Suggestion: Ability to Systematically Avoid/Restrict Grouping WITHOUT Blacklist

[EveK]

Fair points on Duty Finder. Perhaps it could be implemented such that it is not the first choice if another is available just as quickly. As you say with party finder, though, all it would do would prevent you from having to manually kick the person and/or explain to them why they are not a good fit. That's all I'm really asking for, for the Party Finder piece.

[Shurrikhan]

Telling someone you don't want to party with them because XYZ is not borderline harassment, it's not harassment at all. Being mean to someone is subjective, and in and of itself doesn't actually qualify as harassment either.

For instance, we're in DF, and I say " Eve - you're bad". You can report me, but I can absolutely promise you I'm not getting put in jail or getting a GM interaction. In order for it be considered harassment it would have to be excessive and likely over the course of several interactions. I.e. if you said "leave me alone", and then I said LOL you're such a baby", then you could claim harassment, but this would be such a pitiful example this probably wouldn't see GM intervention either.

If you feel this feature has any value, I'd posit that the root cause may be the common denominator in the equation and it isn't the people you are grouping with.

This, for the most part.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing the commendation system expanded significantly, and in both directions. If you thought someone was a pain in the *** to dungeon with, and greeted the exit with a sigh of relief specifically because of them and would like others to be informed or permitted to automatically avoid this player to the varying degrees that they care about those qualities, you could tag said player with one or multiple of the qualities associated that caused that feeling on your part. That would be weighted highly instantly for you, but for anyone else, it'd be weighed against whom you've tagged in the past and judged on a basis of how many others, of what weight each, thought the same. Essentially, a rating weighed collectively by a sum of collectively weighed sources. Likewise, players can commend any qualities basically opposite to those faults, and those too will be weighed collectively.

The weight of each tag / report would fade over time, especially on the negative end. Tags referring to competence also take into account the history of competence of the reporter, such as raid progress. (This would get a whole lot easier if official parsers were added.)

Players can then set a tolerance for players they'd like to be paired with, including a gradient of descent. If you don't much care how long you wait, but only want to pair with highly commended players, or an average of highly commended players (with no one below the set negative score), so be it. Enjoy your hour-long queue and your carry/smooth and harmonious run.

...Though, if someone were the kind of person who can't take a run with less than the best, I feel there's a greater than average chance that someone is not the kind of person the people desired would desire in kind...

[Luin]

So similar to the Avoid Player list in games such as Overwatch? While a fair idea it has strict limitations as to how many people you could set in it due to the system needing to run all those checks for all the people using DF concurrently. Honestly if someone joins your party and you don't want them in it, just tell them. It may get messy but it's all in how you say it and how appropriate your actions are.

Overwatch doesnt actually avoid the player, it just says it does. And prefer player takes precedence too.

This is a bad suggestion. Other games dont use this kind of feature because it destroys matchmaking, and that's what it will do here.

I don't believe blacklisting someone actually sets them up for GM action so... there should be no problem with blacklisting them?

Blacklisting only prevents you from seeing their messages.

[Okamimaru]

No.... just no... if you don't want to party with people at least have the guts to tell them.... unless you're the kind of two faced person who talks smack about people behind their backs but can't handle the blowback... just handle it like an adult...

[AxlStream]

It sounds to me all that you need is the current Blacklist. Blocks chat from people you don't like, stops them from joining your party finders (ones that you are in charge of). Remember, you don't owe anything to anybody other than playing your role. Explaining to people why they aren't a good fit, unless you are a static lead doing tryouts, is useless. Kick, recruit someone else, move on.