Good Grief(ing), Charlie Brown!

[Jim Preston]

I have to prepare a paper about the scourge of griefing in online play for a console audience that isn't too familiar with the concept. They seem to only understand cheating, and not the far more pervasive act of griefing that has been incubating in the PC world for years now. I need some good examples of greifing. And by good I mean ones that are almost impossible for the game teams to have anticipated, and that represent a pretty ingenious use of game mechanics by the griefer.


I recall hearing stories in UO about roving groups of carpenters who would surround a player, build some chairs and effectively jail that player with drive-by carpentry. Also, sluggo's recent example of pausing ESPN NFL 2K5 and going in to replay and putting the camera on your QB's ass for 5 minutes is another good instance. Anyone else have something memorable they could add? Even if you weren't the, uh, victim of such activity.

[MarchHare]

http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12802

If you haven't already read that one.

[extarbags]

Not sure if it counts, but it's really, really annoying when you're new at a game, or not even new but just not a grandmaster, and you can't find a game, because the newbie rooms are filled with accomplished players who like stomping on noobs to stroke their egos.

Play an online game of THUG and you'll see what I mean... it's impossible to find a game that doesn't contain someone who scores eight million points (literally) in the two minutes.

[extarbags]

http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12802

If you haven't already read that one.

Too bad the system is DOWN.

[Ron Talbot]

So many to chose from...

In WoW on the PvE server you can be 'blessed' with the PvP tag if you help someone who already has a PvP tag (you can manually set yourself to PvP as well, the normal method of becoming PvP) When your PvP tag is 'on' your name is green instead of blue. (an odd choice of color in my mind) Also a PvP tag in WoW is faction based.

So here is the Grief, Your a lower level character running down the road in a zone that rarely sees any PvP. A friendly character runs by, stops and and asks for a buff. You may or may not notice the green name but you buff him out of camaraderie. This sets you to PvP (unknowingly if you didn't notice the green name.) Immediately his friend, a high level player of the opposing faction that has been hiding nearby jumps out and slaughters you. They both then dance on your body crowing illiterate insults...

[agriffith]

When Planetside first came out, I had a guildmate who frequently performed this act of griefage. He would get the Galaxy cert, which allows you to pilot a troop transport. He would then form a group and load the vehicle to capacity with other players under the guise of leading them into combat. He would then fly over the ocean while still in the safe zone and make all the players on the ship "vote" someone off the Galaxy. This person voted off would then be ejected from the Galaxy by the griefing pilot. The player would drown not being able to make it back to shore fast enough. He would keep doing this until everyone was voted off and had been ejected or they got disgusted and ejected on their own. I think he called it "Planetside Survivor".

The worst part of it is that he was griefing people from his own team, rather than the enemy. This tactic was also a loophole that allowed for team killing without receiving grief points and their associated penalties.

I beleive the original use of the eject feature was to allow the pilot or group leader to control where and when the team would drop to keep the team together, and to remove people from the ship that weren't part of the group or squad while loading up for combat.

I have also seen people kamikaze a Galaxy full of troops right into the ground. Though they usually get grief points for that.

[Jakub]

Well, let's see...


1. Equipment. Any game with limited and desirable equipment will see people camping it. While this isn't necessarily griefing per se, some will do useless things with - deliberately not use it on the enemy, for example.

2. Related to #1, if friendly equipment can be damaged in any way by a griefer, it will. Would you like to launch a bomber off a carrier in Battlefield 1942? Too bad, I moved it off the map/beached it.

3. Teamkilling. Any game that has team damage or incidental damage (ie, attack an explosive object, kill the person standing by regardless of team damage rules), will see a FLOOD of this activity.

4. Training. A favorite in EverQuest. Don't like somebody camping a valuable spawn? Get a gimp or sacrifice character to aggro all the nearby mobs and run them to the enemy. Was very prevalent on some servers back when the gods and dragons were the only major raids.

5. Scams and social engineering. A perfect example of a scam was posted just recently in this thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12802). Basically any MMO reliant on an economy, particularly a player economy, will be victim to this. Other feats of social engineering include stealing accounts (by sending out fake emails pretending to be the company) and GM abuse - people reporting you for spiteful reasons.

6. Exposing/hindering other players. Especially common on servers without team damage. Whether you're on a Rainbow Six, Quake or MMO server, it works by discharging very loud/visible weapons when an attack is being organized, or stepping in front of someone firing a weapon with splash damage (ie, even if team damage is off, you can get someone to kill himself by setting off his rocket early). An unintentionally funny thing happened to a friend playing World War II Online. He'd brought a Matilda, this incredibly slow tank, from another town in order to support the defense of this front-line city. He just got there and began taking sporadic but generally harmless fire from enemy tanks, but one of the newbies near him decided to "protect" him by throwing a smoke grenade his way. Needless to say, he was not amused when his tracks were damaged. Other examples include crashing into teammates, blocking doorways (very popular in some CoD maps), etc.



Just FYI, since players are helpless against these abuses unless the developer puts in counter-measures like callvotes, odds are the only people benefiting from your article are griefers-to-be.

[tronnc]

Well, let's see...

3. Teamkilling. Any game that has team damage or incidental damage (ie, attack an explosive object, kill the person standing by regardless of team damage rules), will see a FLOOD of this activity.



Yeah i've seen stuff like that in battlefield a bunch of times. Also once a guy was sitting in a tank just to the side of a runway and whenever a plane started to take off, he'd drive into the middle of the runway when the plane was up to speed. The plane would ram him killing the pilot but the tank would be ok as it could take several hits like that before dying.

Ive started to see griefers intentionally get team killed to get other players autokicked. Such as if a server autokick/bans after 3 TKs in a round. A griefer will look for ways to get teamkilled. For example once on Desert Combat a guy was doing this by purposefully running over any mines I placed. It sucked because I put down some mines on a bridge and the griefer comes driving up in a BMP. I jumped out in front of him forcing him to stop. In a scene somewhat like Tiananmen Square, im standing in front of him and typed. "There are mines on the bridge do not go over!!" He says Roger. Then as soon as I move out of the way sure enough he goes forward straight into the mines. While funny it did cause me to get auto kicked from the server.

[Alan Au]

There's the classic UO example of people who had discovered a way to get to the roof of buildings, putting them out of reach of the insta-kill guards. They would then rain down fireballs on the local populace without fear of reprisal.

Another MMOG tactic was to create one-way teleport gates to undesirable locations, generally causing the victim to die in a location where equipment would then be unrecoverable.

There are various stories of griefers healing monsters and the like, or otherwise causing indirect kills that wouldn't be tagged to the instigator.

- Alan

[Thrrrpptt!]

I'm always annoyed by players who try to get other players voted off a server by repeatedly calling a kick vote. They're usually ignored, but I've seen people kicked because other players don't pay attention to what they're voting on or they'll just vote yes to shut the person up.

There are also people who switch teams just to wreak havok. Team killing, purposefully losing objectives, hoarding/destroying resources (e.g., health packs or vehicles in BF1942), etc.

[tronnc]

I'm always annoyed by players who try to get other players voted off a server by repeatedly calling a kick vote. They're usually ignored, but I've seen people kicked because other players don't pay attention to what they're voting on or they'll just vote yes to shut the person up.

When that game Savage first came out it was very common to see the devs in servers, usually S2Rocky but there were others too. The devs were always nice and would answer questions about the game and stuff. One time on an official public server a dev was on and someone vote kicked him off. The vote was successfull to. Pretty funny seeing a griefer vote kick a game dev from an official server.

[Gourmand]

Favorite diablo II hardcore tactic by some sorceress players was to join a group of folks lower level than you (low enough for you to one shot them), ask for a teleport, lay down some maxed out hydra's and the go back to town. From the safety of town activate PvP mode and watch the carnage from your group window / chat box.

[Matthew Gallant]

There was a map hole in the superstructure portion of the American carrier in the Coral Sea map of Battlefield 1942. You could jump in it with a parachute and shoot respawning Americans without them being able to shoot back-- the inside of the superstructure allowed bullets to pass through, but people outside of it couldn't shoot in.

Most of the time a person took advantage of this it was an ally inside there TK'ing.

[JessicaM]

In UO, we had mages taking cheaply priced orders from newbies for gates to certain places, then instead sending the payer to an island with no moongates. He was basically stuck there unless someone with a boat would come get him. Caused us some grief until we made sure every isalnd had a one-way gate back to Britain or some other city.

[EvilIdler]

Here are two related ones from City of Heroes:

Teleport-griefing: Team members can be teleported with a power called
Teleport Friend. Without warning. No confirmation box. If the griefer can
hover or fly, a team member can effectively be killed by a long fall into
some hostiles.

Resurrection griefing: No confirmation boxes here, either, but it really
depends on what sort of resurrection there is. The weaker forms rely
on enemies being near to draw life from, or will temporarily boost the
resurrected before weaking to near-death again.

The first one is fixable by quitting the team (or confirmation boxes when
they become an option soon). The second doesn't even require you to
be teamed with the one resurrecting you..if you die in the middle of a
nasty ambush, you want to respawn elsewhere.

[McBain]

Wow, you guys are easily annoyed.

Is there anything that *doesn't* qualify as griefing?

[Talisker]

I did a teeny smidge of griefing during the original UO alpha preview. The game had the bare minimum of infrastructure in place at that point -- you'd go whack rabbits, eventually work your way up to killing orcs, could get some basic armor bits, and I think you could dye 'em. If you thumped another player, you could loot their pack; additionally, you could look in their pack and try to steal stuff -- if you failed, they'd get a private notify that you tried to steal from them.

The alpha test was chock full of Ultima Dragons (the online Ultima fanboy group) -- the only people who'd really heard of it and expressed enough interest to screw around with it were the Ultima hard-core, which meant that everyone was running around being Virtuous.

So, I'm standing there with my usual kit consitiing of nothing, chatting with a guy in spiffy armor of some sort, and I realize that the social dynamics would allow for some nifty, fun mischief, most likely. Having not yet heard the term "grief", I decided to put it to the test -- as we chatted away, a group of a half-dozen or so well-equipped guys came walking through, heading to the orc camp or whatever.

"Hey! Give me back my gold! Thief! Thief!" I started yelling.

"Have at you!" the passing war party said, and proceeded to beat the fellow who'd been innocently chatting with me. "Hey," he said. Then he died.

"Thanks," I said. "We give unvirtuous thieves no quarter," said the other guys, and headed on their way.

I got a bunch of free armor and money, and wandered off, feeling mildly guilty, and realizing that there were going to be some *very* interesting problems for the game to overcome.

[TrodKnee]

I love a good excuse to tell my Meridian 59 story of grief. Back in the pre UO days griefing was a rare phenom, so it was fun just to test the boundaries of acceptable in-game behavior...without resorting to the ruthless scumbag tactics of the modern griefer.

In the main city of M59 (Tos was the name I think), there was a graveyard where many players would gather at night to kill the roaming skeletons for loot and experience. A popular grind spot, basically. Most of the time it was a simple convenient place to go and it was not really considered dangerous unless you were low level. I put an end to that. My character's name was Random, a self-proclaimed servant of the Lord Chaos. The roleplaying spin was important for justifying the grief. In M59 at that time players could kill each other only after reaching level 20, players below that were safe from PKing. Random was perpetually level 19. I would go into the graveyard and cast a couple spells, Darkness and Winds, which would cause all in the area to have difficulty using their weapons. I think Darkness actually made the area darker also. Then I would use a magic wand to "pull" the skeletons from across the graveyard. I would try to get all the skeletons angry at me, then run them around a little bit and then exit the area. I don't remember if it was a spell or my Evil faction, but I used a mechanic that allowed me to re-enter the graveyard without attracting attention. I would repeat this until I had a large crowd of skeletons just inside the entrance, waiting for the clueless victims to arrive.

Predictibly, my victims were none too happy with my behavior. When they died, I would rob their corpses. When they sent me angry tells or complained over broadcast I would state "I simply serve the will of my Lord Chaos". For added fun, I would take the loot I stole from the corpses and give it away to random people. When they thanked me I asked them to praise my Lord in broadcast...when they thanked me in broadcast the victim would inevitably complain "Hey, that was my sword!" etc. Fun, twisted stuff.

Eventually the GM's started following me around. At first they threatened me to stop, but I argued that I wasn't breaking any rules. After observing my activities for awhile they determined I was right, and let it go. But of course eventually the outcry became too much and they put their foot down, and I had become bored of the mischief and went back to plain old PvP. For the record, it was never officially determined that I was doing anything wrong...

[Jim Preston]

Just FYI, since players are helpless against these abuses unless the developer puts in counter-measures like callvotes, odds are the only people benefiting from your article are griefers-to-be.

This isn't going to be an article for public distribution, it's strictly internal. I wanted to pull some examples from a wide variety of genres, with the economic scam from Eve Online being particularly devious. There are some great ones here, especially the ones that don't involve an exploit of technology, such as a problem with level geometry, but use the game's legitimate tools, but with a design towards ruining the fun of other players.

[Jakub]

This isn't going to be an article for public distribution, it's strictly internal. I wanted to pull some examples from a wide variety of genres, with the economic scam from Eve Online being particularly devious. There are some great ones here, especially the ones that don't involve an exploit of technology, such as a problem with level geometry, but use the game's legitimate tools, but with a design towards ruining the fun of other players.
The single best tool you can offer your players is information and kick/ban power.

Any griefing can be eliminated most of the time by showing off very detailed kill stats.

The example someone pointed out about people deliberately trying to get themselves is extremely valid, I think. Most Enemy Territory servers have team damage on by default because otherwise the field ops and rocket launcher get abused. To counter this, they have auto-kick for a certain number of team kills.

One of the engineer's special abilities is to lay mines on the ground. Mines are a great defense on many maps and griefers will routinely step on them to kick the one who planted. Even if there isn't an autokick, the griefer can say "omg he teamkilled me 3 times!" People can scroll back and see that it's true.

What they can't see is that the griefer died 3 times by stepping on the mines. That just doesn't happen often. Yeah, you step on mines by accident here and there but not 3 times on the same person's mines on the same map.

I think a stat log in the score sheet, where if you double-clicked someone's name it shows how he died, when he died, doing what, as what class, would really help. The more informed players are, the more capable they are of decisively voting off any griefers. So the same guy in a tank blocking a runway in BF1942 can't play "oh it was a one-time accident" for an entire map.

BTW, McBain, nice attempt at a troll.

[Rimbo]

Duke Nukem 3D Deathmatch.

The freeze ray.

After successfully hitting them, stand behind them, wait until they thaw, and hit them again. Repeat.

You can also use the shrink ray to similar effect, but then, it's just too much more fun to step on the little Dukes than to taunt them.

[DivDevlin]

[quote="Ron Talbot"]In WoW on the PvE server you can be 'blessed' with the PvP tag if you help someone who already has a PvP tag (you can manually set yourself to PvP as well, the normal method of becoming PvP) When your PvP tag is 'on' your name is green instead of blue. (an odd choice of color in my mind) Also a PvP tag in WoW is faction based.[quote]This is probably the most commond and easiset to explain.

It was a huge factor in both Ultima Online, as well as currently in Linage II and SWG. Folks will nudge you to go into a criminal (red/pvp flag) and then punce on you 20 to 1.

[Aszurom]

In Asheron's Call 1, if you were really careful you could whack a rabbit and not kill it on the first shot. Rabbits very rarely did any damage at all when they hit you, especially if you were mid-level. So, we'd run into the newbie zone and thump a couple of rabbits who would then spend the rest of the day trying to bite our toes off.

Interestingly, monsters seem to level up in that game. After a while I noticed that Mr Rabbit and friends were starting to wear down my HP pretty good. I don't know what level the rabbits had gotten up to, but I told one of the other guys to keep an eye on them while I logged off and back on to break the aggro. Now we had a docile crowd high-level rabbits standing there in the newbie zone.

So, we stand around for a while, and a newb comes over and thumps one of our rabbits. The rabbit 1-shotted him. Aaaa! Thump, dead newb. His reply was along the lines of "OMFGWTF?!" so this became our daily sport... leaving packs of killer rabbits sitting around. We referred to it as "Wabbit Wanching". Eventually we mastered the art of having like 10 rabbits chewing on each of us as we had a "cattle drive" from one area of the map to another, picking up more rabbits along the way.

Needless to say, endless hours of entertainment were had from dropping a full herd of these insane eaters of the newb flesh around the starter towns.

[Doctor Hillbilly]

In UO, we had mages taking cheaply priced orders from newbies for gates to certain places, then instead sending the payer to an island with no moongates. He was basically stuck there unless someone with a boat would come get him. Caused us some grief until we made sure every isalnd had a one-way gate back to Britain or some other city.

All mentions of griefing and UO make me think of the awesome B0N3D00D and pLaTeDeWd (http://spla.sh/bp/oldstuff.htm).

[Supertanker]

Nobody has mentioned door blocking yet? Some maps are designed with narrow exits from spawn, so one or two griefers will stand in the doorways and prevent the team from leaving. If friendly fire is off, there's nothing you can do about it in most HL mods because you can't shove another player out of the way. Even if FF is on, you get a TK & most servers limit that to three or so.

I've noticed a lot of online console racing is done in ghost mode to prevent blocking the start & intentional ramming.

[Jakub]

In Asheron's Call 1, if you were really careful you could whack a rabbit and not kill it on the first shot. Rabbits very rarely did any damage at all when they hit you, especially if you were mid-level. So, we'd run into the newbie zone and thump a couple of rabbits who would then spend the rest of the day trying to bite our toes off.

Interestingly, monsters seem to level up in that game. After a while I noticed that Mr Rabbit and friends were starting to wear down my HP pretty good. I don't know what level the rabbits had gotten up to, but I told one of the other guys to keep an eye on them while I logged off and back on to break the aggro. Now we had a docile crowd high-level rabbits standing there in the newbie zone.

So, we stand around for a while, and a newb comes over and thumps one of our rabbits. The rabbit 1-shotted him. Aaaa! Thump, dead newb. His reply was along the lines of "OMFGWTF?!" so this became our daily sport... leaving packs of killer rabbits sitting around. We referred to it as "Wabbit Wanching". Eventually we mastered the art of having like 10 rabbits chewing on each of us as we had a "cattle drive" from one area of the map to another, picking up more rabbits along the way.

Needless to say, endless hours of entertainment were had from dropping a full herd of these insane eaters of the newb flesh around the starter towns.
OH MY GOD.

I finally understand the Killer Rabbit.

Jeez Louise. All this time I thought it was a random mutant super-rabbit spawn. I'm pretty sure some other people caught onto this because I got killed at least twice by rabbits.

[Rimbo]

this thread is hilarious

[Matthew Gallant]

Nobody has mentioned door blocking yet? Some maps are designed with narrow exits from spawn, so one or two griefers will stand in the doorways and prevent the team from leaving.
And sometimes whip out the Panzerfaust and kill everyone. And sometimes make videos of it and add the Rocky theme. (http://www.truemeaningoflife.com/stuff/raw.avi)

Apologies if you can't see the video, it was compressed a long time ago with an old version of DivX. But if you can, Jim, it would make a good visual aid.

[tronnc]

Nobody has mentioned door blocking yet? Some maps are designed with narrow exits from spawn, so one or two griefers will stand in the doorways and prevent the team from leaving. If friendly fire is off, there's nothing you can do about it in most HL mods because you can't shove another player out of the way. Even if FF is on, you get a TK & most servers limit that to three or so.

There was a nasty exploit in the original Day of Defeat using this. There were a couple of maps where the teams started in a room with only one door out. With FF off if you stood in the doorway your team was guaranteed to lose as there was no way they could get you to move. The exploit was that in original DOD if you threw down a gernade and switched teams before the gernade would explode, the gernade would switch teams too.
So for example if you were blocking the door and your whole Allied team was stuck in the start room, you could throw down a gernade. FF is off so it wouldn't hurt the team so they don't try to get away from it. Right before it exploded you switch to Axis. Since the gernade switched teams it would explode and kill the whole team. And since you were on the Axis team when it blew you would actually get the points for killing the entire enemy team.

It was kind of funny to see people do this because you would even see the gernade change models when the guy switched teams. So you'd be looking at the allies pineapple gernade and it would suddenly switch to the nazi stick gernade then blow up.

[Stroker Ace]

DAoC: guild group is hunting deep in a dangerous dungeon. we recruit a player to come join us. 20 minutes later he arrives at our camp at the bottom of the dungeon, but he dies to a monster from the room right before us.

instead of rezzing him, we log out.

yahoo chess: game with no timer. i'm losing with two pieces left. rather than making my last move, i go to the mall.

warcraft3: in about ten games on battle.net before i gave up in disgust, i was 0-10. this game i'm getting spanked in a 4-way free for all. i build a house in the middle of a defeated player's city. it looks just like all the other houses except for the teal front door and ring around the chimney. the game lasts an additional 30 minutes with the eventual victor wandering around the map looking for my last structure.

http://www.unix.eng.ua.edu/~dpritchett/img/wc3/rofl.jpg
30 minutes later....
http://www.unix.eng.ua.edu/~dpritchett/img/wc3/rofl2.jpg
http://www.unix.eng.ua.edu/~dpritchett/img/wc3/rofl3.jpg

A Tale in the Desert: A friend and I are playing the 24 hour demo. we join a guild. the friend raid's the guild's chests and puts all of their contents into his own. he arranges his chests in the shape of a giant pointing middle finger and never plays the game again. since this game is sort of a social simulator, players eventually push through some legislation reposessing his stuff.

http://bama.ua.edu/~pritc004/distro/Frame0000.JPG
http://bama.ua.edu/~pritc004/distro/Frame0004.JPG
http://bama.ua.edu/~pritc004/distro/Frame0005.JPG
http://bama.ua.edu/~pritc004/distro/Frame0007.JPG
http://bama.ua.edu/~pritc004/distro/Frame0006.JPG

i can't think of any other great ones at the moment, but i'm sure they'll come to me.

[Rimbo]

In Asheron's Call 1, if you were really careful you could whack a rabbit and not kill it on the first shot. Rabbits very rarely did any damage at all when they hit you, especially if you were mid-level. So, we'd run into the newbie zone and thump a couple of rabbits who would then spend the rest of the day trying to bite our toes off.

Interestingly, monsters seem to level up in that game. After a while I noticed that Mr Rabbit and friends were starting to wear down my HP pretty good. I don't know what level the rabbits had gotten up to, but I told one of the other guys to keep an eye on them while I logged off and back on to break the aggro. Now we had a docile crowd high-level rabbits standing there in the newbie zone.

So, we stand around for a while, and a newb comes over and thumps one of our rabbits. The rabbit 1-shotted him. Aaaa! Thump, dead newb. His reply was along the lines of "OMFGWTF?!" so this became our daily sport... leaving packs of killer rabbits sitting around. We referred to it as "Wabbit Wanching". Eventually we mastered the art of having like 10 rabbits chewing on each of us as we had a "cattle drive" from one area of the map to another, picking up more rabbits along the way.

Needless to say, endless hours of entertainment were had from dropping a full herd of these insane eaters of the newb flesh around the starter towns.


Tim the Enchanter: There he is!
King Arthur: Where?
Tim the Enchanter: There!
King Arthur: What? Behind the rabbit?
Tim the Enchanter: It IS the rabbit!
King Arthur: You silly sod!
Tim the Enchanter: What?
King Arthur: You got us all worked up!
Tim the Enchanter: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit.
King Arthur: Ohh.
Tim the Enchanter: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
Sir Robin: You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
Tim the Enchanter: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
Sir Galahad: Get stuffed!
Tim the Enchanter: He'll do you up a treat, mate.
Sir Galahad: Oh yeah?
Sir Robin: You mangy Scots git!
Tim the Enchanter: I'm warning you!
Sir Robin: What's he do? Nibble your bum?
Tim the Enchanter: He's got huge, sharp-- eh-- he can leap about-- look at the bones!
King Arthur: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
Bors: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin' right up!

The best thing about this is that the rabbits (presumably) don't attack someone attacks them first, so I don't reckon it's really "griefing."

[Shadari]

In UO, we had mages taking cheaply priced orders from newbies for gates to certain places, then instead sending the payer to an island with no moongates. He was basically stuck there unless someone with a boat would come get him. Caused us some grief until we made sure every isalnd had a one-way gate back to Britain or some other city.

All mentions of griefing and UO make me think of the awesome B0N3D00D and pLaTeDeWd (http://spla.sh/bp/oldstuff.htm).
Ah, such fond memories.

[Jim Preston]

This isn't a game, Stroker Ace. But if it were, you'd be the winner - or the biggest loser depending on your perspective. :lol:

[Stroker Ace]

This isn't a game, Stroker Ace. But if it were, you'd be the winner - or the biggest loser depending on your perspective. :lol:it wasn't all me, i just took the best notes :P

[Dave Long]

The Warcraft III one is very clever. Great job with that one. I see oinkfs was in on the endgame too. :)

--Dave

[LogRoller]

Although this is not MMORPG, it was a form of griefing. In the old Tribes days, there was a mod called Renegades that was extremely popular with new players, due to it's relaxing of certain game mechanics and presence of overpowered weapons. One of the modifications was force fields.

Well, a lot of the base game players used to go around on Renegades servers and peform "llama caging", where they would find a newbie and drop force fields around him, forcing him into a corner. Some players who did not know the suicide key strokes would be stuck there for the entire round. And then the cagers would post screenshots of their exploits on various forums (Tribalwar, mostly, for those of you who are familiar with that particular internet cesspool).

That was the most prevalent form of griefing, but there were many many things that could be done, and there were entire political systems that rose and fell on the structure of unsaid rules with respect to team damage being on or off. The subtlety of griefing possible within that environment was legendary.

[Gourmand]

The Warcraft III one is very clever. Great job with that one. I see oinkfs was in on the endgame too. :)

--Dave

Stroker doesn't play with me anymore, he hates RTS's :cry:

Anywho, I was there for the DAoC thing, too. I remember the guy spamming everyone in our group for invites. We made it clear his presence wasn't wanted, but he told us he was coming anyways. He took an insanely long amount of time to run from A to B and we lost all patience with him. So, he wasn't completely undeserving.

But, I am a bastard, because I was cackling like a maniac with stroker on ventrillo after we logged out (and subsequently quit for the night).

In other news : I enjoyed clever feats pulled off in a Enemy Territory game involving myself, Mr Ace, Angie "FoodBunny" Dietrich, Alan "ItsAtrap!" Au, and Mr. Gallant. At least I think that's who was there. Stroker made a spy I think, and I made an engineer. He stole a uniform off of a guy and opened all of the doors for me in the demo level all the way up into the enemy base, which is usually protected by 2 chain fences an enemy engineer builds. Problem - there's a door only accessible only to the enemy team that leads to a roof you can jump off of into the pit. Well, a door only accessible to the enemy team AND people who stole their clothing. We planted the bomb, and the enemies had no idea what to do because their own chain link fence blocked them from defusing. you could run this operation effectively within the first minute of gameplay and end what should be a 20 minute match in about 2 minutes. Although I'm not certain if it constitutes griefing or not.

That has to be one of the hardest moments of laughter ever induced by a video game for me. It might be important to include that for some people (not all), the fun in griefing is being clever, not just acting sadistic.

EDIT: I just remembered a friend who played EQ managed to get faction up in Qeynos/Freeport through a bugged rogue quest (as an ogre shaman) and endlessly completed the quest until he was the only ogre allowed inside of human towns. The developers hadn't built those cities to accomodate ogre's. As such, one day he got bored, cast invisibility on himself and sat in the door way of the bank effectively trapping a bunch of folks inside. I think a day later he had a patch dedicated to his discovery.

[Dave Long]

I've seen the Enemy Territory thing. I think I was there when you folks did it once (Grimrod) and I've seen it a few times since too. I don't see that one as grief play because it's up to the defenders not to be stupid and let someone get in there. Plus if they do you can always go up and through the door to jump down in and defuse that dynamite.

It is awfully satisfying to blow it up that way because as soon as the thing is planted that verbal warning is broadcast and immediately the Axis guys are in "Oh Shit!" mode.

--Dave

[Jasper]

That has to be one of the hardest moments of laughter ever induced by a video game for me. It might be important to include that for some people (not all), the fun in griefing is being clever, not just acting sadistic.

What a steaming pile of self serving bullshit! Sure, you couldn't find anything clever to do _without_ griefing.

My experience admining Muds is that griefers are generally people who like to _think_ they're clever, and just don't give a shit if they piss someone else off. It never quite dawns on them that knowing a games loopholes better than a newbie isn't exactly impressive.

IMHO there's only one solution for griefers. Have an an admin confront them, log their actions, then ban the fuckers once you have proof. There are some pitfalls to watch out for, but I haven't seen anything else work.


While I'm at it, two griefing instances I remember. On an old Middle Earth mud you could summon other players, but they decided that was too usefull... and made it so that summoned characters left all their equipment behind! Brilliant.

On an old MOO called GodNet (set in Torg's Cybepapacy -- great fun!), I was once on neutral ground, where if someone attacked you they got tagged as a violator by the defenses, but you didn't if you defended yourself. Someone attacked me, and I defended myself -- only they hadn't attacked me, but had instead spoofed the attack messages. Haha, very clever! Spoofing was one of the prime abuses on text muds.

[Nathan]

I was always amused when, for a while in Team Fortress Classic, it was possible to build a sentry gun on top of a possum-playing spy that would prevent them from moving.

[Gourmand]

What a steaming pile of self serving bullshit! Sure, you couldn't find anything clever to do _without_ griefing.

There are other avenues, griefing just happens to be one of them. Griefing is wholly despicable to me if it doesn't involve some method of breaking the game system without outside help. It's clever, and it's entertaining. Quit being righteous.

Not so amusing instances of griefing include following noobies around stealing their kills so they can not level, and spamming female characters with mysogynistic sexual advances. Note the lack of clever manipulation, and the sole reward being other players misery.

[Sunny the Unemployed]

A buddy of mine was a long time UO pker. He has tons of stories of wacky bug exploits, stealing, and murder. And he does it with masterful, engaging storytelling and an insane glimmer in his eye.

A lot of it is completely hilarious, to tell you the truth.

Sure, griefing sucks. As a genre, MMOGs have a lot of social issues that need to be ironed out, but god damn, do they make for some funny stories. As long as you're not the victim.

[0racle]

EvilIdler, both of yours will be fixed in the next big update to come out. For both you will get a message box asking if you want to accept it or not.

[Jim Preston]

Griefing is wholly despicable to me if it doesn't involve some method of breaking the game system without outside help. It's clever, and it's entertaining. Quit being righteous.

Well, it may be a way for a smart assholes to express themselves, it's also a way for makers of a game to lose money because those stupid old non-clever n00bs are likely to pull up tent stakes and go somewhere else. This isn't a big concern for games with free multiplayer like most FPSes, or service providers, such as Xbox Live, but developers who are trying to make a living off those witless non-griefers generally like to see them stay around.

[GMicek]

In A Tale In The Desert Voltaic and I walked for literally hours to try and find an out of the way place to form our guild. Eventually a number of people joined the guild and we were moving along very nicely. One day a guy names Zimok (or something) wandered into camp and proclaimed he had set up shop not too far away (10 minute walk I'd say). Eventually we discovered that our camp was right next to an iron vein and we started the time sucking process of building mines. Well Zimok wasn't happy because there was no iron in the area, our vein was the closest. After some heated debates he started building little camfires everywhere to try and block off our vein and said that he would only remove them if we let him mine just outside of our camp. At that point a couple of our guild members lost control and started building their own camp fires everywhere to try and prevent Zimok from squatting our area. It was hilarious to watch these people get into this race building camp fires up and down the vein.

Another good Tale In The Desert semi-grief was to create obscene artwork inside the camp of people you didn't like.

There was a fear for quite a while in A Tale In The Desert that building mines very close to (or uphill from) water would contaminate the water and kill the sometimes very valuable fish life in it. I don't know if this turned out to be true, but when walking around the world you would routinely find areas that had basically been strip mined by unfriendly folks.

[Wheelkick]

In other news : I enjoyed clever feats pulled off in a Enemy Territory game involving myself, Mr Ace, Angie "FoodBunny" Dietrich, Alan "ItsAtrap!" Au, and Mr. Gallant. At least I think that's who was there. Stroker made a spy I think, and I made an engineer. He stole a uniform off of a guy and opened all of the doors for me in the demo level all the way up into the enemy base, which is usually protected by 2 chain fences an enemy engineer builds. Problem - there's a door only accessible only to the enemy team that leads to a roof you can jump off of into the pit. Well, a door only accessible to the enemy team AND people who stole their clothing. We planted the bomb, and the enemies had no idea what to do because their own chain link fence blocked them from defusing. you could run this operation effectively within the first minute of gameplay and end what should be a 20 minute match in about 2 minutes. Although I'm not certain if it constitutes griefing or not.


That can hardly be called griefing. And it's no sure win tactic against people who know the game.

[EvilIdler]

EvilIdler, both of yours will be fixed in the next big update to come out. For both you will get a message box asking if you want to accept it or not.

Yep, I'm anxiously awaiting them. It seems some people will be *annoyed*
by these options, too. I guess that's a way to spot a griefer ;)

[Warlord of Mars]

Nobody has mentioned door blocking yet?

I ran into one (aptly named "Doorblocker", gee) on RTCW. I didn't know what the commotion was, until the crowd parted to let me see what was going on, as everyone else was scrambling to find another way around. Luckily, I was running the server myself. Even though I chuckled for half a second, it didn't take long for me to be irritated, knowing everyone else was pretty po'd. I kicked him, then banned him. Someone started singing "for he's a jolly good fellow". I daresay my popularity rose exponentially that day... Admin/mod powers is very good in the hands of people who play by the book.


Griefers can do funny things, but the joke's only good once. After that, it gets annoying and downright pathetic. I've heard too many people getting disgusted with online play as a result, and Mr. Preston has a point about trying to please everybody (sorry to put words into your mouth, but I think that's the gist of it.) It's fine if you're geniunely creative, but there should be consequences to actions, particularly ones that devalue the fun of others. Save it for single player mode, gents.

[Wheelkick]

A friend of mine played a lot of CS in the early beta days. Back then they implemented a system to handle the TKers that made a TKer spend the next round watching the game unable to participate.

Sometimes my friend singled out one member of his own team and started to follow him everywhere, pointing his gun in his face, blocking his view. After a while that guy usually lost it and killed my friend, and in that process had to sit out the next round.

[tronnc]

Here's one im guilty of. On shockwave.com there is a multiplayer game inklink. Its basically online multiplayer pictionary, its free and pretty fun in a dumb way.

Anyway whenever it was my turn to draw I would never draw the word given to me. For example if the word was chair, I would draw a sailboat. Its pretty funny seeing people guessing stuff like boat, sail, ship, etc. Then at the end of the timer people would be like WTF that picture doesn't look anything like a chair.

Its fun for a few mins anyway.

http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/inklink15

[Wheelkick]

Here's one im guilty of. On shockwave.com there is a multiplayer game inklink. Its basically online multiplayer pictionary, its free and pretty fun in a dumb way.

Anyway whenever it was my turn to draw I would never draw the word given to me. For example if the word was chair, I would draw a sailboat. Its pretty funny seeing people guessing stuff like boat, sail, ship, etc. Then at the end of the timer people would be like WTF that picture doesn't look anything like a chair.

Its fun for a few mins anyway.

http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/inklink15
:lol:

[Super_D]

In Age of Empires, you can grief your teammate by sending a peasant and building a wall around his starting city right at the start of the game. At that point he's pretty much screwed since he can't put out any more peasants.

This mechanic works because you have the ability to do these basic fences right at the start and you can't destroy buildings/fences/walls created by teammates.

[Aszurom]

Not really grief so much as a weapon of mass destruction... In bf1942 we'd take a jeep, have an engineer toss explosives in the back, and then both people ride to the outskirts of the enemy base. Engineer gets out with detonator in hand, and the driver drives full-tilt into the middle of the enemy spawn - especially good if it's a barn or something. WHAM. Creates quite a scrolling effect on the kill list.

Now, if you load a jeep like that and then walk away from it and the enemy drives off in it, feel free to click the detonator too - but it's just not as much fun.

I wouldn't call it grief, but it sure is totally obnoxious.

[EvilIdler]

I wouldn't call it grief, but it sure is totally obnoxious.

Griefing bad - obnoxious good!

Someone wrote a guide to being an utter bastard in Tribes 2;
it was all about doing the daftest possible things. Things that the enemy
would never expect *anyone* to be silly enough to do.

Place structures in pits behind tall hills near the enemy's territory,
for instance. Make use of sacrificial vehicles, like the jeep example
above. Think annoying, on the border of good taste, without exactly
griefing.

[LionelThompson]

Way back in the day, in UO, it was discovered that trapping chests in town was an offensive act and you could get the guards called on you (like stealing in town).

I would dress in 'peasant's attire' (not deathrobes) with a few chests that I had bought or made and acting as the newbie, ask people to trap them for me as I was tired of getting hit up by thieves. Most were happy to oblige since it was such an obscure fact and as soon as they had the trade window back up "GUARDS KILL" would appear and they wouldn't know what hit em.

I was a lousy UO player, but this was always good for a chuckle at the banks.

[Squirrel Killer]

Sure, griefing sucks. As a genre, MMOGs have a lot of social issues that need to be ironed out, but god damn, do they make for some funny stories. As long as you're not the victim.

There's the rub, to griefer, it's great fun, to the victim, it quickly becomes "online play is retarded."

The only reason griefing works isn't that you're more or less anonymous online, it's that you have an unending stream of newbies to serve as victims. In real life, if you grief during a LAN party, people don't come over to kick your ass (well they might do that too), they just stop playing with you. Will that happen online? Probably not completely, but if the word gets out to the mainstream that online gaming with strangers suck, there will eventually be a smaller group of naive victims available.

[Ben]

Griefing is the online equivalent of vandalism. Laughing because you made someone you don't know waste time or not have fun is just being a jackass. I don't care how clever you think you are, you're still an asshole. What's your total thought process? "Ha, this loser wanted to enjoy himself in his free time! I'll show him!"

[Shiroko]

Now, if you load a jeep like that and then walk away from it and the enemy drives off in it, feel free to click the detonator too - but it's just not as much fun.

I do that in UT2004, when I place grenades on a parking enemy tank, and then when I see the enemy tanks moving or someone jumping in it I blow him up. Not much of a grief but lets not forget the ability in UT2004 to carry the leviathan on a raptor and simply fly it to wherever you want.
Though Epic put a stop to it in the first patch.

-Shiroko

[Stroker Ace]

you could run this operation effectively within the first minute of gameplay and end what should be a 20 minute match in about 2 minutes. Although I'm not certain if it constitutes griefing or not.


That can hardly be called griefing. And it's no sure win tactic against people who know the game.what oink forgot to mention was that we were doing this during the first week of the open beta. we got a kick out of confusing people, i'm sure it became de rigeur a month later. i played CS for two years, there weren't any secret map exploits that the whole world didn't know about at that point either.

edit: i misspelled my pretentious french words

[Supertanker]

Is it a form of griefing when some person decides to launch a DDoS on the authentication or master servers for a game? Steam is having problems this morning, but it could just be lots of people downloading CS:Source.

[Jakub]

Is it a form of griefing when some person decides to launch a DDoS on the authentication or master servers for a game? Steam is having problems this morning, but it could just be lots of people downloading CS:Source.
That's more of a technical problem. I think what Jim's mostly looking for is:

a). Examples that prove that you can't count on player good behavior.
b). The infectiousness of bad ideas.
c). How design features can and will be turned against the game.

[quatoria]

Is it a form of griefing when some person decides to launch a DDoS on the authentication or master servers for a game? Steam is having problems this morning, but it could just be lots of people downloading CS:Source.

No, it's a crime.

[Aszurom]

Q: What's the key for _____?

A: ALT + F4

Try it, it works!

[Guido Jones]

There was a guild that ran from MMORPG to MMORPG greifing people - it was their whole reason for existance. Their archives of stories resided at www.darkwolves.org - but it looks like the site is down now. There was some great stuff there - they were just complete assholes.

One of the best ones was when they were playing DAoC - there was these set of merchants in a dungeon that were set to be killable by anyone (which is odd for DAoC). Anyway, they decided to take on the roleplay that they were holy warriors killing demons (the merchants) who were selling their demonic wares (the equipment on the merchants) to the brainwashed peasents (the other players). Everytime the merchants would respond they would one shot them, preventing people from buying the equipment. It was pretty bad because these particular merchants were only available in that one place.

People eventually appealed them and the CSR's came to talk with the Darkwolves folks - and then the CSR told the people that had appealed it was perfectly legal (which it was, the merchants were on a faction based system that if you killed to many they wouldn't sell to you anymore). Eventually the Darkwolves people got killed by people from another realm who were clearing the dungeon out - they could have done it for literally ever though. The Dev's changed how the merchants worked so you couldn't attack your own, but could attack another realms a while after the article was published.

There was some other great ones (convincing newbs on a Full PvP server to remove their no PvP flag so you could gank them for instance) but they all appear to be lost.

[tronnc]

There was a guild that ran from MMORPG to MMORPG greifing people - it was their whole reason for existance. Their archives of stories resided at www.darkwolves.org - but it looks like the site is down now. There was some great stuff there - they were just complete assholes.

They have a different site now.

http://www.darkwolves.biz

[John Reynolds]

I almost feel bad writing this, but some of those Dark Wolves stories are funny as hell.

[Lokust]

The exploits of Fansy the Famous Bard (http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm) are legendary within Everquest. Fansy was a bard on Sullon Zek server- the server that was supposed to be no-rules, be as hardcore as you like, and nobody cares about playing nice.

The no-rules server made a special case for Fansy's brand of griefing. Highly recommend the link but some knowledge of how EQ works would help a lot in understanding the logs.

[Guido Jones]

They have a different site now.

http://www.darkwolves.biz

Hey Thanks! Wish my Google Fu hadn't been weak, didn't need to type all that out. You can go here (http://www.darkwolves.biz/crusade.html) for the original story of what I described above, complete with screenshots.

Really, just point people at the darkwolves site if you want an example of griefers. These guys are the experts.

[Shadari]

I almost feel bad writing this, but some of those Dark Wolves stories are funny as hell.
That's one of the reasons people grief to begin with -- because it can be funny. Not accusing you of anything... I find some of that stuff funny too. Although most of it is nothing more than idiots acting like idiots.

[Jasper]

What a steaming pile of self serving bullshit! Sure, you couldn't find anything clever to do _without_ griefing.

There are other avenues, griefing just happens to be one of them. Griefing is wholly despicable to me if it doesn't involve some method of breaking the game system without outside help. It's clever, and it's entertaining. Quit being righteous.

Sure, _you_ think it's clever and entertaining -- Griefers _always_ think the particular way in which they are a jackass is clever and entertaining. "The way I grief is hillarious -- not like those other assholes!"

As another poster pointed out, griefing is the equivalent of vandalism -- but without even the potential to be redeemed as artwork. It's just puerile enjoyment of the misfortune of others.

[Rimbo]

Some of this is hilarious. Fansy's training of the Sand Giants is greatness.

These are video games. Not real life. If you aren't enjoying the game for the moment you're playing it, you shouldn't be playing the game. The EQ players who complain about the time and effort that was wasted by Fansy's antics need a good strong dose of that perspective.

[Jasper]

Ah yes, "it's the victem's fault". There's a bit of time honored projection. "The victem just needs to see things from the griefer's perspective." You've got it backwards -- it's the asshole who should be made to see things from his victem's perspective.

And "it's just a videogame, not real life?" Frankly I very much consider my free time to be part of my life, and if someone fucks it up I'm pissed -- I'm certainly not "enjoying the game for the moment". People universally take their leisure time very seriously.

Why is it that people generally don't pull these stunts in non-internet games? Because on the internet they feel anonymous and invulnerable. Grief in an offline game and nobody will play with you anymore. Anyone trying it at a sporting event -- hey, it's just a game! -- would get their ass kicked and/or wind up in jail.

It's pathetic that some people get their kicks out of the misery of others.

[Gourmand]

Ah yes, "it's the victem's fault". There's a bit of time honored projection. "The victem just needs to see things from the griefer's perspective." You've got it backwards -- it's the asshole who should be made to see things from his victem's perspective.


Those folks joined a No Rules server and expected Order and good to prevail? What?

[Silverlight]

Ah yes, "it's the victim's fault". There's a bit of time honored projection. "The victim just needs to see things from the griefer's perspective." You've got it backwards -- it's the asshole who should be made to see things from his victim's perspective.

Those folks joined a No Rules server and expected Order and good to prevail? What?
Uh, I think he's speaking a little more generally.

And damn it, Jaspar, it's "victim". :)

[Rimbo]

Ah yes, "it's the victem's fault". There's a bit of time honored projection. "The victem just needs to see things from the griefer's perspective." You've got it backwards -- it's the asshole who should be made to see things from his victem's perspective.

And "it's just a videogame, not real life?" Frankly I very much consider my free time to be part of my life, and if someone fucks it up I'm pissed -- I'm certainly not "enjoying the game for the moment". People universally take their leisure time very seriously.

Why is it that people generally don't pull these stunts in non-internet games? Because on the internet they feel anonymous and invulnerable. Grief in an offline game and nobody will play with you anymore. Anyone trying it at a sporting event -- hey, it's just a game! -- would get their ass kicked and/or wind up in jail.

It's pathetic that some people get their kicks out of the misery of others.

"Schadenfreude! It's a German word meaning pleasure at the misfortune of others!"

"Hmmm, that IS German!"

I call bullshit on people taking their leisure time seriously being universal, because I don't. Therefore by definition it ain't universal.

Avenue Q rules.

[Silverlight]

I call bullshit on people taking their leisure time seriously being universal, because I don't. Therefore by definition it ain't universal.

What about the implication that everyone should treat gaming like you do? Isn't that bullshit as well? Are you saying that because one person in the world doesn't take their leisure time overly-seriously, that people are supposed to sit back and enjoy being griefed?

[Timemaster Tim]

I call bullshit on people taking their leisure time seriously being universal, because I don't. Therefore by definition it ain't universal.

So if you went to the beach to relax and some griefers showed up and placed all their stuff around you so that your view in any direction was blocked, you'd just shrug your shoulders? If you moved to another location and they followed you and pulled the same stunt, you wouldn't be put out at all?

[Rimbo]

I call bullshit on people taking their leisure time seriously being universal, because I don't. Therefore by definition it ain't universal.

So if you went to the beach to relax and some griefers showed up and placed all their stuff around you so that your view in any direction was blocked, you'd just shrug your shoulders? If you moved to another location and they followed you and pulled the same stunt, you wouldn't be put out at all?

It's a false comparison. Being at the beach is not the same as playing a video game.

See, there are many fine single-player games available. There are no single-player beaches. :)

[Bill Dungsroman]

Avenue Q rules.

Fuck yes, it does.

"The internet is for porn - for PORN!"

[Rimbo]

I call bullshit on people taking their leisure time seriously being universal, because I don't. Therefore by definition it ain't universal.

What about the implication that everyone should treat gaming like you do? Isn't that bullshit as well? Are you saying that because one person in the world doesn't take their leisure time overly-seriously, that people are supposed to sit back and enjoy being griefed?

Of course it's bullshit; both the belief that people should take it the way I do AND the belief that griefing is wrong is saying that everyone should treat gaming in one way, or pick up their ball and go home.

If people treated gaming as I suggest, they would enjoy themselves more, because the griefers wouldn't get them down. I would even go so far as to say that the state of gaming would improve, because people would have less patience for games that suck, and wouldn't buy them. There is a distinct advantage to my attitude. And everyone can change their attitude.

What benefit is there to your way?

[Rimbo]

Avenue Q rules.

Fuck yes, it does.

"The internet is for porn - for PORN!"

All these guys
Unzip their flys
for porn, Porn, PORN!!!! :)

[Jasper]

If people treated gaming as I suggest, they would enjoy themselves more, because the griefers wouldn't get them down. I would even go so far as to say that the state of gaming would improve, because people would have less patience for games that suck, and wouldn't buy them. There is a distinct advantage to my attitude. And everyone can change their attitude.

What benefit is there to your way?

What benefit is there to "my" way? Two people have fun -- sounds like a win to me. If one of those people decides to get his kicks pissing in the others fun, well now only one is having fun. Your solution is that the other guy should just learn to like the taste and see the joke?!

Quit hogging the bong, man!

[Gourmand]

Isn't the "if everyone just thought my way we'd all be fine!" idea one of the tenets of National Socialism? And the crusades? And the coldwar?

Excellent idea.

[Silverlight]

Of course it's bullshit; both the belief that people should take it the way I do AND the belief that griefing is wrong is saying that everyone should treat gaming in one way, or pick up their ball and go home.

If people treated gaming as I suggest, they would enjoy themselves more, because the griefers wouldn't get them down. I would even go so far as to say that the state of gaming would improve, because people would have less patience for games that suck, and wouldn't buy them. There is a distinct advantage to my attitude. And everyone can change their attitude.

What benefit is there to your way?
The scene is a grassy field. In the background are bleachers and a high-school building. On the stage we see some GRIEFERS and a VICTIM.
GRIEFER 1: Come on, man, it's all fun!
GRIEFER 2: Yeah, man, this is funny as hell! Get with the program! Relax a little, will ya? Learn to take a joke!GRIEFER 2 aims a nasty kick at VICTIM's stomach.
VICTIM: You're -ugh- right, guys. This is funny. Ha ha ha! -urp-VICTIM slumps to the ground. A trickle of blood falls from his mouth.
GRIEFER 1: That's the spirit! See? I told you this was funny!GRIEFER 1 kicks VICTIM in the face. VICTIM tries to laugh, but chokes a bit instead.
GRIEFER 2: When you just learn to relax about getting abused, it gets better. See? Soon you won't even be conscious anymore!We see the GRIEFERS close in on the VICTIM and pummel him with their fists. Fade to black.

[SlyFrog]

Isn't the "if everyone just thought my way we'd all be fine!" idea one of the tenets of National Socialism? And the crusades? And the coldwar?

Excellent idea.

Whah! Godwin alert, Godwin alert.

Incidentally, isn't the "There is no central consensus, everyone should just do their own thing to the degree it makes them happy" one of the tenets of Somalia, Bosnia, and Rome at the time of the fall?

Excellent idea.

Hey, this is fun. Does anyone have a communism example to throw out? :)

[Gourmand]

Isn't the "if everyone just thought my way we'd all be fine!" idea one of the tenets of National Socialism? And the crusades? And the coldwar?

Excellent idea.

Whah! Godwin alert, Godwin alert.

Incidentally, isn't the "There is no central consensus, everyone should just do their own thing to the degree it makes them happy" one of the tenets of Somalia, Bosnia, and Rome at the time of the fall?

Excellent idea.

Hey, this is fun. Does anyone have a communism example to throw out? :)

I never said anything about pursueing hedonism with reckless disregard.

I think there are games designed with higher degree's of griefer friendliness (Read: UO) and those not so friendly to it (Read: standard fair EQ servers). If you joined early release UO and got agitated about all of the griefing, you'd be hard pressed to find sympathy from your gaming peers. Vice Versa if you went into EQ actively attempting to ruin other players fun it works the same way. There are minority pockets in each crowd with dissenting views, but obviously each is designed for a certain style of play.

I really don't understand the people decrying griefing as heresy, espousing it's banishment from the entire digital arena. Look at all the "Hah, I really enjoy these stories" responses from folks here. Obviously a certain fraction of people are entertained by it, and get a thrill from it. Victim or villain.

That's my opinion. You can rightfully chide me for that view if you prefer.

[Derek Meister]

Obviously a certain fraction of people are entertained by it, and get a thrill from it. Victim or villain.

For the vast majority, though, they're laughing because it's not actually happening to them.

America's Funniest Home Videos is funny to watch, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the guy getting hit in the crotch all the time.

Even humor itself tends to skew towards the misfortune of others, but that doesn't mean society still doesn't try to enact laws to reduce the amount of misfortune you can cause your fellow man.

[Gourmand]

I definitely can not vouch for the majority.

For me, it's mainly about being clever and outwitting both the game system and another intelligent player. Being clever enough to make a griefers plan fail is equally as entertaining as enacting a successful grief for me.

All I'm trying to say is some games are designed to be griefer friendly. Designed so you can lose anything you have or own. Joining a game like that and getting righteous about griefing as the scourge of online play is stupid.

Even in other cases where the sole goal is to win through heated competition it doesn't seem that dastardly. I like stroker's WC3 ploy. He lost the landwar, so he went for the win through pure cunningness. His grief was totally directed towards the end of winning the game. His "victim" didn't seem too distraught about it either.

[Derek Meister]

I wouldn't mind a game designed to allow griefing if it also allows one to do something sginificant about it. Unfortunately in a number of these stories there's really little you can do as a player even after you know you're being griefed.

Stroker's WC3 story might be aggravating, but it's not really a situation where the other player couldn't do anything about it after he figured out what was going on.

[McBain]

And the coldwar?

Heads up, chief. The good guys won that one.

[Stroker Ace]

griefers are people too:

in atitd, the same game where my friend distro ganked a guild's items just to quit the game with them, i made a guide to operating the charcoal hearth. at the time this was high technology and many player groups were having trouble finding people who knew how to use it. like many others, i held training sessions in game.

looking back, i shoulda tried to figure out how to blow them up mid-lesson.

http://www.unix.eng.ua.edu/~dpritchett/doc/hearth.htm

[Jason McMaster]

Jim, I haven't read the entire thread yet but I thought I'd contribute my UO stories.

I was in a guild called the CCC on the Catskills server. I orignally started out trying to play the game like normal, then, as everyone else, I got screwed. So I met this guild and we started taking "advantage" of the rules.

Number one: Animal Taming was the quickest way to become a Great Lord. The trick was this. My team mates and I would tame rabbits, then we'd hang out in this valley and look for patsys. We would find a guy, a good guy (aka blue) and we'd stand behind him with our trained bunnies. As soon as he had killed whatever monster he was fighting, we would use our macros (ones that had 3 lines of blank space below the command as to push the text out of sight) to have the rabbits guard the corpse. In UO that, if you looted something that was being guarded, it flagged you a criminal. We would then kill the guy and GAIN reputation points from it. We became Great Lords by killing people of our own faction and standing.

Number two: After that got old, my friend and I bought a house and he started making traps. We would then place a pair of clothes on the ground, a weapon and a backpack. When you died in UO your body would eventually deteriorate and would leave just that on the ground. So, inside the backpack we put some gold and other stuff, just whatver you'd usually find and then we would place a box. A box with several hundred pounds of rocks inside and a Grandmaster explosion trap. So, people would come along, see the stuff there and decide to loot whatever poor soul had died there, all the time thinking "HAH HAH! I have your stuff n00b!!!". So, they'd pick it all up and notice that they were SERIOUSLY overburdened. Opening the backpack they'd find a mysterious heavy box, surely filled with tons of reagents and priceless treasures!! "I think I'll open it!" BOOOOM!!! We come out cackling and loot their corpse, drop their stuff ont he ground and add another box. That went on for days.

Number Three: There were a lot of just basic griefings you could do in UO. Hide next to someones door, kill them and take their house key, making it pointless for them to ever return. Constantly killing the Lumberjacks who wanted to make bows (some of my favorites). You know, just PK stuff.

Well, hope I didn't retell someone elses story or something

[GMicek]

in atitd, the same game where my friend distro ganked a guild's items just to quit the game with them, i made a guide to operating the charcoal hearth. at the time this was high technology and many player groups were having trouble finding people who knew how to use it. like many others, i held training sessions in game.

Yeah, I remember your hearth skills being very valuable. I never actually learned how to use them, hehe. I think I spend most my time looking for mushrooms and trying to figure out the optimal spacing and location of beehives.

Great game. Other than Zimok everyone I ran into in the game was cool. I think a big reason for it was that there wasn't a role playing/non role playing rift. People didn't pretend they were in ancient Egypt because that was completely besides the point, the point was to advance technology for the greater good of your guild, local geographic area, or Egypt as a whole.

Walking around the game was a trip sometimes because I would come across areas that were very high up on the tech ladder, but a mere 2 hour walk in one direction would reveal an area struggling with basic technologies. One particularly late night when I was trying to see if I could walk from one end of Egypt to the other I literally went a couple hours with seeing anyone else. Eventually I came across a fairly built out community of players, a couple dozen of which were milling around picking grass or growing flax or something. I tried to talk to them and they started speaking in some sort of code that I couldn't figure out. Turns out I had run into a village of French players that had banded together out in the middle of nowhere. I never felt so alone in my life.

[Rimbo]

Isn't the "if everyone just thought my way we'd all be fine!" idea one of the tenets of National Socialism? And the crusades? And the coldwar?

Excellent idea.

"Nihilists? Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos!"

Lebowski trumps Godwin.

[Rimbo]

If people treated gaming as I suggest, they would enjoy themselves more, because the griefers wouldn't get them down. I would even go so far as to say that the state of gaming would improve, because people would have less patience for games that suck, and wouldn't buy them. There is a distinct advantage to my attitude. And everyone can change their attitude.

What benefit is there to your way?

What benefit is there to "my" way? Two people have fun -- sounds like a win to me. If one of those people decides to get his kicks pissing in the others fun, well now only one is having fun. Your solution is that the other guy should just learn to like the taste and see the joke?!

Quit hogging the bong, man!

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

So your way is not better.

[Rimbo]

Of course it's bullshit; both the belief that people should take it the way I do AND the belief that griefing is wrong is saying that everyone should treat gaming in one way, or pick up their ball and go home.

If people treated gaming as I suggest, they would enjoy themselves more, because the griefers wouldn't get them down. I would even go so far as to say that the state of gaming would improve, because people would have less patience for games that suck, and wouldn't buy them. There is a distinct advantage to my attitude. And everyone can change their attitude.

What benefit is there to your way?
The scene is a grassy field. In the background are bleachers and a high-school building. On the stage we see some GRIEFERS and a VICTIM.
GRIEFER 1: Come on, man, it's all fun!
GRIEFER 2: Yeah, man, this is funny as hell! Get with the program! Relax a little, will ya? Learn to take a joke!GRIEFER 2 aims a nasty kick at VICTIM's stomach.
VICTIM: You're -ugh- right, guys. This is funny. Ha ha ha! -urp-VICTIM slumps to the ground. A trickle of blood falls from his mouth.
GRIEFER 1: That's the spirit! See? I told you this was funny!GRIEFER 1 kicks VICTIM in the face. VICTIM tries to laugh, but chokes a bit instead.
GRIEFER 2: When you just learn to relax about getting abused, it gets better. See? Soon you won't even be conscious anymore!We see the GRIEFERS close in on the VICTIM and pummel him with their fists. Fade to black.

It is STILL a false comparison to compare real life to a video game.

In your example, someone's actually getting hurt. In a video game, there are no wounds.

[Silverlight]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

Rimbo, that's a ridiculous stretch. What happens when we remember that the average griefer can cause at least an hour or two of pain-in-the-ass play for someone else in exchange for fifteen minutes of his own fun? And that he can keep doing this all day to different people if nobody stops him? Are dozens of people supposed to not have fun so that the griefer can have the right to be a fucktard?

[Munky]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

So your way is not better.

Hint: there exists in the universe more than one game.

[Rimbo]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

Rimbo, that's a ridiculous stretch. What happens when we remember that the average griefer can cause at least an hour or two of pain-in-the-ass play for someone else in exchange for fifteen minutes of his own fun? And that he can keep doing this all day to different people if nobody stops him? Are dozens of people supposed to not have fun so that the griefer can have the right to be a fucktard?

Well, if the griefer's 15 minutes are eight times as fun as the other player's two hours, then it's all worthwhile in the end. And if he's having dozens of times more fun than the dozens of people, then it all balances out.

I think Stroker Ace's ATITD tale is the best example of what should happen: It's up to the people playing the game to police griefers. As a result, they come up with something that's far more interesting than if the griefer had never shown up: A rudimentary political system.

Or take Fansy, for example. He could have been prevented from doing what he was doing with a coordinated effort. The fact that there was no such effort leads me to believe that the other players either weren't bothered so much by it, or they were tools and deserved what they got.

The players who have "worked" so hard to get to high level, only to have a griefer ruin it? To them I ask, since when is a game -work-??? Get a fucking life. If the game is work, why play it -- why not work at something that's actually productive for yourself?

It's a fucking game, and griefers aren't breaking the rules. Cheaters break rules. But if you aren't cheating, you're just behaving in an unexpected but legitimate fashion, then that's part of the game. If that makes the game no fun, then DON'T PLAY IT.

The problem is not the griefer, but the game that is not fun.

[Hump]

Neocron is the ultimate test of patience for a legit player in a PvP game. The griefing is endless.

[Creole Ned]

The problem is not the griefer, but the game that is not fun.
Would it not make more sense for the griefer to find a game to play that was fun? I mean, that's why I play games. If I wasn't having fun, I'd move on, not invest my time in working exploits to keep myself from being bored with the thing.

[Rimbo]

The problem is not the griefer, but the game that is not fun.
Would it not make more sense for the griefer to find a game to play that was fun? I mean, that's why I play games. If I wasn't having fun, I'd move on, not invest my time in working exploits to keep myself from being bored with the thing.

Well, for some people that's what's fun; finding exploits is rewarding and entertaining. Consider single-player games that have particularly clever puzzles -- that's what some of the mmorpg griefer exploits are like. Fansy's training of the sand giants is a great example of this, as is the Dark Wolves' massacre of the merchants. Sometimes getting BACK at the griefers is the rewarding part, like the ATITD story.

If there wasn't a pleasure in griefing for its own sake, Dark Wolves wouldn't exist.

Now I'm not saying all griefing should is good and that people should suffer for game designers' shortsightedness without the designers coming in and changing particularly egregious problems. That would be just as bad as the people who come out and say that all griefing is EVIL AND BAD and should be STOPPED and you're a REALLY BAD MAN if you go griefing.

There's a balance between clever griefing, clever solutions to griefing and straight up gameplay. Gaming the game is perfectly legit; design the game expecting that people will find clever ways to exploit things. That's just good software engineering, y'know?

[Bleeding Edge]

Someone mentioned this earlier, thought I'd provide the link to The Tribes 2 Annoying Bastard Guide (http://www.dansdata.com/t2bastard.htm)


Comedy is you falling off a ladder.

Tragedy is me falling off a ladder.

[Anaxagoras]

I have a Warcraft III griefing story to share. In this case I was the griefer. It wasn't a clever grief, and I'm not proud of it, but the reaction of the grief recipient was.... interesting.

While playing a 2v2 game, my partner was one of those extremely bossy know-it-alls that will give you an unending stream of directions for exactly how you should play your nation. ("Move that peon to harvest wood! Now build three footmen and follow me on a raid. THREE! I SAID THREE! WHY ARE THERE FOUR FOOTMEN HERE???" And so on.) Anyways, I got sick of it and decided it would be more fun to just kill my partner. So I ignored his continuing orders, marched my army into his base (he was playing human as well) and simply blizzarded his peasants repeatedly.

Here's the weird part. He then started shouting at me that if I keep this up we're going to lose. Since I continued to blizzard his peasants, he then started detailing how blizzarding his peasants is not good strategy, and how the enemy will now have the advantage. In fact, even after destroying his army which came back to defend his base, he still offered analysis about how my conduct wasn't conducive to winning the battle.

Now, as far as grief goes, attacking your partner's base is extremely "Ho hum". Extremely unclever. What I found amazing was that my partner had absolutely no concept that he could irritate his teammate so much that said teammate might throw the game. Furthermore, even after all his troops and peasants were dead and I was destroying his buildings, he still stuck around to lecture me on how I shouldn't destroy his buildings since after he leaves I could use them. It was one of the most surreal online experienes I've ever had.

[Ergo]

Now THAT is classic. I was shaking my head as I read it.

[Ben]

Rimbo- Uh, making other people not have fun so you can extract your fun makes you an assholet. It's probably fun to break people's car windows too. And pull the wings off flies and kick cats, etc.

The primary reason griefers grief is because it makes other people angry at them. The thinking isn't "Hey, I bet the designers never thought of this! What can I do with my new knowledge?" it's "How can I possibly fuck this guy over? Oh, hmm, maybe the designers never thought anyone would be a worthless asshole!"

[Jim Preston]

It is STILL a false comparison to compare real life to a video game.

In your example, someone's actually getting hurt. In a video game, there are no wounds.

Wounds are not the only form of harm. That's why we have laws against slander, libel, perjury, fraud, and other things that harm nontangibles like other people's reputation, standing, ideas, or good old fashioned mental well being.

And just to hop on on the ol' philosophical high horse and say that if the basis of private property is the mixture of one's labor with the thing, it doesn't matter whether your labor is physical or mental and the thing is a chair you made or a melody you wrote. If someone steals or destroys the product of your labor they have done you a genuine harm in the eyes of the law. I'm not saying we need to start applying the same sort of laws to cyberspace or that we need to start rounding up the griefers. I'm only saying that is simply too facile to dismiss griefing as not a genuine harm just because it doesn't produce a measurable wound, nor does it dismiss that griefers are -- staying on my philosophical high horse -- genuine assholes.

Present company excluded, of course.

[Ben]

Oh, I think I've got a good analogy. Say you are at the beach and decide to build a sand castle. The sand isn't yours, and at high tide the castle will be gone no matter how well you build it.

If I come along and demolish your sand castle, I'm just someone having fun at the beach? I don't like swimming or surfing or whatever, so I had to find a new way to have fun, right?

[Gourmand]

The primary reason griefers grief is because it makes other people angry at them. The thinking isn't "Hey, I bet the designers never thought of this! What can I do with my new knowledge?" it's "How can I possibly fuck this guy over? Oh, hmm, maybe the designers never thought anyone would be a worthless asshole!"

Have you conducted a thorough and empirical study of the griefing community? Accepting your personal biases and anecdotal generalizations as solid truth is tough.

[nutsak]

Oh, I think I've got a good analogy. Say you are at the beach and decide to build a sand castle. The sand isn't yours, and at high tide the castle will be gone no matter how well you build it.

If I come along and demolish your sand castle, I'm just someone having fun at the beach? I don't like swimming or surfing or whatever, so I had to find a new way to have fun, right?

Yeh that's right. Fun at someone elses expense.

[Silverlight]

Have you conducted a thorough and empirical study of the griefing community? Accepting your personal biases and anecdotal generalizations as solid truth is tough.
It isn't necessary to understand assholes in order to condemn them.

[Jasper]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

Eh? The only way you can have fun is by griefing someone else? Surely you can find _something_ else you like to do! I find the current ORPG's to be purely banal level grind; rather than take advantage of obvious loopholes at someone else's expense to make myself feel clever, I find something else to do.

I'm curious, just how far can you bend over backwards to rationalize griefing?

[Rimbo]

Rimbo- Uh, making other people not have fun so you can extract your fun makes you an assholet. It's probably fun to break people's car windows too. And pull the wings off flies and kick cats, etc.


Pulling wings off of flies, kicking cats, and breaking car windows are not analogous to someone standing in front of a doorway or PK'ing in a bleeding video game.

I'm only saying that is simply too facile to dismiss griefing as not a genuine harm just because it doesn't produce a measurable wound, nor does it dismiss that griefers are -- staying on my philosophical high horse -- genuine assholes.

You're right I shouldn't dismiss it outright -- people who take games seriously do feel a real emotional impact. The people who worked and slaved to build something that they could sell on eBay are losing real value.

I feel exactly zero sympathy for those people. They're games. The effort produces no real value for humanity, and if we looked I'd be surprised if you couldn't find peer-reviewed psychology that shows that it isn't really contributing positively to the player's mental health even in a perfect game-world, either. That's the kind of thing that needs to be hit, very hard, with a Perspective Bat:

http://www.bishopsstortfordcitizen.co.uk/_images/db/8/85/web_yoko.88584.full.jpg

OK, sorry, bad pun.

Oh, I think I've got a good analogy. Say you are at the beach and decide to build a sand castle. The sand isn't yours, and at high tide the castle will be gone no matter how well you build it.

If I come along and demolish your sand castle, I'm just someone having fun at the beach? I don't like swimming or surfing or whatever, so I had to find a new way to have fun, right?

Now THAT is a good example.

In that case, the structure of reality gives you and others avenues of retribution. Someone who does this is likely to get the shit beat out of him by you, your family, your friends, and probably even sympathetic strangers nearby. You can steal his girlfriend. You can even appeal to the Lifeguards and Police. You do not have to appeal to God to ask Him to divinely intervene, or to rewrite reality so that people can't kick over your sandcastle.

Reality's well-designed that way.

It isn't necessary to understand assholes in order to condemn them.

Yep. It's not necessary to understand anyone in order to condemn them. It's easier, too! Just try it:

I hate those damn fags!
I hate those damn Republicans!
I hate those evil Yankees fans!
All Americans can go to hell!
Fuck the French!

See? That didn't take any brain power at all!

But if I wanted to understand homosexuals/Republicans/Yankees fans/Americans/French, I'd have to actually TALK to one, and maybe even learn another language and History in the case of the French. Who the hell wants to do that?

[GMicek]

I think Stroker Ace's ATITD tale is the best example of what should happen: It's up to the people playing the game to police griefers. As a result, they come up with something that's far more interesting than if the griefer had never shown up: A rudimentary political system.

The problem with the ATITD laws, at least when I was playing, is that it quickly devolved into schoolyard politics. There would be new laws proposed all the time against specific people or guilds, not as a result of their actions.

For example, there was a player named "Douche" and a number of people got offended by it, even people that had never even run into this guy in-game. So people proposed a law to not only force him to change his name, but to change it to "Flower." They were able to push through the legislation quickly because people that didn't care just didn't vote. Would'nt it have been better to just pass a law with a list of offensive names that people could not use, or if they wanted to keep the laws a rudimentary as they had been don't use it as a tool to humiliate the guy. When the law passed the guy basically said "fuck you, guys" and cancelled his subscription.

But who knows, maybe the fact that the game's forums were a nightmare of debates over things like the the pro's and con's of a strong central government showed that things are heading in the right direction.

[Jasper]

Now I'm not saying all griefing should is good and that people should suffer for game designers' shortsightedness without the designers coming in and changing particularly egregious problems. That would be just as bad as the people who come out and say that all griefing is EVIL AND BAD and should be STOPPED and you're a REALLY BAD MAN if you go griefing.

There's a balance between clever griefing, clever solutions to griefing and straight up gameplay. Gaming the game is perfectly legit; design the game expecting that people will find clever ways to exploit things. That's just good software engineering, y'know?

I can somewhat see your point here. There are clearly shades of griefing, and I suspect alot of what you're thinking of griefing isn't griefing to me. In a pvp realm a thief isn't a griefer, nor is a bandit mugging travelers on the highway, nor is a sheriff rounding up a posse. A pack of experienced players hunting down newbies however is definitely griefing. So is taking advantage of game exploits to repeatedly hound another player, especially when it borders on cheating. FPS style screw your teammate tricks are definitely griefing. A clever ambush isn't griefing.

Game loopholes IMHO are a particular problem, as the designers can never cover them all, yet it's pretty obvious to most when they see a loophole. For many players they spoil a game's immersion, and those tend to be the sorts of players that are more fun to play with, and more likely to attract other players.

There are a variety of things I'd like to see that I think would address griefing, and just be more fun in general (though I suspect they're not for everyone):

-flat power curve, with no level grind
-avoid the constant body count of stupid monsters, which leads to training, etc.
-in game punishment for crime
-permanent death (though it should be difficult, and possible to just be KO'd)
-rewards for reporting game loopholes (but not for reporting griefers!)
-allow adversarial players to play monsters, etc.
-have a meaningfull economy -- i.e. not loot or grind based. For example by basing an ORPG's world on top of a strategy 4x game.

Basically I think a simulation-like role-playing grounded ORPG would be more fun, and tend to redirect griefers towards adversarial roles that are more than just ruining someone else's day.

[Rimbo]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

Eh? The only way you can have fun is by griefing someone else? Surely you can find _something_ else you like to do! I find the current ORPG's to be purely banal level grind; rather than take advantage of obvious loopholes at someone else's expense to make myself feel clever, I find something else to do.

Well, now that you've asked THAT question, there are better things I can be doing than playing video games. I could be writing a novel, I could be practicing my cello, I could be getting more involved in my community. And that's a really good question, too. If you're going to do something as worthless and masturbatory as playing video games compared to other things you could be doing, isn't criticizing people who play it one way as opposed to another (without cheating) splitting hairs?

I'm curious, just how far can you bend over backwards to rationalize griefing?

Tell me when I start bending. I'll take rationalization over emotionalization any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

The game designers made the game a certain way, and anything someone does within that structure is fair.

[Rimbo]

I think Stroker Ace's ATITD tale is the best example of what should happen: It's up to the people playing the game to police griefers. As a result, they come up with something that's far more interesting than if the griefer had never shown up: A rudimentary political system.

The problem with the ATITD laws, at least when I was playing, is that it quickly devolved into schoolyard politics. There would be new laws proposed all the time against specific people or guilds, not as a result of their actions.

Heh... how's that different from real life? ;)

[Ben]

So you've elected yourself punisher of those who seek enjoyment in video games? "Ha, fool, I'm Rimbo, Lord of Leisure Time! You shall not attempt to derive enjoyment from this unworthy task, so I shall waste my time and yours to make sure you don't have any fun! Mua-ha-ha!"

If you want to play the bigger loser game, the griefer loses. The catassing EQ player needs a life, but the griefer gets his enjoyment from stopping losers from having fun. That's practically bullying the handicapped. If griefers could, they would destroy sand castles at the beach. They would get their asses kicked, so they pick on people in a way that doesn't allow for the possibility of them getting what they deserve.

[Jasper]

[snip sandcastle anaology]

In that case, the structure of reality gives you and others avenues of retribution. Someone who does this is likely to get the shit beat out of him by you, your family, your friends, and probably even sympathetic strangers nearby. You can steal his girlfriend. You can even appeal to the Lifeguards and Police. You do not have to appeal to God to ask Him to divinely intervene, or to rewrite reality so that people can't kick over your sandcastle.

Reality's well-designed that way.

So, since video game worlds don't allow as robust a selection of retribution options as the real world, it's ok to do whatever you please?

Ah, but they do have one robust-enough solution -- ban griefers. By your analogy this is a perfectly valid way to deal with griefers, compareable to calling the life guards.

[Jasper]

If you're going to do something as worthless and masturbatory as playing video games...

Ahh, now we get to the nub of the issue. You think playing video games is worthless, and so it doesn't matter what happens to people playing them.

Of course, it simply doesn't matter to you whether others feel differently -- your judgement is good enough for everyone! Why do you play videogames at all? Do you loath yourself after you play them?

Personally I think good videogames are a form of art, as worthwhile as cinemas, paintings, museums, etc. I make "videogames", and hardly consider my life worthless. Art is certainly a hell of a lot more worthwhile than Schadenfreud, which is all there is to griefing.

[Jason McMaster]

Present company excluded, of course.

It's ok, I really am an asshole.

[Jasper]

Eh? The only way you can have fun is by griefing someone else? Surely you can find _something_ else you like to do!

Well, now that you've asked THAT question, there are better things I can be doing than playing video games.
So why do you grief then, if you can find things that you enjoy better? Why ruin someone else's fun? Is it just that you enjoy the misery of others?

I'm truly curious, what makes a griefer tick?

[Jasper]

Present company excluded, of course.
It's ok, I really am an asshole.
Me too! I admit a certain enjoyment from flicking shit at griefers, and winding them up in their words. Is this Schadenfreud too?

[Jim Preston]

You're right I shouldn't dismiss it outright -- people who take games seriously do feel a real emotional impact. The people who worked and slaved to build something that they could sell on eBay are losing real value.

I feel exactly zero sympathy for those people. They're games. The effort produces no real value for humanity, and if we looked I'd be surprised if you couldn't find peer-reviewed psychology that shows that it isn't really contributing positively to the player's mental health even in a perfect game-world, either. That's the kind of thing that needs to be hit, very hard, with a Perspective Bat:

Curious. You are willing to admit that the victims of griefing suffer real emotional impact, and you are willing to admit that in some cases griefing can lead to the loss of real value, whether that is through eBay or perhaps developers having paying customers alienated. Yet you seem to think that because you regard video games as trivial and culturually irrelavant that those harms aren't genuine in some way.

If I regarded rap music as of "no real value for humanity," would it be okay for me to walk in to Best Buy and just start destroying the rap CDs? This is an absurd example, of course, but my point is just because you regard games as trivial and worthless, doesn't mean that everyone else who engages in the activity thinks so too, and certainly the economy that surrounds such trivial activities is very real, even as you admit.

You seem to want agree that griefing does a real harm in one breath, but then turn around and say no it doesn't in the next. If you're griefer, why not just admit that you do real harm and don't care, rather than try to rationalize your way out of it?

[Rimbo]

So why do you grief then, if you can find things that you enjoy better?


I don't, and never have, except for the aforementioned DN3D bit.

:D

Although trolling message boards is a kind of griefing, no?

[Silverlight]

I'm truly curious, what makes a griefer tick?
No, no, I think we should go back to the other part. The part where....

(A) Gaming is a valueless waste of time and gamers are losers....
(B) ...which makes griefers, who are assholes while they game, even more of losers....
(C) ...which makes Rimbo even more of a loser for defending sub-human fucktard slimeballs on a message board, thus sinking even lower than their level....
(D) ...which gives me immense joy as I bait him into post after post, watching him contort himself into more and more convoluted arguments, trying to explain why virtually kicking somebody in the balls is acceptable even though the kicker is only doing it because he's a scrawny asshole in real life and would get his ass kicked on the local elementary school playground.

I may be joining the ranks of the scourge of QT3 by baiting him this way, but by Rimbo's own arguments, that's five or six levels higher on the evolutionary scale!

So tell me, Rimbo, are you sure you want to continue this line of discussion, little buddy? Because the rest of us can keep happily drawing you into such bizzare logical knots of logic that eventually your head will explode and you'll be bouncing around in the rubber room, screaming at the top of your lungs about a woman named Fred.

For what it's worth, I'm only doing this because the thread is long since a degenerate pile of shit. Oh, and I want to grief a griefer. Is that so bad? Rimbo doesn't think so!

[Silverlight]

I find it amusing that Rimbo and I are both now into the meta-trolling stage, in which we actively move from trolling for opposing responses to trolling for points on the scoreboard.

Oh, and, uh, sorry for calling you a griefer. ;)

[Alan Au]

Someone mentioned this earlier, thought I'd provide the link to The Tribes 2 Annoying Bastard Guide (http://www.dansdata.com/t2bastard.htm)
Good stuff -- I wouldn't really consider this griefing.

What about stuff like spawn camping -- it's annoying and demonstrates a lack of sportsmanship, but is it technically griefing? In other words, at what point does something get labelled as griefer play instead of just general immaturity?

- Alan

[Jasper]

So why do you grief then, if you can find things that you enjoy better?
I don't, and never have, except for the aforementioned DN3D bit.
:D
Although trolling message boards is a kind of griefing, no?
Damnit! I thought I was baiting you! Instead we're recursively trolling each other! :oops:

Maybe we should move onto something more usefull. I really am curious about ways to reduce griefing short of banning griefers (as I outlined earlier)... Are there ways to setup a game so that people prefer to play instead of grief, that griefers leave, or that griefers aren't attracted in the first place?

Also, is it just me, or does griefing happen mostly on grind-based ORPGs and FPSs? I've rarely seen it anywhere else.

[Silverlight]

What about stuff like spawn camping -- it's annoying and demonstrates a lack of sportsmanship, but is it technically griefing? In other words, at what point does something get labelled as griefer play instead of just general immaturity?

In a team game, if the game is close and your actions are actually advancing your side's cause, then I would find it difficult to call them griefing, or even bad sportsmanship.

[Rimbo]

Curious. You are willing to admit that the victims of griefing suffer real emotional impact, and you are willing to admit that in some cases griefing can lead to the loss of real value, whether that is through eBay or perhaps developers having paying customers alienated. Yet you seem to think that because you regard video games as trivial and culturually irrelavant that those harms aren't genuine in some way.

If I regarded rap music as of "no real value for humanity," would it be okay for me to walk in to Best Buy and just start destroying the rap CDs? This is an absurd example, of course, but my point is just because you regard games as trivial and worthless, doesn't mean that everyone else who engages in the activity thinks so too, and certainly the economy that surrounds such trivial activities is very real, even as you admit.

There's a reason your example seems absurd to you: Because you yourself don't put the same value on the eBay MMORPG items that you do on physical media. Destroying the rap CDs is analogous to destroying the game CDs, not to fiddling with an in-game creation. These things sold on eBay don't exist, except as the whims and caprices of a corporate body separate from the seller and buyer, and that corporate body has every right to make those eBay items disappear without recourse regardless of how much someone paid for them.

A better analogy to fiddling with an in-game creation is the sand castle above; although that has a physical presence, its continued existence is beyond your control and it has an ephemeral structure even for the lifetime it has.

And if you take your argument to its logical extent, you'll realize that there are many cases where emotional pain and loss of financial value aren't worth our sympathy. That guy who lost all of his money at Roulette aren't going to get much sympathy from me, and neither is the person who feels really bad about his favorite team losing the big game. There's nothing wrong with me not giving them sympathy; the roulette player should have known the risks, and the sports fan isn't even involved with what he's watching.

[Gourmand]

Also, is it just me, or does griefing happen mostly on grind-based ORPGs and FPSs? I've rarely seen it anywhere else.

As long as there's a channel for communication, then there's an avenue for griefers to walk down. A buddy of mine observed it's occurance during his time administering Pokemon card tournaments for elementary school kids.

Although, for me at least, offering more opportunities for clever mischief later as incentive for being a good player now works just fine.

On that note, nothing particularly revolutionary is planned for dragon empires IMO, but it still looks like a very enticing game.

[Rimbo]

So why do you grief then, if you can find things that you enjoy better?
I don't, and never have, except for the aforementioned DN3D bit.
:D
Although trolling message boards is a kind of griefing, no?
Damnit! I thought I was baiting you! Instead we're recursively trolling each other! :oops:

You, me, and Silverlight, too!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: That's just greatness. :) :) :)

Maybe we should move onto something more usefull.

Nah... if I'm gonna do something useful, it'll be this @#^$&*! cgi script that still doesn't work so I can go home... :)

[Jasper]

I too must get to work (although I'm just starting for the day). Pseudo-trolling is a sure sign I'm procrastinating, which for some reason always surprises me. :o

I've got to make sure terrain backdrops are drawn before roads and border terrain, and are then used to mask out terrain and site sprites, which are drawn last, in z-order -- except site sprites get masking preference. Oh yah, and change cliffs from fractal lines to sprites.

Bleh. No wonder I'm procrastinating.

[Bill Dungsroman]

America's Funniest Home Videos is funny to watch, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the guy getting hit in the crotch all the time.

That's just one guy? That show is funnier than I thought.

[GMicek]

The problem with the ATITD laws, at least when I was playing, is that it quickly devolved into schoolyard politics. There would be new laws proposed all the time against specific people or guilds, not as a result of their actions.

Heh... how's that different from real life? ;)

Although I do see the wink at the end there, I'll address it anyway since I like to hear myself talk, err, type :)

Whenever laws are passed in real life as a reaction to some specific action that law can then be applied to people performing that same action in the future. The problem with ATITD is that many of it's players were so freaky about having any laws that restricted personal freedom that they made the laws they did pass extremely weak. Most of the laws on the ATITD books while I was playing were "So and so stole our stuff, make him give it back." rather than "If someone steals stuff they have to give it back." They would pass these inane laws right some sort of wrong, but very rarely pass laws that would deal with similar wrongs in the future.

Anyway, I'm just pissy because I couldn't form my own little fiefdom within the game. Bastards! Fuck that game, had too much sand anyway :)

[Jim Preston]

There's a reason your example seems absurd to you: Because you yourself don't put the same value on the eBay MMORPG items that you do on physical media.

Actually, my point was absurd because of its obviousness. You seem to think that the value you and I place on something personally translates in some way to your freedom to destroy those things. How you are able to make that leap of logic escapes me. But forget about the eBay issue and return to the issue that griefers chase away paying customers. Presumably you think that it is a loss of geniune value if a developer spends 3 years and $8 Million to develop an MMO in order to survive on the subscription revenue, and that when griefers chase away paying customers that it is a legitmate loss of real money.

A better analogy to fiddling with an in-game creation is the sand castle above; although that has a physical presence, its continued existence is beyond your control and it has an ephemeral structure even for the lifetime it has.

The sandcastle analogy is indeed a good one, but not because of its physical quality. The value of the sandcastle is the labor that person put into it, not the sand. The sand is relatively worthless because of its abundance. You kicking over the sandcastle is wasting someone's labor without their permission despite the fact that the rising tide will do that anyway. A griefer destroying someone's in-game property is also wasting the time that person has invested in that thing regardless of phyisical, real-world properties.

And if you take your argument to its logical extent, you'll realize that there are many cases where emotional pain and loss of financial value aren't worth our sympathy. That guy who lost all of his money at Roulette aren't going to get much sympathy from me, and neither is the person who feels really bad about his favorite team losing the big game. There's nothing wrong with me not giving them sympathy; the roulette player should have known the risks, and the sports fan isn't even involved with what he's watching.

Hmmm...we should probably stop debating at this point. The two examples you point out are completely irrelevant because they don't involve one person inflicting emotional harm on another, which is the center of the griefing debate. No one has ever suggested that we should care about every emotional pain, so this last graph is a complete red herring. My only point is that while you may regard video game as trivial as masturbatory, your personal regard does nothing to change the fact that some greifing causes genuine harm to players and developers.

I'm not sure why you can't enjoy the liberation of honesty that McMaster and Jasper have attained. :lol:

Edit: grammar.

[mouselock]

Well, if the griefer's 15 minutes are eight times as fun as the other player's two hours, then it's all worthwhile in the end. And if he's having dozens of times more fun than the dozens of people, then it all balances out.


Let's say you're into sports. Specifically soccer. Let's say you and your team of friends are out having a nice soccer game on a public field. You're set up, you've chosen teams, you've been playing for 20 minutes or so. You have the defense sussed out, you're starting to get your strategies down. You're just getting ready to make a run up field when some random guy runs onto the field dribbling a soccer ball that looks exactly like yours. He dribbles it through your backfield, right past where you're currently working your ball, and right next to it. He runs through your defenders, gets in the way of your passes, and eventually ends up sending his ball into a cross at the same time as yours.

This guy is, frankly, being an asshole. But he's having fun! And because of the dynamics (his fun comes at your expense, so as he has more fun you absolutely have less), he's having more fun right now than the rest of you put together. He's also not breaking any rules. He's playing soccer on a public field, he's playing with his own ball, he hasn't touched any of you or run into you or anything like that. He's a complacent obstacle; it's obviously your responsibility to figure out how to play soccer around him, because he's broken no rules and he's having as much fun, easily, as you are.

Do you expect the situation to end up where the game of soccer just casually accomodates the griefer? No, neither do I. It's not the quality of someone having fun at other's expenses; it's not the fact that it's "just a game" (soccer is just a game too, as is baseball or basketball or water polo or, really, anything else you can imagine this example with). It's the fact that the griefer is an asshole and, in real life, has a throng of many angry players breathing down his neck that keeps him in check.

Unfortunately, online games don't have a viable method of social pressure. It's hard because on the one hand they're big enough that absolute power (administrative rights) don't tend to be effective due to the potential griefer:administrator ratio. On the other hand, the population isn't so large that you can really enable social control, because a relatively small subset of the population (read: organized griefers) can wield too much power if you enable social retribution tools.

The answer isn't "There are single player games, go play one of them." There's a difference between single player and multiplayer. It would be akin, using your beach example, to telling you "There are wheat fields too.. they're flat and kinda golden colored like sand, and therefore ought to be good substitutes. If someone is screwing up your beach experience, you should just head to the midwest instead! Nobody can grief you there."

Griefers are assholes (whether habitually or just at that instant) who aren't mature enough to say "Hey, I'm bored with this process, I should move on" and, instead, decide to say "Hey, I'm bored with this process. I should fuck with some other folks, that'd be un-boring." In real life that attitude has consequences generally; nobody has figured out a really effective method of imbuing online games with the same.

[Derek Meister]

Speaking of sports, does that mean GoldenPalace.com are olympic griefers (http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13188256,00.html)?

[Aszurom]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91059-13199062,00.html

I thought that was more interesting. There's going to be some griefing going on for that kid later.

[Silverlight]

I just have to wonder about the biology of that one. I also have to wonder if it can move.

EDIT: The tail, of course.

[Lokust]

Curious. You are willing to admit that the victims of griefing suffer real emotional impact, and you are willing to admit that in some cases griefing can lead to the loss of real value, whether that is through eBay or perhaps developers having paying customers alienated. Yet you seem to think that because you regard video games as trivial and culturually irrelavant that those harms aren't genuine in some way.


You know, when I was a teenager, I was very active on a local BBS mud in the Toledo area. This was basically pre-internet, so the locals that wanted to play a mud, and didn't understand telnet, etc, were stuck playing it on this BBS, which ran something like 20-30 lines.
In this mud, anytime you died, whether to a player or a mob, all of your equipment dropped to the ground. This was a big deal, because most of the good items in the game were unique, there was only one of them, or there were 3-5 of that given item. If the items were all taken by players who got them off mobs, the only way to get that item was off a player.

On this mud, I was one of a handful of player killer types. I ran with some buddy player killers, fought with some other player killers, and generally played as ruthlessly as possible toward the good-aligned folks on the mud.

Being a local thing, there were fairly frequent "mud-meets" where a bunch of the players would meet up at a park and talk and BS for a while. A lot of folks were friends outside the game, or otherwise knew each other prior to playing the game.

At one point, another player killer type killed and looted a character belonging to a woman in her 40's, who had always avoided PvP and was "lawful" aligned (extra penalties to attack her, but she could never do anything evil, ever). The woman was so distraught that she got in her car and drove it into a tree.

After that, those of us who played the game as player killers (despite it being perfectly allowed within the game's mechanics!) were reviled and shunned and not welcome at the local meetings. We were treated like griefers and as "bad people" that the "goodies" didn't want to associate with.

So were we really griefers? The people we killed often wanted no part of our fight and wanted to be left in peace. However, the game mechanics allow for PvP and actually put the advantages on the side of the good aligned. My belief was that those of us who had no qualms about fighting other players were playing the real game, and that those who thought it was wrong were playing their own game with made up rules that existed outside of the actual game mechanics. The PvP level restriction on that mud was only four levels, so it's not like level 30+ players were preying on newbies.

[Timemaster Tim]

So were we really griefers? The people we killed often wanted no part of our fight and wanted to be left in peace. However, the game mechanics allow for PvP and actually put the advantages on the side of the good aligned.

I would say "No". You were not a griefer. The game mechanics specifically allowed for it. The difficulty seems to be caused by the fact that there were two type of individuals playing the game -- those who accepted PK as part of the game, and those who simply wanted to the play the game without PK. For that latter types, this was simply the wrong game to be playing.

[Jakub]

I'd say no, Lokust.

However, I do think that PvP in UO became griefing. I doubt that OSI knew that players would become so attached to their characters, or that there would be so many players who'd be so effective at attacking others.

If OSI had marketed that as PvP heaven, then the consequences of the game design wouldn't be as great. But PvP was thought of only an "option", a "tool" like any other - at least that's the impression I gathered.

Also, something I've noticed in MMOs is that nobody ever wants a fair fight. PvPers didn't fight each other because it was too risky. Each knew the other was good and the potential payoff wasn't worth the risk, especially since it was a good bet that eventually the clans would get organized and both would be decimated by the ensuing war.

Lions don't prey on lions. Two prides will fight if one is desperate for territory, but they don't prey on each other. They prey on weaker animals.

You can see this in World War II Online where once one side sends a moderate force of aircraft in, the other side is reluctant to join. Why risk air to air combat when you can gank the ground pounders somewhere else? There are no real rewards for winning or losing, though there is a K/D ratio, but nobody wants to die and lose the aircraft and have to fly another in to combat.

If you're going to have PvP, base the game around it. Lineage has the right idea.

Of course, the end result is that one faction eventually wins. Either everyone joins or quits the server. Because no one wants to be a victim forever.

[russellmz00]

is a person's "level" stats avaliable for everyone to see in most mmo games? like if you were level 5 then you can see the other guy is level 999999 and vice versa? would removing that help fix the problem of griefing?

[Lokust]

Generally though even if you can't see someone's level, you can get an idea of how dangerous they are from the equipment you see on them.

I think people in a lot of games want fair fights, but only when the stakes are low. Guild Wars has great fair fights. Fair fights are really fun in DAOC when they actually happen. It's games like that mud I played or UO where you lose stuff on death that people get skittish.

[Rimbo]

There's a reason your example seems absurd to you: Because you yourself don't put the same value on the eBay MMORPG items that you do on physical media.

Actually, my point was absurd because of its obviousness. You seem to think that the value you and I place on something personally translates in some way to your freedom to destroy those things. How you are able to make that leap of logic escapes me.

Stop breathing! Every time you breathe, you're killing millions and millions of germs!

The distinction between what's okay to destroy and what's not okay to destroy is essentially arbitrary. We either obey some authoritarian decree ("Thou shalt not kill," "Keep off the grass") or by general consensus (If we stop breathing, we all die, and we're not willing to collectively die to allow germs to live). Emotions and values change from person to person, so there isn't a logical inconsistency if I personally see no value in a gamer's efforts -- that's just where I define it.

If you have a different set of values, it would not be consistent for you to say the same thing. Logic is just a series of steps to go from one statement to another -- starting from a different statement can result in a different conclusion. So what I said is perfectly logically consistent with the value judgment I made above. There is no "logic" that can reconcile your values with mine; they're just different.

But forget about the eBay issue and return to the issue that griefers chase away paying customers. Presumably you think that it is a loss of geniune value if a developer spends 3 years and $8 Million to develop an MMO in order to survive on the subscription revenue, and that when griefers chase away paying customers that it is a legitmate loss of real money.

I was only engaging in the debate for fun and baiting, but you've got a very important comment here: A company that develops a game does not have a right to make money from that game. If a developer allows a flaw to ruin the fun for others, that's part of the risks of bad game design, just the same as bad graphics/sound, repetitive gameplay, or any other design flaw. This loss of genuine value is in the developer's power to control and change, even after a game hits store shelves. The good developers either step in, or they give players ways to deal with problems on their own.

[Bill]

Quick question: who is a bigger griefer, Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden? I'm going with OBL--he "gamed" the system by using planes in a way the developers never planned, and did it just to be a dick. Hitler was just a straightforward pker.

[mouselock]

If a developer allows a flaw to ruin the fun for others, that's part of the risks of bad game design, just the same as bad graphics/sound, repetitive gameplay, or any other design flaw. This loss of genuine value is in the developer's power to control and change, even after a game hits store shelves. The good developers either step in, or they give players ways to deal with problems on their own.

Righto. In the same way that if a car manufacturer wanted to, they could make a car that provided 100% effective protection against vehicle based fatality brought on by other drivers. Therefore, the onus falls upon the car manufacturers to do so, rather than the other drivers on the road. After all, vehicle makers ought to be able to make vehicles that withstand 65 mph side-on collisions due to inconsiderate drunk drivers; the fact that people die in such accidents is completely unrelated to the lack of responsibility of the drunk drivers.

(Requiring the developer to bear the burden for anything that can possibly be done with their product is as asinine in the realm of entertainment software as it is in any other field of product construction. Requiring the developer to bear the burden of accidental mis-use is one thing. Requiring them to bear the burden of devious and intentional mis-use is another. We don't have such stringent requirements for any other facet of production out there today, why should software be any different?)

[Rimbo]

If a developer allows a flaw to ruin the fun for others, that's part of the risks of bad game design, just the same as bad graphics/sound, repetitive gameplay, or any other design flaw. This loss of genuine value is in the developer's power to control and change, even after a game hits store shelves. The good developers either step in, or they give players ways to deal with problems on their own.

Righto. In the same way that if a car manufacturer wanted to, they could make a car that provided 100% effective protection against vehicle based fatality brought on by other drivers. Therefore, the onus falls upon the car manufacturers to do so, rather than the other drivers on the road. After all, vehicle makers ought to be able to make vehicles that withstand 65 mph side-on collisions due to inconsiderate drunk drivers; the fact that people die in such accidents is completely unrelated to the lack of responsibility of the drunk drivers.

(Requiring the developer to bear the burden for anything that can possibly be done with their product is as asinine in the realm of entertainment software as it is in any other field of product construction. Requiring the developer to bear the burden of accidental mis-use is one thing. Requiring them to bear the burden of devious and intentional mis-use is another. We don't have such stringent requirements for any other facet of production out there today, why should software be any different?)

Oh, don't you join in on the bait-fest, too!

[Anaxagoras]

Quick question: who is a bigger griefer, Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden? I'm going with OBL--he "gamed" the system by using planes in a way the developers never planned, and did it just to be a dick. Hitler was just a straightforward pker.

Stalin was worse than either of them. He fragged his own team.

[Rimbo]

Fuck it, I'll bite:

We DO require auto manufacturers to include rear-view mirrors, seat belts, passive restraint systems, crumple zones, headlights, taillights, front and rear license plates, bumpers, passing of safety tests, side view mirrors on both the left and right side, visible switches for opening the trunk, spare tires, and a bunch of shit we don't even know about regarding the fit and finish of the whole product.

So we DO hold auto manufacturers liable for the safety of cars. They can't stop people from running into each other any more than game designers can stop people from griefing, but not only are there things they can do about it to make cars safer in case of accidents, we actually go so far as to legislate that they must do so. We don't legislate that designers do anything with games but designers have a host of things they can do to ameliorate griefing.

so nyah :P

OK, back to work..

[Jasper]

If you're going to have PvP, base the game around it. Lineage has the right idea.

Of course, the end result is that one faction eventually wins. Either everyone joins or quits the server. Because no one wants to be a victim forever.
Definitely. I suspect tacked on PvP is a huge source of griefing, as well as non-PvP players getting pissed off without being griefed (e.g. Lokust's example). It's tricky because some people play for escapism (and so don't ever want bad things to happen), while others player for simulation/immersion (which is impossible without bad things happening).

I don't think a solid PvP design necessarily ends up in one faction dominating however. You could have a loose federation of smaller factions with shifting alliances, provide defensive advantages to smaller/losing factions, or the gamemasters could simply take a direct hand in balance. Another tack is to have a set ending time or event, and then start a new scenario (e.g. after some time has passed).

Perhaps it often ends up with everyone converting or dying, but IMHO that's a short comming of the current ORPG formula, not a necessary feature of the genre.

[Brian Koontz]

Griefing isn't really an issue. Its tied to Public gaming, or rather a lack of control over the environment by the players.

In traditional reality there are all kinds of things that hinder griefing. Legal laws, social mores, revenge, etc. Most of these are nonexistent or substantially weaker in VSOGs DUE TO DESIGN. Its not difficult to create a VSOG which severely hinders griefing... A Tale in the Desert was good at that and it didn't even include the most important part... Private gaming.

Look at how effective private gaming is at anti-grief. You guys play Planetside with Qt3ers... how often does a Qt3er grief another? How often does a guildmate grief another? How often does a player of Neverwinter Nights grief another?

The issue with current VSOGs is that they are individualistic. An individual can go anywhere, do anything. Groups are weak, they have little control over their environment and no complete control over a section of the map except for the small interior of a guild.

If players govern the game, control cities, establish councils and laws, etc., and physically allow or disallow players entrance to their controlled space, grief will be kept to a minimum, as it is right now in Private Gaming. The difference between a VSOG with Private Gaming and Neverwinter Nights with respect to "griefing" is that the VSOG will have "griefing" on a large scale... groups fighting groups. Armies fighting cities for control of the government (and thus the economic revenue from taxing the citizens). This won't be called "grief", however... it will be called War.

[Jon R.]

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=8397220

Now that's griefing, if it's true. If not, well, it's just another drop in the bucket of pretend dialogue that's been going on the last 3 pages.

[EvilIdler]

Someone mentioned this earlier, thought I'd provide the link to The Tribes 2 Annoying Bastard Guide (http://www.dansdata.com/t2bastard.htm)



Thanks! I'd lost my locally saved document in one of many hardware
disasters :)

[mouselock]

So we DO hold auto manufacturers liable for the safety of cars. They can't stop people from running into each other any more than game designers can stop people from griefing, but not only are there things they can do about it to make cars safer in case of accidents, we actually go so far as to legislate that they must do so. We don't legislate that designers do anything with games but designers have a host of things they can do to ameliorate griefing.

so nyah :P

OK, back to work..

So in other words we recognize with automobiles that it's possible to provide reasonable tools to protect people from reasonable occurrances within the system (random drunk drivers), but ones that are entirely inadequate to protect people from people intent on using their cars in completely unintended methods (say, intentionally T-boning people in intersections at high speed). However, most rational folk don't think it's okay to say "Hey, if only the auto-manufacturers really wanted to and really tried, we could survive that t-boning in the intersection from the 1% of drivers out there who are assholes behind the wheel trying to cause somebody harm."

There's an analogy in here somewhere I'm sure; maybe you could help me eke it out?

[mouselock]

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=8397220

Now that's griefing, if it's true. If not, well, it's just another drop in the bucket of pretend dialogue that's been going on the last 3 pages.

Seems to be true. Current official line is that people who received duped credits have been insta-banned, but everyone is receiving an individual ear for an appeal.

And yes, that's griefing to a large scale (though more meta-griefing; it's not really within the game so much as it is within the EULA that the grief actions are occurring, and Sony is doing both the right and the horribly wrong thing here, at the same time).

[Rimbo]

So we DO hold auto manufacturers liable for the safety of cars. They can't stop people from running into each other any more than game designers can stop people from griefing, but not only are there things they can do about it to make cars safer in case of accidents, we actually go so far as to legislate that they must do so. We don't legislate that designers do anything with games but designers have a host of things they can do to ameliorate griefing.

so nyah :P

OK, back to work..

So in other words we recognize with automobiles that it's possible to provide reasonable tools to protect people from reasonable occurrances within the system (random drunk drivers), but ones that are entirely inadequate to protect people from people intent on using their cars in completely unintended methods (say, intentionally T-boning people in intersections at high speed). However, most rational folk don't think it's okay to say "Hey, if only the auto-manufacturers really wanted to and really tried, we could survive that t-boning in the intersection from the 1% of drivers out there who are assholes behind the wheel trying to cause somebody harm."

There's an analogy in here somewhere I'm sure; maybe you could help me eke it out?

Ya got me. Most of the analogies on this thread have sucked, including my own. I didn't bring up the car analogy, so I have no idea what the original poster was trying to say. And since I was just posting flamebait to begin with, anything I believe isn't worth the phoshpors* they're displayed with.

*Those of you using LCDs can replace this with "transistors"

[Ed Solomon]

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=8397220

Now that's griefing, if it's true. If not, well, it's just another drop in the bucket of pretend dialogue that's been going on the last 3 pages.

You know, I thought I was against grieving, but this I kind of like. It's pure evil genius (or dumb luck).

[Rimbo]

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=8397220

Now that's griefing, if it's true. If not, well, it's just another drop in the bucket of pretend dialogue that's been going on the last 3 pages.

You know, I thought I was against grieving, but this I kind of like. It's pure evil genius (or dumb luck).

Evil will ALWAYS triumph over good... because good is dumb.

http://www.crazymofo.com/mofos/images2/darkhelmet.jpg

[Jon R.]

You know, I thought I was against grieving, but this I kind of like. It's pure evil genius (or dumb luck).

It's an odd case, because techinically SOE has just as much of a hand in making it a griefing situation. If they hadn't started banning indescriminately, it would've been a good thing for the people. Or if they just deducted the duped credits, they at least would've been no worse off than they were before.

[Bill Dungsroman]

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=8397220

Now that's griefing, if it's true. If not, well, it's just another drop in the bucket of pretend dialogue that's been going on the last 3 pages.

Jesus Jon, how can you of all people stand to read that forum?

[quatoria]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

So your way is not better.

Wait, so not enjoying a game gives you a free pass to prevent anyone else from enjoying it, too? Wow, that's really the height of pathetic behavior. "Man, this game is boring as hell. I think I'll go wander around and ruin it for everybody else, instead of playing something I'd actually enjoy."

[quatoria]

You're right I shouldn't dismiss it outright -- people who take games seriously do feel a real emotional impact. The people who worked and slaved to build something that they could sell on eBay are losing real value.

I feel exactly zero sympathy for those people. They're games. The effort produces no real value for humanity, and if we looked I'd be surprised if you couldn't find peer-reviewed psychology that shows that it isn't really contributing positively to the player's mental health even in a perfect game-world, either. That's the kind of thing that needs to be hit, very hard, with a Perspective Bat:

"I don't place any value on the things that you enjoy doing. As far as I'm concerned, the way I do things is the only way of doing things that has any validity. As such, I have no problem whatsoever with fucking your things up, because I don't think anyone should value them anyway. Whether or not what I do makes you angry or miserable is totally unimportant to me, because I don't agree that you should feel that way, and thus, your feelings are totally worthless. Therefore, even though what I enjoy doing will make many other people unhappy, it's totally justified, because their happiness is based on things that I think are worthless, and my happiness, gained from their misery, is inherently more valuable."

Wow. That's about the ultimate in selfishness, Rimbo. If you don't give a shit about other people, why would you want to play a multiplayer game in the first place? Oh, right - so you can piss them off. Thank god that virtually every civilization throughout history has recognized how utterly worthless such a perspective is, and how ultimately damaging it is to the society as a whole, if allowed to run unchecked.

(Note - I'm using 'you' to refer to the viewpoint you were advancing, not you as a person. Edited post to make that clear.)

[Rimbo]

Isn't the reason griefers grief, in large part, because they don't find playing the game straight up very much fun? If I don't enjoy mindless clicking and levelling, how is that fun? So with your way, still only ONE person is having fun, not two.

So your way is not better.

Wait, so not enjoying a game gives you a free pass to prevent anyone else from enjoying it, too? Wow, that's really the height of pathetic behavior. "Man, this game is boring as hell. I think I'll go wander around and ruin it for everybody else, instead of playing something I'd actually enjoy."

Yep, that's the basic idea. ;)

[John Reynolds]

Yep, that's the basic idea. ;)

IMO, the truly sad thing about such behavior is that it's predicated upon cowardice. You wouldn't dare behave in a similar fashion in any of the above 'real world' scenarios others posted. I can understand a rare, occasional bit of fun griefing others, but not systematic approaches to it tailored for individual games.

[Warlord of Mars]

I'm having trouble understanding this (not so recently started) social trend of ruining other people's fun. It's certainly a selfish motive, not unlike an analogy of an older brother constantly giving his brother a wet noogie rather than staying on his side of the room, minding his own business.