WTB spam = ban; leeching = promote?!

The WTS/WTB thingy is just stupid... :s

We're mainly concerned with PvP right now. In my suggestion, I specifically said to implement only in FA/JQ/AB where it severely impacts other people. If I'm in a PvE mission with only heroes and henchies, I'll go AFK for quite a while as well. After all, I'm not inconviencing anyone except Koss.


Ratings would just open up their own set of problems. You'd get immature kids joining missions just to give everyone a low rating. You'd also get the noob Warriors spamming flare and earthquake non-stop in a mission and if you try to correct them they just yell "Shut Up you %#$ Noob!!!! Don't tell me how to run my build!!!!" and then they give you a low rating.

Sorry, but I don't like the attitude that RA and FA are lost causes. Let's put our heads together and find a solution that's workable and acceptable to everyone (except the leechers of course )

They can just use a skill or move around every once in awhile to get around this. I think temp bans are very acceptable.

Why should they gain from the teams effort without contributing? why should those of us who dont leech and actually play the game have our playtime ruined because 5 or 6 of our team are afk? leave the game and start a new match? all very well but most of these leechers are not 1 time things. They repeatidly enter the match and leech knowing they can get away with it.

QFT. I think even a simple solution, like auto-kick after inactivity, would be a huge step in the right direction, and shouldn't be rejected just because some people could bot around it.

Lots of people know there are no repercussions for hitting the "Begin Battle" button every few minutes while doing homework or surfing the web, to collect some easy faction. But they wouldn't want to risk being caught running a bot to do the same thing.

First of all I think this auto three day ban is a really bad idea. Just too much room for innocent people to be banned and it's too harsh of a penalty for standing around. I know you hate leechers (I do too) but really...

Vote kick is also a bad idea. There's too much room for abuse.

I definitely agree that if you are AFK, you should just be kicked back to the lobby. It's true that some will get bots to move around, but an overwhelming majority, I'm sure, will not. Thus, if someone innocently gets a phone call or gets called away then they're simply kicked back to the lobby and the amount of points already earned during the match is deducted.

I think that's a very good first step, but if you wanted to make the system a little bit better you could require that, for example, every five minutes you must attack, take damage, have your summoned creatures take damage, OR use a skill that targets an enemy or OTHER ally. In AB standing on a shrine as it is being captured (little red/blue progress bar) would also fulfill the condition. In Fort Aspenwood, returning amber would also fulfill the condition. I'm pretty sure that convers every gameplay situation, but if there's something else feel free to add it. Again, if a person is kicked back to the lobby, they lose ALL faction earned from that game.

Finally, one more measure to thwart the auto-join clickers for fort aspenwood (if auto-clicking is widespread enough) could be to have a little message pop up that says "are you sure you're ready to enter the mission?" This popup would appear randomly somewhere within a circle in the center of the screen with a radius no more than 0.33*user_resolution. This would make the popup appear in a relatively small area of the screen, but also be too random for a bot to use to join.

These suggestions should definitely cut down on most of the leeching. I personally think they are feasible and fair.
I hope you'll pass these on as some ideas, Gaile.

Well, for start, i think the penalty system would work, IE:

"For each two minutes AFKing in FA AB JQ, you lose 1k Luxon/Kurzick Faction, your title track is decreased by 1k, and you get no rewards for the match."

This wouldn't be a big deal for those who go afk a bit here and there. Come on, even if you're on the phone it's not that big a deal. There's no bad or anything.

A more milder variation would be: "After 1 minute of inactivity, you gain no faction in a current game". Even this would help. If you're on the phone, have an emergency etc, you didn't contribute to the team, and thus you're not gaining anything, sorry. 1 minute time isnt too harsh. 1 minute in PvP is AGES.

Frankly, I personally don't care about leechers. Both sides are equally affected. Just because other people have more to do than FFF all day doesn't mean you gotta give them crap because they don't contribute.

/notsigned.

It's simply not quite as much of a problem as you make it out to be. So there's some chum who's standing in the same location. The opposition probably has someone just like him.

You guys are really stretching this a bit too far. If you're ABing, something pulls you away for a few minutes and you get kicked back to the lobby and lose only the faction you would have gained in that particular round, then that's completely fair. It goes with the territory and reasonable people would be accepting of that. Of course you'll have people who complain, there will be people who complain no matter what happens. Let them sit and whine. The majority of people would find an autokick more than fair, and wouldn't find their faction greatly affected because they're not being pulled afk every other round. If they are, frankly that's their problem. They can either find a better time to play or learn to live with being kicked every other round. If you don't contribute, you don't get faction, end of story. Lag sucks, it's unfortunate, and someone might get kicked now and then, but an occasional inconvenience shouldn't stand in the way of a solution to this problem.

So you're saying they have something better to do than faction farm. Okay, that's cool. However, that is NOT an excuse to just sit there and leech faction,. If they don't have the time to faction farm, then they shouldn't get faction. And just because both sides are affected doesn't make it right.

Oh how I was that was always true...

Also, Kali - keep in mind that faction isn't the only reward. In Fort Aspenwood, you earn experience. This makes it a very easy way to get Legendary Survivor.

You know, when i come to power in my country, i will personally see to it that people like you are exiled from my country. That will attract the opposite ones, and the country will prosper.

IMO banning or kicking people back to the starting area is only a mediocre solution. The reason why people leech should be removed. If there is no reward for leeching then there is no more reason to do it, except to grieve other people ofcourse.

Denying leechers faction or exp if they don't participate is the only solution IMO. This way you should get full teams again, with occasional disconnects and afk's, thus being able to enjoy the areas again to their fullest. If you kick people back to the starting area you deprive the team from a player and take away from the enjoyment of the other players. In other words only players that want to do these areas should then be playing.

Now there is no way to fully remove bots from these areas but it would clean up quite a bit.

On a side note I find the faction gained by fort aspenwood and jade quarry to be quite pathetic compared to other areas. These could and should be buffed too, if something like this would be implemented.

Yes Faction gained in FA is quite pathetic, but if you're leeching it's still cool because you get something for zero effort. People play FA because it's fun though, not that much for gains.

It sucks more for the Kurzick side, timewise. If Luxons do it right (and Kurzicks don't), they can earn a little over or under 600 faction in under 10 minutes.

Yup. But that's old story and we are going a bit off-topic. Yes Luxons can win in 5 min, which i do very often. And they get as much faction as Kurzicks get for 20min win. Luxons can get 2-4x more Faction. It's just not right.

Just a small piece of advice here: you may think that a solution is stupid (and it'd be stupid to think that without any good solid reasons) but they're rarely "artificial". If you want to open a discussion (rather than just try to make a point to Anet), leave the doors open.

Thanks for the clarification, this is consistent with Anet's definition.

Globally I understand and agree with your point if we delimit it exactly to the precise behaviour you describe, i.e. "Enter mission, then do not move until end of mission". The "AFK" FACT can probably be checked automatically by the server and no reward would then be given. But it would come as a surprise for those casual players (not everyone plays as "seriously" as you are) who are legitimately AFK without notifying the party (not a big deal if they only loose the mission rewards, big deal if they're banned).

But people are "smart" and they often find ways around. What about just following the group and doign nothing? Or moving randomly? Or typing once in a while an AFK message? All this with the same purpose/intention of leeching?

My point here is that, though this proposal sounds good, it may move the problem elsewhere. Going further discussing the examples based on the questions I raise above would probably lead us to discussing what it is to "contribute" to a party/mission and how one could assess others' contribution (i.e. what about people lying?).

(by the way, I thought your point was about AFKing in missions, would this still be valid in other contexts like PvP, which I'm unfamiliar with?)

One final note on your last message:

It will not, because you will have very angry ennemies More seriously, managing large communities is an art very close to a science (I'm sure Gaile could tell us more about that ), it does not work with simple rules like the one you stated. This is not a mechanical thing, rules cannot make a community prosper, they can only try to address certain problems. The global equilibrium in a large community is a very subtle thing (it's probably even worse in a rich game like GW, remember the PvE/PvP divide?).

/signed, and agreed. To the OP - you may not have had a severe family emergency yet, and I apologize for the acidic nature of my first post, but, heaven forbid, if you DO have one in the middle of your game, the game is suddenly the LAST thing on your mind. I just don't think coming home to a ban, another kick in the nuts, is good customer service for someone who's probably just suffered a major kick in the nuts to begin with.

And I'm not saying the problem doesn't need solved. Leechers suck. But, from personal experience, emergencies arise also, they can be legit, and GW is the last thing on your mind in those instances. I agree wholeheartedly with the above solution. And no, technically, I wouldn't have even realized I had been banned for 3 days in my case, but that's just me. Other's situations will be different. And had I found out, I would have been LIVID.

"Sorry son, yes, that's a sucking chest wound, but I'm in the middle of an Alliance Battle. It would be severely impolite of me to to leave. At least give me time to type a detailed explanation, and shut down. I should be able to call you an ambulance in 5 minutes or so. Try not to breathe."

That's not entirely accurate. It's true that other gametypes don't give end of match points after you lose, but you still get points in the loss as long as your team got kills, so you're not leaving the game empty handed.

However, that did bring to mind a better idea, which is to remove the losing team's points at the end and in exchange give points for completing game objectives. For example, whenever you are in capture range of a shrine that is neutralized or captured, you gain X faction. It's almost the same thing as long as the objectives you award faction for directly relate to your team score (as shrines do in AB), but doesn't award anything to players that aren't doing anything.

Although I fully agree with you, leeching is also a in real life problem. EVen there its difficult to discern who really earns his wage, or just gets it because is being nice or whatever. Same for social securities. In real life these problems have not been solved, never will, and it will be like that in GW for as long as its servers run. You can fire people in real life, but if people are nice and just do enough they dont get fired, even if they should.

With the proposed inactivity kick leechers would just move a tad each minute, leeching continues.

leechi8ng = alliance titles

Nah, i was referring to solutions like "give faction only when in range of ..." or "only when you use a skill this happens..". That's too artificial to be usable.

People still do that even now. Some of them. They play 5 minutes, then they just keep afking. So yes, they can do all that which you stated, but it takes a lot of "work". In other words, if you're clicking all the time, you might as well play.

The main problem with leeching are blatant greedy scum which just AFKs for days and days and weeks and months. You know them easily because they all play in Offline mode. Why? Because otherwise they would get flooded with curses There people don't really have time to move once a minute left n right, unlike they make a bot which can result in a ban so it's ok.

Simply saying that leeching is a problem will keep a lot of people away from such greedy adventures. You don't need to weed out all of them. Even in RA you can find some who just AFK whole game (sometimes because they forgot they pressed Enter Mission, happens to me too from time to time), but it's bearable because it doesn't happen as often. In FA, the leechers are all over the place, in every single game. It's difficult to find a game where on at least one side there won't be a leecher.

While there are many ways of griefing, a simple methods already suggested are enough IMO to make those game areas *playable* and *enjoyable*.

Haha well having angry enemies means you're possibly doing something right as well. Look at all the great people, they always had a strong opposition and a lot of people who envied them

Managing large communities takes a lot of skill and ability that is true, and it is by no means simple. Im not a fan of rules either, but i wasn't making any, really. I merely said that i would remove those whose mentality doesn't fit the society mentality i would try to build.
Look at GW for instance. The problem is the mentality. If GW was full of unselfish people who wanted to enjoy the game and wanted the others to enjoy, the place would look much better. As it stands, look at how many people only care for themselves. It's self-evident. Look at PvP-PvE debates. To me, they look silly, because there is actually no conflict of interest between PvP and PvE. The only conflict is in some peoples heads. The mentality of people causes otherwise non-existent issues. There are 2 days to solve that: 1) limiting access to people whose mentality fits in, and 2) improving people mentality. Im not talking about GW here but IRL, since GW is about economy; you need to attract as much people as possible. However, IRL is different. Numbers alone don't mean that much. The goal should be achieving the mentality of people which hold up to the higher (yet realistic) standard, and keeping non-wanted out. When the average quality of population mentality increases, the virtue and prosperity becomes more evident, and thus the country attracts other productive and virtuous and unselfish people. The mentality of the population also needs to be such that it sees vices as repulsive and unwanted. When a selfish person decides to join such a society, it will instantly run into a brick wall, because the virtuous people would not tolerate such negative behavior.

As you can see, in such a society there would be lot of discrimination, but not based on nation, color, age or something like that, but on personal qualities. So, when you would see a guy like that one saying "wtf ffs i dont care about your issues, im enjoying my own stuff who cares about you blabla", he would soon be linched so to speak, kicked in the bum and launched out of the countries borders. There would be no need for a rule and regulation, the high sense of morality and virtue of the population would be enough.

Im aware of that, and im not really a huge fan of bans here except for frequent repeated violations.

That's the whole thing. If you had such an emergency, you probably wouldnt realize it. There would be some issues to solve IRL, possibly, and it's not like there are no other games around, or other activities to do in life. Cmon

Leeching IRL is a different phenomenon. Let me explain.

Leeching in GW makes you richer and richer, your titles increase, and a lot of people got tons of gold by selling amber early on.

On contrary, leeching in real life has the opposite effects. You get the same money as if you were actually doing the job normally right? Ah, but your company has worse results, and let's bring this leeching to extreme - your country is going down and down. While some Chinese people work whole day, two shifts, in your country tons of people do half a shift and half leech. Sure, that seems good at first, but in the long run your overrun. At that point, your country either needs to do something, or you're pwned. It's the same with corruption etc.

I agree with comments for a 3 min idle kick out of battle comments. I have seen that work well in other games, and it drastically reduces the leachers....

Add to that a code string that if you get 4 kicks/disconnects you loose access to PvP areas for 1 day. RA, HA, TA, AB, GvG. that will also solve for the other nastiness in PvP that is the quiters.

Both of these have essentially ended all PvP participation from me. most will say thats no loss, and thats ok, most people wouldn't give a second look if I layed decapitated on the ground in Lions Arch. Indeed many would dance and praise that as the best thing ever to happen in the game. so be it...

I will still express my opinion when its nessesary.

And I refer you back to my original post...

So you freeze up and get booted out of RA for being AFK for 60 seconds. You take another 4 minutes to regain control and have 60 seconds left on your punishment timer. I think you can deal. Anyways, whether or not it was your fault, you most likely left three other people to hang out to dry. You won't be the only one affected if something like this comes to pass. We all will. However, the result will make the game more fun and playable for the general population. I welcome constructive criticism, but someone saying "That's dumb and lame" without offering a reasonable alternative or a way to amend and improve the previous idea is just a waste of bandwidth.

Though others have covered this pretty well, I am still going to point out that this is an incredibly uninformed opinion. It would be like me saying that you should get a better ISP to fix your lag issues.

You already have been, yet the rage-quitters are still getting away scott-free. I do, however, believe that RA should be a little less random and should have some code incorporated so that you don't wind up facing 3 or 4 of the same profession unless there really are too many to go around. That discussion, though, would probably warrant its own thread.

Good for you. That's what courteous players should do. Though I have made a good plenty glad points from monkless teams, if you leave after the round is over, you did your part, the team will get a replacement and no one is getting screwed. As a result, I don't think anyone should be penalized for that. As you can imagine, my previous post was a bit of a rough draft and meant as a starting point to get things moving in the right direction. It's not going to be the end-all solution that will be implemented word-for-word. If you have ideas on how to change my concept in order to better it, or can come up with other practical solutions that may work better than mine, feel free to post it. Cutting someone down who is actually trying to help only makes you look the fool.

P.S. - Guild groups or friends are a good way to get those last few points for your title

The thing is most people leech at the same time everyday. I see the same names and same guilds leeching. The guild [west] (the other way ) leeches alot and I believe they even own a town..... Ft. Aspenwood is fun and the wait isn't as long as AB. Please fix....kthx

How do they not see this as a problem?
3-5 minutes of AFK, then a kick will work. Maybe bann a few people here and there. Put some kind of fear into them for leeching........

Well to give it a little magnitude and exaggeration, let me provide an example of what leeching does to those small-minded people who do not comprehend the problems that people experience:
Let's say, there is a person that[LIST]Takes a spot in your party, which cannot be filled by another

• Gains the same experience as you

• Gets the same loot (meaning that R9 Elemental Sword you pulled from a chest, that person gets and devalues yours as another has entered the market)

• Follows you to EVERY instance, be it PvE or PvP (Free Balth/Glad/Championship Points or Money/Items/Mats etc.)

• You cannot rid this person unless you perform a mind-numbingly repetitive task X amount of hours every day, and if not this person will return the following Y hours

• This person is immune to banning and flagging and constantly follows you by targeting then spacing to make sure you are never out of sight.

• There is no feasible way to rid this person, as people have flamed you to hell for trying to fabricate a procedure, and each solution is thrown out.

• Many people who know nothing about the predicament you are in criticize you for trying to figure out a solution and say it is a waste of time.

So now what do you do?
You can leave the game, but it would be like another example I would like to bring up:
You bought a car in 2005, which you thought was a great deal and offered options and equipment you desired. There are no payments left, you know the car in and out, and have been accustomed to it. Yet many recalls have plagued the car and you are forced with a decision. Try and sell it for as much as you can (eBaying a GW account), causing you to research new offerings, the hassle of trying to sell, being a called a bad salesperson, going through the stress of waiting for a sale, saving money for a new car, going through the process of payments all over again, and relearning everything in and out (level up your intelligence). That is one option, or you can try to deal with the problems (nerfs, leeching, etc.) that the recalls have shown and take the risk of more coming out. Worse of all, the dealer does not cover any of the expenses, so you must take your time to deal with the inconveniences that you did not cause.

Kind of a tough choice, but that is just putting things in a bigger perspective. Just hope that my little, badly put-together rant can have some effect on the topic.

As you can see, I would like to to see a change to leeching, but not just that. All that idiocy that has been coming up/ever will come up, but you can't have a perfect RPG like that.

I like this point of view, but that's my personal statement. I think I would not allow me to state this kind of "rule" if I was at Anet, because in business promoting moral views may not be the smartest move (well, at least in the short run; you'd probably have to aim at going one small step at a time in order to bring the community to "share" your values).

What if GW then becomes a "morally unacceptable" game because it tries to impose limits and constraints on its players' "thinking"? In other words, you and me agree that GW would be so much more enjoyable for us if people were not GREEDY, and we probably even agree on what it means. But about this other guy in this very far land who does not feel greedy when he's trying to get a lot of money/XP/fame in order to impress his friends? Well you'd have to discuss directly with him, not try to impose your (and mine) views on him via the game.

(actually the discussion on this "beautiful" community you're depicting is more complex, because we stay at a high level of abstraction; in practice, there are a lot more problems, for example there are laws that prevent companies to discriminate their customers, so whatever your philosophy is you'd have to comply with the law ... one can even be much more sneaky and ask you the question: what if the "general population" is greedy and you'r ethe exception?)

Anyway, I know you're suggesting to change people's mind via rules like temp ban. Actually we need to lead by the example (what I personnally try to do, I'm very far from being a "serious" player in terms of hours of play/knowledge of the game but I'm always careful not to be unpolite and I'm definitely not greedy), there is no other way in the long run. Bad behaviour can spread very quickly (if you're robbed, you tend to become angry and may do bad things in turn and so on) while good behaviour takes a lot of efforts to spread. It's easier to destroy than to create!

I bought Prophecies because i liked the ideals GW has set. It's still not perfect, and grind/greed factor increased a lot since then, but it's still better than the other games in the genre. PvP is much better if nothing else, I don't even play PvE anymore. That's why leechers bother me that much, they have no place in PvP because greed and grind are not PvP-related except for Hall of Rank Farming. I don't have hopes that PvE will be the way i like it, and that's ok, it has a wide enough audience. Increasing grind is politics, i like it not but i can choose not to play it.

Just for comparison, i went to check the Age of Conan. I decided not to play it. Why? My personality would simply not fit in there. Let me quote one line from their official website which made me puke: "This sense of status achieved through materialistic gain (let's face it, we're all very vain) is very much present in Age of Conan, as well."
See, that's the example i was talking about - a discrimination based not on race or color or religion, but on personal qualities. Conan and alike games filter people; they are made to attract the vain, which is OK, but it's also made to repulse people like me. In the end, everyone asks himself "is this the game community i want to be a part of". For me, it's a hell no.

Every game imposes limits on its players. The question is how squished do you feel in a game. Do you have a sense of freedom and fun while playing the game, or do you feel forced to do things you don't want to, do you feel under stress or annoyed, agitated; do you feel that the players around you have a personality which definitely conflicts your own, etc. It's a complicated and a bit sensitive topic so im not going to go into details here.

Nah, there are no such laws. The laws talk of classical discrimination based on race, color, religion, or something like that. There are a lot of existent discriminations, for instance, age. Discrimination based on personal qualities is not something that i think law would interfere with. Except maybe in America because for something very trivial you get 1mill dollars as a compensation. You could cut yourself with a kitchen knife and sue the company because they did not put a label "Warning, can cut veins with this knife". Anyway, even when you go to more sophisticated places, like some hotels, you can't just walk in dressed in whatever you want. I think you'd get kicked out

Regarding GW, the product itself discriminates customers just by existing.

ANet is free to modify their game within certain boundaries of course. But it goes both ways. For instance, increasing grind in Chapter 2 & 3 was a discrimination for people like me We were discriminated against because our grindless nature defies the laws of greed, and we feel left out.. and among strangers who mostly care only for their own benefit (see leeching). I can always choose not to buy the game, or not to play it, so the problem is solved.

The general population is greedy and im the exception. The question therefore isn't "what if", but "what now"

Im not suggesting that at all. Im suggesting removing people whose mindset doesn't match the mindset of those for whom those game areas are made, and who play those game areas. Somehow i don't think ANet had in mind catering to leechers when they designed the game.

As for changing peoples mind, that's not my job. That's the job of Karma, indirectly, and Yogic practice, directly (if they choose to).

Exactly. Everyone can take a baseball bat and smash the monitor, but come on, if you're so cool go and *create* a monitor. Create a chip.
Good behavior takes a lot of effort, because you have to fight inertia and all the bad habbits. And just a quote for the end of the message: "The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind but the odour of good people travels even against the wind; a good man pervades every place. The perfume of virtue is unsurpassed."

There are similar laws in the UK and France, to my knowledge. So there are laws and Anet cannot ignore them. What about people sueing Anet for bad assessment of their "personal qualities"? I'm not a fan of laws but they're here (read this for fun: http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/396 )

I don't think so. Both you and me have different perception of the GW community, so I'm not sure we'll be able to sort this difference out

I wanted to write "You're NOT suggesting", sorry!

Very slipery slope: would you personnally judge people's mindset based on a few sentences from this forum, or the chat, or a few minutes/hours of gameplay? This is not something that Anet can do, it hasn't been done before because it can't be done by "negative" means (rules, laws).

Love the quote, but if you're in the "wrong" mindset you won't get it.

End of off-topic

What exact laws are there in UK and France? Copy paste?

You can't sue ANet for "bad assessment" because ANet doesn't do personal assessment. ANet makes a product which they sell on the market. The qualities of a product are aimed at a certain group of people, who might be attracted by the product and what is has to offer. I don't see at which point here ANet is doing the assessment of personal qualities, nor do they have to. That is done indirectly, by making a product oriented towards a certain group of people (and each group of people has different qualities, otherwise they would be the same group of people).

It's easy. You can even make an exact percentage out of it. Just do a poll here: "Do you think everyone in the game should have FoW armor for free, if they want to?". People who voted "no, you should earn it" are greedy and selfish. People who vote "i don't mind if others have it as long as i can choose the fashion design of my own characters" are unselfish and not greedy, and their sense of "fun" is not based on putting themselves above the others in egoistic way saying "look at me, i have FoW, therefore im cool and you're not".

Why is this a perfect example? Because in real world, one needs to work for stuff, not everyone can have everything here. Therefore it is not possible to "will" that everyone has the best stuff, since that doesnt work like that on this plane.
GW, on the other hand, is another matter. You paid for the game, for content. Everyone can have the best stuff, instantly, and that's not a matter of possibility but of wanting and willing. A non greedy player will be able to have fun in GW world without putting himself directly over the others (in such a way). He will PvP for fun (sure he can pvp for ranks too), and he can do PvE for fun, smacking monsters, doing missions, trying to break the records like timing, HM mode, challenge missions etc.
These 2 mentalities can be seen in a comparison of Bill Gates and someone who simply dresses up in expensive suits and has an expensive car. Bill Gates dresses up in jeans and shirts; quite unimpressive. But some guy whose abilities are far below that of Gates, needs to dress up in expensive suits to make up for the lack of abilities. Gates on the other hand does not need such outwardly displays of power. Why? Because his achievements speak for themselves. Even if he dresses up in something cool, it's because he likes it and feels comfortable in it. Not because everyone else will think "wow im cool, look at me i have FoW armor".

I never said ANet nees to judge anyones mindset. They are selling a product and should only react on bad actions done by others, which harm other customers. It's quite a simple rule of economy. Let's say you're owner of pools and people have to pay entrance to swim a bit and enjoy the water. Let's say that a small group of people pay entrance as everyone else, but instead of swimming around they sprinkle people with water, put a foot in front of them so they fall over, push people in the pool etc. Now, you have two choices, you can let this go on, which means you satisfy that minority, but everyone else leaves, or you can kick/discipline the minority, at which such minority might still enjoy the pool the way it's meant to be enjoyed.

As for judging someones mindset, everyone does that, more or less. It was enough to see for me what that one guy wrote in this thread, to decide that i wouldnt want him near me IRL. If i had more authority, i would be tempted to roleplay Judge Dredd: "I am the law! Put down your weapons and prepare to be judged."

I'm still going to push for a personal ban. An easy thing: if someone is on your ignore list, they will never be placed with you as part of a random party. People fall off the ignore list after a set amount of time, probably a few weeks, and unless you re-ignore them, you will then have them available as teammates again.

What happens when everyone starts ignoring the leechers? They stop getting teams, while everyone that's actually playing gets to go on, play, and not worry about them. Lowering the rewards for the losers actually encourages leeching, because the leechers don't CARE if they win or lose: they get something anyway. Reducing the faction gain to 0 for losing? Same thing: as long as they get faction every few games, they'll just keep leeching. It will slow their progress, but it won't stop them.

making sure they can't enter matches to begin with will stop them, and I think that allowing each player to decide taht they don't want to deal with certain people, can definitely improve the experience. We'd probably need bigger ignore lists, though.

To really deal with the problem, ANet could do a search, and every week, look at the top names on the ignore list. Then run down the logs, and see if those people's actions are consistent with leeching. If so, ban them from the arenas for a time, or permanently after repeated violations.