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#1 2019-05-15 01:14:18

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

I've joked before about the list of important roles in a village including "griefer."  That was actually my local designer friend's take, and he was being serious.

I agree with him, but at Dodge's urging, I will try to make my position clear on this matter.

First of all, why is griefing inevitable?  Why can't I just disable PVP, or design the game so that griefing is impossible in the first place?  Why do I "allow" it to occur at all?

If you stop for a moment and really think any of your anti-griefing designs through, you will quickly discover that they all make the problem worse, not better.  Remove PVP?  What are you going to do when someone slaughters all your wool sheep before they regrow fleeces?  What are you going to do when someone burns all your rabbits?  Turns all your steel into the wrong tool?  Hides all your baskets?

Removing ability X removes it from the griefer's playbook, but also removes it from the good guy's playbook too.  If a griefer can't get rid of you... you can't get rid of a griefer either.  Since the good guys are in the majority, PVP helps them and hurts the griefer.  Removing PVP would hurt the good guys and help the griefer.  2HOL, which removed PVP, was a griefer's paradise.


Second, why do I feel like a bit of griefing is important, and that the game would be worse if there were no griefers?  Because it gives the good guys in the game something to fight for.  It gives them a villain that they can all agree on.  And it motivates certain pro-social behavior and organization.  After all, there is safety in numbers, but safety from what?  It allows people to forge relationships of deep trust, which are only possible when not everyone can necessarily be trusted.  I don't trust you because it's impossible for you to harm me.  I trust you because you are fully capable of harming me, but you choose not too.

And this is doubly true with the new war swords and language update.  Here is this outsider who can't necessarily be trusted.  You can't even communicate your intention to them directly.  But if you can establish a trusting relationship with them, that trust will be very deep and meaningful indeed.  That is a place where the human spirit can really shine through.  I've built an enormous wall for the two of you to climb over.  If you can forge a friendship in the face of those odds, it will be amazing.


You can't have a full emotional spectrum without the darker elements.  Griefers are the yin to society's yang.

That said, a little griefing goes a long way in this regard, and I don't necessarily want you completely overrun by it.  But I don't think the game has ever really been overrun by it.  I'm still skeptical that Donkey Town is necessary, though I do also acknowledge the reincarnation problem...

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#2 2019-05-15 01:16:28

DaTrüf!
Member
Registered: 2019-03-17
Posts: 149

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

JASON WIPE MY CURSE SCORE


>Me: *writes detailed post on pit bull griefing and details how to prevent it*
>Community: GRIEEEEEEEEEEEEFFFFFFFER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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#3 2019-05-15 01:18:26

fatbunny
Member
Registered: 2019-02-14
Posts: 21

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

DaTruf nobody cares.

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#4 2019-05-15 01:18:53

Left4twenty
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Registered: 2018-03-09
Posts: 116

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Few things worth doing are easy


Be strong.
Mother loves you.

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#5 2019-05-15 01:32:04

lychee
Member
Registered: 2019-05-08
Posts: 328

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

I see your position Jason; I'm not totally sure that I share exactly the same confidence/optimism on the inevitability of good guys outnumbering/beating the bad guys, but I respect what you want with the game.

There was an interesting post made by RedComb yesterday (part two), and I'm not sure if you saw it. In that post, @RedComb discusses some experiences and cites a few articles/interviews/books by the MMO designer Raph Koster had during his work with Ultima Online regarding pvp.

It was a really cool article, so if you get a chance, it might be interesting to take a look at.

Last edited by lychee (2019-05-15 01:44:41)

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#6 2019-05-15 01:36:43

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Jason how do you define griefing? Because I don't consider most of the kills in the game griefing, or even much of stealing and other nonsense.

Griefing is players spouting racist nonsense.
Griefing is players making it hard for you to play quietly for no other reason than to watch you get frustrated.
Griefing is spamming curses on someone with multiple accounts.
Griefing is spamming gifs in the discord so people can't talk.
Griefing is killing off a town *because* someone cares about it so we have to be careful never to mention family names till after that line is dead.

It's not "something to fight for" it's boring and makes me want to just quit.

Thankfully it's not super common in the game but posts like this encourage it and make me feel disappointed and angry at you.  It's gotten worse since your comments as has the taunting in the forums as discord.


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#7 2019-05-15 01:40:14

Potjeh
Member
Registered: 2018-03-08
Posts: 469

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Building trust takes time. Time is one thing we don't have in OHOL. I understand why PvP in some form must be present, but I'm very sceptical about updates that promote PvP by sowing distrust. OHOL's fairly unique niche is that it's coop PvE, so I think going towards more PvP is the wrong call. As a lone developer you'll never be able to make something that stands out in the overcrowded PvP MMO niche when there's giants like Rust.

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#8 2019-05-15 01:46:58

BladeWoods
Member
Registered: 2018-08-11
Posts: 476

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

jasonrohrer wrote:

And this is doubly true with the new war swords and language update.  Here is this outsider who can't necessarily be trusted.  You can't even communicate your intention to them directly.  But if you can establish a trusting relationship with them, that trust will be very deep and meaningful indeed.  That is a place where the human spirit can really shine through.  I've built an enormous wall for the two of you to climb over.  If you can forge a friendship in the face of those odds, it will be amazing.

I think that's the right direction, but it's really not possible at the moment. When you can't communicate, and can freely grief and easily slay one another, there's just no forging a friendship. More work needs to be done to make friendship between lineages possible. Right now the only end result to two lineages in the same place is one of them wiping the other one out.

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#9 2019-05-15 01:47:38

A_person_1234
Member
Registered: 2019-04-17
Posts: 13

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Is it important to have PvP to fight back against griefers? Yes. Is it interesting to fight back against griefers every once in a while? Again, yes. The problem is that griefers are so prevalent that many lives become a tiresome and hopeless experience.

I think griefing stands in the way of what you're hoping to accomplish with the game. Making us care about our families? Why bother if my son is going to grab a bow and arrow and kill me as soon as he gets the chance?

Making people care about their lives? Why bother if someone could randomly ruin it all at anytime with no repercussions. Why waste my energy caring about my life if others can take it all away in a second with no warning?

It all just boils down to griefing ruining player experience, and in turn, making us less invested in the game. It's not in-game roleplay murder or sabotage, it's just someone wrecking others' enjoyment of the game for fun. And being at the receiving end of that always sucks. Of course there will always be a small amount of griefing, even with anti-griefing measures. But the very presence of griefing, players who don't care about their families other than the entertainment value they get from killing them, contradicts your vision for OHOL.

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#10 2019-05-15 01:49:09

Peaches
Member
Registered: 2019-04-04
Posts: 62

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Encouraging them is entirely the wrong move.

I understand where you're coming from (especially given how outright hateful some players can be towards your updates) but it's disheartening seeing you taking the side of people who would rather drive off the most dedicated and passionate of the playerbase. I once played a civilization based Minecraft server that took a similar "its inevitable and makes life spicey" approach and it died due to the playerbase being driven off by griefers under the guise of a "highwayman gang." I only know they weren't doing it for the sake of role or game play because I was, unfortunately, a part of that group. We just wanted people to get mad and ragequit.

The admin's attempts to revive it fell through, as nobody trusted him to run it well despite the amount of work he put into it. This was an admin willing to drive several hours and states over just to fix server issues himself, mind you, in the earliest versions of multiplayer. I can easily see this happening to OHOL, as much as I don't want it to, because the playerbase is so tiny compared to other, more popular games. It's a niche game and as such, you can't afford to let too many people get driven out.

One griefer can go on indefinitely if not disciplined.
One griefed, innocent player can get frustrated after one bad encounter and stop playing for months.
Maybe they come back and have a few good games, but one bad game and stop for good.
Once the real players are gone, the griefers get bored and leave for bloodier waters in other games.
Then the game dies.

Regular players will still go to war and fight and kill, just as you want them to, but they won't be doing it to see how many people they can get to ragequit. They wouldn't be doing it in every single life they live.

If anything, even if you refuse to do anything more about the issue in game, at least ban them from the forums and discord, assuming you control the discord at all. I've not really messed with it.

They feed off attention, they enjoy people's angry responses and they love it when people get frustated with their "JASON REVERSE MY CURSE SCORE" posts. It won't hurt anything to at least keep them out of discussion spaces when they have literally nothing of note to add other than "MY CURSE SCORE IS TOO HIGH" or "HURR HURR JASON'S MAKING IT EASIER TO GREIF WITH EVERY UPDATE. THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT EASIER TO GRIEF, JASON! WOW BOY I SURE DO LOVE TO GRIEF BOYS, PLEASE SHOWER ME IN HATE GUYS I DON'T CARE I LOOOOOVE IT!!!!!" and we'd be better off without that much.


DaTrüf! wrote:

JASON WIPE MY CURSE SCORE

And, honestly, this isn't the kind of thing you want a new player seeing when they come to the forums for the first time.
Not when its on every single post by the admin. Not when they're never warned. It's a bad look for a messageboard.

Last edited by Peaches (2019-05-15 03:35:00)


The Frank to your Cleopatra

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#11 2019-05-15 01:52:55

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Honestly, it just annoys me that you keep saying this type of thing when it encourages people to grief more. You do have power and influence and it matters how you use it! And coming after your (valid) concerns about people being rude to you here-- it seems kinda of hypocritical.

Why is some kid spouting the n-word and spamming noise at me supposed to be "something to fight for" and "interesting" but people being disrespectful and rude to you is supposed to be a real issue that people should care about?

What if I said you should find people being rude "a challenge" ? Like I'm not going to say that. But can you see how it's just a bad response?

(Also, PVP isn't "griefing" they aren't the same thing at all, griefing is someone ruining your gaming experience for no reason other than it amuses them to get on your nerves. )

Last edited by futurebird (2019-05-15 01:54:24)


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tantum baca, non facies opus

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#12 2019-05-15 02:00:12

FeignedSanity
Member
Registered: 2018-04-03
Posts: 482

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

@futurebird

Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him? "spouting the n-word and spamming noises" is the issue, not the thing you're supposed to be fighting for. Is he not saying your values that cause you to deal with the issue are the "something to fight for"?


Believe you're right, but don't believe you can't be wrong.
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#13 2019-05-15 02:08:39

futurebird
Member
Registered: 2019-02-20
Posts: 1,553

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

I'd rather not deal with that kind of thing while having fun. I don't like being told that I should just try to have fun trying to deal with it when I'd rather not be exposed to it at all. I realize (and accept) that it isn't possible to always prevent that kind of thing from happening. But, I don't like being told it's a feature that makes the game better when it's just not.

It makes the game worse. In an ideal world there wouldn't be griefing and there would still be plenty of PVP and things to fight for and tension and disagreements.

What I'm taking issue with here is saying "this isn't really a problem it's good"
rather than "I understand you see this as a problem and wish it didn't happen, but there isn't a way to fix it without ruining the freedom and other positive aspects of the game."

The latter is reasonable the former is trying to re-define my experiences as something they aren't and just kind of inconsiderate. IMO.


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tantum baca, non facies opus

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#14 2019-05-15 02:09:24

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

jasonrohrer wrote:

First of all, why is griefing inevitable?  Why can't I just disable PVP, or design the game so that griefing is impossible in the first place?  Why do I "allow" it to occur at all?

If you stop for a moment and really think any of your anti-griefing designs through, you will quickly discover that they all make the problem worse, not better.  Remove PVP?  What are you going to do when someone slaughters all your wool sheep before they regrow fleeces?  What are you going to do when someone burns all your rabbits?  Turns all your steel into the wrong tool?  Hides all your baskets?

There's a logic to that, sure.  I don't disagree when I think about this point.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Second, why do I feel like a bit of griefing is important, and that the game would be worse if there were no griefers?  Because it gives the good guys in the game something to fight for.

No, that's fighting against someone else... in particular fighting against the griefer.  It's not something to fight for which involves protecting something.  The goods of the town get fought for, but those don't arise because of griefing.  Instead they arise because of people's productivity.

jasonrohrer wrote:

And this is doubly true with the new war swords and language update.  Here is this outsider who can't necessarily be trusted.  You can't even communicate your intention to them directly.  But if you can establish a trusting relationship with them, that trust will be very deep and meaningful indeed.  That is a place where the human spirit can really shine through.  I've built an enormous wall for the two of you to climb over.  If you can forge a friendship in the face of those odds, it will be amazing.

The language aspect alright.  But, not the swords part.  Each person thinks and feels with their own mind.  There are no collective thoughts or collective feelings and that's even more apparent in OHOL where normal communication (the kind you can understand) comes as limited.  Swords don't make killing one individual any simpler so far as I know.  Outsiders could come with a bow and arrow (and did sometimes, e. g. Tarr and Da False), or a knife and kill you personally before.  So, swords are NOT increasing trust here.  Also, it's very suspicious to put swords in here as if a bow and arrow and a knife didn't exist before.  Also they can get made earlier than sword, so it's weird in multiple ways. 

It's one thing to say that griefers would have more power if killing were removed from the game.  It's another thing to say that if swords were removed griefers would have more power.  No, griefers would not have more power if swords were removed from the game.  They would have less power, because they wouldn't have a tool to kill multiple people quickly like Michael Punch did or like Tarr did.


jasonrohrer wrote:

You can't have a full emotional spectrum without the darker elements.  Griefers are the yin to society's yang.

No.  Trust can get built on other bases than someone not killing you when you can.  People don't trust their children less because they don't have guns and trust the government more because they have guns and don't usually kill innocent people.  Having guns and not using them doesn't map to getting people to trust you... it's not like that.  I've also experienced trust in low population play where there's rarely a sign of griefing, because sometimes me and the other play get on the same page without even talking or much communication.

Also, I haven't played on bs2 since the sword update.  And I won't for the foreseeable future.  Swords are just a killing tool and a water guzzler or smithing hammer waster and nothing more, and there were already enough knives in bs2 before that for dispatching with griefers.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-05-15 02:11:49)


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#15 2019-05-15 02:33:45

Léonard
Member
Registered: 2019-01-05
Posts: 205

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

futurebird wrote:

<2 last posts>

1000% agreed.

I'd also like to add that it's pretty much nonsense to support griefing just for griefing, especially when Jason contradicted himself last month:

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm looking for ways to motivate murder, though, so that murder becomes real.  Currently, it's just for griefer lols.

This I can respect.
Real stakes. Killing for real reasons.

Supporting griefing for griefing makes no sense even as a game dev.
Everybody knows griefers only do it to upset people for real and break the immersion while doing so.
It's just frustrating and not fun.

This is also why many people dislike the war sword update.
Currently, there is no real incentive to genocide a whole lineage.
Yet people actually do it. And when they do it, you can be sure it's griefing for the sake of griefing.
Which people hate.

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#16 2019-05-15 05:41:06

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

Léonard wrote:

Currently, there is no real incentive to genocide a whole lineage.

I don't like proposing the following, but since you stated that in such strong terms...

Let's assume that someone doesn't check who killed them or care about that.  Let's also assume that the human player will keep playing if murdered (I don't find this likely enough, but it's not impossible).  I'm further assuming that getting murdered by someone doesn't ban you from being in that person's lineage.  Say there's only one man and one woman in a village.  The woman is young, like 10 and there's decent food around.  So, then the man goes out and genocides some other lineage.  The effect could be that the woman has (more) babies, with fertile girls included.  Thus, the lineage could in principle live on by players choosing to play again, not caring about murder, and getting redirected to that lineage.

Does that work?  I don't know, because I'm not sure how murder by a sword interacts with the lineage ban.

Will genociding another village work out as best as a strategy to keep your lineage going?  By no means will it necessarily do so in the majority of cases even, since theoretically it might result in a population rush leading to a water/food crisis.

Will people keep want to playing a game where their family experiences genocide every so often?  No, that's not likely at all.  There's comments floating around by Ralph Koster on the forums which indicate not controlling griefing by the developer destroys a customer base, at least that's what I've taken away from it.

Does such calculated genocide for the sake of the lineage come as likely to happen?  It's not impossible, but in the majority of cases I would highly doubt that such would get done in a purposefully strategic manner.  It's more likely someone looks for a family with a war sword and doesn't have enough luck OR they kill families in a fruitless crusade... a crusade just to kill mind you, not for God.  OmniousBladeBlank tried to put out a genocidal meta, but when he did it, it's clear that his family's lineage length wasn't anything special.

Would such be effective over just yumming and trying to get temperature up?  Or just hoping babies pop up?  It's hard to tell, but my guess that a crusade to get more players in your family won't do enough.  And even if it does, you might end up with someone resentful of the genocide of their previous family who then decides to grief their new family.  So, the swords might encourage the mutual destruction of families in some cases.  And two genocides is worse than one genocide.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-05-15 05:41:26)


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#17 2019-05-15 06:25:33

Guppy
Member
Registered: 2019-03-14
Posts: 202

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

jasonrohrer wrote:

Because it gives the good guys in the game something to fight for.  It gives them a villain that they can all agree on.  And it motivates certain pro-social behavior and organization.

Its kinda hard for everyone to agree on one villain if the most efficient way of griefing is secretly hiding stuff away from the city without being caught.

Someone roleplaying as a villain, yes.

But people just hiding stuff and shooting people from behind trees? no

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#18 2019-05-15 07:20:22

Toxic
Banned
Registered: 2019-03-09
Posts: 193

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

When you say this Jason it really makes me think.......

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#19 2019-05-15 07:41:32

hmrka
Member
From: Polska
Registered: 2018-08-12
Posts: 271

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

jasonrohrer wrote:

If you stop for a moment and really think any of your anti-griefing designs through, you will quickly discover that they all make the problem worse, not better.  Remove PVP?  What are you going to do when someone slaughters all your wool sheep before they regrow fleeces?  What are you going to do when someone burns all your rabbits?  Turns all your steel into the wrong tool?  Hides all your baskets?

Nothing because I'd get three curses and have to play eat-banana-and-berry simulator for 5 hours. Total curse score still broken.
Oh and Ignore datruff hes a troll, not only ingame but on forums and discord too.


I sign my ingame notes as Gio or Truz.
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#20 2019-05-15 09:33:29

Tarr
Banned
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 1,596

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

There's always going to be griefing no matter what can you play, no matter the genre, or even the level of play. That's just a given at this point in time. Our problem specifically is that players have to self moderate with you tweaking numbers here and there to try to balance things out. We've seen everything from having no wounds and instant death, bloody graves and 30 second stagger, bloody graves plus 60 second stagger, donkey town based off slow decaying points leading to extended visits, to stuff like we see now with explicit hard limits on who you can curse. I think the comment about banning people for pictures posted to the photos section rubbed people the wrong way originally because apparently that was the line you had to cross to get any sort of true punishment.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think you or anyone should be stuck trying to read through some convoluted mess trying to reckon whether you should ban someone. Hell, I don't even think you should ban anyone (unless they're doing stuff like doxing you or any of that sort of crap.) and should just keep the self moderation but make sure it's beefy enough to actually do something.

People have complained about how crazy overpowered it is to grief with twins and everyone in this thread has seen of felt the effects of group griefing in the past. Having coordinated players destroy hours upon hours of work for the lols is not amusing. People have asked you to do anything and everything, tossing ideas left right and even center, even asking for one of your original ideas to be implemented with the only nerf being to ban both twins to any spot the other twin is banned too which was mostly a lineage ban avoiding exploit.

Of course you can always say "just kill the people griefing" but it's much simpler said than done. Ask any of the 40 people who crossed me when I had a sword how well that idea worked out for them. If the curse system was still able to curse people outside ones lineage my ass would have been to donkey town multiple times at this point but instead all those players had a bad experience without anything being done to stop the issue.

Once you give us the tools I am without a doubt happy to see Donkey town removed, the problem is we actually need the tools before you go about nerfing curses. You don't have to solve all our problems for us Jason, but we need to be given the right tools to deal with our problems properly.


fug it’s Tarr.

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#21 2019-05-15 10:16:25

CatX
Member
Registered: 2019-02-11
Posts: 464

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

FutureBird has a very good point. We can't discuss this on a constructive level until we know we're discussing the same thing.

To me, griefing is not pvp. Although pvp can be part of it. To me, griefing is trolling.

What if we substitute 'griefing' with 'trolling' in Jason's original post, does it still make sense?


jasonrohrer wrote:

I've joked before about the list of important roles in a village including "troll."  That was actually my local designer friend's take, and he was being serious.

I agree with him, but at Dodge's urging, I will try to make my position clear on this matter.

First of all, why is trolling inevitable?  Why can't I just disable PVP, or design the game so that trolling is impossible in the first place?  Why do I "allow" it to occur at all?

If you stop for a moment and really think any of your anti-trolling designs through, you will quickly discover that they all make the problem worse, not better.  Remove PVP?  What are you going to do when someone slaughters all your wool sheep before they regrow fleeces?  What are you going to do when someone burns all your rabbits?  Turns all your steel into the wrong tool?  Hides all your baskets?

Removing ability X removes it from the troll's playbook, but also removes it from the good guy's playbook too.  If a troll can't get rid of you... you can't get rid of a troll either.  Since the good guys are in the majority, PVP helps them and hurts the troll.  Removing PVP would hurt the good guys and help the troll.  2HOL, which removed PVP, was a troll's paradise.


Second, why do I feel like a bit of trolling is important, and that the game would be worse if there were no trolls?  Because it gives the good guys in the game something to fight for.  It gives them a villain that they can all agree on.  And it motivates certain pro-social behavior and organization.  After all, there is safety in numbers, but safety from what?  It allows people to forge relationships of deep trust, which are only possible when not everyone can necessarily be trusted.  I don't trust you because it's impossible for you to harm me.  I trust you because you are fully capable of harming me, but you choose not too.

And this is doubly true with the new war swords and language update.  Here is this outsider who can't necessarily be trusted.  You can't even communicate your intention to them directly.  But if you can establish a trusting relationship with them, that trust will be very deep and meaningful indeed.  That is a place where the human spirit can really shine through.  I've built an enormous wall for the two of you to climb over.  If you can forge a friendship in the face of those odds, it will be amazing.

You can't have a full emotional spectrum without the darker elements.  Trolls are the yin to society's yang.

That said, a little trolling goes a long way in this regard, and I don't necessarily want you completely overrun by it.  But I don't think the game has ever really been overrun by it.  I'm still skeptical that Donkey Town is necessary, though I do also acknowledge the reincarnation problem...

To me, this just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Trolling has no place even in Jason's vision of including the part of the darker aspects of humanity into the gameplay.

And the reason is that what it seems to me that Jason tries to accomplish, is for real stories to emerge from our play. What is a story? It's a question everyone alive probably think they know the answer to, and yet if it were that easy, there wouldn't be courses at university level trying to explore the topic. What is a story?

A story is when conflict happens because of a reason, and the characters involved reveal who they are when forced to face this conflict.

There is no reason behind trolling, other than someone having fun detached from and outside of the world we're building together.

What if you sat down to watch Romeo and Juliet, and in the first scene Mercutio stabs Romeo, then proceeds to kill his whole family, and the story ends with Mercutio gleefully shouting "Haha, killed you all!"
Not quite a satisfying experience, is it?
To be fulfilling, there has to be a build up. There has to be a chain of things happening and choices made that leads a person to do the deeds.

Trolling is bad because it breaks the immersion. It takes away the deeper, darker aspect of the game because there is no reason behind it. It makes people less involved with the world and their lives, not more. It's a constant reminder that "oh yeah, this is not a real world, we're just a bunch of people playing a game. This is what I have to expect."

What if I was playing The Witcher III, a game I adore, with deep characters, surprisingly meaningful encounters, a world I'm able to feel like I'm part of, and what if I was going to talk to my mentor and discuss the latest clues about the whereabouts of my missing loved ones. Before he got to say a word,  a random naked villager boy ran up with a knife, stabbed him, and now he's dead. Maybe I'm able to kill this naked boy. Great. It begs the question though - where tf did this boy come from? Was he an assassin? Was he on drugs? Is something going on here that I need to pay attention to?

No, he's just a troll. Moving on.

It takes you out of the world instantly.

It creates boredom.

It's a bug, not a feature.

My grandfather was a twin. His mother gave birth to twins twice. She had ten kids I think in total, and all of them survived, but many in those days weren't as lucky. My grandmother had two siblings who died as children I believe.

I bet that my great grandmother never, never looked at her four twin babies and thought: Hmmm, my kids seem to be sick. They're making strange noises, and their faces are green. They're probably griefers, I'd better not feed them just in case they intend to destroy me and my family when they grow up.

It breaks the immersion.

Trolling is lame. Griefing is lame. It has no place in OHOL.

And yes, I agree that unfortunately griefing can't be eradicated. It will always exist in some form. But we need to acknowledge that it is detrimental to the game if we at least are going to be able to have a good conversation about it.

Last edited by CatX (2019-05-15 10:25:42)

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#22 2019-05-15 12:23:26

Spoonwood
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Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

I think CatX makes a good point.

To speak honestly, the term 'PvP' comes as sort of new to me.  Looking up what 'PvP' means on Wikipedia, it has to involve players competing against each other for some goal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_versus_player.  The word 'competition' comes from a Latin word meaning 'to seek together'.  How does griefing in OHOL work?

Well, here's an example: I'm standing at the forge trying to organize things.  Some clown picks up a bow and arrow, which unfortunately are too dangerous around towns often even though they have good uses, and shoots me out of nowhere.   Were we competing?  Did we have a common goal?  No.  I wanted to make tools, process iron, or do something productive at the forge... I don't recall which at this point in time, but it doesn't matter, because I'm sure as heck that I did NOT want to kill the other person.  The other person wanted to kill another player.  So, we were NOT seeking a common goal.  We were NOT competing unlike in fighting games like Mortal Kombat were players compete to kill the other person.

So, resoundingly I think, CatX is correct.  Griefing is NOT PvP.  Griefing is trolling.

It's also not even clear that war swords induce PvP unless you have two families trying to destroy the other family.  You can't just have one family being defensive and one family offensive for it to qualify as PvP.  The offensive family would want genocide for the other family.  The defensive family would want their family to survive and would probably prefer to leave the other family alone.  If one family fights offensively and the other defensively in terms of their goals, that is NOT PvP also.  BOTH families have to fight with the same goal in mind for PvP to exist.  They would have to both be genocidal.

Players who like PvP games like PUBG or engaged in such games for a long period of time might be more likely to grief in OHOL or something, I don't know.  But, unless BOTH parties try to accomplish the same thing, there is no PvP.  Thus, the murderers and other griefers who steal items away from camp to try to doom it are NOT engaged in PvP since they have a different goal from everyone else.  Trolling seems like a more accurate term.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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#23 2019-05-19 19:26:37

Spoonwood
Member
Registered: 2019-02-06
Posts: 4,369

Re: Reasons why some amount of griefing is inevitable and important

jasonrohrer wrote:

Second, why do I feel like a bit of griefing is important, and that the game would be worse if there were no griefers?  Because it gives the good guys in the game something to fight for.  It gives them a villain that they can all agree on.  And it motivates certain pro-social behavior and organization.

Yea, I'm not so sure about that.  Not with recent changes.  People have been talking about blocking off Eve spawn locations nearby by building impassable structures around them.  At first I thought the use of that lay in pointing out how predicatable Eve spawning could be made bad.  But, thinking more about how the curse system doesn't allow you to curse someone outside of your lineage, there's no way to send a griefing Eve to Donkey Town.  So, some people might wall out Eves to prevent griefer Eves from attacking their people.  That isn't pro-social behavior and organization.  It's anti-social xenophobia, and I can't say that such a strategy is misguided.  Sure, not all Eves are griefers.  But, the risk of an Eve being a griefer might be high enough to make blocking them off reasonable by preventing them from getting away from their spawning point.  And griefers don't care enough about getting killed to reconsider griefing.  Cursing them to donkey town (now effectively impossible for Eve griefers) at least made for serious consequences of their evil behavior.  So, I do think that cursing foreigners to donkey town should come back.


Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.

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