While there are several things about your post and the way you’ve explained your position that I like, I’m not sure how accurate this is. It sounds like a nice idea, but there does seem to be an overrepresentation of complaints on these forums, so I’d take that with a grain of salt.
It would be interesting to know what the benefits of the debuff are, and whether there are measurements in place (observability/metrics gathering) that detail its effectiveness for Blizzard.
I mentioned this in another thread recently, but whenever anyone asks for change to Classic, I tend to look at Retail and see if whatever they are discussing has been addressed there, as if it has that seems to me to often serve as a blueprint for how they might approach the problem in Classic.
On the one hand, you might see that for instances that have been formed through automatic group matchmaking, you still have the same or a very similar vote-to-kick mechanic, but on the other hand, they have effectively removed the feature from end-game content.
Personally, I don’t immediately see issues that would arise if they changed/lowered the debuff time for being removed from a group (that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be any; just simply that they aren’t immediately apparent to me).
Of course, as almost always, these issues people have with automated grouping tools go away if you form or join your own groups. That’s an option, particularly if you have a special situation where maybe you need to AFK for several minutes multiple times a run.
And while it’s quite possible that those who post on these forums about the negatives of vote-to-kick are mostly outliers who are experiencing being kicked for no known reason seemingly almost every run, and that I am personally (and quite consistently) an outlier on the end of almost never having experienced it, and seeing it in groups so infrequently, if I didn’t read the forums, I would practically forget the feature exists, I’d be curious as to what extent this is an “issue” as well.
This would be an interesting can of worms to deal with for everyone involved.
Anyway, interesting ideas. Who knows if we’ll see changes to the classic progression version of the game along these lines.
Ultimately, I’d be interested in access to any data/metrics that might suggest this is an actual issue, but I can’t help but think it just isn’t. It’s a game, so any claim that there’s time being wasted is moot. And, there are so many workarounds including, but not limited to playing other characters, forming your own groups, or doing something else for the duration of the debuff.
Best of luck out there!
