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Blizzard Punishing Griefing On Warcraft III Ladders
Thanks to RPGDot for pointing to a Battle.net forum post, in which Blizzard indicate they will ban Warcraft III teams for 'griefing'. This requires Blizzard acting on in-game tactics, rather than illicit software mods/hacks - they mention: "We have received reports and observed that certain Warcraft III players have deliberately caused their own teams to lose in team games. This goes against the spirit of fair play on Battle.net, and as such, we will take action on a case-by-case basis. In each case, if we determine that griefing is in fact occurring, the griefer's Battle.net account and access to ladder games will be subject to removal."
Even though a lot of people seem to hate Blizzard, this just proves that they may actually care about their customers. I'm glad there's at least one game company looking out for their user-base.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Try this analogy for size:
Imagine you belong to a tennis club where you can play scratch games of doubles. Sometimes your doubles partner just deliberately throws the game. You'd probably try to avoid playing that person, but if he persistently did that he might well be subject to sanction and perhaps ejection from the tennis club for unsporting behaviour.
Does that mean doubles tennis is a broken game? Or does it just mean that you sometimes need extra social or organisational structures to make games work? On the 'net, those problems can be harder to solve because of the relative anonymity, so your range of solutions is narrower.
Putting all the teenagers who think soloing is gameplay on the same team for CounterStrike is a good thing. I think I played CStrike for about a month back in 2001, then I got fed up with all the teens and cheaters online.
You have no idea how difficult it is to "just fix it." You're asking developers to write an algorithm that recognizes bad behavior; that recognizes when someone is intentionally playing badly as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to play well.
The Athenians knew how to just fix it. Once a year they'd hold an election; the person getting the most votes -- ostrakons, for the shell or potshard used in voting -- would be ostracized, banished, for a year.
Do it monthly, and I bet you'd see a lot less griefing.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I can understand not wanting people to mess up the ladders. So why not have ladder bans? There are systems for this that can work without keeping people off B.net as a whole.
I can understand wanting good players to be able to play with other good players. Which is why said people catch on and play private games with people they know.
What I don't understand is how Blizzard can keep doing things like this, just snapping its fingers and banning thousands of people. Do they really think that by getting rid of those who "don't play nice," those who do will spend enough money to make up for the lost customer base? Banning a huge sum of players on the off chance that other players will have a better time is a flawed business model, and no competent business would ever do it.
And if this trend continues, how long is it until Blizzard EULAs contain rules and guidelines on how you can play the game? How long is it until people who don't play along are just deleted?
Wouldn't it be nice if there was an alternate Battle.net clone for people who want to play on a huge network but don't want to deal with Blizzard's rules? You know, like bnetd.
Whoops.
It keeps happening, a few people keep griping, and the mindless Blizzard junkies who have become zealous followers of every game the company makes keep praising Blizz for allowing them to play with less people. It's bound to crash and burn eventually. Right?
Glog!
First, this is how they are "fixing" it. Rather than patching to record the behavior or altering the gameworld so that griefing is somehow no longer fun, they are going to patrol their own gameworld and punish griefers. It's a fix with a meat space touch, but still a fix.
Second, Blizzard isn't just a game developer in this case. They are also a game host. Here they are not just selling a game, but a game world and a (must control gag reflex) user experience. As a result, it isn't enough for them to merely let their game out into the wild as it were. They have to provide the appropriate environment for most of their clients to enjoy their game.
There's an easy solution to that one, don't make an ally you can't trust.
And here lies the problem: battle.net players are randomly paired with a partner (or 2 or 3 ) for team ladder games.
There is nothing preventing the little griefers from organizing their own games on open or non league servers, so if they want to throw games there is nothing stopping them. But in league games?
Blizzard owns the servers, so you play the way Blizzard wants you to or you can go play by yourself. Getting the boot from battle.net does not make Warcraft unplayable, it just denies access to their matching service which I think is fair. Now is this whole thing going to blow up in their face? It could, we shall have to see.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I think more games need a simple, easy-to-use "teammates vote moron out" feature like SOCOM 2 on PS2. On some online PC shooter games, I've seen such features, but often they require some typed command at the console that most people never learn.
The Athenians knew how to just fix it. Once a year they'd hold an election; the person getting the most votes -- ostrakons, for the shell or potshard used in voting -- would be ostracized, banished, for a year.
All right, so I used to work for Kesmai, who the people who are in the know realize that means that I have some idea what I'm talking about when it comes to multiplayer online gaming and customer support.
While your solution sounds hopeful at first, you really have to stop and think about the consequences of the solution in other terms, rather that just the problem at hand. See, you're trying to keep bad players out by making a system that allows for players to rid the system of other players.
Now, do you have some magic way of ensuring that the troublemaking players don't get to vote? Because here's pretty much what would happen: The troublemaking players would gang up and start a concerted effort to ban proper players. If the troublemakers could get a good head start, then they would quickly be able to outnumber the proper players.
The quick rule of thumb is to imagine that you want to make life miserable for other players. Then ask yourself how you can abuse the tools in the game. Presume you can find 30 other players who also want to abuse the system, 'cause you will be able to.
Automatic, player-controlled community tools are a nice idea, but you have to make sure that those tools can't be used to affect a player's experience.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.