Leveling and the LFG kick system

[Marxman]

In theory, "players" aren't supposed to read the "dungeon master's" book. The abilities of monsters that you haven't encountered before should be a surprise.

I accept that heroic raiding is all about reading the DMG, because these are people with the cheat code, pay to win, what can I get away with, etc, mentality.

However, the rest of the player base isn't necessarily corrupted.

In this RP scenario, you're likely playing with a group of friends, whose goal is likely purely to have fun. They probably don't mind you failing, they probably don't mind you learning as you go. Further, your failure likely has very little, if any, impact on them in the game.

In the WoW LFR/LFD scenario, you're playing with a group of strangers, whose goal is a mixed bag of "just having fun", "progressing my character", and "I just want to be done with this as fast as possible". Your success hinges on the success of the rest of the group, regardless of how good you are (ignoring 5mans for this example because I can solo them at this point). In this situation, is it not rude to assume everyone is playing for the same reasons you are?

This whole problem is partially Blizzards fault. They partner with these 3rd party websites, but then don't have any means of getting their playerbase to them, so that they can improve themselves. They provide the dungeon journal, but make it so thick and technical that only a small percentage of the players can even comprehend it, much less a new or casual player. They provide no information within the game that teaches you how to actually play your class. That's the real culprit behind a lot of the problems expressed in this thread. The other half of the problem being players who just don't give a damn about anyone else. They AFK, auto-attack bosses, don't gem or enchant anything, and expect everything handed to them.

[Normie]

Second - CHeat code? Pay to win?? What the hell are you talking about? Insisting on competent play isn't cheating, it's asking the other people to pay some fucking attention. If you want to live in your airy fairyland and pretend you're an elf that's fine but when you queue you're playing a game with other people. Respect them too - you and your attitude aren't the center of the world.

Are you saying that you think it's a problem if people who are in your heroic raiding group refuse to play on the PTR, read web sites about strategies, about stat weights, et cetera?

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expect everything handed to them.

Join 3rd party web site, spout memes.

[cFortyfive]

I don't buy into the people need access to third party sites and guides bullshit to perform better than they do. Reading tooltips, knowing what spells you are shown under specialization and applying some common sense is easily enough to push performance to a reasonable level. It just went out of fashion to actually care.

Are you saying that you think it's a problem if people who are in your heroic raiding group refuse to play on the PTR, read web sites about strategies, about stat weights, et cetera?

Obviously yes if he is with a group of people who find that relevant which not every guild doing heroic content does.

[Icaras]

Sad but true op, most people don't pay attention to who is being kicked. I'll bet the priest whole "that damn priest" and quickly started the kick. So ur party members just saw "priest" and would have clicked vote, not realizing til it was too late that it was you being voted on.

That trick fooled me once and got my sister, who I game with, kicked out. I was pretty pissed off, but it also taught me to read the text when a kick starts (And how to sometimes save myself from a kick if the party decides to make it known they want me gone for whatever reason)

[endersblade]

Your timer goes up if you vote kick often, this is a protection system agains crazy rage kids
Looks like you kicked a lot of player in the last few weeks/moths
In this case ask someone else in the group, they should have different timer
In 5 man groups after the first kick everyone gets extra time, so it takes like ages to kick a second player from the same group.

In raid groups where you get personal loot (LFR/Flex) your drop chances are changing too. There was only a shady blue post about this without any specific numbers (ofc they don't want us to know how does it work), but basicly he said if you are a naughty boy your drop chance is different.

While I'm not saying that's the case, it makes me wonder. I was in the same situation as the OP last week, I was the tank and my friend was the healer. We were just chain-running instances, we went from 22-48 in the time we played. However, we had a loooong streak of, for lack of a better name, huntards. Several of them came in with melee weapons, a few of them didn't know how to summon their pets, etc. I vote-kicked every. single. one. Almost every instance we ran for about two solid hours, I ended up initiating the vote kick and never once did I get the '2 hour' warning. It wasn't just hunters, either; I had several other people of all different classes who just tried to 'meh' through a whole instance. One 'lock actually put one of the other chars in the group on follow and tried to AFK the whole time. I caught this, and had the person he had on follow jump over holes in the ground and shit (we were in...DM east I think) and the lock fell through and died. We left him in-party to see if he ever came back, he never did. Finally booted him after we finished the run and continued on.

OP, it drives me fucking batshit crazy when that sort of thing happens, and the rest of the party doesn't give a shit. It ESPECIALLY fucking pisses me off when people just say, "It's a level X dungeon, who cares?" I FUCKING DO. Because people will continue to fall back on that lame-ass excuse all the way to 90, and then these same people are the ones who go AFK in LFR, or drag ass in 5-man heroics. It makes me want to reach through my monitor and pop their fucking heads off their shoulders.

I am extremely lenient in the groups I tank for. As long as you're actually at the keyboard, doing your job, I do not give a rat's ass if you're topping the DPS charts. As long as you are there and a contributing member of the group, playing your class how you're supposed to, I'm happy. But try to AFK in my groups, play your class stupidly (melee huntards? Really?), or in general NOT be a contributing member of the group, I will fucking boot you in a heartbeat. I don't even care if you're a newbie and this is your first experience in WoW. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, especially by level ~30 or so, how to properly play your class. And you should know better not to try to /afk /follow through an instance. Or a raid for that matter. That's just rude behavior no matter how you look at it.

I have spent the past 9 or so years (how old is WoW, anyway?) trying my damnedest to teach new people how to play, or help people who know how to play be better. I am by NO MEANS an expert player. But if I see someone who knows less than I do, I will do my best to help them. When I first started, it went from getting a 'thanks!' and possible in-game friend, to 'you're a fucking nub, I know how to play asshole' when trying to help. So not only does the playerbase seem to be getting WORSE at playing, but they're all turning into assholes to people who try to help them.

[judgementofantonidas]

This is the worst possible response ever All the slackers/afkers in lfr use it constantly. If there is no dealing with the slacking problem when leveling, if it is an acceptable thing on the forums, it simply means player mentality is not a good one. Sadly, not much can be done with it. To the OP I would suggest not to stop complaining when someone slacks/afks. Even if they kick you. If everyone starts finding slacking acceptable, eventually we will end up with a group of 5 people who afk immediately as they zone in. Not all people are like that, hopefully your next group is better.

As for the kick timers, I find them very confusing. Logged on today, did a lfr run and there was a particularly bad agility geared monk healer. When I clicked him to vote kick, it said can't be kicked for two hours... Wish I knew how the system works.

I agree with you. Policing the ranks should start at level one. Maybe that would lead to less crappy players at higher levels. The system could easily monitor whether players are even trying and give them a warning followed by an auto kick for basically being afk.

[announced]

I was leveling today, and I feel like I'm a pretty reasonable guy. I was on my resto druid alt q'ing with my tank friend to get faster ques. About halfway through the dungeon, I realized that the priest that had come as dps was in discipline spec, not healing, and casting less than half the time we were in combat.
There honestly has to be something done about this, because it takes away an entire option for me to level through content, which is completely ridiculous. Stop letting people slide through unscathed while doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the group, or blatantly trying to hinder its progress.

i agree, there should be something done about this. another situation. I was on my prot pally and i had some retarded ass mage and priest combo from the same realm and guild and i noticed only the priest was dpsing, turns out the guy was botting his priest or w/e using raf and only attacking on 1 account. i told him to either attack on both or gtfo outta my dungeon. he whined and complained and wouldnt leave, so we waited 10 mins to kick him. the healer and the other dps were cool with it so it jus goes to show u that you dont always need to put up with retards.

since you are a healer, u can get almost instant Que's anyway, just leave if the group isnt up to standards. the same applies for tanks. better yet, leave after they pull a huge mob so they wipe due to their own incompentency, then atleast you'll burn the message into them.

[judgementofantonidas]

Well, I'd rather have a disc priest than a shadow priest at that level. They do more DPS (if they don't slack, obv.). Aside from that, yes, low level dungeons suck. But I don't even bother looking at DPS in them. The tank does the most DPS anyway, since most DPS specs don't have an AOE ability (and because vengeance).



This would be the most stupid feature since the crowd chose you...

It's unbelievable how susceptible this is to grieving. If people knew you could get banned from LFD for a week if you kick someone enough, they'd kick more often.
Not to mention the fact that low geared lvl 90 players often get kicked from HC dungeons because their DPS is low, and then Blizz would be like "hey, you got kicked twice, here's a week long ban".

maybe they would learn to join groups with the proper gear then.

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QQing in a low level dungeon will get you nowhere. You can two man/solo all of that shit anyways. When you start moaning at people in low level 5 mans you just make yourself look sanctimonious and a know it all regardless of your intentions.

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I dont believe there is a reason in LFR. As it requires five people to initiate the kick, i think you just see "so and has been voted to be kicked" or something similar

that is why when i feel someone is being a detractor to the group I initiate the vote, then post that I have and include the number of votes still needed to bring it to a group vote. the player is warned, there is no whining, just simple fact. if the group chooses to kick me that is fine too I will take my 560 ilvl and instant que into another group.

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So you don't get, where I'm coming from, right after you stated how low level dungeons are tuned to be 2-3 manned? That people should just put the worst offenders on ignore and be done with it?

I don't get, what you don't get tbh. I'm just pointing out, that ignoring bad players will do nothing to solve it. You say it isn't a huge issue - according to who? Ofc that's going to be subjective but with all the LFR bashing threads where people complain about baddies, I'd dare say that bad players in general is an issue for everyone else.

I didn't say, that you were leeching for just ignoring a bad player. If that's what you got from my post, maybe I worded it wrong. But the bad player is indeed leeching and while you have a pragmatic approach to that, others simply just refuse to carry leeches. Again, we're back at the whole point of this thread - why can't we just freely kick bad/leeching players? Why are they always protected by a vote to kick shield?

the ignore list is not big enough for how many low lifes you find in LFG.

[Nobleshield]

In theory, "players" aren't supposed to read the "dungeon master's" book. The abilities of monsters that you haven't encountered before should be a surprise.

I accept that heroic raiding is all about reading the DMG, because these are people with the cheat code, pay to win, what can I get away with, etc, mentality.

However, the rest of the player base isn't necessarily corrupted.

With all due respect, this arguing apples and oranges. First, even in D&D and traditional RPGs you run into what constitutes "metagaming" i.e. knowing a monster's abilities. As an ex-D&D player myself I have often run into issues where I am told that I have to "play dumb" against a monster since it would be metagaming to pull out the acid/fire immediately when fighting a troll or bring out a bludgeoning weapon for a skeleton. That, to me, is nonsense.

Second, in general third-party research is more akin to the "Character Optimization" forums of the D&D website and not "reading the DMG". You're confusing cheating (knowing things you aren't meant to know) with min/maxing and powergaming (optimizing against what you know). Raiding in general and heroic raiding in particular is much closer to powergaming since you aren't cheating, but you are going in prepared for what you know you're up against and bring the "best" build for your role e.g. if your "concept" is "DPS" then you optimize to do the most DPS without cheating (which generally isn't possible in WoW anyways beyond actual exploits). There is no such concept as "reading the DMG" in WoW, the closest you get is outright being a powergamer (even "munchkin" doesn't exist in WoW as being a munchkin is bending the rules; it could be argued that doing a fight in a way that isn't intended, but not exploiting, is considered being a munchkin. Three-tanking Dark Shaman, for example).

[Deleted]

It's this mentality of acceptance or apathy from more "experienced" players, who recognize it's still quicker to not care and power through the dungeon, brought about by the broken Vote Kick "rules".

I'm guilty of it myself, but the Vote Kick does need to change. Have had people deliberately pull a random mob to restart the 10 minute counter so they can't be kicked...

Frustrating and it doesn't bode well for the game if new players see this as acceptable behaviour, being carried through Dungeons and LFR etc knowing they are protected.

And "experienced" players just can't be bothered trying to enforce that the person in question actually does their role appropriately, simple because they can't enforce it beyond verbally expressing their dismay! :O