Kicking a player.

But you liked the other form of abuse better ?

If it's about getting rid of the abuse, removing the ability to take a group hostage with a ragequit/"linkdead" situation will do the trick. And that's easier to do by adjusting or removing the linkdead feature. Now, in a situation with linkdead removed try to "insert example here" - everything else is about jerks behaving like jerks. Easy fix:

1st - stop behaving like a jerk yourself, not even occasionally
2nd - add anyone behaving like a jerk to your ignore, instantly

Done. You won't even need the kick feature anymore than in the rare occasions someone managed to get by your ignore list before outing himself/herself as a jerk. The problems with people "needing" to kick more often is simple people expecting a perfect group with no "carries" being generated by que in an optimal amount of time, so they can finish their run in an optimal amount of time as well. And that is simply too much expectation towards a group build by que.

Please point out where I said I liked either the old or new kick system being abused?

Since you can't then quit making assumptions that I did.

Seriously, before anyone posts a reply go read the very 1st post I created this thread with.

It was about a change for the "linkdead" player and the penalty the group pays for kicking them.

The rest of the changes in the topic are in the thread because people want changes. Everyone has the right to post their opinion. even if they disagree with any that I personally may or may not.

My ignore list is huge and growing daily. People make new toons daily also.

I do not expect a group to be perfect to run an instance EVER. Doesn't matter if it comes from the que, LFG or it's a league run as every group always has it's own dynamics.

I believe what he is referring to is players who join a group and can't be bothered to be in the same chat channel as the rest of the group thus hindering any feat the group might be going for.

that is the way I took it...those who are not involved with the group chat at all ,,, instead they are in a voice/text chat somewhere else

That's all based on the assumption that everyone knows everyone which is not the case. I would divide the need to kick into two categories. One being technical and the second being social.

First off the game doesn't seem to recognize when there's a bad network connection vs someone deliberately closing the program the wrong way. On PC you can change your the game to windowed mode and click the [x] button to close and it will linkdead your character. Why the game would recognize that as linkdead, I have no idea. It a legit way of closing the program. And why not give people the option to vote out the player (marked linkdead) without a penalty whether deliberate or not. The group can decide wait 5 minutes( or whatever) and vote, if he doesn't show in another minutes after that, vote again, and again and again. Because as time progresses and its likely people will decide they don't want to wait and vote the player out. Ideally if the game could recognize rage quit then the linkdead feature would be a positive. I've seen plenty of good players come back from a linkdead.

As far a the social side of the kick, I would have to side with developers. I think 3 hours is fine. But you would have to solve the technical problem I mentioned above first.

That's why I build up a case-to-case-scenario. I guess it's "thx for not reading"

So a kick would need the players to provide a reason in your idea???

Because a user could have accidently closed that window instead of the messenger or mail or spreadsheet tool the user really wanted to close - it's basically what I said: linkdead is providing "features" mostly for users who have their problems outside of the game (bad PC user in this theoretical case, bad hardware, bad ISP) and thus stuff the game shouldn't need or even try to deal with shortcomings that are not of its own origin. Only point here: the game does cause plenty crashes from update to update, but: linkdead currently disallows users to escape from the area of the game that is causing crashes, as it forces the players to either sit linkdead out or try to reconnect with the toon that got dropped exactly in the troubled area

Let's assume for a while that this feature is in the game, exactly as you put it here. How sould you feel about getting your 3 hour timer running for kicking a player that is still marked "linkdead" in the group list but back and catching up, just without saying something (or with problems on the mic/sound driver which in that special case crashed his/her game)? The list is not really done well and not updating correctly; I've seen people mark "disconnected" who were right next to me in a boss fight and were disconnected before that fight started, same for the AFK marker in the group list.

Second thing: If you provide a way to deal with rage quitters for "free" (as in: not costing 3 hours), people would feel encouraged to come here and ask for a way to deal with people deliberatly going AFK in instances as well. Having the first exception usually starts a trend to ask for more exceptions, especially in communities that thrive on bad social behavior

Third thing: your categories are wrong or wrong labelled. You ask for a "technical" exception to deal with what's really a case of super bad social behavior: ragequitting. You said yourself, that if there is a technical hickup, good players do return. So from the "technical" only point, this exception would provide a way to take away the cases linkdead is supposed to work in a positive way, and has worked in a positive way for you before, while you really want to have a tool to fight one of the worst social behaviors we encounter ingame

We agree here. 100%. Just our ideas differ. I'm for the removal of linkdead from group environments/instances, you want an exception from kick timer. How about we both go a different way: linkdead stays, but as the game is able to identify players who go linkdead, have the game start a vote of the type "Player XYZ has gone linkdead. Do you want to clear that spot in your group?" when someone goes linkdead - or a minute or two later - which is not a kick vote by definition and will not effect the timer at all, and will not need a player to initialize the vote. As the game can identify linkdead players, this should sufficiently solve the problem. It would need another color in it's background than red (kick) or green (loot roll) so players can see directly that this is not a kick vote initiated by another player. Maybe make it yellow, as system messages are yellow in the chat.

And in case some special jerks - you're out there people, I know, so have your giggle for being mentioned - want to play along with the one or two minute timer, have the systems start a "Player XYZ seems to have trouble with their connection. Do you want to clear that spot in your group?" vote with the same background color after the third linkdead. If someone really has trouble, they should realize that with that many disconnects they are a liability to the group anyway, and the jerks who want to fool around, well: they get 6 minutes tops, which is still much less than a ragequit causes nowadays. Besides, people could still start their kickvotes after the second disconnect

WoW Slade has went from only remove the linkdead feature to using "examples/ideas" that are oh so very close to some that have been posted about.

I think my ignore list for the forums is going to gain new members soon,,,,,,,,, very soon. lol

I think you're overanalyzing...again

In PBE last night and wouldn't ya know,,,,

The groups healer is acting as a DPS letting the group drop multiple times. It was so bad the group didn't even get to the 1st boss without wiping 5 times. We tried talking, texting and even stopped moving forward at all to get their attention but they wouldn't change how they were playing. Then "POOF" 2 players in the same league DC at the same time. Connection issues??

I have no idea what happened after that. I left the instance and turned the system off.

Please fix the linkdead feature so an instance can't be held hostage by those players who decide to unplug/power down/ turn off their PS/router/PC.
It doesn't take over 5 minutes to reconnect if a player has truly been DC'ed due to an interruption in service/game crash even on a PS3.
Unless they choose to do a " system has corrupted files and will be restored " WHICH the PS says may take HOURS they can reconnect in 3-4 minutes.

We had over 6 people DC last night in PBEand only 1 was a true accidental DC( he was reconnected in less than 2 minutes) the rest were obviously done on purpose and had to be voted out over a 30 minute wait for a new player to take an empty slot and then the new player had to initiate the vote EVERY time to kick 5 Dc'ed players.

Finally finished getting 8 players connected and then 4 who had been waiting left so the group disbanded after it had been there for 55 minutes. I won't be spending replays for T7 content again.

Oddly,

Seems things have changed a bit.

People are being excused when asking and being asked to excuse themselves instead of shaming and belittling them into leaving.

Still seeing DC'ed players though.