To: Anet Re: Leechers.

Anet, you have been good to us in the past about stopping exploits and unfair game practices (ie. Sigil, dye remover, cost of fur), and I hope you do something about this. Today I had my second encounter with people who leech or ruin an entire mission for the group.

First Experience:
While doing the mission with the Scepter of Orr one of the group members kept dying and was being very rude and obscene. He became angry with the monk and the rest of the group because he kept running ahead and dying. We told him to stop being stupid and to stay with the group. Well, he didn't listen, to say the least. The second we got into battle he grabs the scpeter from the ground and runs off and hides with it. We didn't realize until we had finished the battle and by then we couldn't track him. The mission that we speant a half hour on was ruined because of this one persons anger.

Second Experience: While doing the first mission after ascension on group member after the first area went AFK. He was a warrior. Well, I think we all know how this ends. He goes AFK from Ranger area to Warrior area. We get a mob to kill him while he's still afk so he can't capture the skill. Well about 30 seconds later he comes back with some sorry excuse about moving furniture or something. The problem is had we not all died, because another group member was also afk for 3-4 parts, he would have recieved credit for completing the mission. How is this fair for all of us who fought the entire mission? It's not.

My Proposal:
I propose that they install a group kick system. The leader of the group would first click on that person and have an option to announce that he wanted that person removed from the group. That person would see this and decide whether to straighten out or get kicked. At this point the other group members would recieve a pop-up asking whether or not they wish to remove this person. Once everyone else in the group voted yes the leader would get a confirmation box. He could send a final warning to that person and then if the person still acted foolish then he would be kicked and ideally replaced my a henchman of the same main build.

One Problem:
Someone brought this to my attention. This kick system could be abused, however I don't see it being a major problem. What someone said was that a group of friends could go out with some random person, do what they needed to do then kick that person. I don't see why they would do this, but it could happen, which is why Anet would have to come up with a solution.

Conclusion:
There has to be something done about this. If not the game is subject to people joining and then AFKing through the entire game. Companies that powerlevel people could use this tactic to get people through the entire game. Anet would have to figure out a way to prevent abuse or realize that the good outweighs the bad in this situation.

So you want to replace one form of griefing with another? I know I sure wouldn't join any group that had a bunch of people from the same guild if this system were implemented. I work with them, they kick me, they get the credit, and I don't.

why would anyone kick you for helping them? especially a guild. Word would spread that guild does that and no one would want to join them or party with them.

it would be a very self defeating thing.

I had a similar experiance in surmia where despite being told not to attack or aggro the bearers they ran up and attacked them and then insisted they didn't aggro them. we just left them dead and they left. had they any brains they could have stuck around even dead and gotten credit but they got to angry.

I would love to see a kick system for in misson. I really don't see people gettting kicked at the end of things anyway. it ends up hurting them more then helping

You must be new to the wonderfully vicious world of MMO's. People will pull anything and everything they can get away with, and trust me this scenario would be very common:

You join a group comprised mostly of another guild, say in the HOH.

You help the team win HoH.

Right before the chest opens, said guild kicks you so you dont get the uber loot drop that they need to help them get their sigil, buy capes, etc.

I would like to see something like this implemented as well. There have been a few instances where people commit themselves to a mission and then either go afk or run off to do other things (like farm the goddamn drakes in gates of kryta) or behave like idiots (not ressurecting or healing party, running off with bonus items, agroing then training mobs, etc). The leader of the group should have the power to remove the offending player(s) and dump them back into town.

a rere drops, its a max dmage sword, everybody in the group kicks the person cuz they want the rare.

I think this should only be in missions and outside areas, not the HoH or Arena.

It won't work. Sorry.

Here's why,
Firey Dragon Swords that drop.
Gold/purple Giants Boots.
Getting kicked at the end of the mission out of spite.
Let's not even get into the HoH.

No way no how. Nice try. I agree this is a problem. But, a better answer is to boot those people from the game for a week.

Still, that would be exploited.

I like to do PvE with my guild, but there are not always 8 to play the underworld with us. Do you think there would be anyone wanting to fill the 8th spot in our group? No way. Unless, that one person was the party leader.

something should be done about leechers who are not AFK too. those who keep dying constantly due to sheer stupidity and refusal to follow orders. or because they are not infused on missions where they need to be infused

i say the Party Leader should have sole discretion over who to kick. he made the party, so he should be the only decision maker in terms of removing a member of that party. if people don't trust a particular Party Leader with that responsibility, then they can make their own parties or join one with a leader who they do trust

votekicking won't work because most players in PVE have no idea what they are doing, and would abuse the votekick function

I agree with you on how much this issue sucks. However, I cannot think of a viable solution and I don't really think the solution you propsed would work very well. I guess your best bet is to remember the hosers and not group with them again, and remember the good players and try to group with them, or find a good guild.

There's already a method to fix these issues, it's called pressing ALT-F4.

If you guys have played any team FPS, you've seen votekick in action - pretty much all team-based FPS's have votekick. I've played tons of FPS, and only once have I been votekicked - by a cheater guild, who were numerous enough to push through the vote.

A votekick takes several seconds. First someone has to type "votekick <players name>", then a given percentage (all players in the group except the guy being voted usually) of the group has to "vote yes". Often the person calling the vote has to give a reason for the kick as well, e.g. "intentionally harms teammates" or "away from keyboard".
If there's a rare drop, the player who's got the drop has probably at least 15 seconds to pick up the drop before he's kicked. If it still turns out to be a problem, one could also add a 30 second delay before the kick takes effect.

Yes, votekick is abused. People call votekicks on eachother in FPS's out of boredom, spite, stupidity, immaturity, or as a joke, but usually the vote doesn't pass unless someone has made himself truly despised, because you have to get all or pretty much all of the other members of the team to vote for the kick.

Another possibility would be to make the team leader a real team leader, so that he could kick people freely. That would be pretty guaranteed to be heavily abused by the griefers/immature kiddies, though.

the problem stems from pickup groups getting some idiot who ruins it for everyone else.

however its not a big deal if it happens at the start of a mission/quest, but it IS a problem when it happens halfway through or at the end etc.

at the start - you can just restart without them, not a big loss.

after that, youve put in time and effort, and it really is a waste of time to have to restart an hour long (or more) mission.

frequently the idiot isnt doing enough damage in the earlier easier parts of the missions, so party's can get through, however its later on in the harder areas that the idiot makes it really difficult.

now in the case with multiple idiots in one group, that group will just not get past the earlier easy parts of a mission, so as before, you can restart without having put much effort in - no big loss.

so the key problem here is singular idiots in pickup groups.

a votekick option almost guarantees to target this particular case, where everyone else wants to kick the idiot who is ruining things for them in the harder parts of the missions.

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now, how many times do you find yourself joining up with a pickup group that has a singular idiot vs. how many times you join a pickup group with 7 other guild members?

honestly, even if it was guaranteed that EVERY single guild was a bunch of arseholes wanting to just exploit non-guild players by kicking them before completing missions, how many times would you face that situation?

no matter what number you wanna quote, i utterly guarantee you have greater odds of finding a pickup group made up of different guild players that might include an idiot.

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so in conclusion, this idea at worst, would still improve the enjoyment of the game for just about everyone - except idiots (whom we dont care about).


(note: im using the word idiots to describe people who not only do stupid/selfish things, but repeatedly do stupid/selfish things even when asked/told not to, or asked/told how to do it easier/better/more successfully)

And in response to such situations, I would just lead the team myself to avoid being kicked. No biggie.

Yet another argument ammunition box for henchmen

Simple Solution: Any items that dropped for you before you were kicked appear in the unclaimed items box; problem solved.

And I did not intend this to be for PvP, since if you have an idiot on your team you will find out soon enough when your team gets owned. Besides most PvP games don't last for as long as a PvE mission.

I was about to post the exact same thing. Perfect solution! The reason would be logged and ANet can easly pull up the kick reasons if someone is being reported as an abuser. Nine times out of ten, the leaders that kick to get that rare item will put something stupid into the reason.

The only solution I could think of is to allow Party leaders to kick players who are AFK. For example, if you havn't touched your computer in 10-15 minutes, you can be kicked by the Party Leader.

This can't really be abused (at least not much), but if you're going AFK for 10-15 minutes, why would you start up a mission? :S

I am not convinced on the votekick thing, I play pickup groups. I like the gamble. I will probably stop playing if I start getting kicked by guilds that let me fill out the team, and then kick me at the end of a mission. I also play with my guild alot.

Last night, again, it was 4 of us and two idiots. But we moved on. Even with the two idiots we had no problem getting done what we needed to. And I don't think the two idiots were that bad. They were rangers trying to lead the way into battle. (That is the Warriors job , Rangers) So we resed them after the battle. They were pissed, but they didn't help the team enough to res them out of the center of a crowd of MOBs.

My point, we were all ready to kick them and not bring them on our way. But, what they were doing really did not deserve them being kicked. They got almost no EXP and had to sit out on the fun.

Sometimes a group that is close will have higher standards than can be expected. We use teamspeak and no one wants to type anything to the people that are not on teamspeak, so they just do what they think we want. We call them idiots over teamspeak and kick them at the next outpost. If we had access to a vote kick, we would be unnecessarily kicking people.

Sure, I have finished the game storyline, but I have a new way to be. If the team leader (or Someone) doesn not keep the target calling going, I do whatever I feel like. If no one follows my targets, I give up calling them. Most of the time the group dies and I laugh at them over the chat channel. Then I leave the group and they miss out.

I agree. I've had numerous experiences like the second one (and 99% of those people who claim to be moving furniture, going to the bathroom, etc. are lying. No one joins a party and then immediately goes afk the second the mission starts.) I've suggested a kick function as well, since this type of afk abuse is worse than botting (which is explicit cheating), as it directly harms the group being leecehd off of.

OK how about this, anyone who gets kicked, gets left with henchmen in place of the party.

That way, if a group decides to kick a member at the end of the mission, that one person is not screwed out of mischief.

However, if the group notices that the one person is afk after a battle or two, they kick that person, that person has to do the entire mission/exploration with sub-par hench. I would say that the group should not get a hench to replace the one person. (This will keep some of the unnecessary kicks down.)

That person would have the same map as the group when they kick them and get to pick up any item that is reserved for them.



BTW: I right now will call myself a genious. Even though I don't know if I spelt genious right.

Just for the record: I liked cc pyros solution to the "kicked because of rare drop" problem (items go in the unclaimed items box), and agree with Inziladun that an option to kick a player who's not touched his keyboard for X minutes is good, hard to over-use, and made of chocolate.

The has not touched keyboard option is too easy to get around. A bot, hitting the forward button once every 2 min, done.

My argument is to protect the kicked, if they are kicked by a malicious guild.

I do not really want people to leave my group just because there are 6 of us from a guild and they assume that they will get kicked when they are not needed. So they, and I, if I am in that situation need some sort of protection.

Just get everyone who's actually playing to stop what they're doing, run back to the leecher, and form a circle around him dancing. Once he sees that his time is being wasted just like yours, he'll wise up.

I really do not think that people will maliciously kick people at the end of missions. There really would be no reason for it and any guild that did that would immediately become discredited and reported to Anet. I know my guild wouldn't do it, if anything we would try to recruit the person if they weren't dingbats.

Heres something else: A group can only propose to kick someone once a mission, if the motion fails, then they can't attempt to kick that peson again. This would prevent people who get mad at someone at the beginning of the mission threatening people by starting a vote kick, purposefully failing it, and then out of spite kicking them at the end of the mission.

Again, I don't see malicious kicking as being much of a problem.

Prayer to Anet: enable a votekick.

Malicious kicking won't be a problem cuz it's a vote. If you are in a party that is 3/4 dinks and 1/4 you then why the hell did you stay there so long? And are you sure that it was malicious?

Quite frankly I think its a moot point. As far as infusion goes, just because their not doesn't mean its a kickable offense, that's their personal choice whether they believe they need to be infused or not. I've seen a few people take on those missions with hench's with no infusion and still do better then a group fully infused.

As for idiots on a PUG or two idiots deal with it. I'm sorry to say but crying over how they pulled a group of mobs over doesn't help. Likely if your on a mission and he pulls em your all dead you go back to the outpost and you can boot them there, rarely do you get a second chance when the huge mob comes screaming down your throat. Secondly it seems a little childish to say "I did all the work in the game so you don't deserve a reward." It's a game people, seriously get over it, there's no use in screaming at leechers because quite frankly they know their odds of getting through some missions without participating is close to nill so they'll just keep trying the same trick. My advice? Get to know people, As many people as you can and learn to find reliable ones. If you always have a group of semi trustable friends on then you've got a better chance of not having a leecher in your group.

Just my two cents.

BTW: I hardly do PUGs I'm a Henchie kinda person.

Not if everytime they do it they get kicked from the beginning.

If you hardly do PUG's then you can't understand how frustrating it is to do a mission and have a leecher sit at the beginning the entire time getting the same credit as you do.

This is what will happen if they allow a "vote kick" :

"Oh my god, Bill look at this - this is the tenth thread about people complaining the vote kick system is a huge grief..."

Henchmen are there for a reason, use them, they are better than people more times than I care to count.

If someone goes afk at the beginning of a mission, is that hard to say: "Everyone map travel back to blah blah district 2 and we will drop this turd and pick up someone else."

Any system that gives players power will be abused.

perhaps then, insted of making a vote kick, butten, change the way xp is handed out, such as :

erick sits at the entrance;

blue hits for five;
x hits for 6;
the creature dies and drops a fur square cloth ( that is now handed out randomly to blue or x, but not erick )
and the creature is worth 56xp ( devided by 2, not 3 because erick didnt help )

this would make it so "leachers" join groups to play, not to get xp or if they need xp they need to help

How about something similar. Maybe that you have to be within a certain distance of the kill to recieve experience and drops (not too much distance, but enough to make casters happy). That way, if someone is AFK, they won't recieve rewards for just sitting there.

I would like to think that malicious kicking would not be a problem, but I know that I would be wrong.

Here is a list of what I have seen that tells me I would be wrong:

Leaving after capturing an Elite Skill
Leaving after failing to capture an Elite Skill
Forming a group in town for drake hunting, and being cursed at by those that decided to go off and try to do the mission alone and died.
Not resing till after an item has gone up for anybody and it is picked up.
Selling minor runes of vigor for 600 gold

I am drawing a little blank here, but what else can you think of?

The real question is, are you improving your group? Or are you punishing someone else?

If you do not notice that a person is not being helpful within the first couple of battles, you are being irresponsible. If a person is just a jackass and will not listen to direction, send them out with hench.

If you are the one getting booted you will want hench. If it is a real mission they will screwed, unless most of the real damage is done.

You have to look at it from all angles, not just the "holy roller I do what is right always one". There are groups out there that would do this, and just because you let someone leech on to you does not mean that we all do.

Ohh idea number two, and I have done this. Go back to town with the rest of the group that is participating and trying to have fun. Again you will have to do this early in the mission/exploration, but why not say meet at dist X and we will regroup and find a good replacement for moron A.

I'm sorry you were griefed by some immature players. These stuff happens from time to time and I think we'll just have to learn to ignore those people. Even thought some kind of vote-kick would be nice, and but when you kick a griefer 30 minutes into a mission, the damage would've been done already. You can fix all the bugs in a game but you can't fix stupid.

There already is a distance point where, after that point (too far behind rather) you stop getting experienced and items.

I tested it in one of the earlier missions. Some friends ran off and I stayed with Rurik - I got no exp. after they got about 100' away, and I could see what items were dropping, but none were ever assigned to me.

I don't think it's that kind of leeching they're really concerned about. More so, I think they're talking about missions. Where one person can sit back afk while the others complete the mission and then the afk person gets credit for it.

Anyway, yes its true I do usually travel with henchs with the rare exception of a few missions, especially the late game missions. However, I do understand your plight more then you think because of the times I do do PUGs I've been screwed once or twice by people just sitting there at the beginning (the infusion runs happened to be one of them). But I still contend that a leecher will continue to leech no matter what you do. Ran into someone like that today, the player actually followed the group but stayed far enough back that they were never in the combat nor did they attack/heal anything. But in most cases there aren't huge numbers of leechers hanging about, like theres 1 in every group or something. YOu get em every once and a while but just because you see a few bugs around your house every now and a again doesn't mean you should bug bomb your house either. Same here, there's no need for a kick button, especially when ANet should be fixing other bugs, like the AI pathing! stupid henchies!

I was unaware of that. I apologize.

I've once again come up with a solution for the problem of getting kicked at the end of the mission. Always travel with someone you know and trust, or someone that isn't a part of the guild you are travelling with. Besides what are the odds that on person gets in a group with 7 guild members, shouldn't that tip you off?

It would get abused as much, if not more, than the leaches... and yes, i've had my share of the bastards. They ruin missions and try to collect exp and items. But it would be equally annoying to go out on a mission, help the party out, and then get booted right before the end.

People are the bane of our society.

I have been in that group you speak of.

5 Champions of Nissi and someone named Immortal Titan.

We almost never spoke to him (we were on Teamspeak and did not have the access to let him in) and he followed our warrior like a second warrior should. He traveled with us for several missions in the Wilds area and left at some really late hour. While we would not have kicked him, unless he was not participating, some guilds might, and we would not get to travel with 5 friends because they would be afraid that they would get kicked.

Anyway, it happens and I like traveling with as many friends as I can, so I don't want to ruin that.

BTW: getting one more member online is a better answer, but not always possible.