The Escapist Presents: The Escapist On: Griefing

[Landslide]

No, griefing cannot be stopped. Not like the guy said in the video, like just log out, go have a drink or something and when you come back, hopefully the giefer already left. That's cowardice. If you give in to the griefer, he already won, because the ultimate goal of a griefer is to ruin everyone else's fun to his own amusement. And if he manages to aggravate you to the point you quit the game, that's the victory dance for the griefer, because he defeated you, he proved that you are a n00b, you suck and he is the ultimate demigod of [insert game]. You won't ruin his fun by getting angry, and certainly not by (even indirectly) admitting defeat, in fact, you are making him stronger.

Griefer lives off of the...well...grief of their victims, it's in the name. If you take that away from him, he loses interest. The griefer feeds off of the pain, aggravation and misery of other players, but if you don't show any of that, soon he'll lose interest and move on. The best way to make a griefer leave, is to pay absolutely no attention to him. Mute him on voice chat and ignore everything he does. This is good for two reasons. One, you are not enabling him, and two, you won't get angry and ruin your own fun. Sure, you are a level 4 Nobody on the server, and he is a lvl 86 Warrior/Mage/Awesome and he killed you in one hit "kekeke! LOL n00b!"'d you, looted your lifeless corpse and left looking for other prey. Was that unfair? Sure. Was that evil? Yes. Can you do anything about it? No. So why get aggravated? You'll just making him have more fun, if you run around cursing his name. Accept the fact that such bastards exist, ignore the hell out of him, and try to have fun with the other, normal people on the server.

You're kind of contradicting yourself here. You tell people they shouldn't 'give up' in the face of griefing, because capitulating only encourages the offender. You then go on to say the only solution is to chill out and accept it as a part of the game.

I was the dude in the video, complaining about the EVE douche that got all my ISK. I'm angry at him, sure. I mean, I know what he did, I understand the thinking behind it. He made the price the same as normal, and tacked on zeroes, hoping no one would notice. It's a pretty standard method for people in EVE to snooker others out of extra cash. Like in my case. I was equally angry at myself for not paying attention. Whoops. Buyer beware. People do the same thing on Ebay.

Anyway, I maintain the only way to 'beat' a griefer is to log off, or leave the area, or do whatever it takes to get away. It's not cowardice. It's apathy for dealing with some nitwit.

I'm not interested if this doesn't stop the griefer, or change his ways, or bolsters his self-esteem, convincing himself that he accomplished something by making me go away. I'm not playing the game to combat griefers and griefing. I'm playing to have fun. When I stop having fun - for whatever reason - I stop playing the game. As you can imagine, I play many, many games, and almost never stick with an MMOG for more than a couple of months.

Fun for me in multiplayer games comes from pitting my personal skills against someone else out there in the world. The closer two MMOG characters are in level and skill, the more victory is defendant on the person, rather than their character's stats and gear. That's what's fun for me. When that's not there, or is taken from me by some griefer, I log off and do something else, or play something else.

 

[jdenicholls]

To be honest griefing is all part of the fun of gaming. Sometimes you get griefed, sometimes you grief. It never gets THAT bad to actually warrant a major discussion on it. If it does you need to chill out and stop taking it so seriously.

 

[APPCRASH]

Griefers UNITE! If we can't have fun, neither can you.

 

[Uncompetative]

This suggests that the scoring for the game should ideally take note of this sort of behaviour and not award points to people who do this.

i.e. no Flag Capture bonus if you have betrayed a team-mate during the game.

So if I'm shooting rockets at someone and some retard runs in front of them, I'm not supposed to get any points?

If you aimed at them first, yes. If the rocket was in-flight for some time and they moved into its path, tough luck for them. They should have heard it coming. This stuff could be programmed.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Ah... Everquest trains. The memories, the horrid, horrid memories...

 

[Slycne]

Ah... Everquest trains. The memories, the horrid, horrid memories...

Train to zone!

 

[incal11]

This suggests that the scoring for the game should ideally take note of this sort of behaviour and not award points to people who do this.

i.e. no Flag Capture bonus if you have betrayed a team-mate during the game.

So if I'm shooting rockets at someone and some retard runs in front of them, I'm not supposed to get any points?

If you aimed at them first, yes. If the rocket was in-flight for some time and they moved into its path, tough luck for them. They should have heard it coming. This stuff could be programmed.

Battlefield: Bad Company would be another good example.

I once accidentally got a suicide and a teamkill when I where trying to throw a grenade through a window but hit that cross that goes through the windows in that game so it bounced back and killed us.

Should that also remove all of my points?

I really doubt that it would be easy to do this kind of thing..

The easy way around that would be to make it so friendly fire doesn't hurt.
I'm surprised that not all FPS multiplayers do this...

 

[CaptainCrunch]

This suggests that the scoring for the game should ideally take note of this sort of behaviour and not award points to people who do this.

i.e. no Flag Capture bonus if you have betrayed a team-mate during the game.

So if I'm shooting rockets at someone and some retard runs in front of them, I'm not supposed to get any points?

If you aimed at them first, yes. If the rocket was in-flight for some time and they moved into its path, tough luck for them. They should have heard it coming. This stuff could be programmed.

It's great, in theory, but getting a computer to understand a human's intent is even harder than getting a judge to convict a bad guy with a good lawyer. We humans have a great luxury in our ability to be deceptive. Herein lies the function of the griefer: to force the gaming world to think about solving new problems. Applying a new consequence to a grief tactic will only create a newer, potentially more annoying grief tactic.

I would even go so far as to say a completely grief-proof game would probably be no fun for anyone. In this perfect game, all elements of randomness become useless. A game in any form is a collection of random numbers, and some functions applied to those numbers. Reducing the number of random numbers or increasing the number of functions makes a game turn into a process, which is likely to be as un-fun as it sounds.

So, just relax already. Griefing is a normal part of the world we live in, and in the gaming world too. It isn't as much of a menace as the outspoken whiners would have you think.

 

[Yuriatayde]

Ugh, 8 minutes into the movie and I've finally found something to make me sleepy enough to go to bed. This is really boring, and... all I've caught thusfar is a bunch of people saying "Griefing is bad and makes me feel bad D="

I needed to go to sleep anyway, so, I guess that's a recommendation for this video.

 

[incal11]

This suggests that the scoring for the game should ideally take note of this sort of behaviour and not award points to people who do this.

i.e. no Flag Capture bonus if you have betrayed a team-mate during the game.

So if I'm shooting rockets at someone and some retard runs in front of them, I'm not supposed to get any points?

If you aimed at them first, yes. If the rocket was in-flight for some time and they moved into its path, tough luck for them. They should have heard it coming. This stuff could be programmed.

Battlefield: Bad Company would be another good example.

I once accidentally got a suicide and a teamkill when I where trying to throw a grenade through a window but hit that cross that goes through the windows in that game so it bounced back and killed us.

Should that also remove all of my points?

I really doubt that it would be easy to do this kind of thing..

The easy way around that would be to make it so friendly fire doesn't hurt.
I'm surprised that not all FPS multiplayers do this...

Not gonna happen, not when they want realism.

I can't see team fortress 2 as realistic, and friendly fire hurt you there , I take it (I don't play it myself), I see no reason why this couldn't be applied there.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Oh ho! Interesting theories I see here! And nice to see the handsome face of our own CantFakeTheFunk. Although one of these days I'm hoping to see the beautiful face of Queen Susan of Ponyland.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Personaly I'd define greifing as doing somthing with the intent of cuasing harm to another person (in this case emotional harm,anger,annoyence,ect.).

The non-gamming term for this is sadist.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Oh ho! Interesting theories I see here! And nice to see the handsome face of our own CantFakeTheFunk. Although one of these days I'm hoping to see the beautiful face of Queen Susan of Ponyland.

Susan is in this video.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/628-Escapist-On-Gaming-Addiction

 

[Tharticus]

This is a good video about griefing. People who does griefing is like dealing with trolls on the forums. They are pests.

 

[black lincon]

I really am liking these escapist ons. I hope they keep getting made.

Also, Mr. Funk, you sound eerily similar to someone I know. You also sort of look like him with shorter hair.

 

[Playbahnosh]

You're kind of contradicting yourself here. You tell people they shouldn't 'give up' in the face of griefing, because capitulating only encourages the offender. You then go on to say the only solution is to chill out and accept it as a part of the game.

Capitulating and ignoring is two different things. Yes, you should hold your ground against the griefer in the form of total and absolute ignorance. Don't show how angry, sad or riled up you are, because that makes the griefer happy. Just simply pretend he doesn't exist at all. If you can get the whole server to act like the griefer is not even there, he will soon lose interest and leave. It works. But if you react to the griefer in any way, thus acknowledging his existence and enabling him (simply, everything you do because of him, like getting angry, cursing at him, rage quitting...etc, is enabling), he will continue ruining the game until everyone fun is ruined. That's what I meant.

I was the dude in the video, complaining about the EVE douche that got all my ISK. I'm angry at him, sure. I mean, I know what he did, I understand the thinking behind it. He made the price the same as normal, and tacked on zeroes, hoping no one would notice. It's a pretty standard method for people in EVE to snooker others out of extra cash. Like in my case. I was equally angry at myself for not paying attention. Whoops. Buyer beware. People do the same thing on Ebay.

No offense, but that was clearly your fault. You made an error in judgment, simple as that. As you said, "Buyer beware". In a game like this, you should expect scammers and double-checking everything should be second nature after playing as long as you say you did. Making one single bad call can end in a disaster, been there done that. I've been scammed out of quite a lot of virtual currency at the beginning of my online gaming "career" myself. But, as they say "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me", and I guess this wasn't the first time someone tried to scam you. I'm not trying to rub salt into the wound, but this is not griefing, this is textbook "scamming".

Anyway, I maintain the only way to 'beat' a griefer is to log off, or leave the area, or do whatever it takes to get away. It's not cowardice. It's apathy for dealing with some nitwit.

Well, that one way to deal with the problem, I agree, but it's not a solution. It's deflecting. I see you tend to think about online multiplayer games as "singleplayer, but with a talking AI". "If I'm not having fun, than I go, and let the others deal with the problem." I only play FPSs online, I'm not a MUMORPUGER kinda guy, so I talk about small servers here, like in CS:S. I tend to think about it as a community. If a griefer comes in and starts to ruin our fun, then we should do something about it. If the server collectively holds the ground and ignores the hell out of the griefer, he will leave eventually seeing that he won't have much fun, since clearly he can't ruin our game. By defending everyone else's fun, you help the community and will get many friends.

just my $0.02

 

[Uncompetative]

This suggests that the scoring for the game should ideally take note of this sort of behaviour and not award points to people who do this.

i.e. no Flag Capture bonus if you have betrayed a team-mate during the game.

So if I'm shooting rockets at someone and some retard runs in front of them, I'm not supposed to get any points?

If you aimed at them first, yes. If the rocket was in-flight for some time and they moved into its path, tough luck for them. They should have heard it coming. This stuff could be programmed.

Battlefield: Bad Company would be another good example.

I once accidentally got a suicide and a teamkill when I where trying to throw a grenade through a window but hit that cross that goes through the windows in that game so it bounced back and killed us.

Should that also remove all of my points?

I really doubt that it would be easy to do this kind of thing..

If you die as well by your actions, that could be considered an accident - so you would only be marked as a betrayer if you survived.