Guild Wars 2

This is just a general opinion of the vote kick system. I think it should be removed, or be more unanimous, as it is heavily abused. I see players kicked all the time for simply being sub-80, and I myself am tired of being vote kicked for no apparent reason. I think it detracts from the game in a significant way, and I think it is a convention that should not be upheld, along with many others that were rewritten in guild wars 2; especially considering the ease with which parties may be formed for dungeons. The lack of a vote kick system in Guild Wars 1 was phenomenal. Please remove or modify this system in a way that it does not have such a negative impact on ordinary ‘pick up group’ experiences. Thank you.

i agree there should be party leader system

Are you sure your not in a “lvl 80” only group?

While I agree the system is broken, most of the complaints are from people who just want to play any way they want even if it impinges on others rights to play the way they want. Some people don’t want to party with sub-80 players, especially now with the broken trait system.

Start forming a friends list of like-minded people because these issues are never getting fixed by anet.

@ cranked.3812 I am speaking more generally, and not about level 80 only parties. I have been around the gw2 scene for quite a while now, and I have seen the vote kick system abused in myriad situations. And as I previously stated, forming dungeon parties is so easy that, in the rare event some lunatic is sabotaging and subverting in a dungeon run, it is incredibly easy to jump ship and join a new party. In other words, I have seen the system be abused and detrimental much more often than be practical, useful, and promoting of team cooperation. I don’t really expect a change to be made, but I felt rather strongly about it. On the other hand, I have seen anet implement some very ingenious systems, some of which were at least partially derived from feedback on these forums. I will continue to hope, foolish though that may be.

Vote kick must exist. Too many people would abuse it by going afk or otherwise being a jerk on purpose. What they need to do is make it majority and require 3 votes. Whoever decided it would only take two probably should have thought about it a little harder xD.

One reason you may get kicked, is because experienced players do not want to carry you.
They want someone who can do decent dps for their class. Provide the utility their class should provide.

e.g, I had a condi spec, 3 signet ranger, with a bear join a fractal 40 the other day. Honestly it would have been quicker to 4man than run with that type of player.

Having bad skills equipped is kinda like an “I am noob” badge. Consider asking the rest of the party to complete the dungeon with a lead ball chained to their ankles. What is a “good” run for you, may be a terrible run for them, because they had to do all the work to carry you.

This is also the result of the learning curve being hidden from new players, and being difficult to see until you are significantly progressed along it ( and experienced the better builds, tactics, and strategies).

http://gw2dungeons.net/?Builds

^ has some good meta builds.
Don’t take this to mean those are the only builds/options. Just be able to justify the choices you make. If that justification is something like “I die to much” strap up in knights armor and watch the kitten foe for attacks! dodge key exists.
Also learn to blind/aegis/reflect/move your fat behind to their fat behind (also known as standing behind your foe).

Just got kicked from a fractal as Jade Maw played his death animation. Don’t know why. Didn’t say anything offensive, didn’t do anything stupid. In fact I carried them through Jade Maw when they all wiped.

I feel like the vote kick system is good to have, but after a certain point in a dungeon the players should be locked in unless they go offline or leave on their own. That way people can’t be screwed out of rewards like I (and a lot of people) were.

I know why you were kicked.

Two people in your party wanted to give the instance to their guildies. Welcome to #GriefWars2014! Until they re-fix instance ownership, expect this to happen from time to time.

dlonie.6547:

I know why you were kicked.

Two people in your party wanted to give the instance to their guildies. Welcome to #GriefWars2014! Until they re-fix instance ownership, expect this to happen from time to time.

I thought about that but none of them were in the same guild. I always check that.

My guess is that the three warriors were offended that a thief carried them through the fractal. They had unacceptably low dps and survivability so I ended up doing most of the tanking and dps.

Haha, also plausible

Either way, sorry to hear about your misfortune

Great feedback guys, thanks.

Woljnir.7810, ‘must exist’ has been shattered beyond all recognition by the Anet/NCsoft team, but I do agree that a vote kick system is effective for ‘troll,’ ‘jerk,’ and afk management (though these are things I experience rarely, the latter especially). I would also agree with increasing the number of votes required, if the vote kick system is kept. It only takes one person besides the one who initiated the kick to notice this bright green checkmark (ooo a bright green checkmark! Let’s click!) and click it in a cavalier fashion, without this person or anyone else knowing just why someone is being kicked.

Artemis Thuras.8795, honestly it doesn’t happen to me very often. I run dungeons quite often, and it usually goes fine. But as I’ve been running dungeons since shortly after release, there are many memories of this happening to me, and observing it happen to others. And the experiences I’m referring to are not in such extreme situations as a level 40 fractal (which requires agony infusions to simply survive the unavoidable pbaoe). Mostly ac, cm, cof, ta, etc. I have seen situations where instead of the party trying to work with someone new, the player was instead kicked, to instantly find another more seasoned player through party search. I’ve seen situations where a party member was kicked because they could not make a run through a very long corridor of enemies that are typically skipped. And I have seen many times situations where party members who weren’t following an exact method inscribed in the ‘current meta tactics’ handbook be promptly kicked with impunity. In situations like these, I believe a more unanimous vote would be fair.

Xytl.8659, you present a very interesting idea about a party instance lock (by lock, I mean vote kick is disabled) past a certain point. The biggest issue with this may be people going afk after the lock, which can be easily resolved by implementing a Dungeon Afk Timer (this should really be imposed anyway, to eliminate this issue from whatever iteration of Vote Kick). Somehow I don’t see people intentionally waiting for the lock to start trolling or being a jerk being a big issue, so I believe this system could legitimately function.

As it is, there is this unspoken understanding for experienced dungeon runners that can basically be summed up as ‘well, if I don’t like one of these players, we can just get another one.’ That is the heart of it, in my opinion. This is what I believe subverts the sense of teamwork and the spirit of cooperation. New party members are a dime-a-dozen, and they are only 2 clicks away. Realistically speaking, there will be situations where a vote kick is justified. However, this would be better judged by more than 2 opinions. There is also a much greater probability of it happening before an instance lock, were this system to be implemented.

Lets take a look to the game dungeon path chosing system, it could be great if its implemented as a party kick function.

That way if the group has afkers, or isnt complete, the party kick still works. At the same time two players cant associate to kick the others.

The implementation could be in a less intrusive way, so that it didnt get a party wiped or can be used to troll:

• A smaller tab in the up, side or down part of the selected part member icon (so that there could be multiple voting at the same time).
• It would be good to put who is asking for the kick (the kick tab isnt show to the one asked for been kicked), so that trolls, etc can be detected..

Gaile Gray, might you provide an example of 3 player vote requirement causing issues? Should the party somehow be reduced to 3 members, the original vote kick system could temporarily activate. There is the possibility of a player being afk for the vote kick. I suppose there could be a timer on the voting itself, perhaps 100 seconds or so. At this point, forcing a majority vote at the end of the timer should eliminate the issue. Between a time lock preventing a player being vote kicked repeatedly within a short window and other player limiting systems for this function, typical party finder dungeons should be basically the same; albeit with a more fair and communicative system for removing unwanted players. Also, it may go without saying, but this proposed 3 person kick would need to be unanimous. If it were 2 votes for and 1 vote against and it passed, that would be the same as a 2 person vote.

Lucius.2140, this sounds like an excellent way to implement this function. The dialogue selection system could potentially be used in tandem with the dungeon path selection system (timer included) for the purposes we are discussing.

For anti afk measures, setting a standard time such as 7 or 8 minutes (at the end of which a vote kick window stating ‘afk’ would appear for players) could be a handy addition to dungeons.

We should start from the beginning:

• The point of a kick system is to allow the party to remove someone that isn’t contributing to the group effort

The two biggest problems are:

• Not everyone agrees on what “contributing” to the group effort means.
• There are trolls, who will take advantage of any gaps in the system.

The first is social and nearly impossible to deal with on a purely technical basis. Any system setup to be flexible for the first, though, is going to leave bigger loopholes for the second.

I think the best system would combine the simplest technical solution with swift and robust actions for people abusing it.

• Every group has a leader, the first person to invite anyone else.
• It takes a unanimous vote of the remaining members of the party to kick the leader.
• The leader can kick anyone, no vote required.
  • ANet should monitor those who do a lot of kicking over short periods of time.
  • It should be easy to report someone for kicking just before a boss, especially an end boss.

This would make it easy for everyone to see who is responsible for the make up of the group when they join. It would allow those organizing a dungeon run to protect their party. It would make it really difficult to arbitrarily troll groups by kicking people randomly. Since one person is always the leader, it would be easy for Support to see patterns of behavior and take appropriate action.

I disagree with the 3-votes idea.
I think party leader system (with the leader being transfered/ability to transfer, when leader leaves party) would be the best. It would minimalize griefers the most. Yes there would still happen some bad moves from unfair guys kicking people around, but I think many people would predict such behavior fast enough to leave party before engaging for a long time.
You can also add an afk-leader transfer, use the wvw/pvp afk mechanism and after 15 min of no activity transfer leader randomly, something like that.

But most of all, nobody entering lfg randomly would be able to kick people around – this is the most important thing.
3 ppl entering lfg would be able to kick someone. For example a solo/duo dungeon sell.

The party leader who has absolute power to kick is the best suggestion. It’s the least abusable and the most easy for Anet to monitor.

Instead of a party of equals, think of the party leader as the “host” and everyone else as his/her “guests.”

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• The leader can kick anyone, no vote required.

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

+1 for party leader, 3 guys joining from LFG and kicking the 2 is still a possible issue.

And I’d like the Block function affect the LFG.

how do you fix the issue where you push your way through a dungeon to the end, then kick folks at the end as a friend/guild member wants a spot in the group in at the end?

Having kicks dependent on party leader isnt a great idea either. Idiocy is not confined to the folks that follow…

As crazy as this may sound, proper party controls could be the way to go. Like you could manually choose how many kicks are needed, whether you are immune, etc.

But this would require work.

Wethospu.6437:

As crazy as this may sound, proper party controls could be the way to go. Like you could manually choose how many kicks are needed, whether you are immune, etc.

But this would require work.

Proper party controls? The insanity!

Leader = god
Dont want to be kicked? make your own group enforce your own rules

the years I have played gw1 where party leader was lead and I wasnt kicked but then again I wasnt crap/ could read/ left groups that I didnt mesh with.

But then again you couldnt invite people after being inside.

Wethospu.6437:

As crazy as this may sound, proper party controls could be the way to go. Like you could manually choose how many kicks are needed, whether you are immune, etc.

But this would require work.

I dont know if I would call that “Proper” seems more like work for the sake of work.
I mean why would you set yourself(as party leader) as not immune? How many kicks are needed? Its gonna be 2 or 3.

I mean you may be thinking of what “you” would do but I cant imagine most groups setting it up fairly, if at all.

If anything that seems closer to server settings for a fps.

I played EQ for ~15 years, party leader was the one with the power, never really had many issues. Literally can’t remember a single time. That can’t be said for the other games I played with the vote kick methods.

sMihaly.1492:

+1 for party leader, 3 guys joining from LFG and kicking the 2 is still a possible issue.

And I’d like the Block function affect the LFG.

The Block functionality needs to be looked at entirely. It completely fails to provide any useful utility in the game.

I still don’t understand why when I do “/join” they get a prompt that they have to accept but that LFG doesn’t work the same way. I think that change would a benefit… though it wouldn’t be enough and really a thorough system needs to be put in place. What we have now is a system that benefits the worst of this community instead of those trying to do well.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Woljnir.7810:

Vote kick must exist. Too many people would abuse it by going afk or otherwise being a jerk on purpose. What they need to do is make it majority and require 3 votes. Whoever decided it would only take two probably should have thought about it a little harder xD.

I’m curious if the others in this thread also agree that 3 votes would make the system equally effective (for yes, it seems vote kick must exist, as Woljnir says) but perhaps less arbitrary.

Or would 3 bring a whole new set of challenges?

It should definitely be a majority.

• 5-person party: 3 votes
• 4-person party: 3 votes
• 3-person party: 2 votes
• 2-person party: 1 vote

I can see literally no downside to this except in the case where people are afk, but even then, once they get there they can weigh in and kick or not. 3 votes would also need a mechanic for someone to say “No” but for it to not end the vote until everyone has voted or it becomes no longer possible to achieve the necessary N votes for the kick.

I think proper party controls are more valuable in the grand scheme of things, though. That is a much greater development effort, however, but is something that should appear as a CDI or John Corpening level discussion.

Making it three votes just kicks the can down the road a bit. All of the same problems exist, except now you need three griefers instead of two.

I don’t want to type this yet again, so I’ll just quote myself:

IMO, the best solution is a system of strong ownership:

dlonie.6547:

• There is an instance owner. This player has sole control over kicking the other players. It is their party, and they are in charge.
• It takes one vote to kick other players: the owner’s vote.
• The owner may transfer ownership to another player by right clicking on the party UI.
• If the owner DC’s for 5+ minutes or otherwise leaves the party, ownership is transferred to another player, by vote or RNG.

This would fix:

• Instance destruction when owner leaves
• “Join & Kick” abuse
• The new “I lost my solo instance because I DC’d!” issue.

It clarifies who is in charge, prevents griefing, and protects both sellers and inexperienced players when they start their own groups.

BTW, thanks for talking with us about it. If this discussion makes it to the designers and developers it will correct a lot of the other issues I mention in the full post I quote above. I hope something useful comes from this, or at least a discussion with more than 1 red-post will happen.

Having a party leader to me seems a bad option, I’m not sure which I’d prefer out of party leader or 2-man kick but I’m leaning towards the latter being preferable.
If there was a party leader who couldn’t be kicked and could kick anyone I probably wouldn’t join anyone else’s parties anymore, if more people would do this it would lead to many parties being formed but few being filled.

Majority seems to me like the only system that’s actually any good.

Etienne.3049:

Having a party leader to me seems a bad option, I’m not sure which I’d prefer out of party leader or 2-man kick but I’m leaning towards the latter being preferable.
If there was a party leader who couldn’t be kicked and could kick anyone I probably wouldn’t join anyone else’s parties anymore, if more people would do this it would lead to many parties being formed but few being filled.

Majority seems to me like the only system that’s actually any good.

15 years under the party leader system with no memorable issues for me. Were some leaders bad, and some players pricks, yup, and I left those groups. Kicks almost never happened because the leader would have to take responsibility for that action.

I’ve played probably 3-4 years under systems with vote kicks… always drama and issues with it. Anonymous kicking leads to more kicking and more frustration. It’s the same issues in each of the games I’ve played with this system.

But, lets be honest, they’re not looking to solve the problem, the only thing they’d be open to is a quick bandaid fix. That’s why the 3 vote option is something that’s possible, they could just change that one requirement to 3. They said they don’t have the code to have it be majority and I doubt they’ll take the time to do it. If ANet proved me wrong on that I’d be happy, but I highly doubt they will.

Wow, a lot of feedback in here. This is excellent.

dlonie.6547, I hadn’t seen your post detailing a party leader system, but it looks pretty solid. It does seem that it would have been a great addition to the instance owner system. Guild Wars 1 had this basic party leader system before entering instances, and it added a useful rudimentary hierarchy, which usually eliminated a lot of immaturity (before launching the instance, that is).

Illconceived Was Na.9781, your proposition is made quite interesting when the unanimous party leader vote kick is introduced. The party leader system is tried and true in many games, and adding features such as this to keep it in check could make it a more viable system than that currently in place.

mulzi.8273, dungeon lock after a certain point? With the right features, this can be overcome.

Jerus.4350, ‘they don’t have the code to have it be majority’? If they are using the dungeon path selection code (which pulls the majority vote to select the dungeon path), it seems that they could just add Yes and No to where the paths are in the dialogue box(to put it simply). You did touch on an important point, however: ease of implementation, and—loathe though I am to admit it—likelihood of change.

I would like to thank everyone once more for their excellent candid, though mature, feedback. Hopefully we have caught the attention of someone with the means to modify this system, and provided helpful ideas for overcoming some of the technical and logistical issues that would doubtless arise, were a change to be considered in earnest.

I said they dont’ because they said they didn’t when we first proposed the issues with the change in dungeon ownership. I agree it seems odd, but just going off what they said.

I’m OK with the party leader being unable to be kicked UNLESS it’s a unanimous decision by all 4 other party members. (And sellers can just bring a buddy to avoid this happening.)

I resolutely support strong ownership; one person creates the party, opens the dungeon, sets the rules and has complete control over the group.

At the beginning I can see some players abusing the system, but it won’t take long until their bad reputation becomes so widespread that no one but their guildies and friends will join a party on which these bad apples lead. This would work especially well on this game, as everyone can see what our account IDs are, regardless of what character we’re using. I understand that this could be considered like some sort of shaming to some people, but if I believe that it might be a necessary evil in this case.

This system has served us well in almost every MMO over the span of a decade or more. I understand that GW2 strives to be different to other MMOs, markedly when it comes to freedom of gameplay, but you know you can’t please everyone, and if you try too hard, you’ll probably end up pleasing no one.

Control is a major necessity.

Off-topic begins here

Also, I know that I don’t represent a majority or even an important group, but I feel that as part of my feedback I must add that I haven’t felt compelled or motivated to come online since the implementation of this last Feature Pack.

Measure.6174:

This is just a general opinion of the vote kick system. I think it should be removed, or be more unanimous, as it is heavily abused. I see players kicked all the time for simply being sub-80, and I myself am tired of being vote kicked for no apparent reason. I think it detracts from the game in a significant way, and I think it is a convention that should not be upheld, along with many others that were rewritten in guild wars 2; especially considering the ease with which parties may be formed for dungeons. The lack of a vote kick system in Guild Wars 1 was phenomenal. Please remove or modify this system in a way that it does not have such a negative impact on ordinary ‘pick up group’ experiences. Thank you.

If people want to kick you they’ll kick you.
That’s the bottom line.

You can’t remove a system like this from the game because it’s necessary. Without it we would have trolling without end. You cannot imagine the amount of grief people could give each other without this tool.

I’ve had instances in which we got people that didn’t speak english. Some were asian, some were latino, even europeans. You couldn’t communicate and most of the times they were new and didn’t know what to do ( Ex : COF P1 brazier part).
There are situations in which you cannot move forward or progress with such a teammate and you have to kick them. There’s no other way.

In other cases you have people aggroing mobs just for the lulz and ruining runs because they can. You have to kick them.

My advice?

I don’t get kicked a lot. Why? Because I pick who I play with carefully and because I try to not be the guy that gets kicked. There’s quite a few things you can do to not be " that guy" that people want to kick.

*Improving yourself improves your overall game experience. *

Gaile Gray.6029:

Woljnir.7810:

Vote kick must exist. Too many people would abuse it by going afk or otherwise being a jerk on purpose. What they need to do is make it majority and require 3 votes. Whoever decided it would only take two probably should have thought about it a little harder xD.

I’m curious if the others in this thread also agree that 3 votes would make the system equally effective (for yes, it seems vote kick must exist, as Woljnir says) but perhaps less arbitrary.

Or would 3 bring a whole new set of challenges?

I doubt 3 is going to improve on the situation. Most likely it’ll be the same as now.
I don’t see any reason for 3 being better than the current system.

What we’re dealing with are isolated incidents that happen because people :

1) Are bad but don’t realize they’re bad – they get kicked and wonder why – that’s still going to happen.

2)Are griefing their party – the kicks are still going to happen.

3)Are getting kicked because the others want to give their spots to their guildies/friends – and that’s still going to happen.

It won’t change stuff- because it’s about reasons at heart.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

We should start from the beginning:

• The point of a kick system is to allow the party to remove someone that isn’t contributing to the group effort

The two biggest problems are:

• Not everyone agrees on what “contributing” to the group effort means.
• There are trolls, who will take advantage of any gaps in the system.

The first is social and nearly impossible to deal with on a purely technical basis. Any system setup to be flexible for the first, though, is going to leave bigger loopholes for the second.

I think the best system would combine the simplest technical solution with swift and robust actions for people abusing it.

• Every group has a leader, the first person to invite anyone else.
• It takes a unanimous vote of the remaining members of the party to kick the leader.
• The leader can kick anyone, no vote required.
  • ANet should monitor those who do a lot of kicking over short periods of time.
  • It should be easy to report someone for kicking just before a boss, especially an end boss.

This would make it easy for everyone to see who is responsible for the make up of the group when they join. It would allow those organizing a dungeon run to protect their party. It would make it really difficult to arbitrarily troll groups by kicking people randomly. Since one person is always the leader, it would be easy for Support to see patterns of behavior and take appropriate action.

So if a player is terribly bad before an end boss – or during an end boss fight people should risk their accounts just to progress ? No thank you.

You should be able to kick anyone at any time.
It’s preferable you kick a bad player early – so you don’t waste their time, but sometimes the “bad” only shows up in certain situations. Most of the times ( in my experience) these are bosses near the end of runs.

Also I doubt support has the manpower to start monitoring kicks on a day to day 24/7 basis. It’s a monumental task.

I’m really glad to see a dev post on this thread.
I really think the current system needs to be changed. No system will be perfect, but the current set up can too easily be abused. I’ve absolutly witnessed meanspirtited kicking from parties at the very last moment of fractals, and then a guild member of the kicker come in and get the reward. Its infuriating, and i’ve never even been the victim!
As I said, I dont know the best solution. I was thinking maybe that when the little green check mark comes up for kick, maybe there could be a red no vote symbol like there is when someone requests to join the party.
A 3 vote could also work well I think. I think the benefits of a 3 vote to kick would FAR outweigh any problems. When guys are AFK, I really never find disagreement in PUGs as to whether or not to replace him. Usually there is a little discussion first, and we qucikly realize we are thinking the same thing and the guy gets replaced. Also, I find that most of the time, when one particular guy is messing up a lot, and cant hack it, he leaves on his own in shame! So kicking those sorts of people isn’t an issue. And if they really are that bad, and the other guys want to kick them, they still can.
On the other hand, while abusive unfair kicking could still happen with a 3 vote, you would now have to have 3 jerks in collusion instead of just 2. I’m certain this would reduce the overall number of negative events.
Lastly, I’d tend to lean towards a 3 vote rather than party leader system. Its kind of like a dictatorship…if your lucky and you get a benevolant dictator, all will be well, but you cant count on that alwyas being the case. My fear is taht more often than not you will get some eliteist wannabe punk and they will make 20-30 min of your life miserable bossing everybody around, making threats, ect.

Jayjaydee.3827:

My fear is taht more often than not you will get some eliteist wannabe punk and they will make 20-30 min of your life miserable bossing everybody around, making threats, ect.

leave the party? I typically know in seconds if a party is for me or not. or you know make your own group

Exactly what Don said. Again, played in that system for years, never really had problems. Sometimes there would be that kitten who I just couldn’t play with, within a few minutes I’d know and I’d simply leave the party without saying a word. If I got a whisper I’d let them know why. Pretty quickly those types of people learn that if they want to use the LFG they can’t be abusive otherwise they’ll be sitting waiting for people far longer than they want to.

Those leaders are held responsible for the environment within their parties. I think the situation promotes a better community as people are held responsible for their actions

At the very least I want merging parties in lfg to require an accept, rather than being automatic, and for instances to close a number of minutes after the last player leaves instead of immediately, to stop disconnects from ruining soloers progress completely (or mass disconnects from killing everyone’s instances).

At best, I’d like the ability to choose a party system on party creation, from a single leader system (leadership transferred if leader leaves) where leader has sole control over invites/accepts and kicks, and a democratic system like the current, except with number of votes to kick chosen on party creation. These settings would be indicated on the lfg.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Woljnir.7810:

Vote kick must exist. Too many people would abuse it by going afk or otherwise being a jerk on purpose. What they need to do is make it majority and require 3 votes. Whoever decided it would only take two probably should have thought about it a little harder xD.

I’m curious if the others in this thread also agree that 3 votes would make the system equally effective (for yes, it seems vote kick must exist, as Woljnir says) but perhaps less arbitrary.

Or would 3 bring a whole new set of challenges?

I think making it 3 people would be great because it would prevent a lot of kick happy couples

Made group. 2 people kept joining and taking my lfg down. No idea why. I think they were part of a competing p2 lfg. No kick. just join, remove lfg, leave.

well that’s kind of lame. 3 vote would be a good idea that way unless they have a whole guild of hater in your party they wont just be able to remove everyone just because 1 guy has a tooth against you. Ive seen lots of griefer in dungeons run all it take is one hater and a guy gets the kick boot no mather how well he play so long as another guy who likely is clueless to why hes doing it click the green hook.

Rising Dusk.2408:

• 2-person party: 1 vote

I can see literally no downside to this …

This obviously was not thoroughly thought through.

dlonie.6547:

• There is an instance owner. This player has sole control over kicking the other players. It is their party, and they are in charge.
• It takes one vote to kick other players: the owner’s vote.
• The owner may transfer ownership to another player by right clicking on the party UI.
• If the owner DC’s for 5+ minutes or otherwise leaves the party, ownership is transferred to another player, by vote or RNG.

This would fix:

• Instance destruction when owner leaves
• “Join & Kick” abuse
• The new “I lost my solo instance because I DC’d!” issue.

It clarifies who is in charge, prevents griefing, and protects both sellers and inexperienced players when they start their own groups.

This is a good solution. Plus one for you.

I don’t see how the instance owner kicks system could be effectively policed. How could ANet distinguish between a player who kicks a lot because he gives paths to guildies at the last boss and players who kick a lot because they “have high standards”?

This is assuming things.
CS would look and see who replaced the people instance owner kicked. At end kick last 3 and replace with 3 guildies/ people on friends list mighty suspicious. Kick various parts of dungeon and relist party standards.

doesnt really need to be “policed”. A person who consistently kicks at end will be known. A person who kicks for “high standards” shouldnt be given the chance as people should leave before kickage.

also start your own groups :/

DonQuack.9025:

also start your own groups :/

If only this guaranteed anything these days. >:

DonQuack.9025:

This is assuming things.
CS would look and see who replaced the people instance owner kicked. At end kick last 3 and replace with 3 guildies/ people on friends list mighty suspicious. Kick various parts of dungeon and relist party standards.

doesnt really need to be “policed”. A person who consistently kicks at end will be known. A person who kicks for “high standards” shouldnt be given the chance as people should leave before kickage.

also start your own groups :/

Maybe I’m not making myself clear about the high standards thing,

Say an instance owner the preserves the right to kick a bear ow on sight. Or doesn’t like people who use the “wrong” tactic on a certain boss. Or will kick someone who mentions they have a non-meta build. I think somebody who owns instances with these sorts of attitudes will end up kicking a lot of people. I don’t think many of these people will pre-emptively drop out.

As for starting your own groups, well that may be sound advice for 20% of people, but that leaves the majority of players in a riskier system than is in place currently.