Dispute Resolution via Instance Splitting

I like the idea of being able to 'kick' someone from my group. However, I'm a bit worried that it could be abused. This is an alternative solution.

What I'd like to see is a "I am leaving" option, where your current 'instance' is forked into two instances -- one with you (and those that follow) and one with those that remain in the old group. The split would have four essential properties:

(a) you can 'split' the group and still maintain your position within the mission;

(b) you can 'invite' people in the current group if they wish to 'split' with you;

(c) those invited can accept to follow you, or reject to stay with the primary group;

(d) after the split, unfilled people show up as disconnected; and

(e) by clicking on a disconnected person, you can replace them with an equivalent class/level henchmen

In this way, there is no abuse. You can choose to leave a group, and others can choose to follow you. No kicking. Kicking is openly hostile. Splitting isn't hostile, it can be followed up with a message:

"Hey all, such-and-such isn't working for me, and you've not taken
any measures to fix this problem. So, I'm going to split. You are
welcome to join me if you wish to do such-and-such."

Nice amicable split. For people that want to do SOC, they can split and take henchmen in their own little world. For people who disagree about how to solve a mission, or are upseat about someone's play style; it's much more politically correct to "leave" and have people "join" you than for you to actively try to "kick" someone. Being on the 'sore' end of the kick is just bad -- what happens, you end up back at the town -- that sucks.

In this option, if you want to "kick" someone, you nicely ask them to "split". If they don't split, then you split, and those that agree with you have their choice to join you or not. No voting, no sore losers. This provides a situation where groups in dispute can have a win-win situation (that is, assuming henchmen are better than "the other guy")

Yes, this sounds good, a lot nicer than kicking people.

still there will be people who abuse this, although there is very little that people won't abuse.

How could you abuse the proposed mechanism? Say I'm the total jerk. You ask me to 'split'. I say "no way". So...

#1 You click 'split'

#2 A "confirmation" dialog appears with a check box next to each
person. By default everyone's checked, including me; so being
of sound mind, and not wanting to deal with me, you uncheck me.

#3 You can fill in an optional 'message' in the confirmation screen,
that is shown to everyone. You then click 'Confirm Split'.

At this point, everyone else (but me, since you unchecked the invite
box by my name) gets a dialog pop-up:

"Arnan Snow has decided to split. He invited you to join, his
reason for splitting was:

I just cannot stand that Ix Chel person, he's ruining the
whole game for me and aggroing. I asked him to split,
and he didn't; so I'm splitting.

Do you wish to split with Arnan Snow? Yes / No"

Each person gets this dialog, and the ones that agree with you can
split with you. You now have your full team, right where you were
minus Ix Chel, and perhaps someone else who agreed with me. So,
you have 2 disconnected slots, lets say.

#4 At this point you can double click on each disconnected player
and they will be replaced with a corresponding henchmen of the
same class, level, and HPs of the disconnected person.

Anyway. That's just one implementation of the idea. How is this implementation open to abuse?

P.S. The last part (replacing disconnected people) works independent of this suggestion -- and it'd be great if Arena Net implemented it.

there will always be ways to abuse

say, a team made up of guild members and one stranger, get almost to end (such as right before all the lvl 20's at the very end of villiany of Galrath), the guildies force the stranger to pay them or they will split. the henchies there are lvl15 so he wouldn't be able to do with just henchies, so he would have to pay or quit.

Serious edge case -- and the henchies arn't actually that bad. I've beaten just about every mission with them -- including villiany of Galrath.

sometimes it's hard sometimes it's easy, but the henchmen are lvl 15, and they are lvl20

Good idea overall, their definately needs to be a mechanism for dealing with these morons.

Well, one way to make this idea work is that when you "split" the extra spaces on both sides are filled with equivalent NPC's. This way no one would be screwed as they'd still have a full party compliment to continue the mission with.

This way no one could abuse the "split" option to farm places solo in long missions and such.

i agree with instance splitting

this would stop "zoning wars". i've had those many times

what happens is some guys try going the wrong way and zoning into the wrong area before the quest we're doing is done (because they wanna do their own quest instead of the one the party is doing).

so i zone back into the right area

then they zone back into the wrong area

then i zone back into the right area again

this process repeats until the other player going the wrong way quits. which can often take forever.

i've had this happen to me many times. many long, multi-hour zoning wars (yes i'm a bit too persistent some times )

a solution to this issue would be great. instance splitting fits the bill.

do you have any idea how hard this would be on the server?

with the current system, the guildies can still pull off this trick by leaving the group all together, leaving him alone to fight the mission. I would say having henchies is better than nothing.

In general, I do like this idea. I'm sure there would be kinks to be worked out, and it's possible that it would be a lot of technological work, so that could be a hurdle.

(It's one thing to make a blank instance for a party where everything is totally fresh; copying a partially "damaged" instance into multiple copies might be problematic.)

The system as it is now has proven that there is current abuse within it.

A popular vote /kick or split system would help nuetralize one system of abuse, but then open another.

As is:

Pros: Not sure
Cons: One person can cause misery for the whole team. One person can choose to go afk and let his teammates complete missions while he recieves the reward.

/Kick by unanimous vote:

Nesscary additions: Kicked player drops mission items he aquired while with his team. Kicked player is replaced by henchman of same primary class.
Pros: It takes a whole group of griefers to be unfair to one person, which is still possably but less likely
Cons: If you have 2 griefers it may be hard to get a unaminous vote

/Kick by popular vote:

Nesscary additions: Kicked players drop mission items he aquired while with his team. Kicked players is replaced by henchmen of same primary class if possibly and random other if not.
Pros: The majority can kick mulitpule players
Cons: Increases the odds for a team of griefers to ruin the game for a few

Split system:

Pros: People that see things differently can go there seperate ways.
Cons:A person could still pull mobs to you. Missions that require items to complete could turn uncompletable for the other group. Would you be able to have a monk henchman join your group once you split with your groups monk?

general merit: great idea!! This would also take care of a problem I sometimes have which is telling my group suddenly "guys, I'm so sorry, but I have to afk for 20 minutes..."

abuse: the abuse prevented would be far greater than the abuse generated

server load: how would it be different from someone mapping back and starting out on their own? Only difference is that killed enemies and dropped items are remembered, as well as path and start location. As was said in OP, it's just a copied instance.

It could even work if it didn't remember the enemies killed.
This could cause problems sometimes if you decided to split in the middle of a place where a lot of monsters lived, but most of the time it would be okay.

the people who choose to leave would be the ones to deal with the reborn monsters... therefore they would just have to make a good decision.

Good idea cat

The guild wars server engine maintains all of the information about monsters in an area, mission status, and people in what they call an "instance". This is on exactly one server and probably is a chunk of memory. Although there is probably lots of implementation work, the idea is to simply duplicate that instance to make 2 identical copies. Then, for each copy, "disconnect" the appropriate people. In this case, monsters and all other status items remain "persistent" for both groups; each party gets their own copy of the world as it was at the time of the split.

I like the idea, and would love to see it implemented, it might also work with droppers (those that don't tell you they only want to capture an elite spell) and dropped connections.

In this example, I don't see how it's really that different from just kicking the person (except being more complicated; i.e. more steps). I mean, okay, the guy is able to continue the mission from where he is, but, by himself, he won't survive anyway.