Disconnects and Kicks During a Mission

Pick-Up Groups are notoriously awful -- and they don't have to be that way. There are two specific improvements I'd like to see in the next patch:

1. If a player disconnects, then they are automatically replaced by a henchmen of the same class -- inheriting the same life status (hp, energy) as the disconnected player. If a warrior drops, the replacement would be Stefan (or the brawler if Stefan was already there).

2. The leader should be able to kick any person; automatically replacing them with a henchmen of the same class as if they had disconnected.

Why?

Let's assume your probabalistic chance of getting a bad-apple is 25% and that you arn't a bad-apple; here is the consequences for groups of different sizes:

(a) For a group of 2 in pre-searing, you've got a 75% chance of getting a good group; and if you get a bad-apple, you can simply disconnect without any additional harm.

(b) For a group of 4, you have a .75*.75*.75 (3 other players), or .42% chance of having a good group; this is significantly worse than the first case, but it isn't that bad. It will take you on-average 2.2 attempts to beat a mission (assuming the good-apples always beat the mission). Also, the penalty for having a bad-apple isn't that bad, you can always /msg the other two good apples and meet-up in another district. Not great, but not horrible.

(c) For a group of 6, the pain starts to show. You now have (.75)^5 or 23% chance of getting a good PUG. That's really bad odds. Worse, reforming the group without the bad-apple is even harder. Doing a /msg to 3-4 other people to have them coordinate where to disconnect and meet-up is just too painful to be fiesable.

(d) For a group of 8, you've got a 13% chance of a good PUG, and reforming the group without the bad-apple(s) is next to impossible. So far, the number of bad apples that make it this far is probably less than 25% -- however, I think this percentage is going up. My last post-ascention PUG had 2 bad-apples.

Even without bad-apples, the coordination difficulty increases with the number of humans. Person A and B might get along, B and C might get along, but A and C fight like cats and dogs. Cooperative behavior is not transitive. So, I'd say that the chances of having a random PUG succeed in one of the ascention quests is, well, 5% or less.

Now, guilds help out immensely. If you have 1-3 guild members, communication (to re-form the group) is easy. So, you can still afford to gamble on one or two additional unknowns. However, without guild members present, your optimal bet is to stick with 1-2 unknowns plus henchmen. If I join a random PUG and they are not in the same guild (one of the first questions I ask), then I leave immediately. I've had great success being the 5th or 6th person in a group of 3-4 from another guild.

To back this up with raw imperical data, I did Elona's last night 6 times with 6 different PUGs (someone always disconnects or leaves between each run, making it harder to gauge). All of them failed; almost directly due to one or more bad-apples:

1. we had a wa/mo who thought he was god and kept aggregating two groups at once; why? he was just impatient and wouldn't listen, even after being asked to "wait, hold up, take your time; attack the moving groups first".
2. we had a monk who thought he was a tank; need I say more?
3. we had a ne/wa who ran off; we almost finished this one though since he died and disconnected -- so the bad-apple was gone and couldn't make things worse for us
4. see #1 (main problem with PUGs is wa/mo being a super-hero); only
that this fella was even worse, he ran _out_ of AOEs. We died so fast.
5. see #2 (do you see a pattern here?), only we also had a bad necromancer -- two bad apples in one group == certain failure.
6. this time it was a ranger being the wacko, plus our healer went afk in an area where wandering monsters were coming back (the minotaurs)

If the leader of the group had the ability to simply disconnect the bad apples and replace them with a henchmen it would make things much more pleasent for all. The other thing that it would do is allow good-apples who disagree to have an amicable separation. Having the 'kick' option also gives some authority to the leader, having responsibility of guiding the group (via concensus when possible) without the back-up ability to "fire" a bad-worker is a serious problem in any endeavor.

So the question here is abuse. When you kick someone from a group, a dialogue should pop-up and you should have to type in the reason. The list of reasons why you've kicked someone should be public.

P.S. While they are at it, when you map-travel to a town, and you were recently there, it should take you to the same district you were in. Otherwise, if you were not recently there, it should take you to a district where other guild members are.

I agree with the replacement of a DC'd player. This is one reason I try to stay out of groups cos I have had this game crash on me. Nothing would be more annoying to my group to have me dissapear suddenly.

I don't like being a liability. Good suggestion.

Well, consdering some of these missions can take upwards of a hour, I'd agree.

Its a major pain to be nearly through a mission and suddenly lose a key player. Or even to be disconnected yourself.

I'd even suggest offering a way to reconnect. Say..have your character tagged as being in the mission. If you are disconnected, allow for a 3-5 minute window to renter the mission.

you'd have to already have been in the mission in order to rejoin, thus avoiding exploits of people hopping in near completion. And if 5 minutes is too long, knock it down to 2-3, enough time so that if you have a hard crash, you can reboot and get back in.

Because nothing really sucks more than getting to the end of a difficult mission and being disconnected right before its completed. Or having one bad apple ruin the whole mission for everyone else.

This should be ANETs #1 priority IMHO.

Guild matches, Mission completions, PVP in general, should not be decided by who has the most stable connection.

We had this happen last night right at the end of the Frost Gate mission. Our Monk lost connection. It wasn't too bad for us (only one person died after that), but I really felt for the monk player.

I have to wonder what someone is playing online games for if their connection is unstable. I mean sure this is an issue as there are odd times where you connection just gays up on you for no apparent reason, but yeah... O_o

I'm not saying this idea shouldn't be implemented either.

Edit: Actually, what I'd really like to see is if a player is really griefing the team, the team can put a vote to the player and that player is kicked from the team, still in the instance but is now veiwed as an enemy or mob to everyone. Let the ass kicking commence.

I get disconnected about 2 times a day from my wireless connection for about as long as it takes for my neighbor to blow-dry her hair. She takes two baths a day, one before she goes out (mid-afternoon) and one before she goes to sleep (about 11pm). Why she blow-drys her hair before she goes to sleep, I don't know. Anyway, the blow dryer is from the 40's (she is in her late 80's) and it creates so much electronic interference that nothing works. Nothing. It also sends wild spikes and brown-outs through all of my electronics -- I had to invest in a $300 surge/brown-out protector and 5 minute backup (if she happens to be microwaving something at the same time).

It's nothing to do with my internet connection. Web pages and my sister's internet stay up. It's the game giving me errors. I don't think an unstable game should prevent me from enjoying games. I don't think there's many out there who try to keep it from disrupting everyone ELSES game.
At least I try to keep it my own problem.

Yes, Henchman replacement of dropped players sounds excelent. This has already been implemented in PvP, so it shouldn't be too hard to implement in PvE either, even if you have to wait until you change zone.

As to kicking players, I think a voting system sounds like a great idea!

I would agree that people should be replaced with a hench in PVE. Losing a monk at a bad time is the worst, especially when it is a long/hard/boring mission or quest...

Another thing that might help with this same problem is if they introduced some sort of stat's counter...like PVP
How many times you left a party before the mission ended, how many times you have tried the mission at hand, etc. I think that this would help good groups form and weed out the mean people trying to just ruin the game for everyone....

But that is a topic for another thread i guess....

I'd be leader then kick everyone right at the end.

This has got to be the best idea I've ever heard, except for that knucklehead above me. You KNOW that's going to happen. You just replace one jerk off with a leader jerk off.

Restrictions to kicking someone- Everyone in party needs to vote Yes, all items dropped for that player being kicked be sent back with him like at the end of a mission.

Unless he's a Wa/Mo, then it's a instant kick from leader =p

I agree with the peron above me, cause you know if something good drops there gonna wanna kick him do fast and run for it, so as long as they can fix that, its all good. An a voting should occur for someone to leave, the dc hell yea they need to be replaced with a hench at least.

does that include W/Mo Axe Mastery/ Smite? opr just Sword/Heals?

I was proving a point, and you've gone straight away to flaming. Tch, so easily aroused, it's what I expect from most GW players.

Seriously, I think characters should be replaced with normal henchmen that best matches the person who left and is still available. This way people couldn't just go in somewhere and pay people to come in and leave for their henchmen after-life.

Boy IxChel, your "imperical evidence" is certainly not the experience I've had. 25% per person added is a bit too ambitious there. I do a lot of PuGs and they're not that bad. In a group of 8 you'll get a bad apple or two roughly 30% of the time, I'd say. Most of the PuGs I join succeed in their mission.

As for the kick proposal, that has definately been suggested before, and very recently too. In fact, the kick proposal suggested in this thread is pretty solid and well worked-out.

But your idea to swap in henchies is certainly a good one. I think that may have been suggested before too, but why not bring it up for discussion again? I think it should be optional though. Various reasons.

• People don't always play with a full group (i.e. trapper teams in UW).
  
• Sometimes getting rid of a player makes the quest or mission easier simply because it's one less person for the monks to protect / heal. I know when I play my protection monk, I prefer smaller teams and it only gets easier as people drop. Whereas I'm normally maintaining 8 enchantments, now I find myself maintaining 6, and keeping everyone alive becomes easier.
  
• Henchies may end up being utterly desasterous for the strategy you're using at the time. It's harder to pull mobs when you have henchies. Also, sometimes you need to spread your damage among several enemies rather than focusing on just one, so that the enemy healer runs out of mana. You can't do that with henchies.
  
• Henchies will not always be a suitable substitute. The ranger trapping group is a good example. The ranger henchie would be a waste.

I think what should happen when someone drops is their greyed out name will have the green arrow beside it, and if the leader clicks on it, a henchie pops in.

I also agree with the replacement D/ced player.

Ash.

Replacement is a good idea, even Re-connecting like you do in WoW (one of the few things I actually like about that game.........) would be really nice.

The whole kicking thing is just a "abuse of a system" waiting to happen. Even if Anet makes a voting kick system, getting everyone to say yes will hardly ever happen unless the guy is near the TOTAL bottom of sucking, which few people are.