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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
And that is what makes the more honest players quit playing. Example, I love(d) Madden Football (not now since I'm boycotting EA). I gave away my PC to my father since I have a mac now and I got an XBOX from a friend for really cheap just to play Madden. I played online a few times and never did it again. I never played online on my PC since it always caused it to crash but on the xbox it worked well but the players were LAME. They would constantly go for it on 4to down (even if it's 4th and 25 on their own 10). I was given Halo2 and I went online once to play it and quickly left becuase of the lame people on there. I have since become bored with the xbox and am giving it away for xmas to my little brother. Screw playing online when there are so many cheesers out there.. it makes it zero fun.
Had something very similar happen to me playing Quake online... I ended up on a map, alone with one other player, at 3 in the morning. He was slagging me pretty well, we got to talking...
JimmyB: Have you set your mouse so you can right-click to do X?
Croaker: I don't use the mouse.
JimmyB: WHAT!
JimmyB: You're kidding me...
Yep. Until he took the time to convince me I needed to learn how to use the mouse, and let me practice with him, I was a keyboard-only player. Once he knew that, he was amazed I'd been able to do as well as I had against him :-) I'd probably have carpal tunnel in both wrists if he hadn't gotten me to learn how to use the mouse in FPS...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
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
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.
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.
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!
But yet they would be the first to brake any social rules before the game such as no rush for 5 minutes
I really detest this social convention. It basically permanently hinders your ability to get better as a player. If you can't stop an early rush, your never going to get good. I'm a pretty occasional Sc/war 3 player. I have never had any trouble defending my base. Early rushes deplete yoru abiltiy to compete later, it's a valid strategy but most new players refuse to play a whole game and prefer to get higher in the tech tree. But I'm telling you now, time is the friend of a experienced palyer. If you think I'm a threat when all I have is 6 zerglings wait until I have lurkers ready to drop. I ussually humor people who ask for 5 min no rush or even 20 min no rush. But at the set time I ussually wipe them out int he next 2-3 minutes.
Upgrade to war 3 a lot of the problems with greifers are fixed. Disc = win for you. Your paired against people of approximatly your skill level. and their is eady tp use natural defence at all bases. I have rarly gotten a griefer except in a 3v3 rt game even then, the griefer gets a loss too and he won't rise very far.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Multi-Undergraduate-Destroyer....memories. :)
Anyway, how about a bounty system backed by incredibly strong "police" NPCs.
Players could have a karma modifier or something. The bounty on their heads doesn't kick in until the karma gets bad enough. The police start eyeing you when your karma dips negative, will arrest if it is too negative, and will kill you on sight if you're extra naughty.
Jail time would be real, i.e if you get arrested for robbing another player and the jail time is 30 days, that means 30 days of real time of not being able to use that character. You will also need to pay a fine which will be taken out of your possesions (gold, armor, etc.).
Bounty's get paid out upon capture or kill, depending on whether the player is wanted dead, alive, or doesn't matter.
If you are a habitual player killer and you are caught or killed in the game, your death is permanent. As in you will not be able to use that character ever again.
If you keep creating characters that do lots of naughty things, then you get permanently spanked from the game.
This would encourage people to play nice.
~X~
~X~
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.
In EQ, there's been a few times when people have bothered me, like edge in on my camp, when there's plenty of places they can go without getting in on someone else's action. I'd just buff and heal whatever they were fighting. Sooner or later they get the point, or they die, either way, they then leave me alone.
But I haven't had that much problems on EQ, all in all. And now that alot of people have moved on to the other games, it's sort of nice there, mostly the hardcores who are trying to enjoy the game (like the raid that went on from 6pm (it's 2:30am how) and where still playing when i logged off a half hour ago.
But i did check out some of the "free" mmorpgs that are being made and besides that aren't as nice as something you pay for, theres still a lot of the lame aspect of online going off. Which is people that think because they basicly anonymouse they have the right to act like lame fucks.
But since the days of BBS hosted on peoples home computers (before Internet became main stream, the old days) there has always been a rather large poplulation of lame-asses who enjoy flameing, being obnocious, and any other words i can misspell.
Be seeing you...
Two things.
1) You are correct, there is a difference between being a PK/PvPer and being a griefer
2) Allow me to paraphrase what you said:
"I am a PvPer but not a griefer. I like to kill new players over and over and over again because its easy. I like to taunt other players before killing them, after killing them the first time, and after killing them the 500th time. I like to pick targets and follow them, killing them every few minutes to guarantee that they do not have any fun. I especially like to stand over spawn points so that I can kill the same person 100s of times per hour."
You are right, there is a difference. However, you are definitely a griefer, as your fun is based purely on the misery you create.
If you want to claim moral superiority, don't compare yourself to professional atheletes... they are very near the bottom of the morality scale. If you compare yourself with them, you are admitting that at best you are no better than them. Just read the news -- most of them are pretty pathetic people too.