200: Wanted: Ganked or Alive

[Allen Varney]

Wanted: Ganked or Alive

In a rush to ban griefers from their online worlds, MMOG operators may be passing up a golden opportunity: to harness griefers' collective ill intent and apply it toward the greater good. Allen Varney speculates whether creative game design can turn griefers against themselves.

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[level250geek]

I like the bounty hunter idea. It would strengthen the role-playing aspect of the game (whatever that game may be) and solve the problem of griefers all at the same time. I also enjoy the idea of players governing themselves instead of being looked upon by some faceless entity that exists only as an e-mail address (which is why I am more and more intrigued by EVE).

 

[1ronJ4m]

What the heck is a Griefer?
Lol, srsly.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

I especially like the oubliette idea. They'd have no idea it's coming. One day they're happily griefing hapless newbies, the next they're in a nightmare world full of howling spectres, dark Lovecraftian atmosphere, and other griefers. It'd almost be like an entirely different game, and some griefers might never want to leave.

 

[Clemenstation]

I especially like the oubliette idea. They'd have no idea it's coming. One day they're happily griefing hapless newbies, the next they're in a nightmare world full of howling spectres, dark Lovecraftian atmosphere, and other griefers. It'd almost be like an entirely different game, and some griefers might never want to leave.

So... griefers are consigned to hell? Sounds about right.

 

[UnSub]

Wasn't the CSM set up by CCP to (excuse my cynicism) make it appear that players could have some input into EVE? All the EVE discussions I've seen about it treat it and the people who make it up (iirc, elected for six month periods based on a popular vote) as an absolute joke.

It would have been much better to talk about A Tale In The Desert - only 5k players, but the community can elect a Pharaoh who can ban players - or Roma Victor, where griefers can be publicly crucified (http://www.roma-victor.com/news/press/showpr.php?pr=060323a).

UO also ran into problems in trying to get the community to deal with griefers on their own - bounty systems only encouraged griefers who treated it like a score card and player police often found (much like the real police) that they'd arrive long after the griefer had fled.

 

[TomDavidson]

The problem with trying to punish a griefer in-game is that the griefer is ultimately playing a meta-game; any punishment you impose is just going to cause them to switch proxies and create a new account, because they aren't attached to their "actual" progress in the game as much as they are their ability to undermine other people's time investments. As long as a relatively new character maintains the ability to be even slightly annoying or destructive, griefers will always have the upper hand.

Consider the idea of an "elected" board of officials. Imagine for a moment how easy it would be for griefers to overrun such a board and take control of it from the inside -- and consider how incredibly tempting it would be for them, especially if such a board had any kind of power. All they'd need to do is talk their friends into making a hundred characters apiece, and voting once (or a million times each, if the vote is conducted foolishly).

In real life, the penalty for being a sociopath is that you don't get an extra life. If we lock you in jail for life or kill you or whatever, you're dead; all games are over for you. Online, however, no punishment lasts any longer than the griefer chooses to let it last, unless he's made the foolish "mistake" of actually caring about the game.

 

[D-Ship]

I especially like the oubliette idea. They'd have no idea it's coming. One day they're happily griefing hapless newbies, the next they're in a nightmare world full of howling spectres, dark Lovecraftian atmosphere, and other griefers. It'd almost be like an entirely different game, and some griefers might never want to leave.

So... griefers are consigned to hell? Sounds about right.

If only Sartre would come back from the dead as a software developer...

 

[JMeganSnow]

In real life, the penalty for being a sociopath is that you don't get an extra life. If we lock you in jail for life or kill you or whatever, you're dead; all games are over for you. Online, however, no punishment lasts any longer than the griefer chooses to let it last, unless he's made the foolish "mistake" of actually caring about the game.

They DO care about the game, albeit from the perspective of wanting to destroy it. Trolls are the most persistent forum members and complain the most bitterly when they are booted. It's like crack for them--they *need* the high of beating up on other people.

If it's a real problem, the easiest thing to do is to reject anonymity. If these proxies just allow people to be jerks and get away with it, why allow proxies at all? Ban the entire bank of IP addresses assigned to that proxy. Scorched-earth solutions like this are obnoxious, but they do work. If the other people who use the proxy want to play, they can complain to the proxy until it polices itself. (And likely get laughed at if they're, say, using university computers without permission, which is not uncommon.)

Anonymity only serves criminals. It can be valuable for good people in a society where the government doesn't respect rights and honest people are turned into criminals, but last I checked gaming was still legal. Anyone who desires anonymity in that context should be immediately suspect.

Maybe the best way to provide some relief from grief is to broadcast loud and clear to other players "THIS PLAYER IS ANONYMOUS!!" Don't you teach your kids to look for suspicious behavior? Enable players to exercise prudence by providing just the kind of information they need.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

I haven't had a chance to finish the article yet, but I'd like to point out that WoW is far from free of griefing. Here are a few examples:

a) Alliance newbie is in the starter area, killing trolls. They go to kill one troll, only for that troll to turn around and slaughter them. Little did they realize it was a level 70 player from the Horde, dressed up just like the other mobs. They also don't realize that they have now been PvP flagged for 5 minutes, which means the second they respawn, the griefer will be waiting to take them under again. The PvP flag was put in place to prevent newbies unwittingly being entered into PvP combat, but the mechanics of it leave them quite vulnerable to provocation and scams like this.

b) You're a hunter trying to tame a rare creature. Of course, so are many other players of both factions. You get there first and begin taming. Another player (of either faction) is jealous for missing the opportunity and promptly slaughters the animal you are currently taming. Since what they did was just a normal part of the game (kill neutral monster), you have no recourse against them, even through the GMs.

c) You are grinding your way through enemies, trying to gain experience. Everytime you go to kill something, the griefer finishes it off. Since you got the first hit, it is "tagged" so that only you get experience, but since the experience you receive is proportional to the damage you have done and the griefer has killed it before you had a chance to do much damage, your experience is considerably reduced. Combine with a limited respawn rate and your experience rate is greatly reduced.

There are many ways to grief in WoW, many of them simple and within the rules of the game. Even in a game largely focused around PvE, any player interactions (even through the external environment) can be used for griefing.

I think there are some simple solutions to this. If we accept that players can always interact in some way conducive to griefing, then we need to give players the opportunity to defend themselves. Direct intervention from responsive GMs is a possibility, but it doesn't scale well and it's a constantly uphill battle. Instead, why not embrace the the fact that PvP is possible and allow them to fight back. Remove the "PvP doesn't exist here" shackles that imply safety and prevent retaliation and instead make it a free-for-all. It assumes that the principle of mutually-assured destruction applies, but it's been seen to work well in games like EVE Online and Warhammer Online. When we are all equal in ability, we all have to fear for our own safety, so we avoid provoking others.

The major downside to this is that, unchecked, equality can always be overcome. Larger groups of people, higher levels, better equipment, or even just skill, can result in a power discrepancy, in which case those with more power can grief without fear of retribution. This isn't an easy problem to solve; if you figure out a way, tell it to our legal system, who constantly struggles with the problem of policing the police.

 

[Ironmaus]

In real life, the penalty for being a sociopath is that you don't get an extra life. If we lock you in jail for life or kill you or whatever, you're dead; all games are over for you. Online, however, no punishment lasts any longer than the griefer chooses to let it last, unless he's made the foolish "mistake" of actually caring about the game.

True, true!

If only there were a way to make the griefer believe they were still connected and still annoying people while disconnecting them from the actual game.

 

[Ironmaus]

Anonymity only serves criminals.

That's the most frightening viewpoint I've read today.

I'm sure it wasn't meant as an absolute but it definitely comes off that way. The shades of grey that exist for those who crave anonymity are far more numerous than the "suspect" and not that you suggest.

One of the major points of interest in gaming is being someone other than yourself and doing things other than what you would normally do. That would be much more difficult if you were tied to your real identity. The identity you present to friends may be friendly and kindhearted whereas one of the many you display in online games may be cutthroat and unmerciful. What if you want to imagine a character of a different sex or sexual orientation in-game? That probably isn't information you'd like indelibly tied to your real-life face. I don't think it's paranoid to suggest that employers who already browse employee's Facebook accounts wouldn't be above accessing records of which employees are spending how much time online or are actively demeaning the corporate image in their outside lives.

Not everyone who seeks anonymity does so in order to be a dick.

 

[mszv]

Having seen my share of "witch hunts" in forums, I'm uncomfortable with making a public spectacle of anyone, even a griefer. I've seen mob rule, and it's not pretty. I also think the author forgets about psychology. If you make a sport of, for want of a better word "torturing" someone, no matter how justified, it's easier the next time around to do it to someone who is not a griefer. You don't want to encourage bad behavior. I personally think that the fact that we don't have public hangings anymore - it's a good thing.

On anonymity - I like it - let's not go there. I'm not going to publically identify myself, in an online world - not going to happen.

On griefing, I think the answer is two fold
- get them out of the game. The people running the games need to find a way to get them out. You stop the game for the griefer - they don't get to play anymore. Remove them from the situation.

- find a way to minimize their impact, in game. Make minimizing griefing part of game design. Some of this might have to do with a change in game design. Instancing is one example. The other is an "ignore" function that really works. Those WoW examples on griefing - interesting. What that tells me that there is something about the WoW design that doesn't work. Sure, WoW is a game that millions of people are playing happily, and it's a good game. but that tells me that even a very popular game such as WoW has some way to go, with regards to design.

I'm not crazy about the game player police force. This assumes there is "one" game community, and that volunteers can police others, particularly in a very large, diverse world, with different groups of people. Maybe it could work, assuming some sort of control - I don't know. Eve is a different kind of game, and in-game deception and in-game politics and complicated player alliances - that's what you do. That is so not my kind of game (though I admit, an interesting concept) that it's hard for me to understand how you can apply something about Eve to another kind of game.

I guess this explains why I like Guild Wars so much, and I'm not too happy that there will be less instancing in GW2.

 

[zoharknight]

This articule i like. I'd love to punish griefers with some of these ideas. Thining out the morons abit sounds good to me, and if there purge helps the game ,or the devolpers think up new ideas that will improve there products via it ,mores the better.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I like the idea of a "griefer hell" server, myself, but it'd have to be one that the griefer doesn't recognise as being a "hell" server or he/she/it'll just exercise the usual griefer tactic of changing accounts. Perhaps pushing griefers onto a server with other griefers and NPCs rigged to act like archetypical newbies/n00bs would keep the griefers in the "flypaper" servers long enough to keep their numbers down in the good servers... but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect a server to pass the "Turing test" for long enough to make the effort pay off without being hellishly expensive on AI development.

Oh well, ideas are free. Maybe this one'll spark a better one in someone else.

-- Steve

 

[Syntax Error]

I've found from most MMO's I've played (all of them Korean) that there are effective means of controlling griefers.

In Tantra, they have a Karma System. Unlike the Evil-Neutral-Bad alignments, you only have Good (0 Karma) and Evil (positive Karma). When you PK someone, you get 600 Karma and your name turns red for all to see. The penalty for griefing is that your HP/MP won't regenerate naturally and some items in your inventory *might* drop when you get killed (not exactly a prospect you will risk after all that grinding). You either wait for the Karma to drop (four hours for 600 Karma) or you kill monsters who are within your level range (difficult, because people can kill you without penalties).

In Cabal, they have a Prison. Everytime you kill someone, your name turns from Orange, to several shades of red, to eventually, Black. During that process, each hit administered results in a loss of Honor Points (Honor is required to equip some of the end-game gear). After your name turns black, one more PK lands you in jail. The jail is a separate maze-like area that only becomes accessible when you get teleported to it. You can try looking for the exit, or wait out the time.

 

[Ashen7]

I very much like the idea of "masking" players to the griefer; Making strong characters appear weak, and vice versa. While this, IMO, is the best method, (other then directly banning them) there are many obstacles. One example would be gear. You can obviously tell a high level player apart from a low level one simply by what he/she is wearing. It would be difficult to change the appearance of a player's gear rather then just his level number on the HUD or something.

It's a good idea, but it poses it's share of challenges. I also liked the oubliette idea, but in practice I don't think it would work too well. Many griefers would see this as a goal and actually want to get themselves banished.

Overall an interesting article. Although, the guy who wrote it seems a bit pretentious with his word selection. I mean come on, not many people know what an "ombudsman" is; Or an "oubliette" for that matter. Maybe leave the thesaurus aside when righting your next article.

 

[insanelich]

Sharing banlists?

Second dumbest idea I've heard all day. This would cause so much abuse it's far, far beyond ridiculous. Anyone who even considers it must either just be throwing it out there without giving it any thought at all.

Rejecting anonymity?

Dumbest idea I've heard all day. Dumbest idea I've heard all week/month. Probably the dumbest idea I've heard all year. Possibly the dumbest idea I've heard this millennium.
If you somehow overcame the technical problems with that idea, you'd instantly be the most horrible person on earth to everyone valuing liberty, free speech, due process or any related concept. You'd be in the same category of people as Oppenheimer, or possibly Hitler if you did it intentionally.
And if you didn't overcome the technical problems you'd be just another windbag full of hot air.