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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."
Couldn't they just force all the griefers to be on the same team?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Sure, griefers are players with names like [jerk]IWILLDROP who go into random team games. As soon as a game starts they usually say something rude or racist or what not and then immediately drop from the game. I am sure Blizzard gets tons of reports about these jerks and is looking for a way for random team people to not get stuck with them. Thus, they are looking to ban accounts of people who routinely do this. I doubt this is a viable solution, since these people will just create new accounts, but at least Blizzard is trying.
http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
Called Greifers, these people usually tend to haunt MMORPGs but can be found in just about any game. They get bored with the "standard" gameplay, and so attempt to ruin the game for other players.
In MMOs, this can be anything from following around a newbie and killing anything close to them, preferably after it gets to about 25% health, to building many small cheap buildings in one area to prevent others from building there (a real example from A Tale in the Desert) - the harder it is for the player to get around the greifing tactics, the better it is for the greifer.
In RTS games, Greifing can range from the passive (disconnecting after 30 seconds (or 2 mins or whatever depending on game), sitting on one's ass not doing _anything_ until someone kills your town center and starting workers) to active (building an army, not attacking with the rest of your allies, then when they're armies are away you force-attack their bases with your anti-building troops) and generally ruin the game for everybody else. The winning team is robbed of a challenge, the losing team robbed of a decent chance.
I can see this policy only being exercised on solid cases, ie. multiple complaints for the account, with replays available. Just having a partner that sucks isn't greifing (though some greifers do intentionally play crappily to get under the greif radar) and I can't imagine any of those cases holding up to a blizzard staff member reviewing the evidence.
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.
This is actually old news, but hey, whatever...
I fully support Blizzards decision, in fact, they just recently banned FFA (free for all) griefers... its SOOO easy to get into a ladder FFA with a "friend" if you click on the play game button at about the same time, since there are relatively few FFA's at any given moment.
Just for clarification, this is your typical griefer:
game starts, they (depending on race) either destroy all their buildings, or hero rush your base, or build nothing but peons.
An older trick was the get this one wand that teleported a unit back to your town hall, and right before you finished "creeping" (killing neutral monsters for gold/experience) they'd teleport your hero back to base, get the item and the xp for your kill...
These arent people that "suck" at the game. These are the asshats that would join your Diablo 2 game with hacked characters and then kill you "because they could".
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
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?
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.
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?
Actually, since there is no recurring charge, they lose no business at all. The people who get banned (probably) already bought the game, and depending on how much they care about it, might buy it *again*.
I can't see how this is flawed in any way. Legitimate players pay to play the game in a legitimate way, cheaters and griefers *should* be thrown out. Why should they expect to get away with being assholes and/or cheating?
If Blizzard got terribly overzealous with these rules, then I can see why you would complain. But at this point, you are just being paranoid. Banning cheaters and losers is nothing but good for everyone.
I know more than you drink.
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'll tell you right now that I think that your over reacting, like they're some fascist government or something, but I know that people get banned from IRC chat rooms for less. The punishment fits the crime, grief and you get banned. Its that simple.
Lemme give you an example to highlight my point. if I go into a restraunt and they have a no shoes no shirt no service policy and some guy walks in violating those rules, and to top it off, he starts pestering paying customers, he's going to get kicked out. The Bnet community doesn't want that sort of behavior, and Blizzard is responding.
Based on your logic, Blizzard should do nothing, let people get away with ruining games because otherwise their being restrictive. Games are supposed to be fun, and griefers really mess that up. The other thing you fail to realize is that this sort of thing also happens outside of the ladder games. Look for my other post on this topic.
What I don't understand is how Blizzard can keep doing things like this, just snapping its fingers and banning thousands of people Basically, they are NOT snapping their fingers. Like any crime, evidence is submitted (EG: a replay of the game). Blizzard support looks at it, sees the person doing the crime, and they ban that person. This is not an arbitrary ban, these people know what they are doing is wrong and bugs other people. They do not care, for them its funny or a cure for boredom. For everybody else its a loss on their record and an annoyance to gameplay.
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. First off, there are lots of people who want to play without interference. I don't think that Blizzards stance of helping out where problems exist will cause them to crash and burn. By your logic, we should rid our streets of police officers because too many victims gripe, and our society is becoming a "police state" because a few people with the power to enforce the law do so. Blizzard is the police on Bnet, and they respond to victims of a very annoying crime.
You mean like Diablo 2's Open Battle.net which is run largely by hacked characters? Yeah, I tried it before. It sucks. People either cheat or hack... and then they kill you... repeatedly.
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.
Because its not just the ladders. Have you even played Warcraft III online? All regular melee games are setup so that you're randomly assigned teammates and opponents. YOU DON'T GET TO PICK YOUR TEAMMATES. If you're playing a 4v4 and your teammates decide to be assholes and force attack your base, tough luck you just wasted about 20 minutes of time and lost the game. Its not like Starcraft where everyone gets dropped into a room beforehand and can chat it out before starting.
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.
It WOULD be a flawed business model if you weren't ignorant. In this case; Step one, YOU buy the game. Step two, YOU go on Battle.net and get yourself banned. Step three, YOU are now screwed. Now where does Blizzard get YOUR money? The answer: Step one.
Battle.net is NOT a pay-to-play model. Once you get past Step one, Blizzard doesn't care if you decide to destroy the CD in a microwave, they already have YOUR money. If it wasn't for the advertisement banners and the low bandwidth necessary to run the servers, Blizzard would be in deep financial trouble considing the fact that people are STILL playing Diablo 1 on Battle.net for FREE.
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.