November 15, 2011

Players Not Happy With the VK System in Warcraft- Others See No Problem


Surely you have been in a random dungeon (if you play World of Warcraft) and had one or two bad apples. You know, the tank that goes AFK for dinner in the middle of a dungeon; the person who does no DPS, or someone who ignores convention and wants to pull everything. When these problems occur, people can vote to kick the person from the group. Use the feature too many times though- and soon you will be on a kick timer. Blizzard's system is an elephant- and it was clearly stated on VK release that the system knows how frequently you try to kick.

The system was implemented to prevent abuse.  Well put here:

"If you're kicking people so often that you have a two hour cooldown on your Vote Kick timer then you're kicking people far to often and most likely for the wrong reasons.  Without the Vote Kick timer you'll get people kicking people for "low dps" or some other such pathetic excuse despite the fact that the person who's doing "low dps" is running the dungeon to get better gear to allow them to do better dps.  Heck you get that even with the timer.  The timer is fine as is.  If you get a troll then put up with him through the dungeon and put him on your ignore list to insure that you never get him in a group again.  If he's griefing the dungeon, a tank that just sits at the start of the dungeon instead of running it for example, then wait a few minutes, to make sure he's not going to the bathroom or something, and report him for griefing.  He'll get booted from the dungeon and you can get a new tank and it won't even count against your timer.  If you're using the Vote Kick timer for the uses its intended for then you should never have any more than a five minute cooldown."
                              
"If you get another bad player who comes in after the one kicked, ask another group member to kick them. After all, if he's being a baddie then it's likely that all members present are going to agree. You can still remove more than one player, just YOU cannot initiate the kick."

and here:

"Problem was: we were kicking to bring guildies in for last bosses, kicking because someone was going to need the same piece of gear as us, kicking because someone is in all greens / blues (you know, actually needing to do those heroics) and slowing down our rush through in T10 and finish the place as fast as possible, or kicking because they didn't stand up to our arbitrary dps minimum, even though they were doing exactly what their dps should be for their gear...

Blizzard's solution, add restrictions to the kicks for the people who abuse it, and help the people who get abused by it."




It begs the question: do excessive kickers have high standards? Often, people kick for the following reasons:

-low dps
-wiping the group
-rude people
-booting for fun
-poor play

Which reason do you think is appropriate? I believe #3- rude or antisocial people. If the run isn't going as fast as I want it to, I will leave and do something else. As for the bad players- put them on ignore so you can't get them again. Even if you don't put them on ignore, chances are small you will ever see them again. Here is an official statement from Blizzard on the matter, circa patch 3.3.5:


We have found that most players using the Dungeon Finder don’t use the Vote Kick feature or abandon groups very often. For these players, we are removing the cooldown on voting to kick players from a dungeon party. In contrast, those players who tend to kick players or abandon groups more frequently will notice that the Vote Kick feature maintains its cooldown. The goal here is to make sure players who are generally patient can make use of the Vote Kick feature when they really need it, without giving a more powerful tool to those who try to kick others or abandon dungeon groups very frequently.
This functionality will adjust itself as a player’s behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.


                     


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