Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Dev Discussion #39 - Griefing
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - Griefing
What do you consider acceptable behavior in an MMO or PvP-based situation, and where do you draw the line at “griefing”?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding RNG!
UPDATE: Hi again friends! Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts on griefing! We had a blast reading through them all! Check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:
- Many players felt that repeatedly killing people (ex. low level players, spawn camping) who are unable to fight back, or those who harass and ruin the experience of another player at little to no benefit of the harasser is griefing.
- A large majority of players felt that griefing is abusing bugs, and exploiting within the game mechanics in unintended ways, tarnishing the experience of other players.
- Some players felt that griefing is okay as long as the problems caused by players can be solved by players. If the griefing requires a Community Manager, or Customer Support Representative interaction, it’s likely disruptive and unacceptable griefing.
- A few players provided examples of this:
Feeding people to mobs so they die without you getting corrupted is griefing.
“Karma Bombing” - For example, taking resources from your attacker to encourage them to attack you while you don’t fight back to increase their punishment. - Alternatively, there were many players who felt that in MMORPGS griefing can be nuanced to the etiquette of that particular MMO and community. Griefing is then determined by the community aside from anything unintended by the developers.
While there was some fantastic feedback and discussion in this thread, I think this quote expertly shows us what... strict benevolence(?) looks like ^_^
Thou shall not PK thine enemy at spawn more than 3 times, or be banned
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Comments
Nearly every system in AOC is designed to get you out there fighting in the open world. Welcome to the love of immersive gameplay friend!
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
So, yes to all the positive elements of players coming together to attack / defend in the open world AND Verra is a lot more dangerous with more realistic meaningful risks than Azeroth ever was or will be. This is why there are so many discussion / debate threads around the corruption system.
Griefing causes PvE-only and casual PvPers to rage quit.
If I get ganked when I'm not in the mood for PvP combat, I don't give a fuck what happens to the gankers afterwards.
There's a wide variety of ways to bring players together besides ganking.
What will truly bond players is working together to build and protect towns, cities and metros - which includes PvP combat without ganking...on a known schedule.
Eeeeesh, I don't share your optimistic view on gaming communities. Negative thoughts aside, we should not equate PvP with griefing, even if the former is usually the easiest way to perform the latter.
When grief play has to be addressed by players themselves it pretty much means they must out-grief the griefers.
...
I've been trying to complete my thoughts on this for the last 10 minutes but can't find anything worth saying with what I know of AoC at the moment. I'll just say that some of the proposed mechanics for the game encourage me. No predefined faction, plenty of different objectives to fight other players over, penalties coming with corruption, not knowing the health of your targeted opponent, ... My main worries are linked to power difference because of levels/equipment and numbers.
Until they watched people actually play. There was so much griefing, they toned down the PvP significantly and are now beefing up the PvE gameplay.
Ashes is being run by Steven who is a long time MMO player that loves open world PvP and large scale battles over things like open world dungeons and world bosses (which requires PvP everywhere); and, the game is actually being created by a team of developers with a long history of developing MMO's.
You should see the same people pretty regularly which means you'll know who's likely to grief you and they'll gain a reputation for being an ass to low levels and people will get joy in hunting them down.
Steven is the opposite - a player who doesn't understand the dev/production side. He's learning more each year, though.
The focus of large scale PvP battles in Ashes is on objective-based PvP combat: Caravans, Castle Sieges and Node Sieges. With Corruption outside of battlegrounds in order to curb griefing.
We still have to actually play in order to assess how well the Corruption mechanic accomplishes the dev goal.
As we've been saying every couple of months for the past 3+ years.
I've noticed some people use ganking and griefing inter-changeably almost, which strikes me as odd, so I would especially like to hear from you guys
Definitions matter, especially in forum discussions where we only have the written word to rely on.
My personal take is, it's griefing only if the intent of the player is to harass the other player, and cause anguish, through methods that are UNintended gameplay.
For AOC, which is a non-consensual PvP game, this essentially means that being killed while green, even if it's several times in a row, is not the same as being griefed if the killer doesn't cheat or exploit.
Is spawn camping griefing? Not if it's intended to be possible by the developers. It is however really bad game design, because people will understandably be frustrated and quit the game, so whether it's a green player being camped, or someone in a guild or nodewar, I would certainly hope it's possible for the dead player to respawn at a different respawn point in order to get away.
Now, if the developers find out about spawn camping being a thing, and they publicly state it's unintended, then it immediately becomes griefing, even if it is possible.
Same thing for killing lowbies over and over in guild and nodewars. It's not nice, but it's effective and it's not griefing if it is intended gameplay. It's up to the stronger players in the guild or node to protect their weaker members, until they can also grow strong. A mitigating factor here is that you can't just perma-war another guild, and it costs money. It's a set duration time probably, or until some objective is reached.
Edit: Just looked up the wikipedia definition. Should have done that first I suppose, but it essentially agrees with me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer
That is the only thing I cant stand in gaming and I hope to see accounts banned if a player reports an offender with screenshot.
Repeatedly attacking someone who is unable to fight back.
Verbally harassing people, especially if using inappropriate language (racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, religious bigotry).
Stealing a resource, treasure, and so on while another person attacks whatever is guarding it.
Grouping with people then ninja-looting.
Teaming with people in some kind of regulated match or other event, then going AFK or performing emotes.
Spamming (not gold farming stuff, that’s different, I mean just flooding chat with repetitive nonsense).
Trying to scam people.
Killing NPCs that provide services to other players, like vendors or fast travel characters.
Really, anything that might make someone to rage quit the game (briefly or permanently). I don’t just mean beating a competitor, in PvP someone has to lose, but when you do something that you know is going to upset people and not only do you not care, you want them upset, that’s griefing. That’s why it’s called griefing; you are intentionally causing grief.
I don’t consider actions that cause corruption to be griefing automatically. I think it would depend on the circumstances.
Kill a guy b/c you were walking through and you can? That's fine, wrong place wrong time happens.
Sit and camp that guy for an hour just to force them to log out? That's griefing.
Same when abusing a mechanic to troll your friends. Once is a prank, 3-5 times is griefing.
That aspect wasn't as bad as you think. As a new player you had no clue. It wasn't till end game I realized what low lvl town camping really did in terms of game play. Granted it was with a lot less consequences to the ones being killed other then a time sink. It was more of a poke the bear and get the other side mobilized for some back and forth. Usually lead to small towns being wiped clean till a major city was raided. Sometimes it would get that far sometimes it was stopped dead and you move on. I am definitely curious either way and will get back into it just to see their implementation. Might just be wishful thinking on my part or just nestalgia getting the best of me.
If someone slighted you in the past, and landed a place on your personal "kill on sight" list. It should be fine to kill that person until you feel like the debt has been restored.
If you just notice that someone has poor gear and a low skill level, and are constantly hunting them down for no reason. That to me is griefing.
Anything else should be fine. Destroy your own reputation with other players, see if I care.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
griefing is in the intention of the provoker - no hard-fast rule can perfectly single it out.
lol
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
If you disagree with me, by all means state your case
I disagree with both of you. It seems that you're both lumping many terms that by "definition" all have their own meanings.
@Nerror regarding the OP griefing on these forums should be used under the premise that the game has designed for it, as it's used in reference to the flagging system which involves spawn camping and killing low level players. In this sense I do not consider it to have further meaning than that.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Most, if not all griefing is allowed by design. It could be intended by the developers, or they lack the will, or resources to mitigate it.
I believe that before the Beta's happen, will will have a clearer understanding of the range of player to player interactions allowed.
I've played WoW starting 1.5 month after release until maybe 6 months before WotLk came out. I started out on a PvP server. The open world pvp wasn't that bad at first. You would be attacked by other players leveling in the same zone you were in or by higher levels passing by. It wasn't guarantied, sometime the other faction would would leave you alone or even help on occasions. It changed when the "honour" system came out. I was level 48 when it happened, I was now a step toward a reward, worth "mystery points" to levels 60 against who I had no chance of winning. I realized that when I was jumped by a gnome warrior 60 while my mage was level 52. The gnome charged me, I blinked out of the stunt and began casting spells after spells. The guy had gone link dead! I didn't have enough mana to kill a linkdead character... I had to finish him by wacking him with my staff. Yet I was worth points for him... Honour? Ha! I cancelled my sub a few levels later and only came back when my friends had rerolled on a PvE server. I got to rank 10 on 2 characters on that PvE server through the battlegrounds, I had a load of fun.
In WoW, attacking a low level town to draw the other high level faction is stupid. It's a coward's excuse. If one wants to fight other high levels one can simply go to a high level zone and find plenty of them there. Choosing a low level location means no real opposition for a long time while pissing off a lot of lowbies because their time is wasted and they have no other option than rely on baby sitters.
But WoW was another game.
Voice coms can be spammed (I have had the delightful experience of someone spamming a dog whistle over voice coms in Rust before....for hours....and yes I turned off voice coms but playing without it sucks).
Text can potential be used to grief but a simple ignore does wonders.
You can camp someone and specifically make their life hell in game.
All of these however I think are easily solved with in game mechanics and a solid support system from IS. Also, this game focusing on community building will heavily influence people to cooperate and work together (aside from guild v guild and server v guild). Players and guilds will have good and bad lists of players to work with or kill on sight.
It's like you are trying to day there is only one way to grief players, and the corruption system is there to prevent that.
This is blatantly not true.
Also, I agree with @Atama
Most would likely agree that being camped in one spot until you're only option is to log off would be griefing. WoW has been spectacularly bad about not realizing that there shouldn't be anytime where another player can shut down your experience in the game so hard that you literally have to leave for a few hours just for a chance to return to playing.
Especially in regards to a game that you pay monthly for.