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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Game Design/Development  |  Topic: Combating griefers in a PvP title 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Combating griefers in a PvP title  (Read 19757 times)
Malakili
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Reply #35 on: June 30, 2011, 08:05:18 PM

Here are direct examples for you:

1. Meatshield/Protector - your job is to absorb damage and get in the way of others trying to kill your teammates
2. Dedicated Buffer - your job is to buff everyone, with you around everyone gets significant boost... you actually don't have to do anything to be useful, but you can be.
3. Suicide Bomber - your job is to run into enemy group and use your massive AoE Nuke, likely dying in process
4. Scout - your job is to run around and find where bad guys are, once you located them you call for backup.

This is not to say that 1-4 roles should be designed with low player skill in mind, but there are roles that do not require you to be good to be successful.


Let me rephrase that for you: Your ideal (good way) is a game where most people (The Worst) do arbitrary shit jobs, so that a few players (The Best) can have all the real fun.

Seriously though.  I'm not saying I even disagree with you in principle from a design standpoint Sinij, but lets be realistic, how often to the most casual/bad players end up with those roles in MMOs so far?  You can't REALLY think that those 4 roles are going to be hugely fun, engaging and popular for/among the casual player base you are talking about, can you?  If all this is for a PvP title designed for a specific PvP crowd, then fine, you can get away with that. But in the context of a mainstream/popular/mass market PvP game, I can't imagine this actually working out.  This is the griefing thread now, so I'm going to copy/past this entire thing into the PvP discussion thread, since I think it actually fits there better.
pxib
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Reply #36 on: July 02, 2011, 03:14:34 PM

Happy players aren't griefers. The hardest people to please are Achievers with nothing left to achieve and Killers with nobody they're capable of killing. The Achievers tend to leave (sometimes in a glorious burst of forum posts), but the Killers tend to find some way to tip the odds in their favor. If that means attacking newbies, so be it. Hacks and cheats are good too. Sometimes all it takes is the opportunity to stab members of your own team in the back by idling during important fights, pulling extra groups, and otherwise generally screwing things up. Sometimes it's even enough for a lousy Killer just to troll people in chat. Anything that provides a chance to make somebody else lose... even if the rules iof the game must be custom-redefined.

Unfortunately these guys are so bad at what they do that it's probably impossible to design a sanctioned arena in which they can be guaranteed to pwn. Anywhere weak enough that they could theoretically be winners, somebody else will be better than them and kick them to the curb most of the time. They have to break the conventional rules of the game in order to have a chance.

The only way to get rid of them is to create a game where every character is fundamentally equal, and there are no bugs to abuse, persistent groups to join or chat channels to monopolize. Basically: Not an MMO.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
Malakili
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Posts: 10596


Reply #37 on: July 02, 2011, 03:55:36 PM

Happy players aren't griefers. The hardest people to please are Achievers with nothing left to achieve and Killers with nobody they're capable of killing. The Achievers tend to leave (sometimes in a glorious burst of forum posts), but the Killers tend to find some way to tip the odds in their favor. If that means attacking newbies, so be it. Hacks and cheats are good too. Sometimes all it takes is the opportunity to stab members of your own team in the back by idling during important fights, pulling extra groups, and otherwise generally screwing things up. Sometimes it's even enough for a lousy Killer just to troll people in chat. Anything that provides a chance to make somebody else lose... even if the rules iof the game must be custom-redefined.

Unfortunately these guys are so bad at what they do that it's probably impossible to design a sanctioned arena in which they can be guaranteed to pwn. Anywhere weak enough that they could theoretically be winners, somebody else will be better than them and kick them to the curb most of the time. They have to break the conventional rules of the game in order to have a chance.

The only way to get rid of them is to create a game where every character is fundamentally equal, and there are no bugs to abuse, persistent groups to join or chat channels to monopolize. Basically: Not an MMO.


There are griefers in non MMOs too, so that doesn't really get you anywhere.  I'll mention Team Roomba again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPoKaoJu0m4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUPzN7tp7bQ
pxib
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Reply #38 on: July 02, 2011, 04:13:11 PM

There are griefers in non MMOs too, so that doesn't really get you anywhere.
Absolutely, any multi-player game can produce bored, ineffective Killers. MMOs are simply their most fertile breeding ground.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
DLRiley
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Posts: 1982


Reply #39 on: July 02, 2011, 05:39:25 PM

There are griefers in non MMOs too, so that doesn't really get you anywhere.
Absolutely, any multi-player game can produce bored, ineffective Killers. MMOs are simply their most fertile breeding ground.
MMo's do two things that non mmo's don't.
1. Power is directional proportional to skill level in a non mmo. In a mmo Power just "implies" skill level. Basically meaning that in a non mmo I must be good at the game to get kills.  A mmo says i just have to have power to get kills. Power in an mmo is inherently independent of skill level, though it can imply some knowledge of the game it is generally not likely to differentiate between sheep in wolf skin as oppose to straight wolves.
2. Encounters are set, in an mmo (pvp) encounters can be as often as every 2 seconds to once every 3 months and 3am. Encounters never very in size in an non mmo, where encounters can be as lopsided as 50 v 12 or somewhat more balanced 400 vs 350. Most of all players are always aware they are in an encounter in non mmo. Not the case in a mmo.

The general myth is that mmo's can't have a more skill based system because most players are bad and will quite if they are told to be good at the game. The successful non mmo's generally solve this by bracketing their playerbase by skill level either explicitly or if lucky and community is with them, the game does it by itself by design.  
« Last Edit: July 02, 2011, 06:11:15 PM by DLRiley »
Pantastic
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Reply #40 on: July 08, 2011, 08:09:51 AM

"Griefing" is really just 'PVP that the speaker doesn't like'. In general, if you have griefing in your game, it's either intended to be part of the game, or it's there because you made bad or lazy design decisions. If you don't want a level 60 killing level 20s, or a player stealing another player's gold, then you shouldn't let 60s kill 20s, or put pickpocketing into the game. If you think that a player should get the loot from a monster he kills, then tag the corpse so that only he can loot it.

Any MMO PVP that isn't in a controlled battleground/duel type situation is going to allow one player to get unfair advantage over another, whether it's by being higher level/better geared, using more appropriate gear (attack an EVE ship optimized for complex farming with a ship optimized to kill that ship), ganging up, and other common means. I really don't understand why you'd try to design a game with open PVP, but ban people who plan to engage in open PVP with good planning - if you don't want unfair advantage fights, you don't want open PVP.

a) intent of action b) lasting effect c) lack of clear in-game benefit to "griefer". So lets look into some examples.

So in any game with looting of PVP corpses like EVE, you never have any griefers, because there is always a clear in-game benefit to griefing (the stuff you loot)? Ninja looting and other forms of stealing don't count as griefing at all since there's also a benefit? In any game without full looting or other big death penalties like WOW, you never have any griefers, because you can't have a lasting effect on another character?  This definition simply doesn't work, and highlights that saying 'griefing' really is just saying 'I don't like that guy'.
sinij
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Reply #41 on: July 08, 2011, 09:43:55 AM

Quote
"Griefing" is really just 'PVP that the speaker doesn't like'. In general, if you have griefing in your game, it's either intended to be part of the game, or it's there because you made bad or lazy design decisions. If you don't want a level 60 killing level 20s, or a player stealing another player's gold, then you shouldn't let 60s kill 20s, or put pickpocketing into the game.  

You are mistaken if you think you can remove griefing with "should and shouldn't" rules. You can't write rules that could judge intent.

Quote
So in any game with looting of PVP corpses like EVE, you never have any griefers, because there is always a clear in-game benefit to griefing

Again, you need to judge intent. That why intent listed as #1 and benefit only #3. Are you repeatedly killing the newbie because he/she is stupid enough to be flying with some lucrative goods or to annoy and piss them off in a "look at me" e-peen showmanship?

Only players can judge intent, so give them tools to do so (player justice).

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Pantastic
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Reply #42 on: July 08, 2011, 11:45:31 AM

You are mistaken if you think you can remove griefing with "should and shouldn't" rules. You can't write rules that could judge intent.

Again, you haven't provided a definition of griefing beyond 'I don't like what that guy did'. The problem with trying to police what you're calling griefing, especially by using preemptive bans of people for being associated with a forum, is that the 'griefing' is often a primary intended feature of the game or server type.

More generally, trying to base video game rules around intent is a horrible way to go about designing a game. You need to figure out which ACTIONS are bad, not try to mind-read players, because policing intent is impossible until someone invents a telepathic interface. If I am interested in a PVP game where you capture towns, but find out that the devs will ban you if they think you're capturing the town hurt your enemies instead of to help yourself, I'm going to lose interest fast.

I mean, you're saying that if AnnoyingClan wiped out my town and the remnants of my clan broke up, I'd be banned as a griefer if I decided to dedicate my game time to taking revenge on AnnoyingClan, even though that's a perfectly sensible development in a PVP game, and is the kind of gameplay a lot of people want in PVP games.

Quote
Again, you need to judge intent. That why intent listed as #1 and benefit only #3. Are you repeatedly killing the newbie because he/she is stupid enough to be flying with some lucrative goods or to annoy and piss them off in a "look at me" e-peen showmanship?

You don't need to judge intent according to YOUR definition - you said that griefing requires 3 components. If it doesn't have #2 or #3, then it can't be griefing according to your definition. The problem is that since in most games where #2 is true #3 automatically isn't true, while for most games where #3 is true, #2 automatically isn't - your conditions contradict each other. If you want to change your defintion that's fine, I was simply pointing out that the definition you posted is clearly flawed, as according to it there's no griefing at all in WOW, EVE, UO, or almost any game I can think of.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2011, 11:49:46 AM by Pantastic »
sinij
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Reply #43 on: July 08, 2011, 12:03:45 PM

Please re-read the thread, one of the main points is that you can't provide definition of grifing.

Quote
What is griefing?

Just like defining pornography, the only 'working' definition is that "you know when you see it". You can try defining it by "intentionally causing distress to other players" but that falls short due to competitive nature of many players, often player will be "distressed" from simply ending up on a losing end of W:L statistic. Generally, "grief" has couple components that make it possible to identify - a) intent of action b) lasting effect c) lack of clear in-game benefit to "griefer". So lets look into some examples.

As to "preemptive bans of people for being associated with a forum" - you could and should preemptively ban groups of players that are known for and openly advertise their griefer actions. If players take it up on themselves to remove ambiguity of "intent of action" and TELL YOU its to cause grief, by all means remove them from the game. It is all around good business sense to remove disruptive customers.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2011, 12:11:24 PM by sinij »

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
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