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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.