And? What does players being kicked, over numbers or otherwise, inherently have to do with toxicity?
What defines a toxic use of parsers to you? Or inversely, at what point does obfuscation of relevant information prevent toxicity, in your opinion? And, at what point specifically is a kick or exclusivity toxic?
Thus far we have a handful of actual accounts of people being kicked "due to numbers".
We have far more of people being kicked because they tanked too quickly or slowly, or, separately, because they suggested that their healer could maybe spend less than 80% of the time idling. We've had people kicked for asking their DPS + tank premade to stand in fewer AoEs.You've not proposed that these situations, too, are or are not toxic. But if we're going to discuss toxicity that will arrive from conflicts in intent or playstyle--which, information obscured or not all these things come down to--it seems to omit the entire category to which something belongs, even if only in interest of discovering the unique intent towards and results in toxic behavior that parsing may or may trigger. I cannot personally find that uniqueness. I see, if one wishes to categorize it separately, a relative small subset of complaints, dwarfed by other subsets in count yet inversely more notorious. I see a difference in medium, at most. And just I don't consider assault by steak knife fundamentally different in intent or injury than assault by pocket knife, even if the latter can be more easily concealed, I don't see discrimination or abuse (which I would define as action harmful to another's experience without reasonable cause and/or with the intent of personal gain at that others expense via a method outside the ToA) by the fact alone that a more advanced tool was used in causing that injury.I've even seen, personally, more times in which someone has been kicked so that a party of two can leave a dungeon without penalty that there are actual accounts of people being, to their mind, unfairly kicked over their numbers. I'd vote against the seemingly trollish kick, be outvoted, and then the remaining two would vanish instantly. Over the course of leveling all but AST to 70, that's happened 7 or 8 times. I've both been the lucky and unlucky of the two premade members to (not) be kicked by a couple of German-queued friends on a NA servers, whose friend quickly joined thereafter for the daily bonus. Now, those are blatant system abuses. I think we can agree that they fall well into or even beyond toxic behavior. But, where does "toxic" begin? Is it when I dare to assert my preferences through words rather than action? Is it fine if I, as a tank, refuse to pull more than the smallest possible number of mobs at a time -- so long as I do so silently -- but not if I suggest that we could pull more if players would use their AoEs? Just, draw your line in the sand. Please.
I cannot speak on Bourne's behalf, and thus it would be inefficient to retailor a response in his or her place, but if you really are asking for understanding, posts with those very details are already scattered throughout this thread.