Literially the griefer problem is getting out of control, not because of the number of griefers (which is still pretty high) it is because of the dickheads who protect them and let griefers remove all of our cover. THe best part is when the dickheads complain about being spawn killed by the greens who had no problem moving up the line.

We need a big brother system to counter this issue. If you don't know what a big brother system is, it is a computer system that records and reports what you do, like if some one has a history of speeding a big brother system would record his speed so some one (parents, family, police) could see that he was speeding.

Now you are likely asking "Well how the hell will a brother system or whatever help our griefer issue?" Well the simple solution is to have one or both of two things.
1. A chat log of a short time after a votekick is issued to see what the votekick was about.
2.Short video of the offender after the votekick is issued.

Number one is the easiest one to make happen, but number two is the most effective. Also to go along with this a registration system is a good choice. But anyway that is my idea/rant on how to counter the griefers.

Won't help at all and will just take up a very large amount of resources.

Griefers just switch IPs to get around server kicks/bans.

Registration is the only thing that'd slow them down, because no matter what their IP address is, once their account is banned from a server, they can't do anything. They'd have to make another account (which requires another new email address, or access to a fake email address provider)

Also, forced votekick participation. Literally, the entire server must participate in the votekick before doing anything else. They cannot move, fire their weapon, jump, dig, etc, until they participate in the votekick. To prevent this from being abused to grief, make it to where you can only initiate a votekick once every 10 minutes, on your account, regardless of if you initiate one, log off the server, then log back in to try to initiate another. Simply typing /y or /n restores action to your character. Those that continually choose /n will be kicked, because chances are the votekick that was initiated is legitimate. By continually I mean like 10+ times in a row.

@Kaede-chan, while forcing users to vote has the right intentions, I can see many users becoming frustrated with something like that, along with many users just blindly voting to continue playing, thus making the results inaccurate.

Well, put a limit on the total amount of votekicks that can be initiated on the server, like one every 5 or 10 minutes. Can't be that goddamn annoying, can it? If people can't be bothered to make the server a nicer place to play on, they shouldn't be playing on it either.

You mean limit the amount of vote kicks to once every 10 minutes? Hmm, but couldn't greifers/hackers/etc take advantage of the waiting period knowing that they can't be kicked (except by the host of course).

A simple votekick UI would work best, I think. Having something on your screen is annoying enough to make you vote. Just a simple thing that doesn't go away until you vote is the best option. It shouldn't ruin gameplay, but it shouldn't be as invisible as it is now.

Also IIRC, the game prevents you from rejoining for a while after a kick. It would be nice if it did this if the person leaves before being votekicked also.

Punishing people for voting no, even continually, is dumb. If the server doesn't have enough yes-voters to votekick one guy (assuming everyone HAS to vote), the server probably isn't worth playing on. If I vote 'no' ten times because everyone thinks Chonny is aimbotting, I shouldn't be kicked.

Well the way it is as of now isn't working.

It's either nobody knows how to participate in one, or can't be bothered typing /votekick #

Make it a hotkey that is pressable when a votekick is in session. like K for yes, P for no.

Y and N would be better keys, I think. It's more intuitive, at least for English speakers, and it appears that a majority of AoS fans do speak English.

I also prefer Danke's UI idea. Make it an alert that's annoying enough to encourage people to vote, but not annoying enough to encourage voting without thinking just to get rid of it. A simple shaded-background alert right over the chat area displaying a message like "A votekick has been called against <playername> for <reason>. Press Y to help kick or N to prevent the kick." A third option, something like "H," could be added to allow players to abstain from voting (H is right in between Y and N, to make it more ergonomic). There might be an excess of people abstaining just to get the message to go away, but it would also allow people who don't know what's really going on to prevent themselves from skewing the results.

The votekick start command would be like the current one, only with a reason added: "/votekick <#> <reason>" so a sample command would be "/votekick 1 griefing"

Y is already a hotkey for teamspeak.

:S

It (or the yes vote command) can be remapped. I suppose it's a matter of Ben's preference.