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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.
Sigs cause cancer.
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.
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.
PB is fine. It is used in a lot of high-profile games, gmase which wouldn't dare install spyware, lest their producer's reputation be gone forever.
Install it.
Le français vous intéresse?
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.
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?
Not as far as I know. It is anti cheat software supported by such big games as America's Army and others.
What it does: scans the harddrive/memory checking for known hacks and cheats. If it detects something, it tells the game server you're connected to, and the server kicks you off. It also updates itself with new cheat definitions (think virus definitions...)
Thats what I know about 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.
No, I don't think it is.
I think I used punkbuster a while back. It may be similar to a program called Cheating Death, which was made for Half-life mods.
Basically, it ensures that the game hasn't been tampered with. The game server admin installs a server copy of punkbuster, which queries the copy installed on your computer (client). This happens when you connect and periodically checks while playing the game. If an illegal modification is made to the game, the client will disconnect from the server, thus preventing cheating (such as aimbots, transparent walls, etc).
I recommend using some kind of anti-cheat software. The servers that have anti-cheat measures installed are generally a lot more fun to play on.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
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
It's never work. You'd have griefers modbombing people. Hmmm...just like Slashdot.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
If that's all you have to worry about...
Call me a paranoid nut but it sounds to me like you've just described my entire life.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
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.:-)
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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.
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'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.
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.
"Is Punkbuster spyware?"
short answer: no
Long answer:
The description of how the software works sounds like a perfect setup for installing spyware, but I cannot find any documented reports.
perfect setup how? because... its a program?
It's anticheat software. It's approved enough by quite a few major publishers for them to pay evenbalance to implement it. It's used on 99% of servers for most of the biggest MP games out there, despite millions of users, you yourself say you cannot find any documented reports. Punkbuster even comes with most of the game above, or comes with their patches. There is a limit to how careful you need to be without a certain modded-down 'troll' reply being justifed and fair.
Personally, for when playing it's supported games, there is no way I would play on a server that does not have PB enabled.
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!
i don't think it's spyware, i allow it to run on my system for ET, but i can tell you that your kids will be surrounded by better people online.
punkbuster keeps away all the lamers that use wallhacks, auto-headshots, and other forms of cheating.
the "matches" they participate in will be of higher quality and generally have less whiners or TKers.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
only allow people within a 2 levels of each other PVP.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" 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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.