Kick Mechanic = Natural Selection Grief Tool

Oh, not a problem, I arrived to the conversation at a point where you were claiming not to have said something that you had already actually said in an attempt to correct someone else whose statement was actually pretty accurate under the mistaken assumption that a third person didn't say something that they actually had said and it looked like an ideal point in time for clarification. You know, to keep everything above board.

Regarding 'to have' or 'to have not'... The difference between having a kick system (and more specifically, having it function in the manner that it currently does) and not having one, period, was already demonstrated by player behavior in a pre-kick era - namely, one person throws a fit and instantly grinds everything to a halt. After this point your option is basically to leave - now you can deal with the problematic attention-seeking behavior, or you can say 'fuggit the last half an hour of my life was a write-off' and leave. So, for THIS reason, doing away with it entirely isn't really possible.

The major flaw that our current system possesses is that it is a very fast moving system that doesn't require any secondary clarification or even a reason to perform its given function. You initiate a kick and bing bang boom, people are kicked; you can be back to playing in seconds. Naturally, this leads to abuse of the system, but its one major advantage is as follows : even though it cares nothing at all for whose feelings are bruised?

It keeps things moving. If you have an uncooperative group member (or if you ARE the uncooperative group member) things can be resolved in minutes instead of continuing to bang your head against the proverbial wall trying to figure things out with a person or a group of people who, for whatever reason, do not mesh with you on an individual level. If the people in your group agree that this person / you are to be removed, it's resolved instantly - democratic process, majority rules, no recount.

Requiring unanimous vote, instituting wait timers, or mandating a reason for the kick all seem like workarounds for the current forms of potential abuse afforded by the kick system, because they do limit the speed by which things occur or require a more immediate evaluation of what is occurring. The flaw that they represent is essentially the flaw possessed by the United States Bureaucratic Process : namely, it makes things move at half the speed of continental drift.

If you have a problem in the group? You now have to deal with hemming and hawing over the reasons presented, if one person decides not to vote then you're stuck with a troll in your group, or if you have someone kicked but there's a five minute delay until they actually leave then you now have to deal with that person making a further nuisance of themselves for the next five minutes while you're trying to continue with the instance.

Essentially, our current kick system does have its known flaws, but the one thing that it DOES do correctly is keep things moving, which is ultimately why we have it in the first place. People getting offended that they're the thing moved tend to complain because hey, if someone was at a party and said 'look dude you gotta leave', you're gonna be mad. 'Why did they really kick you?' becomes a good question - I've kicked a lot of people out of groups that were pissed off afterwards, but their conversation with me while still in the group started with things like 'FU DUDE' or they displayed other deliberately pejorative behaviors.

Of the ideas presented in your post a 'kick reason' seems the closest to this concept in spirit, though do understand it's going to lead to things like 'Kick Reason : FU BRO SUK MA DIKKKKKKKK'. Still, it has the least potential for breaking down the intentional function of the process - being, specifically, quick resolution of circumstances that communication is not currently resolving. And it is a further step forward in communication, which can (if used correctly) contribute to better performance in the future.

I did like Haze's 'you can see who kicked you' suggestion, because it allows you to ask 'why' on your own time later - it COULD be problematic, granted, for the same reasons that your 'Kick Reason' suggestion could be, but there would at least be the ability to address it as a player in a manner that doesn't require a breakdown for a therapy session in the middle of a Raid to sort out.

I liked Sechuran's suggestion the most of all because it gives you, as a player, a response method allowing you the flexibility to keep problematic people out of your hair afterwards - it may not prevent us from running across problematic people in the first place, but it WILL keep them from becoming a consistent, recurrent issue. Also, if the problem is you, as a person, it'll point that out too.

I think that's about what we can do in this situation : damage control and provision of communication tools are the best options, because not having kick as an option at all worked out so well that they had to install the system in the first place, and the way that it functions is, admittedly, rather impartial - it's a simply majority vote, anyone can initiate it and afterwards it provides instant result. You are or are not kicked and you move on from there.

FYI if you join someone's group expect everything BAD to happen til you finish the content. Thats how I look at things now.

Why for most part I dont really run content alot without 1-3 of my own league members in the same instance. That way my league is the majority

and WE dont kick for dumb reasons we kick if your 1) rude or 2) AFK/not helping or 3) say your going to heal/tank/troll and then stay in DPS role or lastly 4) keep running ahead of the tank and dying or grabbing aggro of adds and just doing stupid BS to put more strain on the group then needed.

other wise you get to stay. I for one wont vote on kicks if I join someone else's group specially if I dont see nothing wrong with what ppl are doing. Because to me the kick isnt justified / needed.

Thank you...I know I can always count on you to correct me when I am wrong. Problem is though...

I never claimed not to have said something. I admitted to all my mistakes. But if I am wrong, feel free to show me....we can discuss that later since you seem to enjoy policing me. I can only assume it was because you didn't much care for our last unpleasant encounter, but nonetheless, if I did indeed claim I did not say something that I did, you are more than welcome to point it out to me.

Now on to the topic...

As far as everything else you said, I think for the most part I can agree with you. With any change made with the kick function, in this case it would seem taking baby steps with changes would be the appropriate way to deal with the issue, the first being, knowing who it was who initiated the kick to begin with. This gives the player the option to place the kicker on ignore, to lessen the chances of having to deal with them in the future. Having said that, I think making a bunch of changes all at once can lead to catastrophic results.

Personally, I love the kick function, have had to use it a couple times myself. But I have seen people be kicked for no reason at all. For example;

Seen an individual ask to invite a league member, then another, then another. Then that player opened a vote to kick, they kicked the lowest CR DPS, and then tried to invite another of her league members. It was a complete hostile take-over of the team. That would just be one example of ways players have abused the kick function.

The problems with the current kick function are clear. I don't think anyone can argue the issues the current function has. The bigger problem may be, how are we going to fix it?

Here's what I learned from our last 'encounter'. Not to bother with pointing out your inconsistencies beyond cursory verification of their existence, because you will insist afterwards that you were always right anyways regardless of how many times you have had to correct yourself in the process to maintain an appearance of accuracy when you could have just not jumped the gun in the first place.

So... moving on.

I think the suggestions made regarding visibility of the kick initiator / vote process, the provision of a reason for doing so, and the aforementioned addition of extra Ignore list functionality would make huge differences if implemented - those, functionally, are the mechanics that the developers could feasibly alter that would improve the Kick system without rendering it effectively unusable or having to alter it too directly.

That aside :

For the most part? We don't fix it, not because it isn't broken but because the cure may indeed be far worse than the disease. There's not an effective way to really remove or alter the direct mechanics of the kick process without also impugning upon its overall functionality, and in some cases it's absolutely necessary to have that ability. So, for the moment, we have to deal with this issue's existence without letting it become an out-of-proportion thing.

So changing the direct mechanics is probably not an effective approach, mostly for the reasons covered above, and partially for the reason that there are bigger fish to fry.

I think for a mitigating factor, we would all benefit from remembering two things : We were all bad at our jobs once upon a time too, and good sportsmanship on our behalf as players can make a huge difference in the game.

It's a risk to rely on that, yes, I'll admit to that, because not everyone is going to play by those rules - the world is full of people who are going to take advantage of certain situations, and sometimes they will do so literally just to be crappy people. Good sportsmanship can give us the ability to establish what is a decent baseline of behavior and expectation for ourselves and by building enough positive bridges, we can end up with enough people on the same page to make pick-up groups an infrequent thing, and thereby circumvent the need for a kick altogether.

We've kicked almost no one from the last half a dozen raid groups I was in (aside from disconnects that never returned) because of this positive approach, as opposed to following the standard DCUO 'middle finger and epithets' method. So it CAN work, but it occasionally requires moments of thicker skin and a more rational approach to the issues at hand - people are very comfortable with the idea of tossing someone because of the mistaken assumption that you can always replace a person, when the reality is that we may very well (and frequently do) end up with someone a lot less qualified or a lot more poorly behaved than the person we already told to piss off.

It CAN work. But it's gonna BE work.

I do think it needs to be addressed but I honestly think this is one of those things that we, as a community, are asking for a developer solution to that we, as a community, have more control over than we're giving ourselves credit for having.

It may be strange but I'm almost proposing a 'nice guy elitism'; where people are selected for their ability to be team players instead of their ability to maintain a high output. Here's one from the other side of the same fence :

I've been kept in groups where I have bluntly told people to go **** themselves, called them stupid or ******** or a bunch of other fun things - admittedly, not without first explaining to people what it was we needed to do, and then trying to do so again and getting ignored to a point where we wiped four times in three minutes because of that lack of comprehension, but still... Not nice things were said, I was the one saying them, but no one kicked me out of these groups because 'you don't kick the top DPS'.

Which is ********, I'm not irreplacable either, and to be frank - even if I have a point, and even if I was trying to be diplomatic initially? There's a point beyond which I'm literally cussing directly at people in order to express my displeasure at their inability to provide a result. That's also bad sportsmanship, period. So... I know it's a two-way street.

Here is what I have learned. Encounters with you will be fun. In between our 'encounters' we still manage to hold a civil discussion, as proven here.

Back on topic, I still feel at very least, a window that allows the player who has been kicked, shows the player who it was who kicked them. I for one, would appreciate the opportunity to /ignore that player, so that I know who I wish to team with and who I do not. Hell, if that small function were to be implemented, I would personally be satisfied with that change. Any change thereafter, if any at all, would be a welcomed bonus.

Cheers, to our next 'encounter'.

The fact that you openly admit that is commendable. I too try and give people plenty of chances to operate with the group. Only when it becomes crystal clear that I am being ignored, do I myself have a tendency to get a bit irate. So I feel your frustration. We are after all, only human and are susceptible to human emotions that can and do build up over time....to a point that they eventually override logical and collective behavior.

For example;

Telling somebody, "Please don't click on the batteries. If you absolutely feel like you need to click on them, than at very least, leave the yellow battery be, so it won't reset Abin Sur's health bar." Next thing you know, the idiot completely ignores your request and clicks all three of them...twice.

This happens more often than it should with random pugs and can frustrate me beyond belief. At this time, I myself am guilty of getting a bit irate.

We never did.