Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsPatch 3.3.5: Changes to vote kick incoming
by Alex Ziebart 
Jun 1st 2010 at 10:40PM
Zarhym hit the forums earlier this evening to announce a change coming to the dungeon finder in the upcoming Patch 3.3.5. For those who behave themselves, the cooldown for starting a vote to kick a player from your party will be removed. For those who kick players out of those parties more frequently, the cooldown will remain. The quote:
ZarhymWe 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.
This functionality will adjust itself as a player's behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.
You might remember that they started tracking this sort of information as of patch 3.3.3. They have been tracking the number of times you kick, the number of times you are kicked, how often you've abandoned a party and a few other things. While this change is a new one, they have been collecting the data for some time. There's a Santa Claus is Coming to Town parody somewhere in here, but I'm not musical enough to pull it off. Help us out?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items
Reader Comments (Page 9 of 9)
Imagene Jun 2nd 2010 2:43PM
lol, this has more turned into horror stories! I love it!!!
I'm leveling my 2nd priest, this time she'll be holy. Haven't healed with my SP since vanilla and I sure don't want to start learning how to again at 80... I'm special, sorry!!! but I'm also an xp fanatic. ANYWAY. I use rankwatch, should turn it off, but w/e... it was for my mage that I flopped between specs and the bars didn't update... so we get into Gnomeregan & I've got this shaman in there. (I hope he/she/it's reading!!!) and it's got like 6 points in resto and no others anywhere else... It was my 3rd group with all of the people cept the shaman, and had a great tank, we were pretty good to roll. So yea - 6 points in resto, got BoA gear....in it's 30's healing right alongside me. It's frustrating to me, cuz I'm sitting here looking at all the downranked spells, and question it's mana spring totem (oh, don't have that. I probably need to train, I haven't in a while) and ask it to please dps since I was assigned the healer and it was wasting my mana. It wouldn't stop, accused me of not doing anything, which I was... accused me of letting the tank "almost" die because I went afk, when I was OOM and he wasn't that close to death, telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about... was horrid! Yet we couldn't kick him. None of us could. My main main is a resto shaman and it drives me nuts to see the class/spec abused, and I start to itch a lot, so I told the rest of the group that I was sorry, was great running with them, but I was going to have to quit. But we couldn't kick it! WHY! Cuz we hadn't been in the dungeon long enough, wasn't a long enough period of time.
I only kick those that are mentally impaired (like the shaman...), ninja's (like....SO many leveling characters are), dps that pull thinking they're the tanks, (though usually I let them die and won't rez them lol), and those that are in ICC heroic instances that simply can't get the job done. That means a tank really - with horrid gear and no skill. You can have skill and horrid gear and still manage, and if I'm on either my shaman or druid, it's just cake to heal regardless.
So yea - there's stuff that needs to change, but there's also stuff that I don't see them changing. Sometimes there's a total need to kick those and you get the stupid reasons for not being able to. I also hate when someone gets kicked that didn't do anything to deserve it! And if 3 of the 4 vote to kick, my vote of no goes by the wayside. :(
Steve Jun 2nd 2010 2:43PM
I don't know, I use Vote Kick a lot...but not like how some morons do. I only use it when we have truly bad players...which happens alot. I wish WoW.com could post something about what NOT to do in a random group...or perhaps they already have. A few of the things I'm thinking about include: Mistakes tanks make, DPS pulling...crap like that.
jfofla Jun 3rd 2010 4:09PM
And you don't even realize this change is targeting EJs like you.
Dere Jun 2nd 2010 2:55PM
Ah Ulurjah the snob tank who thinks the world revolves around "their group." Dude loot is loot everyone who could use it is entitled to roll for it. Like the guy above said you should have pugged from your own server with loot exclusions being said at the start of the group, not used the LFD to find you a healer then proceed to tell him that the loot he wants he can't get because you will all roll against him....if i was that healer i wouldn't have healed you either. Learn to not be an ass then come back and let everyone know about your adventures.
thegatherer Jun 2nd 2010 3:10PM
Speaking of vote-kicking people...
Would it be wrong to annouce when I zone into a random that I will vote kick anyone who tries to troll the rest of the group especially the healz or tank?
I have been in too many groups where some jackass dps has irritated the healz/tank into leaving...then they drop group, as if to say "I have accomplished something, my job here is done."
I have had a few too many groups like this.
Honestly, is it too much to expect a drama free run?
MisterRik Jun 2nd 2010 3:29PM
I've only initiated/attempted to initiate a small handful of vote-to-kicks, but I've never even seen where I'm supposed to enter the reason. Then again, something might be messing with my vote-kick feature, because every time I've tried it appears that the vote failed (that is, the person didn't get kicked), only to have somebody else initiate a vote-kick on the same player.
That said, there have only been a few instances where I've really wanted to boot somebody:
1) By all that's holy, if I encounter one more griefing tank who goes AFK in CoS while the timer on the drake-dropping boss runs down ... GAAAAH! I mean, sure, I've already got the Bronze Drake on two of my three 80s, but I generally assume that any random party I'm in is going to include at least one person who doesn't have it yet, so I want to get to that boss for their benefit. I've been in there countless times, but only twice have I seen *everybody* pass on the drake. My most recent run was on my third 80, and it was her first time and so she didn't have the drake ... and the tank just sat down after Meathook and wouldn't move. By the time we were able to kick him and get a new tank, the timer was down to like 2 minutes. And even if nobody needs the drake, hey, Triumph badge.
2) The 6000+ GS boomkin in H:UP who kept blasting away with Moonfire the instant the tank would pull, and then bitched nonstop because the sub-4000 GS tank couldn't hold aggro through that. And making fun of everybody else's DPS - good grief, what kind of DPS can my fresh 80 pally do when she can't get in more than one hit before the boomkin incinerates everything? We all laughed when the healer "accidentally" forgot to heal the boomkin and he died (the only death on the entire run). Yeah, buddy, it's not all about you.
3) The male draenei who kept up a steady stream of /laugh and /silly emotes all the way through an instance, interspersed with making fun of the tank's gear.
4) People in HoR who, despite being told over and over and over, just don't understand "Kill the priest first!"
Meatwadz Jun 2nd 2010 3:43PM
I want to briefly share a LFD horror story that happened just last night. This was the most disgusting display of egotism I have ever come across in my 4 years of WoW. I have grown accustom to afk dps, bubble-hearthing tanks, enhancement shaman healers, and general douchebaggery since the inception of the new system but this guy takes the cake. His name is on the tip of my tongue.. I only wish I could remember. He was a druid tank in Heroic VH.
My paladin friend queued as healer. He is building his holy set (5200gs so it is plenty for VH) and, much to the tank's dismay, did not yet have a metagem in his helm. Just as the event begins, the tank inspects the healer (no need to one would assume as he had nearly 35k mana) and tears into him for being a "scrub" and an "underachiever." If this were ICC I would understand but it is H VH and it was simply unnecessary. Thats not the bad part though... during all the pulls he kept linking healing meters and calling my friend a scrub and going off about his ICC resto gear and how my friend should l2play, etc. I can assure you that heals were right on par, nobody dipped below 98% hp the entire run.
And then, as if to prove some kind of point ... right after the first boss goes down our TANK switches to his resto spec, puts on his beloved ICC resto gear and begins to have a 1 man heal-off to prove he can "heal better" than my friend. Our group wipes on the next pull due to having NO TANK. We had to restart from scratch AND wait for the 15 minute mark to kick the guy.
I don't mean to hijack this thread... I just want to emphasize that this is a long-needed change that the community has been BEGGING for and I am happy to see it come.
babysnakey Jun 3rd 2010 2:28AM
Personally I think a reason needs to be put in the "reason" section for vote kicking and the penalty for using it too much be assessed on that reason. Whilst there are plenty of people who just tag along on the heroic for the emblems, there are also many out there who are busting their hump to do the best they can, yet still get kicked for reasons such as "your dps isn't high enough", "your gearscore isn't high enough", etc. I recently levelled a priest to level 80, and have been kicked from heroics twice for not performing to the standard required by some elitist jerk. This coming after explaining to those concerned right at the start of the run that I'm new to level 80 and am running the heroics for the experience, practice and to try to gear up. Once you are kicked, you generally have no recourse...you're often then locked out of a run where you may have been trying for specific gear drops, and left feeling inadequate when all you're trying to do is improve and maybe even learn from others. This character is an alt, by the way, so I'm fully aware of the pitfalls of running heroics with well geared people and those new to the level.
If someone is being rude and basically a complete jerk, I will start by having a quiet word with them asking that they just settle down. I have never started a vote to kick thing, and prefer that people show more tolerance and patience in general. I must admit, there have been times when I've felt like doing it, but I figure everyone needs to learn somewhere. I stayed with a pug group (on my main) doing heroic FoS one night where we wiped 6 times on the final boss, offering encouragement and support to a new tank and a new healer, neither of whom I knew, and in the end we completed the run and they did it well. The horror stories they told of being kicked from groups and wondering how they were supposed to learn when this is happening all the time, were really quite astounding.
All I ask is those who have been at the top of their game for quite some time, just try to remember what it was like for you when you first got to level 80 and were trying to gear up and improve your characters...have a little patience, understanding and compassion. For those who are after a "lazy" run to get emblems, please think about what you're doing and be fair to the rest of the group. In regards to the comment further up about the hunter going into a heroic with no arrows...well, let's just say as someone whose main is a hunter, I am absolutely gobsmacked and can definitely understand people wanting to kick him/her from the group.
dick Jun 3rd 2010 7:57AM
I hope they add some feature that you also get a debuff for not being there to accept when the group has assembled.
Lately I get a lot of frustration when the popup comes up telling that the group is assembled and just have to click to go. Lately every single time there's always one or two people not accepting within the allotted 30 secs or declining at that moment. The last even happens with tanks? Why would you decline, you have like a 2 sec queue time, what changed in those two seconds that makes you decline? So I'm all in favour of giving people that are AFK or declining the invite a 30 min debuff too.
Holdar Jun 3rd 2010 8:16AM
My current pet hate as a tank: Boomkin that insist on using Typhoon just as I try to round up a group of mobs.
jfofla Jun 3rd 2010 4:05PM
Bravo Blizzard!
I have never, and I mean never voted yes on a votekick.
Why? Because there are only two reasons to EVER votekick somebody.
1. They have been offline more than five minutes
2. They have been AFK for more than five minutes.
That is it, period.
DizzyG Jun 3rd 2010 7:09PM
For all the elite-tards out there who kick ppl fresh to 80 and wishing to gear up/train/get emblems because they're not high GS enough for you, I have but one thing to say.
I am *ignoring* you.
That said, the kind of person I most feel the need to kick is the ninja-looting paladin who enters as a tank to get the quick group, but is specced *holy* with no shield. This person also gets *Ignored*. if anyone in the group defends this person, they get *ignored* as well.
Finally, there's people who loot gear they can't posibly use, e.g. druids rolling need on plate. Die die die. And I'll *ignore* you as well.
My only wish is for Blizzard to increase my *ignore* list.
Simple politeness can cover most of the rest, you want to try for an achievement - ask for it. You're looking for a particular drop - say so, but stay till the end anyway even if it doesn't drop. Want an item for offspec, ask (particularly good for fresh healers/tanks). If you're polite, very rarely will you get anything other than 'go ahead'.
Greg Jun 4th 2010 12:19PM
Awesome. It will be great to be able to vote to kick the Tank or Healer right away when they join the group, says "I have to go", then logs off without leaving group. This has happened many time. However it currently seem to let you kick them after only 5 minute, that still too long.
Once, right at the start, the healer says "brb 15 minutes". There wasn't anything we could do. After 10 minutes the rogue used "Tricks of the Trade" to agro a mob onto them. The healer healed themself for 5 minutes before we could kicked them.
johnny Jun 22nd 2010 9:34AM
There are still alot of problems with the random dungeon system, and so many variables that they often contradict eachother. Eg, earlier kicking allows fast disposal of AFKers, however it allows people to kick low geared, new to level 80 people. Such is life, nothing is perfect.
The real problem lies in the amount of people that complain about everything blizzard implements to help the ones complaining (infinate cycle).
I'm just thankful that there IS a dungeon finder, sure beats getting kicked out of a heroic PUG the second the group leader sees your GS. I'm just as annoyed by AFKers and nubtards as anybody else but anyone would have to aggree its better then waiting over half an hour to find people for a group then waiting for another person to get to the stone, summon then find a replacement for the person who left because it was taking too long or they had to go.