Slashdot Mirror
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.
Sigs cause cancer.
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.
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?
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
Another point is, couldn't the virtual police become corrupt (again, as is common in many societies), and wouldn't you need extraordinarily complex systems such as...
a judiciary
lawyers
ombudsmen
investigatory units
a bar association
...etc, etc... to eliminate the possibility of abuse by the "authorities"? How would you like to be "imprisoned" in a MMORPG by some rogue "virtual cop" who decided you were acting improperly? Something to think about.
Sigs cause cancer.
It's never work. You'd have griefers modbombing people. Hmmm...just like Slashdot.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
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.
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.
only allow people within a 2 levels of each other PVP.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
If you're not able to do that, you'll just have to be one of those people who suck at life *AND* MMORPGs.
Then those people begin to leave. Not only that, but they will also spread the word that the servers for that MMORPG are full of lamers, which will turn away people from trying the game.
Since the amount of prey is decreasing, people on the top will be forced to turn on each other. Those elite players get tired of repelling those anoying laming attemps and leave.
Through this vicious cycle, any online game begins to die.
Add the cheaters into the mix and things turn bad even sooner.
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.
Yah, right! A company is going to limit me to making only one purchase from them on my credit card, because they really don't want more of my money. Yah!
I think this is a good idea. If you make a jail system where the player has to do a number of hard to script for actions in order to get out, the virtual equivalent of breaking rocks. The higher the sentence, the more actions needed to get out.
That way, just like in the real world, you can have anti-social types, but they're limited in the amount of damage they cause.
I don't read AC A human right