Players connot join the party while you are engaged in combat

[origamikitsune]

@everyone in general;

Yes, some of us don't have problems. Some of us do. I count myself lucky that I do not get disconnects frequently. But for those of you that are still arguing that its not SE, or that its the ISP of the people playing, I encourage you to look at this thread. While this does not show the instability that causes people to drop individually, I would like to point out just how unstable SEs servers are. EVERY DAY since the 28th of last month, servers have gone done.

SE does have a problem with stability, and until/unless it is fixed people will get dropped. And because of this, people will have to disengage/invite/reengage. The programming behind someone dropping but not loosing their place in the party is proven to work. I hate to compare to other games, but AION does it just fine. You DC, your reconnect, you're still in the party unless you're gone for like, 20min. There's no reason this can't be done. Leaving a party, logging out, etc., voluntarily does not encourage cycling PT members, because you can't join combat already started.

Personally, I'm not asking for us to be able to. What I am asking for is some common sense application of the procedures that SE has in place to prevent abuse.

1.) Allow a DC'd party member to stay in the party while DC.
2.) Do not reset their hate when they DC.
3.) Inflict a status affect (weakness) on them if you think its necessary.
4.) Allow people to /pcmd leave a party while engaged instead of having to force quit
5.) Keep the inability to /pcmd add -new- party members while engaged.
6.) Keep other abuse deterrents like no outside heals on NMs in place.

In short, address the specific, crippling issues, without negating the actual needed limiters.

2/cents.

[Amineri]

I agree. Most of the heatedness that I've seen so far has been from two sides:

Side A : I keep getting DCed and dropped from my party, and can't get re-invited. Please fix.
Side B : Inviting party members during combat is terribly exploitable. Don't add it.

Looking at the problem (side A), there are the three parts (1) getting DCed (2) getting dropped (3) unable to invite in combat.
Many people have suggested fixing (1), but there are simply too many variables for that to be a reliable enough solution. I see many people suggesting changing (3), but it does seem horribly exploitable, and the devs have pretty much come out and said that there is no plan to change this.

This really only leaves (2) as a viable way to fix the problem. Keep party members who disconnect from leaving the party. Even this is open to certain degrees of exploits, but game design (and life) is about a series of compromises.

My 2¢

@everyone in general;
In short, address the specific, crippling issues, without negating the actual needed limiters.