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Player vs. Player Play Examined
aws910 writes "An interesting story at news.com.com tells of the various efforts employed by various MMOG companies to abate the problem of Griefers." From the article: "Social miscreants can do more than ruin the game for better-behaved competitors. They can hurt game companies' bottom line by driving away customers and burning up support lines. Problems related to grief players often account for 25 percent or more of customer service calls, according to game publishers." Commentary from the old men of MMOGdom available at Broken Toys and Terra Nova.
Charge for support lines and dont reward the bad guy.
Sigs cause cancer.
I don't get it.
As a non avid game player especially with multi-players games is because I will die before I get any handle of the controls in the game. So with people who are interested in upping their kills is more important then having a good time. There were some times when we have team games in Starcraft (Where me and a friend try unconventional strategies, that sometime work and other times fail) the person who is usually the Greafer when in a loosing battle will unhook their internet connection other then having it marked as a loss, this type of stuff is frustrated for a person who plays just to have a good time if they win great if I loose it is no problem. But it is frustrating playing against a person and you are about to win and they drop off thus not even give you a legit win. But yet they would be the first to brake any social rules before the game such as no rush for 5 minutes. Also being a non-hardcore gamer I don't have all the state of the art gaming equipment so I am already at a disadvantage such as in a 3d shoot them up because I just have a normal mouse and keyboard. I wish the Hardcore gammers would play in a different area then the people who are in it for a 1/2 hour of fun. And Not just try to get a bunch of wins. It is akin to a company softball team hiring professional baseball players just to win. (yea yea simsons did it). But there are different cultures for games.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's news.com.com.com.
Kinda fitting IMO since this is the stance that most of the GM's in the MMORPGS I play take. The usual response is "Use the in-game PvP system/It's part of the game". May sound good on paper, but when you're 20+ levels behind, it's hard getting a group together to go after that one lone griefer.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I can't find where, but haven't we seen this story a few weeks ago here or elsewhere? Maybe I read too much web stories lately and it's all becoming mush in my head...
Semi-OT, but the only forum I know of that might have the answer: My kids have been bugging me to install Punkbuster so they can log on to better game servers. We are careful about analyzing any software we install to ensure that it is not a trojan or spyware vector. But I cannot find any solid information one way or the other on Punkbuster.
The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports.
What has Slashdotters' experience been with this product?
sPh
Punish everyone by degrading support? Now, if you only charge for support for the bad guys....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"griefers," a small but seemingly irradicable set of players who want nothing more than to murder, loot and otherwise frustrate the heck out of everyone else.
newsflash - there are @ssholes in real life too.
This has "fluff" all over it - bring on the lights, bring on xmas ! - send us the snow, because there aint none in Africa this Christmas ! :D
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
What you need to do is make a game where either the rules constantly change or the more experienced you are the weaker you are (thus newbies are killers).
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
If it were me (if I was a developer) I would create a character that had unlimited power but looked like a noobie. Sort of a sting operation. It might not work, but it sure would be fun.
Well, duh.
Let each player give other players a single positive or negative "reputation" point, with a certain maximum number possible. When you first see someone, you can check out their reputation, and if they are +5 helpful you might trust them more than a -1 annoying player.
You could go farther, and those with negative karma might be banned from certain areas, like around spawn points.
Because pissing people off is fun. Especially when those people are self-righteous jerks aka geeks. Face it people, these are just the jocks of your adult life. You deserved it in high school and you deserve it now.
I'm surprised developers of MMORPGs didn't realize that simulating social interaction on a grand scale introduces the exact same problems a real society has: namely violence, theft and other lawlessness. The solution is to implement exactly what the real world uses: a police or security force as a detterence.
A virtual police or secuirty force that could 1) recognize "crime" and 2) had the authority to "detain" (perhaps indefinitely, depending on the seriousness of the breach) and even fine "criminals" would solve the problem to a large degree. But like real life, there will always be those who want to break the rules and get away with it.
[Stampy butts another elephant]
Marge: Gosh, I thought he'd be happier in his true habitat.
Warden: Oh, I think he is.
Marge: Then why is he attacking all those other elephants?
Warden: Well, animals are not like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them
act badly because they've had a hard life, or have been
mistreated...but, like people, some of them are just jerks.
Stop that, Mr. Simpson.
[Homer butts the warden repeatedly]
Anyone remember Sirian and his flameware about Diablo II's PvP?
Are those like USENET, or IRC, or /. trolls? Typically (most often?) they're moderators, or ops, who are bored to tears all day long and happily lie in wait to start arguments and feed flame wars as often as possible?
Just like in business and government: we can't get rid of the bad apples because they're composed of the oldest, most well-established, most wealthy individuals.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
this?
Sorry Pirates ... Terra Nova != SuprNova replacement
How about you buy something for a change?
I enjoyed playing the last Rainbow Six when it was only a multiplayer online demo. Everyone played well and was friendly.
Then the game was released and I bought it and anytime I joined a server to play online, my own team would shoot me. Same with Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I took the games back to EBGames and haven't bothered since.
I can't be bothered wasting my time with retards with the mentality of three-year-olds. These days I might play a game a couple of times a year and that's LAN only. I've written off online completely.
All the griefers would do is just create throwaway characters.
If your idea was raily so good, we would be relying on this wonderful mod system right now, and not posting as AC, right mate?
Just make PvP opt-in. For 90% of games, this makes a lot of sense, since the _focus_ is not on player vs player combat as compared to simple player interaction. Why force people to participate in a system that they don't particularly care for?
Variant: PvP "zones", which, IMHO, are worse, since you can lure people into them. Better to have opt-in PvP and then have PvP-Free zones.
For that 10% where player killing action is the point of the whole game, if the game is properly balanced so that players at equal level are equally good at combat, level limits would seem to work best.
An alternative system for mandatory PvP games where combat is _not_ balanced level for level:
The more a player is killed, the less experience s/he is worth. The more a player kills, the _more_ s/he is worth. This discourages people from getting killed, and encourages people to kill "griefers" (aka, jerks). This works very well in conjunction with no-looting.
IMHO, the griefer syndrome stems from the fact that modern commercial MMORPGs are not RP-enforced. On the best MUDs, this problem is solved to a large extent by administrator judgement ("no assholes on my MUD!" *deletes and sitebans player!*).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
It's very easy to fight griefing. Look at EverQuest II. There is no explicit PvP, it's impossible to loot other people's corpses, and encounters are locked ( so you can't interfere with someone else's fight without his consent ). Result? Antisocial behavior is virtually nonexistent.
... penalizing players for killing PCs?
Say, you kill someone, you lose some experience/life/karma/whatever points.
I would have to say that pvp is part of the game. If you dont like it, dont play games that allow you to die. Dont go offline in unprotected areas, and learn how to defend yourself. Your death is a result of your own stupidity if you are an even match for your attacker, if not then you should have run as soon as you saw red.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
....If you make this character look like Jessica Rabbit, you will have one honey of a honeypot indeed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
No, actually, it's because there are geeks who got beat up by jocks, and are socially mal-adjusted, just as you seem to be.
Anti-social behaviour is only "fun" if you're socially maladjusted. Once you grow up, you don't find it fun anymore.
I used to work as a software developer at a small startup company with a large customer base. I had a tech support database where you could see a customer's call history. We rated customers (internally and informally) by how stupid their questions were (i.e. the insist on doing the impossible or they refuse to consult the manual). Customers who reported bugs or supplied all the information we required were rated higher. Again, this was just an informal system to let us know what to expect during a call / how much time to allocate. We would frequently ship out t-shirts with our releases and someone came up with the idea of choosing the t-shirt color based on the customer's rating. Then, when we went to trade shows we could see who was who. A tie-dye for the cool people and a red shirt for the clueless ones. We never actually did that. If word got out we would have taken a lot of flak, I sure.
why are things like battle.net and steam so popular? is it to foster teamwork and good spirits? no it's to go in and hand some fool their ass. it is better when there is legitimate competition. but online play is, primarily, popular because it allos you to play AGAINST people not with them.
now, mmo's tend to be more touchy-feely circle jerks. but if you dont want to get owned by some 'griefer' don't play a PvP game and/or get a clue.
i have to admit though, i remember being duped in some silly D2 scams. remember that one where they made you fill your inventory with potions so when you went for your corpse all your loot would land on the ground?
or now in cs:source the f10 deal? yeah i fell for that the first time.
hazing aint going away. but it is always good charma to every once-in-a-while tell some guy named 'Player' how to change his name.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
I remember a bunch of punks like this in the old game subspace camping in the T20 safety zone so players (newbies and experienced) would get obliterated just nudging within a few screens of distance. The way to deal with these types of people is to do the same thing back. It's no fun for them. I got an armada together and we linked ships to beat the crap out of them for a good 30 minutes straight. That was such sweet victory.
One problem with mmorpgs is that people can grief while still playing "fair". In SWG, if I was trying to run low level faction missions from the city I lived in, there was always one guy who had far more combat skills than I who would actually lie in wait to kill me daily (in swg you become pvp-able when you run a faction mission). Yes I could of gone to another city or run non faction missions but I would of got a fraction of the experience and money for them. So I would constantly be attacked, killed and taunted by one individual who was playing within the rules of the game and until I finally had a character to match his, there was nothing I could do about it and it really sucked, it made me consider quitting many a time.
I just wonder how they account for the "I'm reporting User So-and-so out of spite because he/she won," factor. I wouldn't expect an all out investigatory thing, but it seems like the very system meant to get rid of griefing could be used as a tool of abuse by griefers.
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
Back in the days I was playing tribes a lot (online game, similar to cs etc), perhaps 5 years ago or so, and by then there was really no exploits to the game known. There was no cheats or wallhacks, it was a good game.
:-)
So one day, a guy invents this autoaim patch which is quite hard to install (near impossibly) and the whole community freaks out in pain, since 99.9% of the players didn't want this kind of mods. Note that this was a very respected modder, he called himself or his mods "sixpack" and was really good stuff otherwise, but nothing that really was cheating.
People on the online servers go nuts, "you use aimbots!", "these people are too good" etc. The comments if you shoot somebody in the head on first sight was almost always "cheater!" etc.
Then of course, after a week or so, the modder said that the whole thing was a hoax and it didn't work at all. Everybody realized people where just that good
Oh the good times.
Albert
It's never work. You'd have griefers modbombing people. Hmmm...just like Slashdot.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Yeah, and there could be a kind of meta-reputation system where people with good karma get to evaluate whether the reputations that had been assigned were fair. That would stop the trolls^h^h^h^h^h^hgriefers!
Orindarily this would be no problem, however, there are many high levels that take it to an extreme and "camp" low level people just to rack up kills. On a single incident basis, this is no problem because well ... we play the PvP servers for the added excitement and added difficulty it presents, but multiply these incidences by 100X and you can see that it goes from challeging to impossible.
This then becomes a viscious circle as lower people quit because they perceive the system as imbalanced with no hope or opportunity to overcome that imbalance -- leaving only the higher level toons to own the server. Witness Asheron's call 2. PvP population on the servers dwindled from two servers 800 each to two years later where there is one server and the high population is now about 30 people.
There is no risk for higher level toons to PK much lower level toons -- particularly when they really can't be defeated. So, have a bad day at work and go home, log on, and commence the mayhem by killing all the noobs you come across.
One way of dealing with this, which would be very unpopular but nonetheless balance the system is to have PvP servers "PERMA-DEATH". Meaning, you get defeated in PvP and your toon is put back to square one with all your money and bankables taken away. This would give you the politics of PvP, but the actual PvP being the last resort because of the inherent risks involved in losing your toon. This combined with giving even the lowest toon a certain percentage chance to defeat anybody who attacks him, would certainly cut back on the random PvP'ing that ruins the game.
as well as social behavior... thank god you can finally be all alone in your own virtual world, just like in the real one.
This is why I don't play Star Wars Battlefront anymore. Teams of these types would wait around spawn points and demolish other teams...
I have to admit sometimes it can be fun to pick on newbies, particularly the more annoying "give me equipment/gold/etc" newbies who seem to think that they have some sort of god-given right to everything you've worked hard to collect.
Being a MUD player, though, my form of revenge is limited to amusing things like charming mobs that the newbie is about to attack, so it would be something like:
Newbie: Oh, there's a giant spider...let me try to kill it...
@ Kill giant spider
Sorry, you must MURDER a charmie.
@ Murder giant spider
Sorry, you can't murder another player's charmie.
@ CHAT Y KANT I KILL THE GIANT SPIDER
[Silence is secretly ordering the spider to speak.] The giant spider says, "Why do you want to kill me, Newbie?"
Newbie: WTF?
@ CHAT THE GIANT SPDIR IZ TALKING TO ME!
Silence chats, "Maybe he just doesn't want to die." [secretly typing 'order giant spider fkiss Newbie']
@ CHAT BUT I WNT 2 KILL IT!
The giant spider kisses you passionately.
@ POKE GIANT SPIDER
Nothing happens.
@ KILL GIANT SPIDER
The giant spider dances around you merrily.
[Silence secretly uncharms the giant spider.]
@ DANCE GIANT SPIDER
The giant spider TOTALLY DEMOLISHES you with its fangs!!
Muahahahahha.
Note that this type of newbie is usually some lamer who has played other variations of MMORPGs before and has never had to work for anything. I agree, the ones who are seriously wanting to get better always get my help.:-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Exploiting of bugs could certainly be termed grief play, but this is essentially a game mechanics issue and should be addressed as such. The bottom line is, the game mechanics define the rules of the game, and if an action is allowed it is a legitimate part of the game. For example: if wildly unbalanced encounters between high-level and low-level characters are not desired, then they should be prevented by game mechanics.
In-game chat, and mechanics exploits are the only real tools of the griefer. An /ignore command, and timely patches in a quality game make this a non-issue.
Banning has already been upheld and practiced by companies running MMORPGs on the basis of cheats and other improper behavior.
A 'legal' force could work in a gaming environment.
You could be put in jail for up to a week. For serious crimes you would be killed. You could implement fines, strip people of titles, or confiscate land or properties (if the game allowed that).
I think the biggest problem is that MMORPGs don't provide a framework for anything like this, they don't provide a real society framework. They expect everyone to behave in a certain way, and it just plain doesn't work. Everyone is walking around armed to the gills for fighting monsters, there is no cause-effect reason to not kill people in your way or causing trouble.
UO had this problem for the longest time. You'd be killed quickly by mobs of characters if you stepped outside the city limits with too much money on you. The only punishment for the players was that they could no longer enter city limits (guards would kill them on sight) but many just had secondary mule characters for doing any in-city work.
Eventually UO added a bounty system but it did little to take down many of the evil players, there just wasn't enough reason to good in the game.
Personally, I think the game would have much better balance & results if the players had more stock in the game. More power over its running, ruling, governance, etc. Police/Private armies would go a long way (you could be inside of a kingdom and the king could raise an army and send it against criminals) towards combating lawlessness in the land (without artificial limits against it). I also think that if there was some finality in death then people would play with much more care, but as usual, gaming companies worry more about the people who play for 16 hours a day and take the game way too seriously than any of their other customers.
FunOne
The article doesn't even begin to grasp the scale of greifing in online games. Griefers are not lone misanthropes looking torture the weak, they just start that way. They form their own groups and then use these groups/guilds/mafia to "police" the server in the form of organised greifing. To make matters worse, they are usually the most likely players to take advantage of bugs and/or exploits, which often unbalances the playing field further. Not being discriminating in their associates often characterises greifers in MMOs. They don't care who their friends are, so long as they can maintain strangth in numbers, and their rules of conduct are so minimal, that they can grow to outnumber any other organisation on thee server, becoming an unbalancing force of extreme inconvenience to other players. Against such dedicated players, there is often no real recourse, or even means to ignore and avoid, so younger players who have been on the recieving end of greifing behavior often break down and become counter-greifers, themselves. Which just magnifies the problem until the entire server revolves around the personal conflicts of the players who least represent the intention of the game, or the majority of the server population. It then becomes impossible to oraganise events on a server, or do any of the really interesting "player created content" that MMO developers yearn to inspire. Want to have a well planned wedding? Not a chance when guild X shows up, and starts screaming obscenities at the crowd or attacking people, if the rules allow. MMO developers are often afraid to take real action against the players involved in a greif oriented organisation. They desperately need the dollars, and can't afford to ban players right and left. Often greifing organisations are led by players who have numerous accounts, and banning the leaders of these organisations would cost hundreds of dollars per month, per individual, and would eventually lead to a noticable drop in revenue. Greifers are also the most likely poulation to purchase items, characters or money outside of game, to further increase their disporportionate power. They drive inflation on a server, and can further tip the PvP balance towards their favour by means not available to most players, or by means that the majority of players, and the developer feel are unethical.
People had the choice of PvP, and I absolutely hate it when people rant on costantly about how they once got 'ganked' (killed by several higher level players). Sure it was unfair, but hey it's a freakin' war. This isn't borecraft, you know. That is not griefing IMHO. It becomes griefing when those higher level players camp the corpse of the lower level player. In WoW, there are guards and NPCs that fight, but they can be taken out too, and it can take quite a long time for them to spawn back. Once they're taken out, it's up the players to defend their town.
You mean kind of like Fable for XBox? In that world, if you're nice to people and helpful, villagers are friendly to you. If you kill people you shouldn't kill, they know to run away...
Are there any good games out there where it is better to work in groups and your opponents are another set of users or AI? Like if all the users were assigned to different tribes? Then PvP between tribes isn't so bad, it's natural. Or if every is basically working against a common enemy, etc.?
Personally, I prefer the cooperative modes on Halo, Medal of Honor, etc. and games like Heroes of D&D, where you can work together.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
Seriously people, don't listen to this garbage. This article is no better than anything that fails to distinguish between "hacker" and "cracker" types. This piece colors any player on the evil side of things as a "griefer" which is ridiculous. The "social contract" they claim exists is in many games the fact that there is no social contract and you are free to be whoever you want to be (without using exploits).
But whatever... it's been proven that the whiners make up the majority of MMORPG gamers... just look at the dumbing down of games due to supposed griefers. It's sad.
It works like this: When you start on a new server, you have 50 AP. The range goes from 0-100. People's names are colored according to their AP, white at 50, and turning a deeper blue as you get closer to 100. It shifts to the red as you get closer to 0. As time goes by, you AP slowly goes up, but faster the lower your AP is, so if your AP is 99, it will take quite a while to get that last point to 100. When you kill someone, your AP drops, depending on how high the AP of the person you killed was. You get a huge AP drop for killing a saint (someone with 100 ap) compared to killing a regular PKer. In addition to just coloring names, though, it also has some practical effects. Saints, who are people that just don't PK at all (you won't get 100 AP if you PK..), cannot be hurt by swords. So if you don't PK, you don't need to worry near as much about the people that do. And for those that go after people with high AP (you'll end up with a high AP if you don't PK, or if you just suck at fighting and never get a kill), their AP will drop to the 0-10 range, from the penalties that come with killing high APs. When you're in the 0-10 range, picking up hearts doesn't heal you. Which means is you go fighting a lot, you will die more too, as you can't heal.
It's a system that makes sense, to me.
I used to be a hardcore starcraft player, but when Warcraft 3 came out I specifically upgraded my computer to run it.
Warcraft 3 gives you a win if your opponent disconnects, so Blizzard knew to fix this "disconnector" problem you had with starcraft.
So I highly recommend you upgrade your computer and try Warcraft 3... it's a little different to play but it's really very fun once you get the hang of it, just like Starcraft was. Plus, you could buy a good enough video card for like $20 nowdays, and it would run WC3 fine.
This brings on an even greater abuse, abusing the moderating system, i.e. creating accounts/getting friends to help raise your main char's rep.
Such things happen in all real life games. People suck, and will continue to suck as long as people exist. Asshats love being asshats, and the only way to avoid them is to "take my ball and go home" [quit the game and play elsewhere].
This can commonly be done with FPS style games, but MMORPGS suffer from the fact that there -is- nowhere else to play the game as there's commonly only one world.
In all honesty, I've always avoided paying for MMORPGs [except for puzzle pirates, which promotes a great deal of social pressure by the community on... 'undesirables'] because of this.
Moderation.
I person from am i.p. can mod a character for one point.
they can change their moderation of that person to -1, 0 or +1.
You can only be modded 5 times from the same guild.
From what I see, there are three ways to handle the results.
1. base the costs of items on someones mod points.
2. base the items that drop on someones mod points.
3. make them hunted by town guards.
IF it was a few people, you oculd ban them, but it is such a large percentage of suscribers that it wouldn't be cost worthy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now MUDs were not really "massively" multiplayer with only 100 players online. But some of the things we toyed with would still play out, like having dice rolls go poorly for people if they're flagged as griefers. You know, nothing you could put your finger on as a player, but chance would seem to be always against you.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I've put some thought to this kind of stuff going on in games. Here's some of my ideas contrasted with what games actually do:
;) You could get around it if you're Star Wars, and implement a version following the Light/Dark side concept of Knights of the Old Republic.
1) Religious alignment system (think DandD style with gods/goddesses representing alignments). "Good" players received the protection of their appropriate gods, say protection from corpse looting. "Evil" players received other rewards and protections, but not protection from looting (thus their reign of terror ends when a dozen good characters stand up to them). Changing alignment leads to temporary penalties where nobody wants to protect you. Then, players who play "good" characters can go about their lives with the occasional evil character attack (the rewards for being evil should be good enough to justify it). Evil characters (the pkillers) can spend their time killing each other for the loot. By splitting hairs farther, perhaps Lawful Good characters (who had never attacked another player) would be completely immune to pkilling, which other good players would have to hold their own or hope that they were close enough to town for the town guards to come running.
Won't fly though, people would flip out at the suggestion of religion
2) If the world was heavily magical (ie, everyone was a magician and justified this), everyone could be issed a mostly harmless pet familiar. Who would then be capable of growing into a dragon and hosing down any unwanted invitations to a duel with fire. It could be made so that pk could still be possible, but would widen the xp gap needed for griefing considerably to take on a n00b and their dragon at the same time.
A) Preventing PvP entirely outside of arenas. Easy to implement when everyone is a good guy, but what do you do if you've got a situation where players play on opposing countries/sides/whatever and fighting is expected as part of the story? This path seems to be getting taken a lot by current games.
B) Doing nothing and letting it happen. This seems to be what the other games do. I wonder if I was the only one who was annoyed by the article's advice of "Ignore them and they will go away"? When I was in elementary school, I was bullied regularly for a year while I tried to "ignore it" until I finally snapped and bloodied the bully's nose. That led to a week of peace followed by the bully's friends holding me down while he taught me not to bother fighting back, followed by more of the usual. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
In the end, I think MMO companies will need to come up with creative, true-to-plot solutions to the problem, whether its as simple as a "murderer" flag, or tied to more complex socioeconomic penalties (say, shopkeepers charging you more and more the more bloodthirsty you become, until eventually the same players that you kill are making money off of you by reselling items to you at a hefty markup).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
well, in order to deal with the modbombin you have an "average rating given" modifier.
Reward those who rate highly with more/stronger mod points and perhaps badges to hand out.
those who mod 50/50 good and bad recieve nothing special and those whose majority of modding is negative shall be pooneeshed!
wieght the algorithm so that when you negatively mod someone who is themselves a negative modder but you are good/neutral then you do not have that held against you.
It would really make you think before you mod someone down if you knew it directly reflected on your ability to mod.
I'm only familiar with Diablo II, where any little twerp can hit the "hostile" button almost any time they want, which I find really annoying and pointless. In the day when real duels were not so illegal, society would only recognize duels that were mutually agreed upon, anything else was treated as brutal murder and punished accordingly. What's wrong with only allowing PvP when one player requests it and the other agrees? If you challenge me, then you're making yourself vulnerable to my agreeing at the point that's most favorable to me and possibly pouncing on you, but, at least in this case, you clearly asked for it.
I cannot find any document that states AI ever pushed for a cease fire between the CPN and the government. I did, however, find this:
(take from here, a pro CPN site. Which I think gives credence to the second sentence.)Amnesty International's official stance is to take no sides and simply to oppose human rights abuses wherever they occur. That includes rebels as well as governments. You seem to have some problem with that, which makes me curious. Usually people who don't want to be held accountable for human rights abuses are the ones who hate human rights groups the most.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I always fought greifers in game the way you should. Don't give them a response.
Seriously, 99% of griefers jollys are from provoking a response.
When playing Neocron I had the misfortune to get ganked by a couple of muppets. Now in NC when you die high level damage gives you XP (or used to). So rather then whack rats for the next hour or so I respawned (genrep) back to them and let them kill me again, and again, and again.
After about 5 minutes they stopped when they realised they were wasting ammo on me for no loot. I got called various names and told to "fight fair" (they were 30 levels above me). At that point they got annoyed and tried to leave the area only to be gunned down by the cops as they were now a criminal for killing me so often. I picked up their nice custom built gattling cannon (4 slots) from their corpse. This was back when you dropped an item instead of a belt.
Similar incidents in UO. Myself and others got annoyed by a PK'er who liked to come in and kill newbies. So my friends dressed up as shepard NPC's and did the NPC shuffle, while I acted all newbish. Once he started to attack me they ganked him and looted him.
I'm still a regular player of Warcraft III, amongst other games. I've regularly encountered players that tend to run off at the mouth way too much, usually after their own poor playing brings their team down.
What's really disconcerting is such remarks are often directed at team members. It's much easier to blame another as being a "stupid f***ing lamer noob" than accept their own lack of ability. I can take the crap from my opponents, but the game becomes moot when Mr. Lvl5 starts insulting my gameplay (as somebody more than 3x his experience level) constantly. You end up squelching your ally, which means you might as well just quit because then you can't coordinate a proper effort.
It's the sad day we've all expected, when gaming became mainstream enough that all the average jerks have wandered in (as opposed to just the geeky jerks, of which there were less in gameplay). I for one would commend a moderation system. Perhaps after each game of war3 you could moderate the players quickly. Enemy moderations rated at 1/3 the power of team-moderations, and perhaps it could ignore those who constantly undermoderate other players (particularly the enemy). I think that there are still enough respectable players who enjoy a good game - win or lose - that such a system would work. Modding the trolls into oblivion would ensure that they could be blocked from games of those who really are there to play, and since accounts can be tied to CD-keys well....
Along with plenty of my own game servers as well. The ONLY way to stop it, perm bans. Griefers....well, if they hurt a companies bottom line by chasing off players, why then, are they allowed to continue to play? You set a limit "let see, you had 5 support calls against you. Sorry, you're off the system." Wow, that's hard isn't it? If they are kicked off your system...for any reason, they can't be allowed back. I can't tell you how many times I've had people come back to me "oh, I wasn't teamkilling on your server". Well, guess what...jaggoff, you TKed me tell your BS to someone else, you're not welcome on MY servers.
I run a multi-purpose shop which includes ISP services. If someone is caught spamming, hacking, or anything of that nature, they get one warning. Next time their service is suspended. You can't allow people to get away with things with impunity. The phrase "give them an inch..." springs to mind. It's human nature to push the limits.
And people wonder why I don't like MMORPGs. You have to buy the game, and if you don't like the way the server(s) are maintained you're out. No single player to fall back on, you can't even play on your own servers.
If there's one thing I've learned in life, multi-billion dollar corperations could care less about your satisfaction. Take Comcast, SBC, and Verizon for example. How often do you have problems with one of those companies, but yet you still use their services? Comcast cable TV and internet, constant problems and getting the problem(s) fixed is like trying to lift a 20ton truck with your scrotum. Same goes with SBC and verizon. Don't even get me started on them, or for that matter any other corp. Their end all is to return money for their investors. If you happen to be happy along the way, great. If not, what does it bother them? It's not like you have too many other options because they fight letting others use their infrastructure.
Ok, that turned into a rant a little bit, but it drives me nuts that so many sheep just blindly follow "I want DSL, but SBC is the only company that provides it." Idiots, there's better companies out there that can provide you internet service that just don't have multimillion dollar advertising budgets so they CAN be on TV. Do a little research. If you're unhappy with something, DON'T GIVE THEM MONEY! *ring ring* "Mister Kettle, it's Mister Pot on line 2"
companies complaining about "bad users" ruining their profits but they don't punish them. Hmmm, I say the people that are paying those companies should be punishing the companies if they don't offer good service and support....ALL companies.
... has semi-solved this problem, by making everything team-based (those who played pvp in the world event know what I'm talking about), because, then it makes it near impossible for 1/2 people to annihlate the team, and it is alot rarer that you will accaulty see a whole team of Greifers.
But has added the ability for a Griefer to join a team and deliberatley leading fat creeps/players back and other mischevious acts, but it usually gets him slaughtered instead.
They should have a special item only available to newbies.
The Dynamite Belt.
If you're being grief'ed, detonate. Only works if you're being attacked/looted by someone N levels above your own and/or several players with a combined level of N. Does not work if you attacked first.
Everyone involved is killed and loses all virtual possessions, respawns totally naked.
Someone stole my holocron, +3 Mace, Robe of OWNAGE.
and there are malicious people in games. Try to remove or inhibit them in the game and you have a stupid, boring game, like most MMORPGs 'CmdrTaco is a pedophile' with artificial PvP restrictions.
I really like the thought Star Wars Galaxies put into their PvP system. It eliminates almost all "griefing"
Basically, the system works like this:
No other player can just haul off and attack you, there are criteria that must be met before you can be attacked. Basically, if you are a member of a civil war faction ("Rebel" or "Imperial") and have listed yourself as "overt" you can be attacked by "overt" members of the opposite faction. If "covert" members of the opposite faction are traveling with an "overt", they can attack you once the "overt" guy does. Once the "coverts" traveling with the "overt" attack, they are fair game to you. All "overt" members of any faction are fair game to any "overt" member of the opposite faction at any time.
Another way is through one on one, or one on many duels. In order to duel, you must be challenged and accept, or challenge and have your challenge accepted. Either way, both players know it's coming.
Finally is a guild war. If your guild is at war with another guild you are always fair game to them, and they are always fair game to you, regardless of overtness or faction. This requires your guild master to "challenge" another guild and for that guild to recriprocate.
These measures really do a lot to ensure that newbies are killed off, and that high level jedi aren't just walking around killing whoever they please. You are never at risk of PvP combat unless you take active measures to put yourself at that risk on purpose.
Of course there are scenarios where a few overt rebel lure a few overt imps into a fight, then group up with a whole lot of covert rebels to gang up on and beat the shit out of the imps, but we call that tactics, not cheating. If the imps weren't looking for a fight, they wouldn't have been overt in the first place.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
Allow me to play Devil's Advocate:
Newbs have to pay their dues before they can get good. It's better that your Level 1 character gets killed for some stupid reason than your Level 20 character.
Maybe it's the whiny players that are the threat to Player vs. Player games? They are the ones making all the support calls.
I haven't played much MMOGs so I'm sure there are some very reasonable answers.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
only allow people within a 2 levels of each other PVP.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If I was a Griefer, I would probably be annoyed that I was being shut down by an in-game system I was paying real-life cash for. A few loud, public complaints of "Why should I pay for a system that screws me? I'm taking my allmightly dollah somewhere else!" and most corporations will bend and let them continue to Grief.
;) I'm sure that once word got out that Griefers were being barred from play, furious new and established players would beat you senseless... with large stacks of cash for subscription fees.
Quite true. But since Griefers tend to chase away a lot of players (particularly new ones), wouldn't it be best to refund their money, say "it's been great, don't ever come back", and perhaps buy them a subscription for a competitors online service?
Stealing murdering and cheating, slandering backstabbing and insulting; these are the bread and butter of any good story. What would Star Wars have been without a sinister lying backstabbing Vader to vanquish? What kind of story would the Indiana Jones movies have been without the evil Nazi presence? Even in Greek and Roman mythology the gods competed and backstabbed each other. Without conflict these stories are not worth telling, and without real conflict MMO's are not worth playing.
Why play a game and experience this conflict in the third person, through washed out scripted plots (quests) where you play a peripheral third party role when you can experience it in the first person and actually be a part of the plot. Sure everyone hates a griefer who steals people's loot and kills player characters over and over again. But everyone loves to team up on a griefer and kill him. I recall a story about original UO pvp that I read on the SWG forums. There was a particularly nasty guild of greifers that were terrorizing the server. Their victims teamed up together and killed one of the griefers by using a mob of low level characters and stole his house key. In that characters house they found the keys to every house the guild owned and stole every item they had. It was an aboslute victory for the good guys. This battle is -legendary- in MMO history and has all the ingredients people are trying to take out of MMOG's; stealing, murdering, griefing, and player killing.
Would you rather do the same quest that 200,000 other people have done, including finding the spoiler online and doing step A, step B, step, C, rinse, repeat, etc, on to infinity, or would you rather contribute to the unique history of your game; creating legends that people will talk about for months or years to come.
So what happens when the Lvl20 guy takes on the lvl30 and loses? By that estimation the lvl30 would lose exp because he toasted the lvl20. You do get players of lower levels that are idiots and think they can take out somebody too high for them... and it's sometimes hard to tell who initiated the combat.
:-)
Now, just making experience based on a comparison of levels would make sense. You gain more for the bigger kill (think of Warcraft III where your hero levels better for more experienced opponents). It also encourages group tactics. Maybe Mr. lvl15 can't take out that annoying lvl20 mage, but a bunch of lvl15's could and split the profit
That helps the problem of those picking on lesser opponents for exp, but not the ones who are just being assholes. Perhaps something wherein you cannot kill a person for X time after he/she respawns (until that person attacks or is attacked by an NPC perhaps), or a penalty for killing a recent-respawn who hasn't attacked would apply in that case. A penalty system based entirely on levels is a bit broad, but there are others ways to do it that might.
Punkbuster is installed with the game, it is part of the game software. You already have Punkbuster installed. http://www.evenbalance.com Yes, Punkbuster is indeed sending local info to EvenBalance headquarters. It is trusted spyware. Punkbuster retrieves game settings, game configurations, names of programs running in memory, and even filenames stored on disk. That said, all installed software is trusted software. Evenbalance has been trustworthy so far. Punkbuster is a good first step in weeding out the undesirable element in the gaming world, since these are the folks attracted to cheats. The more significant second step is administration of game servers. Admins can ban any player for any reason from the servers they control. Most admins are proud of their service and attempt to keep the riff-raff out as much as possible. Internet anonymousness remains the real problem.
Myg0t www.myg0t.com ohhhh, I've been waiting for an excuse to slashdot these guys.
The people that do this kind of behavior often have the same personality traits in real life, though the anonymous nature of the net often brings it out more. If particular players are becoming real jerks, then they can be taken down by using their own techniques and illict behavior against them.
? t=216&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 the forum has been down several times aready due to server load {especially after being posted on Fark}, so please be kind). To show the mentality of thses cretins, this person first lied (and continues to do so) and then made baseless legal threats against everyone. This isn't quite as big as the 'Star Wars Kid', but is still very widespread now. Heck, there is name an urban dictionary entry for the act of being caught cybering (http://www.urbandictionary.com/confirm.php/956579 /4130c4cec1/ack).
For example take some player called Ceciliantas. Apparently this person has been a jerk to the entire community in several online games. So recently he was caught in a cyber sex session in EQ2 with a character he thought was a female that turned out to be a male. the whole thing was a setup with the entire session and chat log archived and then posted to a discussion forum (http://www.eq2permafrost.com/forum/viewtopic.php
It is just really pathetic to see how people conduct themselves, and this Cecil character is a prime example of the kind of person that the community needs to be rid of.
http://www.thedauntless.com/cecil.html
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
" If word got out we would have taken a lot of flak, I sure."
yeah, but only by people in red shirts...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How about an option to be available for jury duty? If you're online, a popup will herald your ability to take a case and you'll be TP'ed to the courthouse. A review of an incident could be replayed and the participants judged guilty or not and penalties applied. The jurors could get a minor payment, or perhaps part of the penalties.
Once you're done, step back into the teleporter and resume play. Just hope you don't get deadlocked into the "virtual OJ trial."
I have a gaming clan called JS that is sort of based around this concept of not playing the game the way it was intended to be played. We're only for FPS games. We commit mass suicides and "dance" even if people get pissed off. We aren't really trying to ruin the game, we just like having fun. Turns out many other people share our joy in misbehaving, we already have had several servers and a ton of members. We aren't mean like the no-famos myg0t clan, but we don't always play the game. It's not like we exclusively don't play it right, we also have active competitive playing and game modding. It's just that people like to see what they can do to have a good time within the game world.
In games like Everquest or UO, have some sort of "hero calling" device.
Once a character reaches a certain level, they can choose to be available to be called upon to aid newbies and they would receive a "pager". Newbies, on the other hand start the game with a "distress signal" device that disappears after they reach a certain level (or they've abused it). This device would allow the newbie to send a general call for aid with a short message. Hero's can check their pager periodically to see if there is the need for a hero. If there is, the hero can "teleport" to where the newbie is by himself, or bring others to aid him, using the pager. Maybe the distress signal would have a limited number of charges, or be usable only a limited number of times per day, or something like that.
Heros would benefit by getting increased shots at experience or battle or whatever, plus they'd get some kind of item that would mark them as a hero that they could display. Newbies would have the possibility of a big brother (or sister) to come kick the snot out of griefers. Griefers might think twice before jumping newbies.
It'd probably be hell to code, but it might be worth it.
As far as FPSs, that's a whole different ball of wax.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't...what about the other 8?
Player accountability is something that older MMOG players have wanted for a very, very long time.
I wrote about it a while back. The ideal situation would be for a third party company to create a database where you could have a persistent identity across games. This idendity tag would follow you on all characters made across all games, ensuring that any stupidity on your part had actual repercussions in future online meetings. It would be a boon as well, because much like Ebay feedback good social and or adventuring interactions would be rewarded.
When death isn't permanent and you can always abandon an old account and start a brand new character
The easiest solution I see to this is to limit players to one character, per account, per credit card. If you character does something that would result in jail time in the real world, then jail the character in the game and don't let the player just abandon it and start a new character without getting a new credit card.
I don't see the game designers actually thinking about what the game citizens would logically do if they had to live in a world like that game.
-
Also, just as is the case with the Army, the game has a firm grounding in values. For example, the game establishes rules for engagement and imposes significant penalties for violations of these rules. Players who violate these rules or who engage in activities such as team killings, can find themselves in a virtual representation of the Army's jail at Fort Leavenworth or thrown out of the game.
So there.Supposedly World of Warcraft is going to implement something like this via an "Honor System", where players who gank other players many levels below them eventually develop a bad reputation, leading to increased prices at vendors and such. I know it was planned but not implemented at launch, whether they are still on track to do this is currently up in the air I believe.
The main reason why grief exists in these games mostly hinges on human nature. The aspect of humanity that really resents being on the short end of the domination chain. This was explored in Lord of the Flies. When the kids come to realize that there is no authority to enforce the cordial rules things go south.
Players who realize that the only real thing at risk is their free time and money will feel a rush from doing questionable things. Their computer becomes their cloak of anonomity. Without some sort of "penality" for being a jerk there is little incentive for some to avoid being jerks. Often times the administrators are overwhelmed or powerless to make rulings let alone enforce penalities so players are left to police themselves.
Games that have large social structures like "guilds" tend to gravitate towards a more stable setup because "player enforced penalities" start to come into play. When leaders start worrying about their group being left out (everyone agrees GuildA55 are jerks and therefore will not share events with them) they are far more likely to be nice and seek comprise than to try and grief and punish everyone against them. Situations like these probably mimic some early human societies and social structures.
Once again technology and MMOGs have shown an interesting side of humanity. I'm sure that there are socialogy majors who could make some interesting thesis out of observed behavior in these virtual worlds.
Friendly fire versus teamkilling. When servers on, say, counterstrike turn on ff, they are not saying "well, go for it, teamkilling is a-ok with us." The point of it is to make you be careful about what you are shooting and where you throw that grenade, because this adds realism and difficulty to the game. It is ignorant to say that "if an action is allowed it is a legitimate part of the game" because even though teamkilling is possible when friendly fire is turned on, it is absolutely not acceptable to purposely kill your teammates.
Sir Killzalot has challenged you to a duel. Do you accept. [y/N]
Of course here, its the greifer I wind up taking a like to.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
...even virtual cops?
Why not copy other online communities...like eBay? Give any player a way to log a grievance against another player. Feedback. When a player begins to rack up complaints, that's when they get taken to the virtual woodshed for a talking to.
It's not perfect (think Slashdot moderation), but it would probably help in a large variety of noob bashing cases.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I play a lot of MMO's. Although I personally don't grief, I prefer unrestricted PvP. It adds a sense of realism, tension, excitement, politics, and fun for me that I simply would never get in a game with no human interaction other than chat.
The griefers in a sense add to my enjoyment and motivation to play. So what, they're 20 levels over me, it keeps me on my toes and if I'm paying attention it can be a huge rush to narrowly escape death by hiding behind a tree or pull of a crazy maneuver to get to a safe area.
You may not be able to get together a part to kill them now, but once you reach a higher level you can band together with others like you and wreak havoc. And you aren't 100% anonymous in big MMO's, those who are known as griefers or lamers eventually become outcasts.
John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., has studied deviant behavior in online game communities and found that griefers fall into two basic camps. nice job! how the hell did he get the grant? I want a copy of the proposal. I wonder what his Office Hours are like.
Long live Sullon Zek! oh wait nevermind...
Players can't complain when the goal of the game is to grief.
That way, the Griefer can learn all the exploits and get the levels needed to grief those who do have a life outside the game.Right. Quote Fight Club if it makes you feel more like a man. The only fights you've ever won have been online and you're too chickenshit to take that philosophy in the Real World.
That's what a Griefer is. A loser who spends his life online in an attempt to prove to himself that he isn't as pathetic as everyone believes he is.
Thats why MMORPGS have PVP servers. Player Killing has been around since MUD days, if youre too whiney to play with the big boys - dont.
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
This scheme would have hit a snag in the UK-- if anyone ever made a formal request under the Data Protection Act and paid you the requisite £10, you would have to print off and send them every personally identifiable piece of information stored about them. This would have to include the "stupid rating" by law :-)
You can do this for banks, supermarket loyalty cards, local council anyone who holds any data on you whatsoever...
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
What pisses me off about most of the articles about griefers is they do not differentiate between griefers, PK's, and PvPers. In my gaming career I have pked, pvped, created characters specifically designed to loot corpses, played thieves, killed thousands with trapped chests, looted and stole houses, res killed people, fought battles with other guilds, and made fun of them for dieing. That does not make me a griefers.
I am a PK and proud of it. Though some PK's are also griefers I would say most of them are not. Most of us do it out of greed. King is an easy way to get loot, magic weapons, ingots, things that normally take time and boring repetitive tasks can easily be gotten by killing others. Newbies, mules, weak characters are targets because they can't fight back. It doesn't matter if it is a veterans new character or a real newbie if they have loot then we want them. Also it is fun. We don't sit down and think about how this is sticking it to the company or any bullshit like that. We think of ourselves as the predator.
Res killing is an important tactic in most of these games simply because people are able to bounce back so fast. In UO and PvPers could reequip himself in two minutes. In games where there is no looting or it is limited then a person can be up and running in two seconds. So the only way to keep them out of the action is to kill them when they can't fight back.
Smack talk is just part of a game. From pro athletes to us in a cyber world it is just having fun. If you are sensitive then get your hippy ass off the internet and go plant flowers and smell bad. Hippy.
Yeah, their are griefers but stop confusing us PK's with them.
It is implemented in the release. It only counts for NPCs. Yes, if you gank an NPC, your reputation will go down. If you gank PCs, it won't.
Because we all know that NPCs need protection from griefers.
Amen.
Taking the words out of my mouth again...
There is no such thing as "griefing" on a PVP server. The closest thing to it is harassment which does exist on all types of servers e.g. some dork repeatedly asking you to cyber is harassment not griefing. The people who complain the most about griefing seem to be people who join PVP servers and then complain when another player kills them. The WoW message board is full of such complaints.
So, you have 5 credit cards which give you 5 characters and all 5 of them are spending time in jail for anti-social crimes
And you're paying $50/month for that privilege.
At least you had some creativity and variety -- tell me you didn't pick on the same newb day after day or get your friends to? If I were there, I'd say "damn, evil trick dude" -- I'm perpetually a newb, see, because the game is mechanical and boring otherwise. I suppose I'd turn to griefing too, especially if I started seeing drivel like "whos the faggot who ___?!?!?!" from my victims.
The griefers I can't stand are the ones who do the same damn things every time to the same people, or social griefers who deliberately disrupt RP and teleport in and just start in with childish profanity. Too much of a culture of it, and it's why I just don't do online games in general now (or I play pure action type games like RTS's, which are after all built on giving as much grief to the other as possible)
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
We at AntiGamer.com fully support the efforts of those who take the time to make gaming a miserable experience for others.
The problem, sadly, is the inherent weakness in any online game that tries to build and semblence of a community in it. Finding a balance between giving those who will spend every waking hour of their lives in the game a challenge, while still giving opportunities to those who will play maybe 2-3 hours a week is very difficult, if not impossible.
.... you quit.
Take a game I used to be heavily involved with, Eve. For someone in a corporation, who spends 4+ hours a day playing, losing a cruiser in a battle is no big deal. Corporations can pump them out like it was cool. For the lone player, though, who spends a few hours a week maximum, a cruiser can represent an investment of many weeks or months. When you get ambushed by a very superior force and have the sum total of months worth of effort erased in a matter of seconds
Battlefield 1942 has some excellent game features that, when enabled can make this nearly, albeit not quite, a non-issue.
-A "buddy" tracker. By adding a player to your "buddy" list, you can easily locate his position on the map, and his nametag stands out in bold green. Since teamkillers, are invariably players of little skill, this removes their only advantage, that of hiding behind the wrong uniform. In fact, they are unlikely to be aware of the "addbuddy" command, thus giving you an advantage.
-The TKPunish command. This can be set so that a player who is Team-killed can "punish" the TK, causing an extra long wait for the opposing player to spawn. Again, the teamkiller is often unaware of the command, conferring an advantage to the "good" guy.
-An automatic "Kick" threshold. When the teamkiller reaches a certain negative score, he can be automatically kicked. The "good" players kills of the TKer will be offset by his positive score actually playing the game.
I invariably play Friendly Fire servers, because I prefer enhanced challenge and skill level required for shot selection and identification of targets. When teamkillers show up, on a well designed game, it can actually be fun to focus on them and see how long it takes for them to quit in frustration.
Is it time to bring a legal system into these worlds? You could have company employees with the King's guards avatar's patrolling for miscreants. Or, if you feel you've been wronged, you can file a complaint and hold a public hearing. A judge or jury can watch a replay of the complaint and issue a ruling.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I would suggest partitioning the mud into areas which appeal to a particular kind of griefer, so that the griefers stay with themselves. For example, like the town guards in UO, just more complex. I'd have several ideas to implement that. You'd also need to give up the idea to make travel between areas easy and quick, because otherwise it is to tempting to just raid and run.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Something that you could track by a UID of some kind (probably assigned by the system, or maybe their SSN.)
I think another option in the MMORPG world would be to take advantage of the different servers and allow character portability across the servers. PVP could be disabled depending on your relative level, and the servers could represent different geographical areas that open up to people of a certain power level. So, say you have 100 levels total, ten servers. You start out with a new character on server 1, and the only people who can PVP you are people of level 10 or lower. You could even disable PVP completely for true newbies (you could base that on age of their account as opposed to character level.)
Games that have large social structures like "guilds" tend to gravitate towards a more stable setup because "player enforced penalities" start to come into play. When leaders start worrying about their group being left out (everyone agrees GuildA55 are jerks and therefore will not share events with them) they are far more likely to be nice and seek comprise than to try and grief and punish everyone against them. Situations like these probably mimic some early human societies and social structures.
....
Well put. Wish I had mod points
-kgj
-kgj
I know some MMORPG's have utilized the DM/GM model but the ratio of players to DMs is much higher, so it's often difficult to get help when you need it.
This is the same reason why I tend to play FPS games on servers that have an admin presence to boot unruly players. I like games that have friendly-fire set to on (forcing you to be careful and work together), but this is almost an invitation to grief unless you have a vigilant admin online. There have been a number of games that were really promising in this genre, but had a tough time because the booting mechanism was so ponderous. I've seen publishers trying to improve this by putting in voting mechanisms for players to boot a PKer, as well as automatic boots for players who rack up too many team kills. These are good steps, but are not yet a substitute for a good admin. One of the best systems I've seen is in Call of Duty, where some servers have a "forgive" system in place where you can do a console command to forgive a player who inadvertently team-kills you. If not forgiven, a player is booted after only a few incidences of team-damage.
If I didn't know better, I'd think you must be referring to Fansy the Famous. But perhaps that's not what you had in mind?
I play on a PvP server on WoW. Here you get large groups of high-level players killing indiscriminately. In other cases, there are players out questing, and others only engaging in PvP when someone is already in a fight or otherwise reduced in ability.
My rules are:
If there is a large group of opposing players attacking everything in sight, form a large group and attack them back (epic battle style of play), or get past them and don't fight much. Sometimes you win the big fights, sometimes you don't.
If there is someone playing alone and questing, I might attack them if they're around the same level, but not while they're engaged in another fight. If they strike first, there will always be some kind of fight. These are usually fair, and part of the game. I'll kill them once and move on. If they're running away with full health and about the same level, I'll take them out to avoid being tracked by their buddies.
If I'm fighting something and they kill me while I'm not fighting them, I'll go back and kill them. When they come back, I'll kill them again for setting up an unfair fight. Then I'll move on.
If there are 3 of them, all higher level, and one of me, I'll sit down, let them kill me, and try to take all the fun out of it for them. They'll usually move on after that.
If there are 3 of us and 1 of them, we'll only attack if they're stronger than our weakest player. They have a chance to kill the weak one, eye of an eye and all that rubbish.
I've only attacked 1 person that I didn't want to since I've started playing. The guy was 20 levels lower than I was. I ran at him (in "contested territory", where anyone can attack anyone) to scare him a bit, but didn't actually strike the first blow (I had ranged combat available, but didn't use it). When he turned on me, I stopped, but didn't attack. He swung at me first, and I killed him quickly and left.
They're talking about setting up an honor system, whereby you gain reputation among varying factions by fighting in your own weight class, but may become an outlaw even in your own faction if you only attack much weaker players. This should help out with that problem, at least a little.
Think about what life would be life in a world where "death" did not exist. If you were killed, you came back 5 minutes later in a new body.
How would our criminal justice system have evolved? Murder wouldn't be the big crime it is right now. And the death penalty
The game developers really need to look at what the logical results would be of some of their game-based decisions.
this is fucking disgusting. i am a greifer for life and you people are the reason why. you are all sheep. if you spent 1/10th of the time you do whining about pvp actually learning how to play whatever game you subscribe to you would actually be able to defend yourself in pvp combat. it would also help if you were somehow able to realize that no one can see your fat, acne covered faces through the computer screen, and thus regain some iota of self confidence that you lost sitting in front of your computer screen constantly. find some internet friends to help defend your sorry ass against the mean pvpers. its fat, scared losers like you guys that i imagine behind the screen of that level 1 i just oneshotted, and it gives me great pleasure to cause you pain.
I found it astounding that they didn't even make mention of Dark age of Camelot, this has been one of the most successfull PvP BASED mmog on the market, others have introduced servers for pvp, tacked it onto a game at the end, but only daoc has made the pv ellement of the game enjoyable to play for people of all levels.
...
Some game designers still harbor the illusion that they can stamp out griefing. Players will always piss each other off and will always find ways to express that. It's best just to start with the assumption that players will use every possible means to attack each other for any reason and no reason at all. Design from there.
For great justice.
I remember the old times when we had to dial-up to connect to a computer BBS and play the games.
I was always beaten by this kind of abusers who were just making fun of others. What fun is playing a game that doesn't let you have a good time?
As a past guide, much of the griefing has been done out of spite.
Samples:
The psychology of griefing is closely related to cutting other people off in traffic. It is like dealing with junior highschool jerks. And companies expect me to pay for the priviledge of dealing with jerks?
Upping your kill count *IS* a good time.
Look, MMORPGs are no different than everywhere else: Some people are on top, some are on the bottom, and the people on the bottom bitch.
The difference between MMORPGs and real life is real life doesn't come with a number on the box to call when you realize you suck.
If other players in your MMPORGs are causing you grief, get better and kill them. If you're not able to do that, you'll just have to be one of those people who suck at life *AND* MMORPGs.
paintball
Well, there's an OBVIOUS advantage over real life.
There are LOGS. In online games, the game designers can be the All-Seeing gods who make justice.
The negative honor system was scrapped because it was a stupid idea. It causes more grief than it solves and complicates PvP. However they are implementing a positive honor system where you get positive honor points for killing players your level and above. Gaining honor points will lead to other rewards that should encourage 'fair' play'.
You just a fucking cock smoker. Simple as that.
I've never played an online multiplayer game, so take this with a grain of salt.
Studies have shown* that reward based systems are far more effective at controlling human behaviour than punishment based system.
*Note: 70% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Based on this idea, players of similiar types (e.g. race or profession) could be offered incentives for mentoring and protecting players of lower skill levels. This method would have the advantage of not eliminating the unscripted "drama" that in-game conflict brings and providing a system for newbies to learn the ropes.
You are not helping the community by increasing the challenge level... you are a prick.
You gain sick enjoyment instigating the pain and suffering of others, and people like you should justly get a permanent ban from the game for behavior like that.
Getting mugged isn't fun, or a challenge, and mugging someone and stealing their time and money while they are trying to enjoy themselves in a virtual world is just as wrong as mugging someone in real life.
Several years after diablo 2 came out, I gave the original a go... logged in, got all setup, walked outside, got instantly PK'd. Quit the game and uninstalled remembering why I stopped playing it in the first place as well as making up my mind about not paying the 10$ for the then ultra cheap diablo 2.
I think one of the only games to have ever gotten PvP right has been FFXI. Durring normal game play there is no engaging in PvP fights, there are ways to get a monster you claimed to attack an innocent bystander but there is no need to share that info here. I'd rather not contribute to some ass clowns idea of fun.
In order to have any PvP you goto an event named Balista. Balistas are held in different zones and have different level caps ranging from lvl 30 to un-capped. The game itself is similar to basketball, except you first have to find the 'ball'. Players who have entered the event get put on teams, seperated by their hometown nation, and compete against the other team.
It's really quite nice to not have to worry about some dick cheese waiting outside and smacking you with his lvl 75 sword as you walk out of town for the first time and taking all your low level gear they wont use anyway. Then when you want to engage in killing another player or someone challenges you you can go fight each other till your hearts content.
fun requires risk
if there is no risk involved, there is no fun
so all of the measures that would remove genuine risk on an online game would also remove all of the fun
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where can I find a MUD? I heard about them in like 1993 on Nickelodeon and I've been trying to get into one for the last 11 years. Still looking.
So any help would be appreciated.
PvP problems need in-game logical solutions. You could just ban PvP, but don't do that. Whatever behavior it is that you find unacceptable, make it unpleasant to perform.
In the game ADOM (a roguelike) you can gain a lot of useful items quickly by killing shopkeepers. However, attacking a shopkeeper Dooms you, and being Doomed makes going on hugely more difficult (oh yeah, and shop keepers are really powerful for all but highly advanced characters.)
The game could have just made shopkeepers invincible, or made it so they could not be attacked, but it didn't. Instead it made the player want to not attack the shopkeepers by assigning negative properties to the action.
Why do you not commit crimes IRL? For some it is a sense of morality, but for others it is simple fear of the law. In a MMOG the "law" *IS NOT* just the game ruleset which says, e.g., "players cannot attack other players." The RL equivalent to that is: "Why do people not breath dirt? Because it's impossible."
How law is best implimented is highly game-dependant. In an EQ-type envitonment maybe an automatic lucrative bounty for player killers would be in order. To prevent scumming new accounts for cash you could make the bounty higher the farther the killer is level-wise from the victim. Combatting other unpleasant behavior can be handled similarly..
There is no reason a functioning society cannot be created in a video game and a lot of reasons why one must be.
I want my Cowboyneal
PvP is not Griefing. Griefing is not just PvP.
Griefers is just a term made up by people that whine alot. Some people can not deal with a game where they can lose something or have to face challenges. I was on the short end of the stick with this term when I was playing Eve-Online. On the box for the game it said you could be a pirate, so thats what I did. I milked jump gates for toll money and wasted those that didn't pay up and sold their scrap for profit. Of course so many people were crying about players like myself using this tactic that horrendous penalties were put on to players that chose to do this.
The game ran off a security rating system. Positive means you're well liked. Neutral is neutral and negative means that the cops will come after you. That however is a gross understatement. The game map is set up like an amoeba blob. In the center is secure space. On the arms (pseudopods) as we called them in 8th grade. Are the no-security sections of space. Cops and NPC corporations aren't seen out there, and you can kill anyone you want without penalty to your security rating. However for those that want to actually hit a gate where someone might be at you have to do it in secure space which means you're losing security rating. Destroying a ship takes about 20 days to come of your record. And in that time if you fly into a system with a remotely high security standing you are killed instantly by NPCs. Honestly you can't tell whether or not cops will attack you and when they do you die before the area is done loading. And with the map being set up so that you have to travel in between secure space to get between each major section of non-secure space if you have a bad security rating you can't honestly travel out of your little system. Effectively cuts off 90% of the universe.
Instant death for us so called griefers because people can't deal with an element specifically put into the game. Thats the reason I left the game.
Delta Tao has a game "Clan Lord" in which they try to solve this problem with digital karma. Basically, every character has karma points that they can spend on others, marking them with good or bad karma.
v etneo.html
http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_29/
I don't play that game, so I don't know the consequences of having a lot of bad karma. I do know, at least, that you're marked in others' user lists.
If you can boot/ban a griefer, what's to stop a griefer from meta-griefing? That is, using the built-in anti-griefing tools that the game provides to boot/ban a non-griefing regular d00d?
I'd think once the old griefing tactics were effectively quashed, it'd only get them thinking about more creative ways to grief, and probably the first thing they'd do is turn the anti-griefing countermeasures against the anti-griefers.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The obvious solution is to fix the game mechanics to make it impossible to "grief" other players. For examply, runescape has a special section of the map reserved for player killing; the farther you go into it, the more unbalanced it allows the combat levels to be. Newbies are amply warned to stay out of that area. Granted, people will always attempt to use social engineering to "cheat" at any online multiplayer game, but most problems can and should be fixed my modifying the game mechanics. Quite simply, players that want to engage in PKing should have to somehow signal their consent to combat other players before doing so. This consent should then be limited in time and/or virtual space. The same applies to choosing 1on1 versus 1toMany combat - you should be allowed to gang up on another player unless they somehow consent. Non-player characters don't require any such protections.
Which is what people do. Which is why the companies want to do something about it. If people stop playing then they don't make as much money. I like playing I don't like the grief.
Unrestricted PvP can deal will grief effectivly. Shadowbane's system of player adminstered justice was great (too bad the rest of the game blew). In Ultima Online, I could deal with anyone who was screwing with me pretty easily. Then they introduced a mirror world where you couldn't attack other players. This made grief much easier, I couldn't attack people, but there were plenty of other things I could do to piss them off and they could do nothing.
;-) I had some great times hiding from PKs in the dungeon of Deceit, my heart racing, hoping they wouldn't find me so I could go bank my hard earned loot. It could be frustrating sometimes, but I'll gladly take a bit of frustration if it makes the game exciting.
I once managed to scam a newbie out of 15 million gold (approximently $300USD, I'm pretty sure he bought it off ebay too hehe) Over the next few days I scammed several other people out of gold using the same technique, and what could they do to me?? Not much, the best they could come up with was to follow me around yelling "Killer Queen is a scammer!" any time they saw me. If if were not for the PvP restrictions in place I would have had my ass handed to me every five minutes by hordes of people.
Besides, what fun is it if there's little risk in the game?? Or worse, having the risk of griefers but having no means to effectivly deal with it?? Playing some of the newer MMORPGs is about as fun as playing Doom on the easiest difficulty and with cheat codes on (less fun in fact, at least Doom ends soon
In fact, the best time I ever had in an MMORPG was prior to the introduction of the care-bear land, but after the implementation of stat loss. Anyone who had more than 5 short term murder counts(which decay after 12 hours) was subjected to skill loss upon dying. Those of us who still PKed were at a distinct disadvantage, as we usually PKed with inferior characters, and dying would mean at least a few days of macroing before we could continue. The risk was still there for everyone, but it was much less and they still had plenty of freedom. The fact that many players still weren't satisfied taught me that you can never underestimate the e-cowardice of the typical MMORPG player.
Grand Theft Auto MMORPG ...where breaking the rules and griefing are the fundamental points of the game. The market for this seems SO ripe that I'm not sure why it hasn't happened yet.
Your post is riddled with statements where you justify your behaviour and bestow upon yourself various compliments. "Griefing is an art", "Griefing takes intelligence, ingenuity, style and thought",
All bullshit. You are in essence an asshole, nothing more. Nobody appreciates assholes. Nobody ever has and nobody ever will.
Lord of your domain? That's a laugh. Lord of a server somewhere that you don't own and have to pay for the right to use?
The real joy of all of this is that the game makers are slowly moving towards models that will make you completely irrelevent City of Heros was absolutely brilliant in putting up with none of the bullshit people like you create. The games are a business and you and yours have no place in the future business model.
Believe me when I tell you that nobody is going to miss having you around to "appreciate". You'll behave or you'll be gone.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I can load all RSS links but all login related links and main page all 503 or 500 errors... nucking futs or something like that...
I think WoW does it the best: http://www.nykoelle.com/reviews/rentries/8/ Good articles on this site too: http://www.nykoelle.com/articles/index.php/
yeah, but only by people in red shirts...
Yeah, but the red shirts are always the first to die.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I personally like the planetside method of PVP grief. Everytime you hurt a friendly you are punished with x amount of grief points. When your grief reaches a certain level the weapons in the game dont work, u cant buy vehicles, etc, etc, basically u can run around and act as a target for everyone else until your grief goes down. This is calculated as x points/hour of realtime. For me this is an effective technique. You want to run around and kill friendlies, then u pay the price. Simple answer is if they take away from another players fun, then take away theirs and let everyone know that they are in the badbooks at the moment.
I've seen techniques like this used in the old MUDs.
1. Resurrected in a temple. The "Hand of God" enforced nice behavior here. You had to move some rooms before you left. Multiple exits, too.
2. You exited into town. There were NPC guards that would lay smackdown on anybody who misbehaved. And while they weren't the HoG, they were still tough, regenerated, weren't worth any XP, and would slap a wanted status on you, so every guard in the city would attempt to kill the miscreant.
3. Bounty system. Any player who dislikes another can place a bounty on that character. While most newbies can't muster much cash, well, it adds up.
I don't read AC A human right
What about an item that, when activated, destroys all magical objects within a certain range, including those of the user? M:TG had such an artifact (hence the topic of this message), and bringing that into play and just leaving it on the table untapped had a definite effect on the opponent's play from that point on (you could use it prior to any attempt to destroy it, since it functioned as an interrupt).
Limit players to one such item per spawn, and make it moderately rare (but common enough to be feared) and non-transferable (when you die you can either trigger it or not, but it disappears either way). Or rather than rare, make its cost proportional to the player's level, so that n00bs would get them cheap but griefers would have to pay a pretty penny for them. Think of it as a medieval corbomite device.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Why else would he be giving them red shirts...
I don't read AC A human right
All you'd have to do would have a "Knowledge" rating. If you don't tell them what the rating means and you dont' know the scale, it'd tough for the consumer to know what the rating actually means.
You have been assigned to the red assistance group.
Me:WTF does that mean?
I don't read AC A human right
So, uh, lemme see if I've got this straight...
(A) You're a sociopath.
(B) You're not even good at being a sociopath, and as a result have to confine your assholery to the equivalent of a chat room with dice.
(C) You have enough time to kill that you managed to find a multistep exploit for killing low-level players. (A huge quantity of boredom)
Normally I'd advise obtaining some sort of sex life as a cure for (c), or a set of balls to fix (a) and (b), but you seem to take pride in the extremnity of your insufficiency as a human being, so I guess I'll refrain from any further commentary.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Dark Age of Camelot has basically 0 griefers, unless you just consider anyone that one-ups you in combat to be a griefer.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
A jail is precariously close to a Denial of Service. Simular to when your ISP goes out for a bit. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to bill someone for a service they cannot use. If you jail someone (making it so they can't use the service), and you do it accout wide, you'd (legally) have to refund their money for the time. Give it a few years for all that 'money' from jail time to pile up, and you'll have a clever lawyer smelling a class action lawsuit in no time. Lets see, 150,000 users, $20 dollars/month.... If 1% of your populace is in jail in any given month, thats 1500 * $20 dollars a month. Do that for a few years and you'll have 100,000 grand or so. Not much, but more than enough to get a clever ambulance chaser or two...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Implement a "hot-button" in the game for all players to alert the system there is a griefer present...
Then have a small force of people able to jump to that point at any time with a condensed history of player actions/chats handy. If they have been called on a real griefer, all of the people around get all the griefer stuff, and the griefer gets levels cut in half.
If it was a bogus call, the person would get a warning the first time and have all THEIR stuff taken away/levels halved the second time they used the call incorrectly.
This would let you have a much smaller patrol force to keep the peace.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
why dont stop playing the game instead? :griefers are venting off the anger ,in a safe enviropment,its accepted better then things like this transferred to RL.actually i can understand what they seek,its sort of attention and fame they gain by their actions in virtual world.Cheating/hacking in online game doesnt necessary result in griefing
adding a artificial mechanism into unbalanced game isnt a good solution.
Why dont look for source of problem instead?
what happening
and negative emotions they accumulate naturally
unless the person who abuses his skillz/accumulated power.I've met many cheaters who help the n00bs,people who
play just to annoy others exist too.
They don't resign,they stay,even if company blocks the "griefing mechanisms"
just to find alternatives.
What game companies should learn is design games to minimize the results of "griefing" and make the gaming expirience worth it.
Look at the picture from the newb side,once.
Griefers are the force that drives game hacking today,as always.Its a battle of wits,and griefers have an advantage : all interactive systems have inherent weak spots,which can be exploited.Such things as PVp Imbalances are fast to point out,but deeper problems lay
in some abstract interaction layers or game system itself,which most players have no clue about.They surface from time to time,making the developers patch
the game.Of course there things you cant
prevent even in perfect games,but you can control the damage of griefing via ingame mechanisms.Even making the game system to adapt to griefer actions would be better then some honeypot bait,which can be avoided.to minimize griefing its better in design terms that the problem would be non-existantant in the first place (bug-free)then adding a third-party object(bait).
Some of these games should implement "hell". When you do enough bad stuff and die, you come back in a place that looks just like the regular game world but is entirely populated by "like minded" individuals.
There is also a difference between hard-core players and casual players. A hard-core player can invest an absurd amount of time into the development of their character which makes it almost impossible for the casual player to compete effectively with them.
So, even in a well designed game, with consensual PvP, the hard-core players can so effectively dominate the battlefield that the casual players quit out of frustration. This is wmy experience of DAoC, a fantastic game that I loved.
What exactly is griefing? I simply don't get it. Is griefing attacking other players when they don't expect it in order to take their possessions? Or is griefing when one player uses exploit to gain an unfair advantage over other players? Some games, like Eve online, have what are called pirates. All to often pirates are considered griefers. People don't seem to understand that the central theme to games like EVE online is risk management. Non-consentual PVP is a part of many MMORPGS. Players who use non-consentual pvp to generate their income can hardly be called griefers. That form of gameplay is part of the design. Too many people play MMORPGs and naturally expect no competition. Can someone please explain me the point of paying 15$ a month to play a MMORPG if all you are going to do is collect, collect, and chat. Seems rather pointless.
"he bottom line is, the game mechanics define the rules of the game, and if an action is allowed it is a legitimate part of the game."
WRONG. That is the battle cry of all griefers, and it makes no sense. Do you kill someone in real life and say "Well, the rules of the universe allow me to kill you, it must be intended." Why is it that when a game designer gives you freedom to do as you like, you suddenly think it's reasonable to exploit these freedoms in any way you like?
When organizations started attacking GTA:Vice City because you can "run over and kill prostitutes" I thought that was dumb. You can run over and kill prostitutes in real life. Ban real life! Vice city is an open ended game and you can do bad things if you want, but that doesn't mean you're encouraged to.
The same with PVP in MMORPG's. Just because the game designers give you more freedom, doesn't mean it's intended for you to kill-on-site everybody you can regardless of reason.
Open ended game != excuse to do whatever the hell you want.
That's why most MMOGs have PvP and non-PvP servers or they give you other ways to flag your character as ready(or not) to PvP. Only people who like it will engage on PvP. Simple as that
Thing is that griefers are a tiny minority, if people start leaving due to them, the game isn't going to last much longer. Most griefers are too stupid to realise this, being focusing on dealing with their inadequacies by annoying people who can't punch them.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
This is exactly true. Why would I want a player that causes five new players to cancel their subscriptions per month, average?
If you want to PvP and be nasty and stuff, join the PvP guild, wear a chicken on your head and have fun trying to be the only remaining member of the PvP guild.
But that's not fun, is it, because they can fight back, huh?
I don't read AC A human right
And this is why even if you have "good" alignments you still need to be able to attack. Sometimes self defense doesn't mean that they necessarily attacked first...
The good character just has to weigh the penalty...
I don't read AC A human right
yes,i should believe you because you actually live in nepal and you have to live with killing all around you. when was the last time you saw a person's hands get chopped off for not thinking the "right way". Get a life, or better yet, go see what the world is really like.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I assume you're talking about government human rights abuses here and not the Maoists. I oppose abuses no matter which side you're talking about.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Because it's a game, and I distinguish between fantasy and reality. Do you march around your neighborhood hacking small creatures to death with a sword to gain experience?
An open ended game is license to do whatever you want and that is the appeal of it. I'm not particularly interested in the dopamine-reward cycle of endless experience-bar watching and waiting for a "ding!". If that's what trips your trigger, there are always games and servers dedicated to that sort of play. I'd rather spend my time getting into the psyche of my character, and if he is an evil necromancer, he's not going to be aspiring to kill just rats. If he is a druid of the forest and you are wantonly slaying the creatures under his charge and leaving the corpses to rot, well, he's going to have something to say about that.
I don't play GTA, but it is obvious that those less than savory features are part of the appeal of the game. With very few exceptions (see the friendly fire posts in this thread), there is no reason to put a feature in a game, when it is desireable that said feature never be used.
Simply solved. When Lanfear and Jakka got married on the Discworld Mud the invite clearly stated 'Dress: Battle gear'. Muhahahhahaha.
:P Oh, and most of the guests died either before or after the wedding.
:)
Be aware that there were several cre's in that wedding chapel
What else do you think happens when two of the toughest PKs in the game get marrier?
Remove all the cooperative parts of the game, then nobody can complain about the griefers because everyone's killing each other.
Cherish the grief.
Thanks!
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Hey Zonk, what happened to that Will Wheaton interview, part deux? :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating