Fix the voting system

[Shyney]

Seriously.. its getting out of hand. :(

Im sure the idea behind the vote system was to help clear idle players out of full servers, or change a map should a server(as a whole) decide to. But its not working quite like that at all, votes are being tossed around all over the place just for the fun of it. The vote system is being abused pretty badly :( With influx of new players, its starting to remind me of when "SA" found biplanes.

If Someone dosnt "like" someone else.. votekick.. And all it takes is for the person voting, to have a couple buddies on, or the other team to not like the player, or hell just people voting for the fun of it, and people get vote kicked off. No actual valid reason required.

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2633/bpvote.jpg

Sure in the pic, the votes failed, but a lot of these votes are going through, shortly after "flyboy" was kicked, for a reason similar to the ones suggested above.

And vote map change.. :( is just as bad at times, nothing worse then being 5 of 6 mins through an ffa, a "new" player joins, dosnt like ffa, and vote change maps, and of course the bottom half of the scoreboard votes yes, and next thing you know perfectly good game is ruined, and you're on some train wreck of a map like blockworld. Its hard to get an FFA round in, on the servers that aren't strictly ffa, without fail someone always votes it off.

Im not suggesting taking voting out of the game, but with all these new players, perhaps its time tighten up the controls. For a fix, increase the requirement for vote kick to 80-85%? If someone is idle on a full server, or really is disturbing a game, im sure you would have no problem getting the required 85% to pass anyway. But this would stop the stupid votes from getting through.

For vote change map, increase the requirements to 70-75%? Or at least put a cap and when/who can vote, ie, past the half way point of an ffa, you can no longer call the vote change map?
Or hell even set it up so you need to be a certain level to "call" a vote, everyone can still vote, but perhaps you need to be level 30-40+ to call a map change, and 50+ to call a kick? This would of course become useless as everyone levels, but it may change the mindset, so that new players feel like the votes are something they earned/unlocked, rather then a toy to be abused..

[Vi*]

I agree with higher percentages required for votes to pass, though maybe not quite that dramatic. 75% for vote kick and 60% for mapchange might be more reasonable.

A level cap seems like a worse solution, as some of the most frequent and annoying vote-kick abuse is from some of our vets.

[Blank]

I vote we lock this thread.

[DiogenesDog]

I vote: 1
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[skywalker]

A level cap seems like a worse solution, as some of the most frequent and annoying vote-kick abuse is from some of our vets.

This thread, and that specific quote, reminds me of the time when someone tried to voteban me (forgot why), and failed, and then I tried to voteban him for trying to voteban me, and succeeded.

[nesnl]

This reminds me of when Gumby votekicks Caped every time he joins the game and then tries to tell Caped later that he "didn't mean for it to work."

Also, this game needs customizable UIs. That way we can all avoid the actual issues in posts like this and instead make fun of someone's "ridiculous" or "less than optimal" UI that they post in a screenshot.

[cokane]

I think an easy solution to stop vote abuse is simple.

If your vote fails, you can't propose a new vote for 10 minutes. If your vote passes, you only have to wait one minute. This should cut down on most of the abuse imo.

It's impossible to cut down on all abuse without doing some bull**** so, meh this is the best solution.

[ORYLY]

How about adding a delay before anyone can vote? This way, there's some time for people to comment on it first.

[Triped]

nothing worse then being 5 of 6 mins through an ffa, a "new" player joins, dosnt like ffa, and vote change maps, and of course the bottom half of the scoreboard votes yes, and next thing you know perfectly good game is ruined, and you're on some train wreck of a map like blockworld.

For this it'd be cool if only the top half of the scores could vote. =]

[nesnl]

I think the most amusing part of that screen shot is that when the reason for kicking was "cheater" it only convinced 33% of the people to vote yes, but when someone said he was "Osama Bin Laden" well that was really all that some people needed to hear and it jumped to a whopping 56%.

[Ferret]

I agree with higher percentages required for votes to pass, though maybe not quite that dramatic. 75% for vote kick and 60% for mapchange might be more reasonable.

A level cap seems like a worse solution, as some of the most frequent and annoying vote-kick abuse is from some of our vets.

So... in a full game instead of 9 out of 14 people finding someone disruptive, stupid, or otherwise not wanting to play with a person, it should take 11? I get it, you never want to kick anyone from any games, ever. Your expression of this by pressing 2 is fine, but I don't think 3 people should be able to override 10 (assuming the person everyone is voting to kick also votes no). It's not like there's any shortage of servers to play on now if one collectively decides it wants nothing to do with someone. I'd rather that one person have to find a new game than 10 people pick up and move because they don't like him. I wasn't aware disagreeing with your world view constituted abuse.

In general, I agree with a longer 'cool down' time on voting and little to no time if your vote passes. Something that prevents people from switching teams during a 7v7 would probably eliminate half of the /vote kicks I call during any given play time.

[Vi*]

So... in a full game instead of 9 out of 14 people finding someone disruptive, stupid, or otherwise not wanting to play with a person, it should take 11? I get it, you never want to kick anyone from any games, ever. ...
In my experience, any vote to kick a person who is actually being disruptive gets well over 75%. Even votes to kick a person just for being stupid or bomb camping usually pass pretty well (you may be shocked to learn that I have even called such votes myself. Not to shatter Your worldview, or anything).

My annoyance, of course, is less with the voting system and more with people who call votes and vote for things as idiotic as someone not having bought the game. Unfortunately, I don't think even Lamster and Karl can patch human nature.

[Ferret]

In my experience, any vote to kick a person who is actually being disruptive gets well over 75%. Even votes to kick a person just for being stupid or bomb camping usually pass pretty well (you may be shocked to learn that I have even called such votes myself. Not to shatter Your worldview, or anything).

My annoyance, of course, is less with the voting system and more with people who call votes and vote for things as idiotic as someone not having bought the game. Unfortunately, I don't think even Lamster and Karl can patch human nature.

Yea, Caped. Everyone ****ing loves caped, it was clearly a ****ing witch hunt because he hadn't purchased the game. He has never been kicked before release nor since he purchased the game because he's full of ****ing candy that makes people love him. And some more **** that would get edited out anyway.

[Smushface]

I think the most amusing part of that screen shot is that when the reason for kicking was "cheater" it only convinced 33% of the people to vote yes, but when someone said he was "Osama Bin Laden" well that was really all that some people needed to hear and it jumped to a whopping 56%.

YOU DON'T THINK OSAMA BIN LADEN IS WORSE THAN CHEATERS?????!!?!!?

What are you a terrorist?

[lamster]

1) I think the FFA mapchange issue you mentioned is more a matter of bad server setup: all the official FFA maps are way overcrowded at 12+ players, and so the majority of less-FFA-inclined players will happily switch to a relatively more sane TBD game. This can be fixed by putting up FFA-only servers and setting reasonable player counts (say 7-10) for that game mode. We will do this on a couple official servers soon.

2) There is already a penalty for failed votes. If your vote is successful you can start another in 90 seconds, if it fails you must wait 5 minutes. I'm not necessarily opposed to increasing the penalty but 5 minutes feels strong enough to me.

3) Higher thresholds might make sense (say 55-60% for mapchange, 65-70% for kick) but, in my experience, the current thresholds feel pretty good in most cases.

[Blank]

map votes should be disabled past a certain time mark.

I'm okay with current vote kick rules. I still have **** fail trying to kick afk's from the game, I don't want to make it harder.

[Carbon]

map votes should be disabled past a certain time mark.

agreeing with this. So many times a good FFA has been ended prematurely because some asshat decides he doesn't want to play FFA and everyone votes yes with only 40 seconds left in an FFA. I say once an FFA gets 66%-75% through the allotted time its impossible to vote for a map change.

[cash]

later in that game (in the screenshot posted by Shyney) I was kicked for "killing and hating norwegians" with 20 seconds left, and just now I barely avoided being kicked for "admitting to being a faggot". So much fun.

[Triped]

Another idea for playerkicks: if a vote to kick someone fails, nobody can vote to kick that person for five minutes.

So I vote to kick Blank, it fails, and for five minutes I can't call any votes and anybody who can call a vote can't call one about Blank. That could work well.

Actually, same should go for every other kind of vote!

[PBS]

later in that game (in the screenshot posted by Shyney) I was kicked for "killing and hating norwegians" with 20 seconds left, and just now I barely avoided being kicked for "admitting to being a faggot". So much fun.

Okay, I'm laughing here at the office. As annoying as it is, the friggin' reasons kids put up to kick somebody amuse this old man.

[TheCapedAvenger]

Okay, I'm laughing here at the office. As annoying as it is, the friggin' reasons kids put up to kick somebody amuse this old man.

I ROFLed at that too.

[Blank]

Another idea for playerkicks: if a vote to kick someone fails, nobody can vote to kick that person for five minutes.

So I vote to kick Blank, it fails, and for five minutes I can't call any votes and anybody who can call a vote can't call one about Blank. That could work well.

Actually, same should go for every other kind of vote!

It'd be nice if we could still call an additional vote if that player is in Spectator mode though... for the previously mentioned failed afk kick attempts -_-

[gumbyy]

This reminds me of when Gumby votekicks Caped every time he joins the game and then tries to tell Caped later that he "didn't mean for it to work."

I did that precisely once and I was legitimately surprised that it worked considering Caped hadn't had more than a minute to piss anyone off.

[TheCapedAvenger]

I did that precisely once and I was legitimately surprised that it worked considering Caped hadn't had more than a minute to piss anyone off.

Life as a professional Altitude player is hard enough as it is.

[Triped]

It'd be nice if we could still call an additional vote if that player is in Spectator mode though... for the previously mentioned failed afk kick attempts -_-

Fair enough. :) Why do you want to kick observers, though?

[Blank]

Fair enough. :) Why do you want to kick observers, though?

14 person server limit. It's 7 on 6. One guy is sitting in spectator mode (IE, he's afk). If he's in there for > a minute or something, I'd rather he be booted so someone else can join and actually play.

(EDIT) Should mention, I don't kick in FFA's. They're crowded enough as is. More people spectating in FFA the better. But team games it just plane sucks (pun completely intended).