviour. Currently, option 2 is what is currently in place, since a GM needs to investigate either way, and allows the GM to consider new types of disruptive behaviour that arise instead of waiting for a change to the tool while keeping the tool interface easy to navigate and use.

I think what I may not be clarifying in my replies is that this allows for a broader scope to the use of the tool than just one stated example (not fulfilling job duties). It's never just "one more reason"; the possible reasons for proper use of the tool are limited only bt the creativity of those looking to disrupt duties. Once we list something there, some new way of disrupting runs is bound to arise, and this allows customers to try to make sure runs go smoothly while still allowing for GMs to consider if the feature itself was used in a proper manner.

LGM Enkrateia

[Amberyl]

Currently, option 2 is what is currently in place, since a GM needs to investigate either way, and allows the GM to consider new types of disruptive behaviour that arise instead of waiting for a change to the tool while keeping the tool interface easy to navigate and use.

While I can appreciate the benefits to the organization of using this to explore community misbehaviour, you're reliant on the concept that the majority of people victimized by misuse of the kick-vote feature go on to report their grievance.

Realistically, this won't be the case. If a new player doesn't understand the game well enough to know how their job role works and is illegitimately vote-kicked for that, are they likely to understand how to report a grievance? No, more than likely not. They'll just presume the community is as toxic as it appears, and go play something else. The low-benchmark for GM response in the industry won't help that either, regardless of how efficient your own team may be.

If you're going to insist on continuing with this 'it doesn't have to match what the prompt says' system, I would request you also examine a random cross-section of logs from sessions where a kick-vote occurs and no grievance is filed, to gauge to what degree you're missing misuse. Specifically, crunch level-sync instances such as Darkhold, Vale, and Qarn, would be a good place to start, as they're prone to poor behaviour relative to their increased difficulty. I'm not trying to teach you how to suck eggs - you may already be doing this. My request is there purely because you may not have considered it, or the extra workload may have previously been considered poor use of funds. I would urge to you that it isn't.

On the downside, it is limited by the creativity of customers to find ways of disrupting a run outside of what is listed.

That's no different to what you're doing now, except the current lack of specificity gives you a perceived get-out-clause for not acting. Whether the bad-behaviour list is public-facing or not, you've still got to refer back to it as a GM to rule. The lack of transparency and accountability merely shields you from recourse when you make a bad decision. When a victim is already feeling let down by the system, a lack of transparency only adds to their grievance. Surely that's a bad thing?

If the list needs to be big and is growing, let the community see that. Policing behaviour can only be easier if the community is aware. Less turning a blind eye, more self-policing.

[Niwashi]

Option 1: We only consider reasons for dismissal that are specifically stated to be an abuse of the vote dismiss feature. On the plus side, this does provide a clear and definitive set of guidelines for the use of the feature. On the downside, it is limited by the creativity of customers to find ways of disrupting a run outside of what is listed. Otherwise, the list of possible violations will be too extensive to be used efficiently or will be too vague to provide a definitive set of guidelines.

That's not a limitation at all. Disrupting a run is harassment, and harassment is already listed. The problem is that GMs are allowing it when no harassment has taken place, at least not on the part of the player who got kicked.

Neither option actively prevents abuse of the feature. Abuse of the feature is prevented due to account actions taken by GMs after an investigation to encourage customers who do misuse the feature to discontinue that behaviour.

Which would only be effective if once the GMs do that investigation, they act on it. Any vote-kick for harassment or cheating needs to result in a suspension from the game. It's up to the GMs' investigation to determine whether that harassment or cheating actually took place (in which case the offending kicked player needs to be banned) or whether it did not (in which case the players who kicked him out are the ones committing the harassment and need to be banned). That needs to happen every single time such vote-kicks are used. Not once every ten thousand times, but on every vote kick.

It should be impossible to select "AFK" or "Disconnected" unless the player actually is afk or disconnected, both of which the software can recognize. And any vote-kick for any other reason should automatically trigger a GM ticket that has to be acted on. If a vote-kick happens for any reason other than a disconnect, then somebody is breaking the rules to disrupt the game of other players. A week or so of not being able to play the game should convince people not to do that.

Unfortunately, that's not what's happening. Currently, the effective "rule" is that people can go ahead and harass other players as much as they want, because SE doesn't like being confrontational, so never punishes any sort of action, regardless of whether it breaks the ToS or not.

Different playstyles, or simply not being "good enough" in the mind of some other player are NOT valid reasons for kicking anybody. If one player doesn't like how another player in their party is performing, then they have the option to leave themself, not the right to kick out the other player. It's the player unwilling to continue the run together that needs to be out.

Kicking somebody else out of a run is a drastic action, and when this feature was first being developed, we were promised that such power would not be given to players without a guarantee that it couldn't be abused. That's why the kick feature has a list of reasons on it in the first place. That's there to ensure that it couldn't be used to get rid of players just because you don't like them. Ignoring that list of valid reasons is inviting abuse. Either start enforcing the rules built into the vote-kick system, or else remove vote-kick from the game altogether. (Obviously, the former would be preferable.)

[NyarukoW]

....
It should be impossible to select "AFK" or "Disconnected" unless the player actually is afk or disconnected, both of which the software can recognize. ...

Actually as much as I wish that the system can detect AFK or Disconnected, this actually a very difficult problem to solve. The origins of this actually lies in the "halting problem" see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92WHN-pAFCs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

AFK or disconnected is actually indistinguishable, but SE has implemented timers and timeout along with some heuristics to make a reasonable guess at this. But to expect the system to get this right 100% of will either take the age of the universe, or it will be mistaken at times. How many times have you seen players get the red disconnect symbol over their head but they are still talking to you in the mumble or other voice comm and still moving and doing stuff in game? I've that more than a few times, usually followed by really bad result of lag induced raid wipes (imagine they just got shriek in T7). Alternatively, the afk auto-follow fairy healing SCH sure doesn't look like they are AFK, but they really are. So SE is really wise to leave this up to players, but it does opens it up to vote kick abuse.

Furthermore, SE send people the non-definitive auto generated response because SE is reserving the right to apply human wisdom and smarts for investigating and applying action. Anyone that choose to interpret that as open season to vote kick others is asking for penalties. I've got those response immediately after submission, but given limited man power, I've usually only got to talk to the GM and provide additional supporting fact anywhere from 2 to 5 hours later. But the GMs are not letting this stuff slip. Our former FC master, who not resubbed for 6 months now, had fun trolling CT and earned a warning, after which he stopped doing CT altogether. The trouble making FC member that was instigating all of this continued to troll and earned himself a suspension and came back and called the rest of us snitches and left the FC. The GMs may be swamped and may not be very fast to respond, but don't expect to get away with it doing it repeatedly. Players need to actively report the trolls, and vote kick abusers.

....
Any vote-kick for harassment or cheating needs to result in a suspension from the game.
...

The danger here is if you are the minority or one in party of trolls like the one my former FC would put together for CT, good luck if you don't get up getting suspended because you are telling them to stop harassing the other players or alliances. They'd vote kick you for harassment for spoiling their fun. Unfortunately, any serious penalty will require human intervention and wisdom to decide and assess, because the most difficult problems after all are people making trouble for other people.

[Bixby]

Any vote-kick for harassment or cheating needs to result in a suspension from the game.

That'd make it too easy to both ruin a dungeon run and get people who kick you for it suspended. Just be careful about what you say (or say nothing at all) while you're getting everyone killed over and over, then play innocent & confused when they vote kick you. As an added bonus, since every kick results in a suspension, you'd know it worked, too, since you're not getting suspended yourself.

Automatic investigation? Maybe. If they get enough (well-trained) GM staff to make that feasible. Automatic suspension? Not so much.

[Ellatrix]

stuff that didn't read what the GM wrote

Go back and look at what the GM posted, about how when one player may think they aren't doing anything wrong, it is annoying/offensive to a few others in the party then they vote to kick. Also, again, go be bad on your own time and not mine. If the rest of the party wants to win and you're the one holding everyone else back, hurray for vote kick.

The majority of people who get kicked deserve it. Posting anecdotes is only half of the story, and if someone is getting kicked repeatedly they are definitely doing something wrong.