Not long after Shadowlands released, there was a heavily upvoted thread on the World of Warcraft subreddit in which a player related a story about an awful dungeon run. He’d been in a group with a new player who had weak damage but who was otherwise competent and hadn’t caused any wipes or serious problems or toxicity. And yet another player in the group “did not have time for some low DPS in the group” and tried to get the rest of the group to votekick the new player – four times.
Fortunately, it sounds as if the other players refused to go along, and the community rallied behind the sentiment. “There is new players coming to World of Warcraft, they might be younger then the game itself,” the OP wrote. “This is a massive game. Give out some tips, ask if there is something they wonder about. Help them a little instead of kicking them out of the group for trying to learn the game.”
I can’t personally imagine votekicking someone for learning. It’d have to be some extreme toxicity – like ninja looting in games where that’s still possible – to get me to click kick. I don’t particularly like the feature at all, since I’ve seen it wielded to hassle people more often than not. How about you? Do you make use of votekicking in MMOs? And what actions merit a kick in your eyes?
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Yep, I initiate on anyone being a prick, which includes: slurs, hate, “noob”, complaining about other people’s DPS/Healing/Tanking in <Mythic, Not letting other people make mistakes, Ordering people to conform to their Perfect Rotation Theory, naming their character after any known facist.
I kickvoted for those reasons : slurs, bias, hateful speech, AFKers and Offliners.
One day, I was surprised with a PUG group in WoW during the first weeks of SL who decided to kickvote a DPS who kept blaming me for poor tanking (we died once). The healer and 2 other DPS told me it’s because he kept pulling in advance and blaming me afterward. I was very thankful that 3 strangers supported me.
Then, after the kickvote, the DPS who blamed me kept bad mouthing in private chat and I decided to report and block.
There’s only a few reasons I see to vote kick someone and I’ve vote kicked people for all of these in the past.
I’ve had to ‘put my foot down’ a few times…when there were people in parties that were clashing…it was either me or them, and I’ll even ‘on principle’ just stop going (I know, appears childish) if someone’s being difficult, because of how they build these vote kick mechanics being that if you get kicked, you get to go again, whereas if you leave, you’re penalized. So sometimes I wait to see if they’ll kick the person causing the ruckus, or me. If it’s me, I’ll go back to what I was doing, if they kick them, usually the party pulls together and we rock out the content and walk away better off.
Generally, I try and get people to work together, come together as a group/proceed, but sometimes, there’s just people that don’t mix/get along. Sometimes, I’m even that person depending on my own mood of the day.
I will almost always vote against kicking a ‘noob’/person who doesn’t know the stuff and wait for explanations, except in the rare situation where they are doing things that effectively harm the group as a whole.
Yes. AFK’ers, trolls, abusive racist halfwits etc.
I will vote if someone puts it up and they are toxic but do not see much of that in XIV.
But I do it all the time for people that queue up and go AFK as they just want the free exp for just walking away and in certain places it makes it easy for them as you can’t kick in cutscenes or combat and they know that stuff is rushed so having to get everyone to slow down just to kick can be a hassle a times but is worth it. I really hate AKF freeloaders they take fun away from another person just to be selfish.
As a Healer, I enjoyed it when ever I got a Tank booted. It’s my group, Bitch. They obey ME!
I do but only as a last resort. If someone is being toxic in a PUG then like it or not if they won’t calm down then they have to go.. pure and simple. I would also vote kick those who need on ALL loot irrespective of if they can use it or not unless the group agreed to do that beforehand. And the same with those who try to skip objectives or rush through instances without first having the group agree to that beforehand. I don’t allow anyone to ride roughshod over me, period.
However I would say some people on the flip side are VERY quick to vote kick anyone and for any reason like simply disagreeing with them, or having their character not specced or equipped in the way someone else likes etc.. Those people’s vote I take no part in and want no part of.
oh I forgot, vote kicking those who go AFK during a run without telling anyone, and those who leech (i.e join a run and then literally do nothing hoping everyone else will do all the work and not notice them still at the entrance having done nada.
I’ve never initiated a votekick. I’ve been votekicked, usually for having the unforgivable gall to join a random LFG queue and start the mission by saying “I’ve never done this before, and I just want to see the story. Can we please not skip the cutscenes?”
I have votekicked but they have to be toxic, rude, or otherwise an actual detriment to the experience. I do like to get through things quickly, but not to the point of being a jerk about stuff and have zero problem slowing down for people to learn, chat, or otherwise enjoy the experience. If a player is genuinely cooperating and has a decent attitude, I’ll take them over someone that may be ‘better’ but is nasty.
I’ve had people ask for a votekick when someone was not space-barring through stuff in SWTOR and while I had gotten to the point of doing so, I’m not going to be a lummox about someone wanting to experience the stories and know what the dark/light choices are about. It is a game after all, it’s supposed to be fun. Letting people read/listen to the storyline for Black Talon or whatever isn’t a problem.
It can be abused, and I’ve seen that happen, but luckily, it’s been pretty rare in my experience, and I only resort to it myself in extreme circumstances.
Its been a while since i played SWTOR, so was wondering if space-barring was some new content. Then I remembered, skipping scenes and dialogs.
LOL, definitely agree with you though. Again, long ago when I last played, had some guy throw a bitch fit, call us all children, then rage quit because one of the players wanted to see the black talon scenes. Thankfully, it all happened in the first couple of minutes, so we didn’t need to use the vote to kick.
He was not missed.