How would YOU fix the Kick cooldown?

Ozstryker · January 2017

For some time now there has been multiple threads regarding the cooldown penalty after being kicked from a group or simply leaving a group.
There are many reasons why folk vote to kick, as well as many, many reasons why folk choose to leave.. But rarely have I seen a solid fix suggested!
Maybe if we bandy around a few constructive ideas so that ZoS may gain a little inspiration and come up with a useable fix!!

I'll get the ball rolling... A kind of penalty system, if u are kicked or leave once per hour... No penalty. If u are kicked or leave twice in an hour...15 min cooldown, If u are kicked or leave three times in an hour.. 30min cooldown!
Also each player has only 2 vote to kick opportunities per dungeon...

What are your thoughts?

psxfloh · January 2017

Most simple solution: Reduce the timer to 2min.
Like this it's still discouraging to hop from one queue to the next, like when people queue for "random" but are actually looking for one of the daily pledge dungeons.
And for everyone else 2 minutes is not that long, live with it.

Next best solution: Penalty only for people who leave of their own accord.

No fancy if .. then .. cascades that introduce a zillion more "unfair" constellations or new bugs.

Cody_svk · January 2017

I would say that the 15 min penalty can stay, but it would not apply to those who have been vote kicked...if you leave the group by yourself, you will get the penalty (for leaving the others), but if they kick you (so you do not voluntarily abandon the group), you should not receive the penalty...

the penalty was implemented to discourage people to abandon the others by leaving the group...however, why punish those who have been kicked by others?

When people are complaining about the penalty, it is in situations where people have been unwillingly kicked by others, so why should these "innocent" people (those who have been kicked) receive penalty for not doing anything wrong?

so simple fix - remove the cooldown penalty if the person was vote kicked by the others

Dasovaruilos · January 2017

Simple solution

Remove the timer altogether (not ideal, but saves development time while solving most of the issue we currently have)

Good solution

Timer only applies to those who leave the dungeon voluntarily after being put in a group. Just create a lock to prevent the person from immediately rejoining the SAME (not other groups) group via Activity Finder. This will allow trolls to be kicked and not being punished, but it is a decent compromise.

Best, but convoluted, solution

Create two "Vote do Kick" categories: one without the penalty, one with the penalty.

If someone gets kicked "with reason", gets a longer timer, like 30 minutes. The other one wouldn't apply the penalty. Both should have a cooldown. Also implement a lock so the person being kicked can't rejoin just the same group again.

Track people using or receiving the "bad" kick. If someone is doing it too much, is probably exploiting and/or being a bad player overall.

Implement a timer to use the kick feature. Even if it is 5 minutes, more people will actually give a chance to other players to avoid waiting in the dungeon a long time for the perfect team mate to appear.

Ozstryker · January 2017

Whatever the solution is, it must be balanced, consider a couple of scenarios, guy gets kicked for no good reason ie. someone deems his lvl too low, then he should not be penalised.. Right? But a guy is being a ***, abusive, legitimately useless to a group, and gets kicked.... Then he should get a penalty.. Right???!
The guy in the first senario probably wouldn't get the same treatment twice in a row?? But the second guy would probally act up again, and then he would rightly be penalised !

Turelus · January 2017

Option 1: Remove it.
Players would only be penalised if they leave a group early and mess up the run for everyone else.
Issues: This would allow troll players the chance to join multiple groups without stopping their bad behaviour.

Option 2: Lower the duration for kicks.
Being kicked would give you a 5 min no group timer, leaving a group early still gives you a 15min timer.
Issues: This doesn't solve the issue people are penalised for being kicked without a valid reason, troll players have less penalty when harassing groups.

Option 3: Increasing kick timers.
Being kicked gives you no timer, second kick a 5 min timer, third kick increases it to 10 mins, fourth a 15 mins where it caps. The timer level last 1 hour then is removed entirely, so no matter what timer you have after 1 hour from your last kick you will have no penalties.
This would give players wrongly kicked one free chance to try again before they face penalties, it also discourages trolling group finder as continued kicking will lock you out for longer.
Issues: This doesn't solve the issue people are penalised for being kicked without a valid reason, troll players have less penalty when harassing groups.

NordSwordnBoard · January 2017

Another cooldown: make people wait 2-3 mins before initiating a kick when group forms or to new member.

Gives small window of opportunity to show your stuff. Its not too long if somebody pretend tanks and you want rid of him.

Maybe this would reduce some stress on the server? Idk

DeadlyRecluse · January 2017

Scaling penalty.

First kick of the day, no penalty.
Second 2 minutes.
Third, 5 minutes.
Fourth, 15 minutes.
Fifth, 1 hour.

Doesn't really effect those kicked for stupid reasons, locks trolls/griefers out relatively quickly.

Syrani · January 2017

There's no fair way to do this, unfortunately.

No penalty for being kicked = obnoxious trolls, healer/tank "line jumpers", and dungeon hoppers receive no penalty for their bad behavior.

Penalty for being kicked = innocent people getting punished through no fault of their own.

You could implement a "kick reason" box, but that's going to get abused - I have seen this abused in another game. You could implement a peer ranking system, but that will get abused. About the only thing you could do to make this somewhat better is also implement vote kick restrictions, so that you can only initiate a vote to kick once an hour or something. This *may* make people think twice before initiating a vote to kick, but I doubt it would do much.

There is no magic solution to this.

Sahbeansington · January 2017

A few times recently I have queued for a random dungeon and when I got a group I was notified what dungeon it was and then almost instantaneously my group 'disbanded'. I was still auto-ported to the dungeon where I was instantly booted back out of the dungeon and had to wait another 15mins to be allowed to queue and wait again for a group...

I think they should remove the timer on kicks and only 'punish' the players who repeatedly abandon their group. Make it some sort of debuff that is applied to you that has a 'X' minute timer and has to accumulate 'Y' number of stacks before the debuff changes to a penalty making you unable to queue again for a certain duration. No negative effects from the debuff, just a way to track who has abandoned their group recently and how many times. OR MAYBE polymorph them into a chicken so everyone will know how they left their party hanging! ...or not the debuff thing should be good!

Syrani · January 2017

Sahbeansington wrote: »

A few times recently I have queued for a random dungeon and when I got a group I was notified what dungeon it was and then almost instantaneously my group 'disbanded'. I was still auto-ported to the dungeon where I was instantly booted back out of the dungeon and had to wait another 15mins to be allowed to queue and wait again for a group...

I think they should remove the timer on kicks and only 'punish' the players who repeatedly abandon their group. Make it some sort of debuff that is applied to you that has a 'X' minute timer and has to accumulate 'Y' number of stacks before the debuff changes to a penalty making you unable to queue again for a certain duration. No negative effects from the debuff, just a way to track who has abandoned their group recently and how many times. OR MAYBE polymorph them into a chicken so everyone will know how they left their party hanging! ...or not the debuff thing should be good!

I am pretty sure the "group has been disbanded" thing is a bug, and they really should look into fixing that. As far as I know, a group finder group cannot be disbanded.

As for the second paragraph, people leaving a group is only part of the problem. People who queue up as a tank or healer without having any intention to perform those roles is another part of the problem, as are people who queue up and are AFK for a long time, or who are disruptive. Implementing a punishment ONLY for players who leave a group will do nothing to stop the bad behavior of those others.

Gilvoth · January 2017

heres my suggestions:

completely remove the ability to "KICK" people out of Group. and also completely remove any and all penalties for leaving a group.
if you dont like who you are in the group with then Leave on Your Own, and find a new group.

problem solved!

visionality · January 2017

1) player leaving the group - 15 min cooldown for that player
2) player being kicked from the group - 0 min cooldown for that player, 5 min cooldown for the group
3) a barrier that prevents players from grouping for vet dungeons unless they have completed them in normal
4) an option-button to be only grouped for "fresh" dungeons

Why?

1) is obvious, I guess
2) most votes to kick I've seen are not initiated because one player is underperforming or rude, but because another group member intends to race through the dungeon as fast as possible and "can't be bothered with low cp players" - a 5 min cooldown would discourage such behaviour while 5 minutes don't seem much if you're stuck with a destructive or totally incompetent player
3) preventing people from queuing for vet dungeons they have never managed in normal seems pretty sensible and would remove another kick-or-quit-reason
4) if you're queuing for a pledge dungeon or farming gear, you don't want to be put in a group that has already killed the first 2 or 3 bosses; this is especially true for DDs who have queueing times of 1 hr or more

PS: I would also strongly recommend to disable the tank and healer role for all players who don't have a taunt or healing ability in their skillbar

Syrani · January 2017

visionality wrote: »

1) player leaving the group - 15 min cooldown for that player
2) player being kicked from the group - 0 min cooldown for that player, 5 min cooldown for the group
3) a barrier that prevents players from grouping for vet dungeons unless they have completed them in normal
4) an option-button to be only grouped for "fresh" dungeons

Why?

1) is obvious, I guess
2) most votes to kick I've seen are not initiated because one player is underperforming or rude, but because another group member intends to race through the dungeon as fast as possible and "can't be bothered with low cp players" - a 5 min cooldown would discourage such behaviour while 5 minutes don't seem much if you're stuck with a destructive or totally incompetent player
3) preventing people from queuing for vet dungeons they have never managed in normal seems pretty sensible and would remove another kick-or-quit-reason
4) if you're queuing for a pledge dungeon or farming gear, you don't want to be put in a group that has already killed the first 2 or 3 bosses; this is especially true for DDs who have queueing times of 1 hr or more

PS: I would also strongly recommend to disable the tank and healer role for all players who don't have a taunt or healing ability in their skillbar

I agree with #1 and #3.

You might be on to something with #2 - make it a 5 minute cool down before the group can re queue to fill that spot. That might discourage people from instantly kicking someone due to low CP or whatever.

#4 could be problematic though. This could leave partial groups stranded where they could never fill that empty slot, or it could take a very long time to fill it. Some people like partially completed dungeons because they still get credit for the random, but others queue for the daily and would always select this option.

As for the rest, requiring a taunt on your bar to be queued as tank could work, as tank queues are pretty much instant so there's no excuse that they wanted to quest while waiting. However, there is no way to guarantee that person will actually tank once in there.

Healers also get somewhat of a quick queue, so maybe it would work for them as well, but I think their queues are a slight bit longer so I could see a healer wanting to quest a bit before the queue pops. But, same as above, there is no way to guarantee they will actually heal.

WuffyCerulei · January 2017

Have the 15 minute timer ONLY AFTER YOU FINISH A DUNGEON. While being kicked/removed from groups and have not finished an activity yet, you won't have a timer until you finish a dungeon (meaning last boss).

Ozstryker · January 2017

I'm kinda liking the idea of remove kick function all together, with an option that if someone has been idle for Xminuits a msg appears to all players asking if idle player should be replaced?
Of corurse a penalty system for leaving would be still needed.. Ie. first time 5min, second time 10min etc

The idea or morphing a player to a chicken after x amount of leaves is awesome

Ozstryker · January 2017

Also... The suggestion that unless u have an achievement for a particular normal version of a dungeon means u cannot enter the vet version is something I could get behind.

Bandit1215 · January 2017

If you get kicked and receive the 15 minute penalty, i'm pretty sure you can search zone chat or ask around in your guilds for someone to group with you. Once you have your group, you can just port to the dungeon you want right?

Ironside · January 2017

Remove the cool down completely. Problem solved.

Mojmir · January 2017

I'd remove the group finder, bonus xp for random dungeon can be done like enlightenment. Join a guild, find people,don't be lazy and rely on a broken feature to do the work.

Ozstryker · January 2017

Mojmir wrote: »

I'd remove the group finder, bonus xp for random dungeon can be done like enlightenment. Join a guild, find people,don't be lazy and rely on a broken feature to do the work.

To be fair I don't think the feature is broken, it just needs to be refined a little as it is open to abuse!
If people didn't blindly click accept when a kick vote was initiated, or didn't que in a role they are not set-up to play as... Or maybe if people used the SPECIFIC dungeon finder if looking for a pledge or something else specific (xp boost needs to be removed from random finder)... Folk would be less likely to rage quit or rage kick!?
Could it be that the community is broken?? And if so ZoS is obliged to be more pro-active in its approach to guiding the masses... I honestly don't think they know how to atm.