Problem: Kicked from BAF because "I was an add and he was doing a 16 man only"

Therein lies the problem. The "forming league" function of the LFG queue is simply not useful right now and it certainly isn't doing everything it is advertised to do. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't gathering a large group of players together for the purpose of completing a trial the purpose of the tool? In fact, it is my opinion that by introducing the LFG tool, the devs in effect attempted to eliminate the need of having a central gathering place to find leagues for these trials. Yet, if we truly relied solely on the LFG tool to build the trial league, we'd often end up with 12 people without a semblance of balance in AT composition what so ever. I have tried it when i20 first came out and I was thrown into 10-14 player BAF leagues without either debuffer, buffer, or even tankers/brutes. Needless to say everyone quit right off the bat and I never went back to using it. Probably never will in its current form.

This is especially an area of concern now that the devs have came out and commented on *some* of the specifics behind the participation system and how it affects end rewards. If I recall correctly, league performance is one such criteria. If people continue to use the LFG tool to form ineffective leagues, wouldn't the resulting poor performance make the trial not really worth running in the first place? The logic also applies to pre-formed leagues with the additional extras tossed in. If you have a solid league in place, why would you introduce some unknowns into the equation which may, or may not, affect your own reward?

Now, due to these existing deficiencies in the LFG tool, many people have found the need to gather at a central location to form leagues once more. In that respect, the LFG tool has completely failed in at least one part of its original intended purpose. You can not force players (the vast majority I might add) who chose to ignore a tool that is obviously broken into accepting the few who actually decides to utilize it.

Its both.


That's an error. Someone joining your league through the turnstile is not an error. The player has the legitimate and justified expectation they will be joining an existing league, because the game specifically *says* that's the intent of the turnstile. Their right to join a trial being launched supercedes your right to privacy because the game specifically states what the intent of the turnstile is. Its no different than trying to drive someone out of the Hive because you want to run a private raid. Attempting to do so would be construed as griefing by the devs, because your right to privacy is superceded by they player's right to enter the Hive, because the Hive is *defined* to be a zone where they are allowed to enter.

The trials are *defined* to be content where players can join a queue and join a group of players attempting to start the trial. They did not join because of an honest error. They joined because the game gives them the right to join. Kicking them is a voluntary act that elects to value your right to control over their right to experience the game in the way the game was designed to be experienced.

At the end of the day, we can dance around what rights players have to privacy and control, but we will ultimately come back to the simple fact that the player who joins the turnstile is playing the game as designed and intended. The trials are intended to aggregate all players that want to experience the trials and toss them into the trials. People who want to control the experience beyond that purpose are free to do so, but must take responsibility for their actions. If they believe their personal right to private trials supercedes another player's right to play the trials as intended, I can't and won't try to convince them otherwise, because that's a hopeless exercise anyway. I can't and won't try to stop them, because I have no ability to do so anyway. But I reserve the right to judge that act in a manner consistent with my own ethics, and not theirs. The same right you claim you have to choose who to team with is the same right I'm exercising in deciding how I judge the acts of other players.

Intentionally clicking the kick button in the iTrial wastes the Pugger's time, thus "ruining their gaming experience".

There is somewhat of a difference between a typo and a server tool adding team members.

The error I see, and which we apparently won't agree on, is that I see that as an outstandingly obvious error by the development team. One in need of being fixed.

So long as it isn't, it's not the person being kicked who is the victim of the error - it's everyone involved each and every time someone is.

(And I'll still argue it's not "both," but I have a feeling I'm reading the phrase "taking it out on" subjectively, adding a feeling of malice on the part of the person doing the kicking - which does not necessarily exist. It would be "taking it out on" the other player if it were - for instance - like the people who used to invite a lowbie to a team just to Recall Friend them off the edge of a building and let them drop.)

I don't think we're going to budge each other on this - I am notoriously stubborn, and haven't seen an argument to convince me this should be left as is, and you - well, you're dogged enough to run thousands of trials to test accuracy. All I'll say is "expect me to argue for this to be changed."

(And I also refuse to take "It's developer intent..." as anything close to a persuasive argument on this. It was also developer intent to have tank armors be exclusive to each other, and that was seen as an error and changed - as were many, many other things done by "developer intent." I expect them to be able to adapt and change to fit multiple playstyles for these scenarios, not shrug their shoulders and say "That's how we did it, deal.")

See my Guides and Tutorials

So which is it? More people will choose to have limited League sizes, or more people would openly welcome LFGers into their team at random?

If it's the second, then adding a feature to allow for limiting team size wouldn't be a real issue for LFGers, would it?

So far, the only real argument I've heard to not implement something like this is that it would make it easier for people to find teams for trials, despite the fact that people have formed random groups for TFs and Raids for years now without the LFG tool. It also ingores the fact that people form trials outside of the queue already.

But I hear more reasons for allowing this:
1. Less wasted time for LFGers kicked from a team that wants to remain a certain size.
2. Less issues of lag for those teams looking to avoid it. I don't care what you say, some people's rigs won't play nice with 24 PC's running around, let along all the NPC's they'll spawn.
3. People who enjoy only playing with select friends can enjoy incarnate content without being forced to play with people they don't know.
4. Less people being called "*******" for enjoying the game the way they would like to enjoy it (it's not like it's creating any exploits).

Do you ask because you think the numbers are low? If so, then adding the option we're asking for wouldn't be a big deal.

Correct. But an unfilled league with the current queue system is an OPEN INVITE.

You have exactly ONE recourse for teaming with ONLY the people you invite.

FILL THE DAMN LEAGUE.

Yet the instituted a system that allows random players to add to an unfilled raid. Now why is that?

Sure we do. Free speech and all. Do they have to listen? No.

Still, dumping a player who's merely trying to get in on a trial and isn't deliberately targeting you for league griefing is a rude move.




I'm sure Arcana feels that you're entitled to your wrong opinions.

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That's the way I've been reading it, too. And if someone's incapable of understanding that you can kick someone for a reason other than malice, then they're not going to be moved to think outside the box.

Personally, I believe this boils down to people's preferred levels of socializing.

I prefer to play with people I know. I prefer to play with people I trust. It's why my global list has taking forever to get the number of friends it has. It's why when someone I just met throws me a global invite, I decline and offer them just a friend invite instead. I'm just that kind of person. When I get a blind invite, I decline because it makes me untrusting of the person instantly. And now I'm suppose to go the opposite way with a "blind join" and be okay with that? Sorry, I'm not. And telling me I'm being a jerk for it, isn't going to swing me over to the other side. Especially when the suggestion offers something for both parties to use.

/stepping off that soapbox for now.

There may not be deliberate malice but there is certainly non-premeditated malice: the league leader has to know kicking the player isn't a positive experience and is explicitly deciding that negative experience is not important relative to their own playing experience. Its not an act that has an unintended consequence that is out of sight or difficult to predict by the league leader, whereupon they could argue they did not foresee the consequences of their actions.

And that is the choice players have to make. You have two options: sacrifice your own control over who you team with and allow another player to join, or preserve your control over who you team with and prevent a player from running the trial with your league, forcing them to return to the queue. The game forces you to choose, but it does not force a specific choice upon you. To change my mind, someone would have to prove the game presented this choice in a manner that the player did not have the free will to voluntarily choose either choice.

The only people saying this is no choice are people who are essentially implying that it is a given the player must always get what they want. In that event, the only choice available is to kick the player. I simply don't subscribe to that axiom, and because I don't I see choices where other people don't see choices. I can choose to compromise to sometimes get what I want, and sometimes not get what I want but allow someone else to get what they want. That philosophy also lies at the core of everything you could claim is a contribution to the game of mine, so that's probably a good thing in general.


Developer intent *shouldn't* persuade a player that just because something was intended to be a particular way, it must be that way. The developers are wrong all the time objectively, and subjectively make lots of odd decisions that aren't wrong, but weird nonetheless. But proper interpretation of developer intend can, and should override any arguments that attempt to build on the foundation of one element of the game being "better" if it is consistent with other elements of the game. Frequently, such arguments fail to properly comprehend why things are the way they are in the first place. The argument that since normal missions which are "instanced" block unwanted people from joining so the trials should follow the same rule, for example, fails to account for the fact that the trials are *not* instanced content in the same way, specifically *because* of the turnstile, which unambiguously signals "this content is not the same as standard content, because here we have a turnstile to autogroup people into it." That makes comparisons to the standard instanced mission content immediately inapplicable.

Saying you want the trials to be just like the standard instanced content is one thing. Saying it *should be* because the trials *are just like* the standard instanced content is something else. The former is an expression of personal preference. No argument there except that I disagree. The latter is an objective comparison subject to the proper interpretation of the game design and the developer intent behind that design. And I'm quite certain a false statement.

Why is wanting the option of private leagues so unreasonable? Some people only want to play with their friends, what's so bad about that?

You're asking the wrong question. The question is, why was the turnstile system instituted in the first place?

Answer: To make it easier for random players to pick up a team/league.

And why have the devs not delivered this?

Yeah. I'm sure the guy who's been sitting in a queue for half an hour feels REALLY "helped" by being booted.


The devs don't want private leagues, but they still want a league leader to be able to assemble and manage his league. What you're seeing as evidence of the notion of private leagues is actually just generic management interfaces.

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Sure they do. Just like I have the right to one star them for being a jerk to someone who did nothing wrong.

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I wouldn't go that far. Because the turnstile system doesn't care a whit about team or league balance, it's possible to enter a trial that way with a group that's completely unsuitable for successfully completing.

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Sure it is!

Bad example by the way.

A team leader kicking someone for non-participation is QUITE different from a league leader kicking someone simply for being a random add. The first one is, the league leader isn't even granting the random add a CHANCE to participate.

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The fact that we're talking about a league leader booting an innocent random add kinda does.

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No. But booting someone who's already in the trial through the random queue IS.

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When and where is your next birthday party? You can't refuse to answer, either.

I'm coming. Have beer for me.

And, you're a jerk if you say no and throw me out.

No. It's the devs telling you that the expectation of playing ONLY with your small clique of friends is an ABERRATION.



I can sum up locked leagues thusly:

"L54 Farm LFM. 3M a run."

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League maps are "population limited" too.

Their population controls vary slightly from city zones sure. But you can't bring 25 people into a BAF or 17 people into a Lambda.

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Exactly. And you wouldn't be griefing him if you did it. That's what the notes feature is for. A tool that let's you screen the people you meet in the game so you can play with people you like and avoid the people you don't like.

And if you are doing a raid and the queue teams you up with someone you one starred you can kick him from the team with a polite explanation that the team is private league and you don't need his assistance.

I disagree there's any malice whatsoever in most cases. (I can't obviously speak for all cases in which someone is kicked, and wouldn't claim to. People are people, some people are jerks.)

The league leader may, actually, be providing a more positive experience. If the LFG-PUGger wants a rush and the league leader's putting together an RP group, or a group going after some specific goal, or is just going to be engaged in private chatter, that PUGger is going to make *everyones* experience negative - including their own.

Taking a hypothetical but not unreasonable (or, I'd think, uncommon) situation -

There's a group of friends who decide, on Wednesday night, they're playing COH. They want to work on their 50s, so they've got enough people to run a BAF. Not a full 24, but enough to start.

Having an unknown person or three drop in is going to disrupt their conversations - or the unknown persons will be ignored as the group is on Ventrillo or Teamspeak. Or they'll be stuck hearing conversations about private matters, or RP that they have no clue about. (With my regular group, I'll routinely have conversations going that range from wedding plans to "guess what substance came out of the kid this time that I have to clean up, BRB" to - politely putting it - feminine biological matters to school/work... stuff that, no, we don't particularly want a stranger listening in on.)

Is it more acceptable to make *everyone* uncomfortable by keeping those PUGers around, or kick them?

Is there any malice whatsoever in kicking them?

Last but not least, why should there not be tools or settings in place to avoid the situation all together?

It's not, after all, just the league leader and the PUGGer's feelings and comfort zone to consider. It's the other people involved, as well.

And the argument presented is that the tools should be in place to prevent having to make that choice in the first place, by allowing a league to be created privately just as teams can be now.

Quite honestly, I'd completely support the mirror of that, as well - that the (standard) team window should have a choice to "Join any group" automatically with whatever parameters (level, etc.) the person looking to join wants.

The game, elsewhere, allows you to freely create teams, present yourself as available TO team, ignore them completely and/or remove yourself from consideration for teaming (via hide, LFT flags and the like.)

Consistency with this level of consideration and control over the player's teaming elsewhere suggests strongly that it should be in the league interface as well.

We do not have that level. We could avoid ANY suggestions of "malice," "Wasted time" and the like if we did.

You're looking at it from one side only - the side of the kick-ee. WHY should the PUGger's wishes override those of the others in the league? Everyone pays the same (well, the same range depending on price plan, region, etc, but that nitpick aside) for server access. Nobody's $15/mo is more important than anyone else's intrinsically. So why do the wants of that ONE pugger override the desires of my (hypothetical) 12 other people who want to play privately?

You can't tell me that that makes sense. Yet that's what I'm getting from your argument - that kicking that pugger is (your own words) an act of malice, that their "right" to be on that team (because they were placed in it - without any input other than "I'm going to click this button and see what I get") should override the desires of everyone else on the league.

Sorry, I don't buy that. Any more than I buy kicking someone is an act of malice - or that the random PUGger *wants* to be making the other people in the league uncomfortable.

My stance is this -

Adding the flexibility to create a private league would improve both the league and the turnstile system, as well as player experience. The only downside is going to be the time to create, test, and implement it. People that want a private league - for *whatever* reason - will get one, without having to turn anyone away. People who want to create a full league ahead of time and join can still do so, and I suspect this would be the regular case in most instances anyway - with the occasional PUGger added. People who don't care, who will accept teaming with anyone, will still be able to effectively use the turnstile system *just fine,* without getting kicked (short of personality conflicts.)

It would be a superior system to what it is now, and for the sake of player experience all around should be implemented. And yes, would be consistent with the freedom and flexibility elsewhere in the game.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Beat me to it.

I disagree about your solution. Someone is a jerk for refusing another player into their league, I can agree with that. But it is not a big deal. And if somebody thinks it's a big deal, they should chill.

Has a dev confirmed this or are you assuming? Do you KNOW for a fact that the instance of a zone is still active and running if nobody's in there? Or does the server tear down the instance until someone loads in (like secondary, tertiary, etc instances of the same zone)?

Wow. Schrödinger's Zone...

*HEADSPLODY*


Okay good point about zone events.

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The quote was dealing with instanced vs non. You missed the point.

See my Guides and Tutorials