If a friend has joined your game, how do you kick them out? We have plans for a kick system, but it won’t make it for ship. We think it’s more important to wait and see how people are playing the game with each other before giving tools that could potentially be more useful for griefing than their actual intent.
A system to kick people out of a game was originally thought of to deal with griefers and hackers. Basically, if people who just want to have fun with other people are being bothered, they could all stand together and do something about that.
The problem is, a kicking system is a coin with 2 sides.
On one hand you can use it to kick people who are afking on your game (I've seen some of this in the beta). The person joins the game, stays in New Tristram and gains a ton of experience and gold from the party finishing quests. That is pretty bad imho. You cannot do anything about this, except leave and start a new game. Currently I'm not 100% positive whether monster difficulty is increased by this behaviour.
* You can also use it to kick botters (should they ever appear) and even someone who's just watching you kill stuff (collecting the loot) and trash-talking - essentially not playing with the party, just having laughs at the others.
The other side of the coin is that friends could use the system for griefing. 3 friends could continuously join games (or create them) and just kick someone out of the game right before reaching a boss' door/event, or right when they encounter a rare monster (that will drop good loot). Apparently, some people find that amusing and have a reason to laugh at that (probably the same people who liked PKing guys 50 lvls below them in D2).
Blizzard is apparently more worried with the griefing that might come from the 2nd option, which is likely why they didn't implement the kick system for release.
Which is these 2 is the lesser evil? Which one can be easily solveable? Would it be better to have a kick system at release or wait for it like Blizzard did?
Of course I am all for kicking. When I open up my game for public that doesn't mean I want douches in it that don't help with progression or are afk for 1+ hour.
It needs to be done perfectly to avoid abuse like the WoW system suffers from. Three people from the same group can team up and kick someone just for funsies.
If done correctly it would be a great aid to counter people who just wanna troll, grief, or otherwise not contribute.
I think Blizzard is erring on the correct side of this issue. If someone is afking or being a jerk, you can leave and reform. If people abuse an overly simplistic kick system, there really isn't anything you can do. A better system might be to let people flag problem users and if enough people flag someone, they would come up for moderation by Blizzard.
Edit: Didn't vote because this really depends on the implementation for me.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
I think Blizzard is erring on the correct side of this issue. If someone is afking or being a jerk, you can leave and reform. If people abuse an overly simplistic kick system, there really isn't anything you can do. A better system might be to let people flag problem users and if enough people flag someone, they would come up for moderation by Blizzard.
Edit: Didn't vote because this really depends on the implementation for me.
That's a good idea, the flagging system. It's like the system Riot has in place for League of Legends. But having to leave a game and reform just because one person is being a jerk is unacceptable to me.
To me, having to have three people abandon ship just because of one guy means that the griefer wins. If the griefer wins, he'll keep griefing. You need to stop them early on, and punish them heavily enough early on, that they either stop doing it and play normally or just stop playing period.
Not to mention that you'd lose all progress that you had up from the last quest start. That's a big deal if you just got done doing something really challenging or time consuming.
They should allow kicking but whenever they kick somebody they should just clone a game for him (even if it was to not allow to form a party) so he/her can finish game himself and grief that he was kicked just before the last boss or whatever.
kick systems usually lead to the mentality that some people are not "worth it" to have in your game , to join a random game to then get kicked cause you weren't geared enough or the right class will be more common then people think.
afking people and others won't be so common that it warrant's a kick system , the flagging system seems infinitely better and you could leave some comments about them to blizzard.
although i think that blizzard won't put the system in if its not really warranted , it would be a sad day for the casual join and have some fun mentality in the game
That's a good idea, the flagging system. It's like the system Riot has in place for League of Legends. But having to leave a game and reform just because one person is being a jerk is unacceptable to me.
To me, having to have three people abandon ship just because of one guy means that the griefer wins. If the griefer wins, he'll keep griefing. You need to stop them early on, and punish them heavily enough early on, that they either stop doing it and play normally or just stop playing period.
Not to mention that you'd lose all progress that you had up from the last quest start. That's a big deal if you just got done doing something really challenging or time consuming.
I don't disagree, it's just a "lesser of two evils" thing. The flagging idea probably won't work along side a kick system because most people would flag anyone who kicked them and that would be self defeating. A kicking system is fine as long as you can keep it from being used for griefing, but that's easier said than done. Also, keep in mind that if you get kicked right before you hit a boss by a group of griefers, you also lose all progress, so that's not really an argument for or against in my opinion.
They should allow kicking but whenever they kick somebody they should just clone a game for him (even if it was to not allow to form a party) so he/her can finish game himself and grief that he was kicked just before the last boss or whatever.
This sounds like a reasonable idea. My only concern here is people kicking others for abitrary reasons such as barb-only, you don't have enough magic-find, etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
On one hand you can use it to kick people who are afking on your game (I've seen some of this in the beta). The person joins the game, stays in New Tristram and gains a ton of experience and gold from the party finishing quests. That is pretty bad imho. You cannot do anything about this, except leave and start a new game. Currently I'm not 100% positive whether monster difficulty is increased by this behaviour.
I have had this happen in nearly every public game I make/join. It actually encouraged me to stop playing public games altogether.
Two people would be out fighting the minions of hell and one or two would be either afk in Tristram or running around in an area we had already cleared for no reason (like Old Tristram Road when we were in the Defiled Crypts). They would wait until an event was triggered, port in for the event and stand in the corner still doing nothing.
This behavior makes for a poor co-op experience.
Adding someone to my friends list just to leave and reform the game doesn't sound particularly appealing to me, so a kick option would be helpful.
They should allow kicking but whenever they kick somebody they should just clone a game for him (even if it was to not allow to form a party) so he/her can finish game himself and grief that he was kicked just before the last boss or whatever.
This sounds like a reasonable idea. My only concern here is people kicking others for abitrary reasons such as barb-only, you don't have enough magic-find, etc.
They should allow whomever was kicked to mark kickers It may easily let him not to try to join game with guys who kicked him before on board. So at some point kicked person may finally find somebody he like to play with and kickers could be in same much trouble with blizzard as kicked ones.
Personally I haven't got much problem with it in WoW unless I was completely lazy and didn't do anything or fucked up the raid party badly and to many times in the row
They should allow kicking but whenever they kick somebody they should just clone a game for him (even if it was to not allow to form a party) so he/her can finish game himself and grief that he was kicked just before the last boss or whatever.
I like this. Some people kick for the dumbest reasons. Maybe I got kicked just because the other 3 people thought it would be funny, at least now I don't lose all that progress, and now that you are in a private game you could just open it back up to public and get a new group of people, where an afker or griefer would still be sitting in town with no one and they wouldn't be able to grief anyone.
Cant really remember a situation in D2 where i felt a kick system was needed. Aside from PKs of course.
For people who compare it with WoW: There are a few things in that i think it is not needed as much in D3:
1. All gear is possible to obtain on your own. This does not force people together to obtain items to improve your character simply because it is the only way. This helps a lot with the morale of the group. You are not forced to be here and does not "have" to do this.
2. There is no queue system. If people are being horrible and/or jerks you can leave and join another game directly without a penalty.
3. AH allows a full alternative to gear progression rather then hunting for drops yourself.
Diablo II and Diablo 3 really aren't comparable. In diablo 3 you can just join a game, sit safely in town, and receive experience from the other members no matter where they are. In diablo II you had to be quite close to the monsters to get any experience. And I don't know how you think gear even relates to the problem. Without a kicking system you will see a large number of griefers once people start leveling their second or third characters and don't feel like doing the work themselves. This is because there is no penalty for doing so. At least with a kicking system you can control it a little bit. I shouldn't have to leave a game and completely redo what I was doing because another player doesn't feel like contributing. Nor should I have to play solo if I don't want to.
Cant really remember a situation in D2 where i felt a kick system was needed. Aside from PKs of course.
For people who compare it with WoW: There are a few things in that i think it is not needed as much in D3:
1. All gear is possible to obtain on your own. This does not force people together to obtain items to improve your character simply because it is the only way. This helps a lot with the morale of the group. You are not forced to be here and does not "have" to do this.
2. There is no queue system. If people are being horrible and/or jerks you can leave and join another game directly without a penalty.
3. AH allows a full alternative to gear progression rather then hunting for drops yourself.
Diablo II and Diablo 3 really aren't comparable. In diablo 3 you can just join a game, sit safely in town, and receive experience from the other members no matter where they are. In diablo II you had to be quite close to the monsters to get any experience. And I don't know how you think gear even relates to the problem. Without a kicking system you will see a large number of griefers once people start leveling their second or third characters and don't feel like doing the work themselves. This is because there is no penalty for doing so. At least with a kicking system you can control it a little bit. I shouldn't have to leave a game and completely redo what I was doing because another player doesn't feel like contributing. Nor should I have to play solo if I don't want to.
Just to avoid confusion: you don't actually get monster xp from sitting in town. You do get quest experience. You need to be out there, in a relatively close proximity to the dying monster to be eligible for loot and xp.
Thats an interesting way to see it. Should others be forced to play with you by that logic?
Lol I'm not sure what you mean by this. If I join a public game that means that I want to play with other players, not people who refuse to contribute whatsoever. I never said others should be forced to play with me. You're argument was that if I want gear then I can go solo because I don't have to play as a group. My argument is that I shouldn't be forced to play solo to avoid griefers.
1. All gear is possible to obtain on your own. This does not force people together to obtain items to improve your character simply because it is the only way. This helps a lot with the morale of the group. You are not forced to be here and does not "have" to do this.
left 4 dead 1 and 2 both suffer from excessive use of the kick system. If you detract slightly from the said path you're supposed to take through an area, or are using the wrong weapon loadout for a certain encounter, you can instantly get kicked. Needless to say, if you fuck up even in the slightest, most times you'll be mocked and kicked from that game just because people totally abuse the kick system in that game.
WoW's is a little better, but still suffers from issues where someone will say "afk bio break, brb 1 min" and people will laugh and kick the person. So the kick system is not without it's downsides. What would be nice is if maybe only the game creator had the ability to kick so that if you open your game up, you have say on who stays and who goes. I know for most normal people this wont become an issue, but there's abuses to almost every system out there so...
Stupid double-edged sword why can't things be simpler?
Well, as I've said in the original post, the reason Blizzard went with the "let's see how it turns out" call is because group griefing would absolutely ruin the experience for players who already have nobody to play with. To the point where these people would give up on coop altogether (which is kind of the core Diablo experience - a ton of fun for me at least).
Sure, people afking is an issue, but someone could be afking for a number of reasons, and you aren't really 100% angry at them, you're just annoyed by them being in a public game, occupying a slot while doing nothing (this would be a major issue in my opinion in the harder difficulties, which might be why they're holding back on this feature).
I adore kicking, but it won't make it at launch :/ Darn it with this game, if only they took their time making it... It's not like it's been 6-7 years since they started it!
I don't think they haven't made it (or have no time for it), they're just deciding to hold back on it. It's probably already done (code-wise).
I have had this happen in nearly every public game I make/join. It actually encouraged me to stop playing public games altogether.
Two people would be out fighting the minions of hell and one or two would be either afk in Tristram or running around in an area we had already cleared for no reason (like Old Tristram Road when we were in the Defiled Crypts). They would wait until an event was triggered, port in for the event and stand in the corner still doing nothing.
This behavior makes for a poor co-op experience.
Precisely. And from what I've seen on a pool made by another user, quite a big part of the playerbase intends on trying out public games when their friends aren't around.
Another interesting point. If everybody notices that they can join games and get a bunch of experience and gold from others doing quests, we can suddenly end up with a ton of people having "perma-join" bots/macros on their computer, and use it whenever they can't play. Sure it might seem a very minor issue, but it won't be if 50% of the players do it.
I don't wanna join 4-5 games in a row with afkers, and the only option left for me is leave the game and try joining another yet again. Might as well play by myself (which I'm sure they don't want people doing).
In the end, after seeing some other arguments here, I believe the majority of the playerbase would want a "kick feature", because most of us are good guys, and not griefers. And if it ever goes out of control (aka, it's used more for griefing itself than to solve griefing) they could just remove it back.
For the few occasions where it might be used for griefing: arbitrary kicking without even talking to the person, kicking because of class / loadout / playstyle / being new to the game, kicking as a group of friends right before a big event / boss / rare monster, to me a very clear solution would be let people know that whoever does that and is reported risks being banned from anywhere between a week (for first offenders, etc.) to a month or 2 (to repeated offenders). To me that's very very reasonable and reporting players is a feature already in the game (so it wouldn't be a big issue).
The abuse thing is hugely overblown. I played WoW for a few years and did daily heroics every day. I've never been kicked from a group (unless I lost connection). If you're good, you have nothing to worry about.
Also, D3 loot system is a lot different than WoW. Most of the WoW abuses were for reasons of loot, I.E. kick someone before a boss that drops loot you want.
Problem with kicking is that in some situations you have 3 friends playing and you join thier game, when a 4th friend comes online they can just kick you from the game to get their friend in the game.
But a kick option with 3 votes needed would probably be better then no kick option at all.
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Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We have plans for a kick system, but it won’t make it for ship. We think it’s more important to wait and see how people are playing the game with each other before giving tools that could potentially be more useful for griefing than their actual intent.
A system to kick people out of a game was originally thought of to deal with griefers and hackers. Basically, if people who just want to have fun with other people are being bothered, they could all stand together and do something about that.
The problem is, a kicking system is a coin with 2 sides.
Blizzard is apparently more worried with the griefing that might come from the 2nd option, which is likely why they didn't implement the kick system for release.
Which is these 2 is the lesser evil? Which one can be easily solveable? Would it be better to have a kick system at release or wait for it like Blizzard did?
Of course I am all for kicking. When I open up my game for public that doesn't mean I want douches in it that don't help with progression or are afk for 1+ hour.
Yes kick.
Ha. Bagstone.
If done correctly it would be a great aid to counter people who just wanna troll, grief, or otherwise not contribute.
Edit: Didn't vote because this really depends on the implementation for me.
To me, having to have three people abandon ship just because of one guy means that the griefer wins. If the griefer wins, he'll keep griefing. You need to stop them early on, and punish them heavily enough early on, that they either stop doing it and play normally or just stop playing period.
Not to mention that you'd lose all progress that you had up from the last quest start. That's a big deal if you just got done doing something really challenging or time consuming.
afking people and others won't be so common that it warrant's a kick system , the flagging system seems infinitely better and you could leave some comments about them to blizzard.
although i think that blizzard won't put the system in if its not really warranted , it would be a sad day for the casual join and have some fun mentality in the game
I don't disagree, it's just a "lesser of two evils" thing. The flagging idea probably won't work along side a kick system because most people would flag anyone who kicked them and that would be self defeating. A kicking system is fine as long as you can keep it from being used for griefing, but that's easier said than done. Also, keep in mind that if you get kicked right before you hit a boss by a group of griefers, you also lose all progress, so that's not really an argument for or against in my opinion.
This sounds like a reasonable idea. My only concern here is people kicking others for abitrary reasons such as barb-only, you don't have enough magic-find, etc.
I have had this happen in nearly every public game I make/join. It actually encouraged me to stop playing public games altogether.
Two people would be out fighting the minions of hell and one or two would be either afk in Tristram or running around in an area we had already cleared for no reason (like Old Tristram Road when we were in the Defiled Crypts). They would wait until an event was triggered, port in for the event and stand in the corner still doing nothing.
This behavior makes for a poor co-op experience.
Adding someone to my friends list just to leave and reform the game doesn't sound particularly appealing to me, so a kick option would be helpful.
They should allow whomever was kicked to mark kickers It may easily let him not to try to join game with guys who kicked him before on board. So at some point kicked person may finally find somebody he like to play with and kickers could be in same much trouble with blizzard as kicked ones.
Personally I haven't got much problem with it in WoW unless I was completely lazy and didn't do anything or fucked up the raid party badly and to many times in the row
I like this. Some people kick for the dumbest reasons. Maybe I got kicked just because the other 3 people thought it would be funny, at least now I don't lose all that progress, and now that you are in a private game you could just open it back up to public and get a new group of people, where an afker or griefer would still be sitting in town with no one and they wouldn't be able to grief anyone.
Lol I'm not sure what you mean by this. If I join a public game that means that I want to play with other players, not people who refuse to contribute whatsoever. I never said others should be forced to play with me. You're argument was that if I want gear then I can go solo because I don't have to play as a group. My argument is that I shouldn't be forced to play solo to avoid griefers.
WoW's is a little better, but still suffers from issues where someone will say "afk bio break, brb 1 min" and people will laugh and kick the person. So the kick system is not without it's downsides. What would be nice is if maybe only the game creator had the ability to kick so that if you open your game up, you have say on who stays and who goes. I know for most normal people this wont become an issue, but there's abuses to almost every system out there so...
Well, as I've said in the original post, the reason Blizzard went with the "let's see how it turns out" call is because group griefing would absolutely ruin the experience for players who already have nobody to play with. To the point where these people would give up on coop altogether (which is kind of the core Diablo experience - a ton of fun for me at least).
Sure, people afking is an issue, but someone could be afking for a number of reasons, and you aren't really 100% angry at them, you're just annoyed by them being in a public game, occupying a slot while doing nothing (this would be a major issue in my opinion in the harder difficulties, which might be why they're holding back on this feature).
I don't think they haven't made it (or have no time for it), they're just deciding to hold back on it. It's probably already done (code-wise).
Precisely. And from what I've seen on a pool made by another user, quite a big part of the playerbase intends on trying out public games when their friends aren't around.
Another interesting point. If everybody notices that they can join games and get a bunch of experience and gold from others doing quests, we can suddenly end up with a ton of people having "perma-join" bots/macros on their computer, and use it whenever they can't play. Sure it might seem a very minor issue, but it won't be if 50% of the players do it.
I don't wanna join 4-5 games in a row with afkers, and the only option left for me is leave the game and try joining another yet again. Might as well play by myself (which I'm sure they don't want people doing).
In the end, after seeing some other arguments here, I believe the majority of the playerbase would want a "kick feature", because most of us are good guys, and not griefers. And if it ever goes out of control (aka, it's used more for griefing itself than to solve griefing) they could just remove it back.
For the few occasions where it might be used for griefing: arbitrary kicking without even talking to the person, kicking because of class / loadout / playstyle / being new to the game, kicking as a group of friends right before a big event / boss / rare monster, to me a very clear solution would be let people know that whoever does that and is reported risks being banned from anywhere between a week (for first offenders, etc.) to a month or 2 (to repeated offenders). To me that's very very reasonable and reporting players is a feature already in the game (so it wouldn't be a big issue).
Thoughts?
The abuse thing is hugely overblown. I played WoW for a few years and did daily heroics every day. I've never been kicked from a group (unless I lost connection). If you're good, you have nothing to worry about.
Also, D3 loot system is a lot different than WoW. Most of the WoW abuses were for reasons of loot, I.E. kick someone before a boss that drops loot you want.
But a kick option with 3 votes needed would probably be better then no kick option at all.