"Players who are outside a dungeon for more than a few minutes are now immediately able to be kicked."
This should include "people who are afk and/or on follow" (for too long), but it's better than nothing for sure.
"If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon."
At first I didn't think too much of this behavior. I didn't like it, but on the other hand, that person got me a group faster too so in a way I gained something from it as well. But then I thought about it some further. A group already in an instance gets a new tank (because it is always the tank) faster, alot faster, than just waiting around in the queue. That means that when a new tank joins the queue, it will first and foremost sift through the system for progressing groups to put that tank into. And that in turn means there will be less tanks left for the rest of us who use the queueing system the regular way. The more people that do this, the longer the wait time becomes! I am really glad they are fixing this, because it really is one of the prime examples of how people shamelessly can abuse a system for their own benefit, without the slightest regard to everyone in it. Some people will say "if you can, why shouldn't you?" and "being mr nice guy won't get you anywhere". It's difficult to argue with people who think this way, so I am glad Blizzard simply are making it impossible to behave this way.
"If three or more players group queue with each other it will require an additional vote for them to kick anyone they did not group queue with.
If a group queue of 4 kicks the one person that they did not group queue with they will each receive a more severe penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks.
If someone initiates a vote kick for someone they group queued with they will not incur a penalty to their ability to initiate future kicks"
I am glad Blizzard are going far to make sure grouped people don't bully the rest of their group. Personally I've always felt uneasy when I group up with a bunch of friends who decide to act like they're the king of the hill. "Do exactly as we say or we will kick you" and you know for sure that they can, and will, with little or no reason. Fortunately this doesn't happen very often, but cutting it to a mere minimum is welcome.
Like I said, I am really glad Blizzard are throwing some focus on this issue, because it was really needed. Personally I still feel like the biggest issue hasn't been fixed yet though. What do I do with the people who go afk or just run along without contributing (like I wrote above)? This tends to happen alot when you have someone who joins mid instance, because they know that if the other guy was kicked, the party won't be able to initiate another kick and he can do whatever he likes without being punished. An even bigger problem is when you have someone who dcs and someone who goes afk. First of all you can only kick one of them, and no matter which one you choose you can't requeue because one of your members won't be present for the role check. One way to circumvent this would be to, like I've already said a couple of time now, be able to kick people who are afk-tagged without penalty. Another way would be to have a timer on the role check, and if you don't respond within the time limit you will automatically choose the roles you signed up for to get into the instance in the first place.
Gah, I hate LFD :D
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for the day they apologize and pull that thing out again, like with RealID. (I know it won't happen)
To me these changes look like patching up an infected wound. You need to cut that arm off Blizz! ;)
I'm glad they're looking at it, too. However, the changes are awfully complicated and specific. If these are the kinds of rules it takes, expect 4 more of them in a month or two, and 4 more a month or two after that. I hope they can come up with a more general rule.
ReplyDeleteIt's tough to do, though. For example, it would be nice to de-prioritize people who are constantly vote-kicked, so that nice people get into groups faster. But, how much can you really conclude from someone being vote kicked? Maybe it was the group that was nasty and not the individual.
Maybe both the kickers and the kickees should be de-prioritized. Loosen up the rules on kicking, but whenever you participate in it, you'll get longer queues the next time around.
The system is far from perfect but it is getting closer especially with those new changes (which came just in time for my horror story).
ReplyDeleteI have to say of all the times (4?) I was kicked, maybe just maayybe once I deserved it cause I was having a bad day and was just "mean" verbally. Another time I opened my mouth to ask a question and was kicked. Another time my dps didn't meet their expectations and was kicked. Yet another time I took too long to get back to the last boss after a wipe since I got lost and was kicked.
But all the times 'other' people deserved to get kicked I couldn't or the group were too idiotic to realize what was going on and just voted no. On the flip side they always vote yes when it was me for some reason. Grrrr!
Anyway here is my horror story and how the new system worked in my favor once, although I still think it could be improved.
I signed up for the dreaded heroic pug on my shadow priest. I get into a group that was already one boss down and in the middle of the run. It was lost city of Tol'vir.
Everything was fine until we get to the last boss.
Let me paint the situation. There were 3 guildies, one shaman 'party leader' the healer, two dps. One pug tank and me the last pug dps.
They get there and shaman she says let's do the achievement, but I will need you to help heal. So I thought ok, get into healing spec and gear and then the deal is to keep all three melee lightning adds up and alive while they are beating on the group with their chain lightnings. As you can imagine this didn't go so well. Halfway through she was out of mana, I was getting close to out of mana trying to heal her guildie huntard who was standing in the middle of the green hurricane swirl not moving.
That was a wipe yet I survived since I'm a cool night elf who can do that meld/fade racial thing.
This is when the horror began. We regroup I'm already back into my shadow form and decided to take it down normally. Nobody said anything to me while I was obviously in my shadowform and we do the fight again.
Even before half life of the boss they were dying all over the place, and then I see the healer has nearly full mana. They said "don't kill the adds" and I'm like, "what?" It turns out they were doing the achievement again. They wipe, I survive again. The healer purposely let the group wipe because she saw that one of the adds died and therefore couldn't complete the achieve so she forced a wipe. They did this one more time again, and wiped again. I told them I had enough and was doing it normally, but the shaman threw a tantrum and said they were doing the achieve and we had no choice. After another wipe the pug tank left.
They requeued and another pug paladin tank had joined and she purposely wiped us again when the add died because I was killing it.
[continued]
ReplyDeleteI tried to tell her that I didn't wait 40 minutes in que just to join a group to do achievements. I gave it a shot they clearly couldn't handle it and I just wanted to finish the instance and get my valor points for the daily.
Her answer was "too bad" quit or join another pug or something to that affect.
We were at an impasse. 3 guildies held us two pugs "hostage" simply because they wanted their way and imposed their will on pugs because they had the majority of votes. But luckily due to the new changes, they couldn't kick me or the pally (we were allied now because of the shaman's attitude) and we couldn't kick them.
A testament to their stupidity is they tried the last boss again while me and the pally tank were idle near the entrance. Obviously it was another wipe (for them).
This went on for an hour, we were idle they were now killing extra trash in the instance to pass the time. The paladin pug tank decided to sing lines from some song, I was just fuming quietly while semi-idling. He even wanted to reason with those three guildies to try to complete it but I told him why bother when they are actively trying to kick him cause I was seeing the message pop up constantly. [another bug with lfd is that it says the vote has passed to kick yet he isn't kicked, due to new rules yet old system messages are running]
I let him know and then he started to 'kick' one of the three knowing full well it wouldn't work, BUT all of a sudden after a few rounds of 'kicking' messages one of the guildies had been kicked!!!
I was shocked, it was now 2v2. Turns out in their zeal to keep kicking the pally tank, they didn't notice that the kick message was initiated by the pally for one of them. Hahahaaa.
Another miracle happened at the same time he was kicked, the leadership had passed to the pally.
This was the breakthrough I was waiting for. I didn't realize it at the time there was another way, but was willing to do the waiting game until they left and even told the pally so. this was a moral blow for them and after a while longer, one of them decided he had enough and left. so now it was 2v1, yet we cannot reque cause the shaman would decline any role checks therefore forcing us to have no group. She was determined till the very end to not complete it unless it was on her terms.
Then the pally told me he was getting his sister to login and he was going to invite her.
You can guess what happened next after she joined. We kicked the shaman very satisfying I might add and got another group within a minute finished in another 3 minutes and the pally even offered to tank another heroic for us to wash out the bad taste of this last group.
What an ordeal that was!
@Ed
ReplyDeleteYowza, that was SOME horror story. I would definitely just had "accidentally" dcd long before things got that ugly. Some people... glad it worked out in the end, it really does give a very nice feeling >:)