please add a "Kick" function

There are two main reasons I would like a "kick" function in parties (namely for missions). I think having either a majority or unanimous (except for the one being kicked, of course) vote required to kick someone would be reasonable. Another way to do it is to give the party leader the power to kick at will, although I think the voting would work better.

The first, and obvious reason is to get rid of assholes and griefers, or just noobs who are detrimental to the party either tactically or socially.

The second, much more important reason is that many players abuse the lack of a kicking function by joining parties for missions and then AFK-ing. Doing so, they are able to both level up easily (this is worse than botting, in my opinion, since you are leeching off of the work of others) and progress in the game more easily (if the party you're leeching off of does win, you get a free ticket to the next town). This also hurts the legitimate party members, since they get one less member to work with. I have seen this very commonly, so please, Arenanet, do something about this.

The need of a vote gets rid of possible abuse from those with the power to kick. For example, your group could get far in a mission, then kick everyone, and instantly grab all of the now unclaimed items. Also, if voting is implemented, please make the window very easy to see, such as a dialogue window popping up in the middle of your screen (and possibly have a field for the one who starts the vote to state the reason for the kicking). If the vote is difficult to see, then it's possible that newer players may not know how to kick people, and the party wouldn't be able to obtain the amounts of votes they need.

I think a "kick" function, plus a confirmation screen, would be nice during missions.

Though, another solution, is to team up with people you trust more.

I'm sorry, but i completely dissagree with this option... it could be abused... say like, some friends get together, and need you only to get past a certain point... We get past the missions hard part, in where they dont need you anymore... and then /votekick you... how would you feel being used // wasting time // not getting that mission... all because some kids are griefing things...

The goal of anet is to take out as much griefing as they can...

I do see your purpose for wanting things like this (as ive seen people go afk from start of mission just to get the mission), and ive also seen people that make up an excuse, such as "I'm stuck on the wall!!", and when we say, hold on there's a cut scene right here... we'll get to it... what are they Actually doing? They're afk, and just griefing the system in there own way... but at least they arent griefing it in a way that's as devastating as what i mentioned above...

One thing ive done against them, is ask for the people in the party to rejoin at the mission stand... and they'll come back to their character just sitting there...

When the person griefing this way isnt near the party, they no longer gain exp (except the 1k exp and the 1 skill point)... and at the end of the mission it only allows you to "accept" items that were dropped near the ending (Since the other's have been on the floor too long, they become "Up for grabs")

i agree with the kick function, but i say only the party leader should be able to use it

a vote kicking is a terrible idea considering that most players are really bad at PVE...and when you tell them not to do stupid things, they will often do those stupid things anyhow after repeated warnings from you to not do them. and then when the party leader criticsizes them after they all die; for them playing like complete morons and getting the whole party killed (except for the smart leader), then they will actually turn on the party leader and start scapegoating him for their own acts of moronicism

i've seen this time and time again. every member of my party dies to due to sheer stupidity, except for me. then i tell them to stop playing like idiots, and they all start getting angry at me for calling them on their idiocy

with a vote kick based on majority, it is the bad players who can't own up to their own horrible mistakes and terrible playing, that would be determining who stays in the party. the person who contributes the most to making the party progress through the mission and keeping it alive would be kicked out simply for being honest about how dumb his party is playing.

that would not be justice.

I think how the kicking would actually be used (party leader, vote, etc.) could be decided by Arenanet, since they have much more experience with multiplayer gaming, but I definitely think that a kick function needs to be implemented in some form. With a good system, the kicking abuse could be much less frequent than the AFK-ing abuse.

I agree with what Levian Lain said about teaming up with trustworthy people, but I think that 75-90% of the parties in the game are just pick-up groups, and so they are still plagued with the AFK-ers, who are still able to power-level by leeching off of others.

I have to agree with Magus here.

Last night we were in a mission group and about minutes into it the writing on the minimap started accompanied by the mini-map pinging. It was so annoying.

It took about 10 more mintes to figure out who the clown was. At that point is was unfair to have to restart. Peace was restored when the clown died. We didn't rez him, but had to use rebirth so the healing henchies didn't rez him either...more wasted time for the majority to avoid this one parasite...not fair.

This guy then went afk for about 20 minutes. Things were nice and peaceful.
Unfortunately this bozo was ressurected at the first cutscene and all the nonsense began again immediately.

Near missions end he died again thankfully and we responded in kind. So he sat there writing all over the map and calling us names while we completed the mission for him.

Call me crazy, but that just doesn't seem right. Not only is he leeching at this point, but he is so obnoxious that he ruined the experience for the rest of us.

I know that a "kick' function can and will be abused as ReLLiK said, but I am willing to take that chance. If I join a group of all guildmates then it will be more prevalent, but regular PUG's, I'd say no.

Its time to make some people take responsibility for their actions in on-line gaming. If this kid got booted last night, maybe he would readjust his behavior in the next group he joined. Who knows, maybe he would become a cooperative productive on-line gamer, which is what A-net wants anyway, right?

If a kick option is ever included, definitely go with "Party Leader" only, none of that vote kicking stuff. In additio, I think Party Leader should have the option to designate someone else as leader -- without having to leave the group, and asking others to leave the group, so the person who should be leader gets bumped to the top of the list to reinvite everyone again. -_-;;

I don't like the idea of party leader kicking only. These people that you say that write things on the map, being idiots, afk, annoying etc. Eventually when no group accepts them they'll just start up a group, and grief you more that way.

Example: Ohh a gold item drops. /kicks the person and waits for it to go unclaimed.
Example: I'm being annoying and you can't do anything about it, because if you whine too much I'm going to kick you.
Example: Party leader goes afk.....

By making it party leader only your actually giving griefers the power to grief people further. The vote method makes it better since if the party leader was being a jerk atleast the rest of the party could vote to remove him.

i agree with both of your points. but why not create a diablo 2 style of experience earning? each of your party members need to be within your "circle of danger" to earn the full experience amount from each killed enemy. the further away from battle you are, the less experience you'd get, if any.

this could also be done with completely missions as you'd have to be nearby the objectives and in harms away to receive the completion and bonuses.

of course, there will always be the good and bad things about it. i dont know if there is any one perfect way to keep everyone happy and keep things fair. but at least this way, you may be seeing a lot less low levels at draknor's and ascension, etc.

I have an idea to make a Kick function that both gets rid of people abusing a team, yet also doesn't allow the function to be abused. Whether or not it is technologically feasible, though, is another matter.

Anybody may use the Kick function. When it is used, a box comes up, with 8 boxes on one side saying, "Yes, and 8 boxes on the other saying, "No". The idea is that each person has one tick to vote whether the person is kicked out or not, and the majority wins.

Once again, I do not know if this is technologically possible, but I think it's a nice idea.

This would work well in a utopic gaming community . But alas, the reason we need a Kick function in the first place is because of the lack thereof. I'm afraid this mechanism would lead to an entirely different form of griefing: kick-vote spamming.

I'm in favor of just keeping it simple and letting the party leader have full control.

During one of the Krytan area missons (Forget the name) We had a "young" player who went AFK for dinner by the shrine and the Confessor while he was holding the Urn for the bonus.

That is just one of the many moments I wished for an option to kick someone!

I think we will just have to bear with annoying idiots, unless they can counter the ways it will be abused such as Xight mentioned.

I think a kick function is necessary. I like the majority vote because having 4 or 5 selfish buttheads in a group is less likely than having just a party leader who is a selfish butthead. Just a numbers game.

I would love it if the game could sense that a character hadn't moved or done any action for over five minutes and it would boot any character who was not moving for that long back to the nearest city and out of any mission group.

--Nokomis

i like the majority vote system too. it seems to work well on cs from my xp.

EQ2, DAoC, Lineage2, et al. All have a "kick" function available to the party leader only.
It's an old concept, it's simple and it works.

It offers several immediate benefits:
People who join then go AFK for free mission credit are denied their ill-gotten gains.
Socially challenged persons are thwarted from working their woeful ways upon a otherwise decent group.
It allows PUGs the freedom to operate with strangers, discovering new friends, and simultaneously weeding out the undesirables.

Negatives?
The "socially challenged" will no doubt rail against this. How can they inflict their own personal version of grief on the unsuspecting so easily now?
Ruthless party leaders may "kick" players without warning to invite other class combinations deemed superior. These morons exist in every game - they are doing YOU a favor if you find yourself the recipient of such.

Talesin

One thing about this game is that it doesn't have an auto log off timer.

I once sat in a mission with henchmen one afternoon. Alt-tabbed out, and forgot I had the game on. I came back from work the next afternoon, and found my guys there, with an item on the ground (apparently a patrol or something came through that my hencmen killed).

ANet needs to put a 30 minute timer or something for those people who are inactive for more than 30 minutes-1 hour. For 2 reasons, people going afk during missions etc etc. Also to clear up server space/bandwidth.

Vote kicking is good. Party leader kicking is bad. What if it's the party leader who's the one who deserves to be kicked?

Alright, i feel the need to quote myself, considering this is an old thread, re-opened... i personaly feel this would Completely destroy the nearly non-griefable system...

Having a kick function, as i said, is far more aggrivating if griefed, then say, a person who sits, and leaches... because, if you kick them, they're still gone... and you're still out a person, just now, you don't have an extra body to take dmg...

And if you have a person who's rushing in... just keep them dead, it's simple, and they'll normaly leave on their own...

And if you have a person who's luring too much, look at my above statement, and take a twist with it... simply retreat, and regroup with your "sane" partners, and let the maniac die... he'll more then likely call you a newb and leave (there yea go, problem gone)

Give me a good reason (and i mean GOOD) for adding a kick function, and perhaps ill reconsider... but a kick function in an mmorpg is NOT a suggestion, it's a pointless topic that should be ignored.

I agree with this, but i think it should be an option in your options control... because, sometimes i say... get a pizza at the door that i orderd, and i just happen to be in the middle of a quest that was a major pain... and i don't want to get back to the point i've already gotten to... so yes, i agree, and add to the fact that it should be an option.

yes yes yes for votekick...the number of times people go afk for free rides through missins is staggering. Voting is good if everyone else agrees to kick the person out...out they go...replaced by far more useful hench. How about arena fights too...especially ascalon >.<.

W/Mo lvl 9
M/Me lvl 8
E/N lvl 10

oooh this party looks good...time for some good pvp action!
last person joins...

R/W lvl 2

just along for a free ride and to leech off exp off others hard work.
bleh!

you get about as much xp from killing a person in arena as killing a lvl 3 devourer with 3 henchies. they probably got like 32xp out of the whole battle. how about the lvl 2s that want to play in arena? are they not alowed to play anymore?

This is different from other mmorpgs because the items are assigned to people, say its a group of guildies that were short one person and they picked up a random guy to do the mission.

random guy: OMG GOLD MAX DAMAGE FELLBLADE AND A GOLD ARMOR ALL FOR ME!!!!
guildy #1 in guild chat: hey lets kick that guy out and split the loot k?
other guildies in guild chat: alright, easy 50k!!!
random guy: YAHOO I CANT BELIEV I GOT A GOLD DROP!!
-random guy has been vote kicked-
random guy: WTF?!?!?NOOOOOO MY FELLBLADE!!!

I've come across the kind of people you're all describing in parties and also been called an idiot a couple of times because I wasn't perfect and didn't know everything.

There are good and bad aspects to implementing any kind of kick system. There are also bad aspects to the system we have now as you're all well aware. I think if ArenaNet introduced 'Kick', by leader or vote, it would be abused just as the current system is and will totally defeat the purpose of introducing it at all.

Well an easy way to avoid the abuse just stated is when kicked all items assigned to that player dissappear and they are given the unclaimed window back in town.


another way to make this 'fairer' is to have it that you can only kick people when their dead. This way vote kick and leader only kick can be less abuse. get the person you want kicked dead then you can just remove them. really think about it how hard is it to kill off someone thats being a pain?

I do think this will help avoid the main worries of abuse against unjust kicks a lot of people are worried about.


as for guilds that abuse kick functions they seem to gain notoriety pretty quickly and it just hurts them in the long run

Well how ever much you don't want to admit it, we were all noobs once. Granted that was during the very first beta or alphas for some of us, but we were all one at one time or another. The only way a noob is ever going to get "unnoobed" is if we teach them what to do. Kicking a noob just because he doesn't know how to play isn't morally or ethcally correct. What if someone would ahve done that to you when you first started? You'd be pissed and probably give up on the game for a day or two. If it happened again cause you don't know exactly how to spam heal or deal a whole lot of dmg you would probably take a break from the game for a longer time and eventually give up on it. Yes some people are annoying, but just relax. Just because you don't get along with some people doesn't mean you need to have the Devs go and create a whole new system just because you don't get along with whats his name and want him out.

I think the Devs need to make it possible for you to grab key items, such as the Pot in that confessor dorian quest up there, out of a players hands and hold it yourself. I think this would help with the AFK situation and would cause less bickering. But then you could come up with the argument that someone keeps stealing your Pot. Well suck it up and act like a reasonable person. If he won't listen then let him die and take it back from him.

well there is a differnce between noob or a poor player and one that is activly causing havoc.

i mean kick is ment to be used as a last resort, sure some will use it first and ask questions later but most players will try to stop them with words first.

I mean your not really gonna boot someone for screwing up but you do want to boot someone that vehemently denies doing what ever they did to screw up even though everyone saw them do it.

I mean for example. We were doing hte ember bearer bonus misson. we said several times stay behind the leader, do not aggro, do not attack and otherwise do nothing but follow a ways behind the bearers til we get where we need.

we follow for a little while(they get all the way thru the tar) and then they run forward in front of the whole group stops and fires thier bow with all of us watching then proceeds to try and blame it on the other ranger in the group who wasn't even using a bow. needless to say we let the bearers kill her before we killed them and left her dead. The thing that would have sucked was she would ahve still gotten the misson but she was too stupid to realize she could leech and got fed up that we woudldn;t rez and left.

its those sort of players that you want to be able to boot. the leechers and griefers

unfortanatly I don't think this will happen because of possibility of abuse.

Namely having a really good party and clearing out most of the monsters then the leader kicks out everyone from the party and goes back and loots the chests in the area without having to share the drops with henchmen or other players. thats just not fair play... so I doubt we will see that.

If they are idiots and you dont want to play with them, you can always leave them to die and reform your group without them back in the community area.

Exactly, abusers are why we have the economic problems that we do now. They will never stop abusing, and this is just another chance for them to work their magic. Altough most of us would use it for its positive aspects the abusers still outweigh the respective people even though there are more of us out there. Anet jsut can't let people abuse this stuff anymore.

Yes, but the game should autolog you out if your not there for like 2 hours or more. I mean does it take 2 hours to eat a pizza? lol

We can all cite perfect examples of why kicking would be a great feature, but it has too much power. If you think those griefers are annoying now, imagine them with any such power... leader only, votekicking on a stacked team, etc. It won't matter. The amount of whining for /kick's removal will outweigh the whining for it's inclusion 100-fold.

It's kind of naive to expect the world to treat you fairly because you're "a nice person". Your intentions are good, but believe me... you do not want this added.

ahh leeches .. Bit of both for this idea, it can be abused either way & i cant tell you how annoying it is when you finally get a good party together & then enter mission & all of a sudden som1(usually the low lvl) str8 away afk's, forcing you to restart mission & kick them, i think this prob woiuld be avoided if they reduced the ability to Rush the game, perhaps lvlcaps on some places need to be put in place, like the same lvl as the current allowed henchies lvl.

I disagree with the kick option. how I do beleave there could be other ways around it. I havent read all the posts - sorry if someone has mentioned this.. but ive goto do something personal in a minute.

Anyways Why not add some small point dot options to the circular maps radius. These could be:

Firstly: A Filter constant drawing on maps (where people abuse the map with scribble) allow this filter to work only with 3 second intervils of drawing.. enought to get your point across to your team mates. (you only need a line to show the way anyways)

Secondly: A filter to minimise contant click on the map.. allowing player to click on a map every 10 seconds or so. (contant clicking will auto matically be filtered)
Could also have option to disable ping noise cause via red dot alert on map.

Thirdly: In regards to Afk users. An option for leader to choose a wait time. example: before entering a mission/area the leader can choose a waiting period timer. lets say 2minutes. that way once in a mission/area the leader can not modify the time to suit there own needs. the wait period is there if some people need to do something "toilet" in most cases. however if there character idels for more then two minutes they are booted from the game displaying a message to all users in that party "Lord Ben was booted due to inactivity for more than 2 minutes"

Now the inactivity would work based on your character. not moving around.. you need to move around, you can stop to identify items etc, but no longer then what the host has set the timer too. that way it will encourage people to move around, and also aleart other players that they are not afk if they are moving around stupidly on the map.

Added with a more advanced detection, if that player isnt contributing to there party with healing, or attacking foes. there character will fail to recive gold, xp, and items. thus preventing the need to boot players from the mission/area. Its a fair cost or price to pay if you seek to be lazy and let other do your dirty work.

What do you think?

Saying that something should not be implemented because it could, in some way shape or form, be abused is something you really need to look carefully at. Right now there is a problem with the system -- One person can get in a team and totally screw up 7 other's experience.

Putting in that the leader can kick doesn't really help, the power is still in one person's hands, it is still that one person can totally screw over 7, not what I would call a solution.. But in the case of a majority vote system, it would take at least four people (if a 50% majority was required, or at least 6 if a 75% majority is required) I'd call that a vast improvement.. Sure, a group of people could get together and screw around with others, but what else is new? You can do that now pretty easily.

Its a restriction on griefing. Is it a perfect solution? Not really, I don't believe they exist. There is always going to be someone not happy with some fix or another, but it could help to improve the situation.

I'm pretty strongly in favor of something like this at least being tried, assuming it's not very costly to implement.

The major existing problem is that one person CAN grief the rest of the party in some missions (usually by holding on to the vital quest item that no one else can advance with). This is obviously bad, and there's currently NO workaround.

If this were to happen at ALL, I'd hope it would require an otherwise-unanimous vote to kick someone out. i.e. if there are six humans in the group, it would require five "Yes, Kick!" votes to knock anyone out. The potential for abuse still exists, but it requires multiple jerks instead of just one (which is what can happen now). There's the same recourse here where the player can and SHOULD report it to ArenaNet. If it becomes a pattern where the same five people keep kicking one guy out, they'll notice. (Just as they can currently do if one individual repeatedly griefs.)

Obviously, if a party only has two humans in it, no one should be able to kick anyone.

As a fairly minor aside, ArenaNet should consider replacing the removed party member with a henchman (preferably of similar class, but this doesn't need to be fancy). This would further reduce the problem of griefing, where a party sometimes just can't finish when lacking that last party member, but would be able to with a henchmen.

(Yes, this creates more incentive, perhaps, for a group of seven players to kick someone else, but I doubt this would make someone be a jerk if they weren't going to be a jerk anyway.)


Also, if there is any kind of voting: It should be an anonymous, secret ballot, just like skipping cutscenes is right now. This should include the person who brings up the vote to kick -- it should just bring up a box saying, "There's been a vote to kick Bob. Choose: [[Yes, kick Bob.]] [[No, Bob is cool.]]" Arguably, this box shouldn't even pop up unless two people request it (i.e., like seconding a motion), otherwise you create a situation where a single person can keep making the box pop up, griefing others. =p

I mean we can discuss procedural checks to insure it can't be heavily abused. One feasible solution would make the kick flag party leader specific, and joiners might get a popup like:

"This team leader has vote kicking enabled. If you join this group, you could be kicked. Join this team? Yes / No ?"

But it's still a bad idea. You pick your teammates. Choose them. PUGs don't have to mean totally random, run-through-town-and-take-the-first-##-willing. Screaming "Protect me!" gets you nowhere in this game, nor in real life... You got one of those [expletive deleted]? You might find this harsh but "sucks to be you." Be more selective of the teams you join and the people you invite. If you need to feel better, come to GWG and rant about it. Besides that, this is


Join a guild, already!

Well i think this would be a good feature implemented right, and now i'm going to punt an idea i mentioned in a nother thread related to "rejoining group when disconnected in missions etc".

Original idea was to allow a means for players to rejoin their group when they got disconnected. After some debate it is clear there is some issues with simply letting them "pop" back in when they log in. So my idea was to merely add "in-mission"-outposts, or simply a mini-hub. Scattered over the map will be "entrances" to this mini-hub. The mini-hub will contain nothing special, can't change skills [debatable], no NPCs, [maybe some henchmen?], and NO EXIT. Now the only reason you would go into this mini-hub is to regroup or rather "fetch" a member that disconnected and returned. Only way to exit is for leader/group to click a "return to mission" button and team is returned to the "entrance" which team originally used to reach the hub. [So if it was near the end of the mission, then that is where everyone will pop out]. Being in the hub one will get no benefits, won't even unlock the mission, you must be IN the mission for that [so you can't disconnect, and reconnect to pop back and idle in the hub]. Essentially if your team don't come and fetch you, or don't find a hub-entrance , then well tough luck for you.

Now to get to the whole kicking effect. I would think this would be ideal to add the ability to kick people ONLY inside the mini-hub. So firstly, the leader/whoever must find this hub entrance, and then kick the person and then return to the mission.

Catch? Firstly, you will essentially be ZONING = everything respawns. Sure you might be deeper into the mission, but you will not be able to kick your team in the hub and complete the mission on your own [assuming the hub entrance is placed at tricky spots]. Obviously whatever dropped will not be there when you return either, so can't kick for that reason either. Basically it will be a semi pain in the butt to go into the hub to kick someone, especially if it means you have to backtrack...but at least you CAN. [The relative pain to kick someone, should be enough not to want to "abuse" it]. From here it is debatable whether you might be able to add/replace a henchmen inside the mini-hub too....all up for grabs.

...same applies for far-off areas , just add a mini-hub feature and some "entrances" or "portals" on the map to get to it.

Well said. I think this is reason enough to institute such a function. My PUG sure could have used a Kick function last night. Some dilweed was drawing obscene things on the map, writing racial/ethnic slurs...we were getting sick of it.

/supports a Kick function

How about a kick vote function.

If all of the players want one person gone then they can kick him. The only time you couldnt use this function is if there was only 2 human players. Otherwise, the voting would be all against one in order to kick. He would then be replaced with henchman of like primary class.

Edit: Oops, I see this idea has already been discussed here. Oh well. I think its a good idea, as it requires multible griefers working together as opposed to one griefer distrupting the whole team. To me I would think that with this the odds for stable play outway the odds for griefing.

I also support a /kick function

I was one of two monks in a game at dunes of despair (We had 2R, 2W and 2Mo). The hero was following a ranger.

When we got to the bridge with the wurm on the left side, the ranger who the monk was following was trying to kill the wurm with his hunters shots, yeah sure, pfff.

Anyway, the leader told him to move the hero to the bridge...he never. The fracas continued even though every member had told him to move several times. He ran around in circles, looking like he was annoying us on purpose!

With the constant barrage from the wurm, you can imagine the amount of heals that myself and the other monkey were dishing out. I had the clever idea of saying "Elwyn, i'm not healing you anymore!" and guess what popped up in the text box after that...the other monk replied "and neither am i".

LMAO...he soon moved his backside to the bridge.

So, get your monks on the correct side and let them deal the punishments!

As for abusers going AFK. How about a autokick feature which is secretly activated by the leader? If that person has not got an assisted kill in X minutes..he is automatically disconnected.

When people beep the compass, how about a symbol next to the name (in a different colour to the current red) to show who did the beep.
Maybe have different colours for when people are drawing on the compass...Player 1 (leader) has white, player 2 has blue etc.

There needs to be some form of punishment/discipline in place. Don't know what or how though.

after paying out 1k to enter fissure of woe to find that 1 of the team of 8 was a complete idiot, charging ahead, giving abuse and generally saying they were gonna ruin the game leads me to think that a kick option should definatly be introduced by way of player vote, also so as not to reduce the number of players in the team in missions like fissure , underworld etc a booted player is automatically replaced by a henchman. this would be an easier solution than having option of inviting another player cos thn its who gets to decide who joins whereas a henchmen has nothing to benefitfrom joining 3/4 way thru a quest. im just sick of the stupid noob idiots who just join missions purely to leech/farm or spoil the mission and particularly fissure and underworld where u have to pay. as regards to how to implement how about within the main chat box, a simple case of /boot (player name) and if say in a team of 6 4 or 5 type that then the player is removed, this then resolves issue of pop ups on screen and most players already know how to use the emotes commands so would be easy enough.