Definition of Griefing

For me it was mainly just the community around the game and the fact that I started playing it at an early age. Lineage 2 had roughly the same flagging system and had all kinds of griefing methods. But the community (at least the one I was a part of) just treated it like it is - just a game. There's literally no reason to get mad at a game.

People might reply to that with "but they waste my time and I don't have much of that", to which I'd say "I was a 12y.o. who could only play in a PC cafe on a very limited budget (1-2h a day, if that) and one death would set me back several hours". If I could live through that w/o getting mad at a simple game - your grown ass better be able to too.

NiKr wrote: »

For me it was mainly just the community around the game and the fact that I started playing it at an early age. Lineage 2 had roughly the same flagging system and had all kinds of griefing methods. But the community (at least the one I was a part of) just treated it like it is - just a game. There's literally no reason to get mad at a game.

People might reply to that with "but they waste my time and I don't have much of that", to which I'd say "I was a 12y.o. who could only play in a PC cafe on a very limited budget (1-2h a day, if that) and one death would set me back several hours". If I could live through that w/o getting mad at a simple game - your grown ass better be able to too.

A reminder that you possibly have a very specific rarer psychological profile.

This is the equivalent of telling someone to 'git gud' irl.

I actually am pretty aware that as the community stands now, it explicitly intends to include any people with social anxieties, specific types of 'anger issues', etc.

Ashes isn't for everyone.

As always I say, don't do it UNNECESSARILY. If the game's design does not NEED to exclude people with such issues for it to function, then find a way not to.

Azherae wrote: »

A reminder that you possibly have a very specific rarer psychological profile.

This is the equivalent of telling someone to 'git gud' irl.

I actually am pretty aware that as the community stands now, it explicitly intends to include any people with social anxieties, specific types of 'anger issues', etc.

Ashes isn't for everyone.

As always I say, don't do it UNNECESSARILY. If the game's design does not NEED to exclude people with such issues for it to function, then find a way not to.

But that would mean that the whole community had roughly the same profile. And while that is a possibility and it might've just come down to the overall cultural features of the community, I do feel like Ashes would definitely appeal to a broader audience (at least if they deliver on most promises).

But I get what you're saying. And Steven hopes that his changes will limit griefing to a big extent and anything on top of that would be caught by GMs, though I feel like Steven himself might have a profile similar to mine so his base understanding of what "griefing" is might not match what other people think of when they hear the words quoted in the OP.

We'll have to see how it works out closer to release. That is if the community doesn't implode on itself before that, which is definitely a possibility considering the current design and all the potential prospects of how the newcomers would react to that design when they learn about the game (and the counter reaction of the oldtimers).

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

A reminder that you possibly have a very specific rarer psychological profile.

This is the equivalent of telling someone to 'git gud' irl.

I actually am pretty aware that as the community stands now, it explicitly intends to include any people with social anxieties, specific types of 'anger issues', etc.

Ashes isn't for everyone.

As always I say, don't do it UNNECESSARILY. If the game's design does not NEED to exclude people with such issues for it to function, then find a way not to.

But that would mean that the whole community had roughly the same profile. And while that is a possibility and it might've just come down to the overall cultural features of the community, I do feel like Ashes would definitely appeal to a broader audience (at least if they deliver on most promises).

But I get what you're saying. And Steven hopes that his changes will limit griefing to a big extent and anything on top of that would be caught by GMs, though I feel like Steven himself might have a profile similar to mine so his base understanding of what "griefing" is might not match what other people think of when they hear the words quoted in the OP.

We'll have to see how it works out closer to release. That is if the community doesn't implode on itself before that, which is definitely a possibility considering the current design and all the potential prospects of how the newcomers would react to that design when they learn about the game (and the counter reaction of the oldtimers).

In my experience this is EXACTLY what happens to games.

By natural selection, after about 5 months, all remaining serious players of a game tend to have the same psychological profile if the game contains real strain-points.

Then you have to reset the whole thing to 'make new players feel like it is worth joining'. This is not from this genre, though. So maybe it doesn't apply to MMOs. Let's hope it doesn't apply to MMOs.

We have not received permission from maouw to share the quoted post.

You say this is really clear.

I disagree to the point of being concerned about it, for the same reason you mentioned.

I go out into the world, I see someone I don't like, I notice they are also doing something that has only the tiniest minimal chance of affecting my profits.

I bother them anyway. Every time. I want them to leave my Node so I keep bothering them.

Unless Intrepid's stance is 'you can push someone out of your Node but going after them consistently beyond that is harrassment', idk what they want here.

The idea IS explicitly to 'hound them out of the Node' in my mind. I figured Ashes would work because 'exiling a player from your area' wouldn't stop them from playing the game.

Of course I want a response from them. I want them to leave the Node (or get others to tell ME to leave instead). Increasing their ability to remain calm about it probably just frustrates ME. It doesn't involve any 'story', it doesn't cause any 'growth', it's just the same old dumb stalemate with people annoying each other 'just slightly less than the rules say isn't allowed'.

I think that community type is more toxic ON AVERAGE in the long run than one where you can grief someone out of an AREA, and Ashes has the almost-unique design where 'there is always another area to go to'.

We have not received permission from maouw to share the quoted post.

It's moreso that the 'fight or flight' response happens in nearly any unexpected situation for most humans, and even if the frustration part does not happen, that reaction can linger easily.

More importantly, I'm sort of saying the opposite.

I believe that people grow faster when they are NOT given the impression that they should 'toughen up'.

They should run away FIRST, then do that. And rational decisions to leave therefore can also come after. As the player with the intention to strain and 'push out', all that would happen if the game added more ways for people to stay calm and stick around BEYOND the current 'TTK is high, you can fight back' and 'group up and try with a group'...

Is that I must now 'make the person more miserable in more targeted and serious ways' if I want them to leave the area, if I don't want a stalemate. I don't think that's good. Maybe it's hard to explain but, it is close to 'fail faster'.

Your nodemates don't like you and kill you randomly when you try to level in the dungeon? Sure, try to work out why once or twice, but after that, I think it's better if you move on sooner and 'accept that you didn't really belong there'. In a big game with lots of content, 'sticking around a dungeon that you keep getting killed in' (since we're talking about the Griefing tier of behaviour) because the game 'gives you tools that are supposed to make you feel less stressed about it', seems like a bad outcome to me, not a good one.

We have not received permission from maouw to share the quoted post.

Well, to answer the question better, I think...

Usually a game has this 'baked into the core systems' for me.

I'll give three situations, one from Elite Dangerous, one from Absolver, and one from BDO.

When someone chooses to attack you in Elite Dangerous, you're almost always in a situation where you can 'avoid the situation' to an extent, and even if you don't have the skill or build to do so at step 1, you should probably have the ability to do it on step 2.

If you don't, it doesn't feel like 'the player is doing something they shouldn't be doing'. They might be attacking you for no 'real reason' other than being a ganker, and they might definitely set you back, but the game's NPCs do this just as often, and you're in comparable danger if you're the sort of player that has the tier of skill or ship that even CAN be 'griefed'. Other than that, it's relatively difficult to do this, so it's easy to stay chill about it when it does happen, it's just 'part of the game'.

In Absolver, you can be attacked anytime by any player, but there is no loss for this. If anything you're encouraged to fight. But I've had situations where people attack in the middle of trying to do something else against a PvE 'boss' or similar. The situation I refer to today, though, was two players who 'ran up to me and indicated they wanted to fight'. Now, being really used to this game, I expected a 1v1 and it started that way, but then the other jumped in.

Then, because you can 'raise' your opponent after you beat them, they did this. I thought this was it. They did the 'raise' and I took it, and they immediately started to BOTH attack again. Then beat me, then did some taunt emotes, then did it again. About... five more times I think. I let them, because... I don't even know what they wanted. It has no benefit to either them or me, but I can see how this sort of thing would be very annoying to a specific type of person. Except that there's no real loss in the game of that specific type. It's moreso 'you are unable to make progress when you lose a fight'. The only loss is potential gains from winning. So while I could have 'not accepted their raise', I just kept going with it because I pity this sort of person.

In BDO, same situation as above. I think it was entirely valid because I think these were Guild War opponents. I left town, they instakilled me because it's BDO and TTK with TWO attackers when you are stupidly in gathering/riding gear is instant. I had other things to do and was not planning on doing anything serious anyway so I just logged off, I didn't feel like 'giving them kills to check if I outgeared them enough to win'.

The last one is the closest to 'griefing' but the previous counts too in parallel. The Absolver players probably DID just want to 'laugh at potentially making someone else miserable' so I just let them imagine whatever they liked until I actually needed to prep for stream.

The BDO pair was doing what the game wants them to do. I can't complain at them, it's BDO that is broken. So I was pretty 'mad'. If you combine the two situations, where it was 'Two people attacking because the game says they benefit from doing so', and 'These two people can keep attacking over and over', I'm pretty sure it's the game that is trash, EVEN if the players are like the ones from the Absolver example.

But much like Dygz, the thing that keeps me calmest when being griefed is that I 'die quickly' and 'my opponent gains little for continuing after the first such death'. Because if the game isn't terrible, I always have a counter to anything on the 'griefing' tier, and if the game IS terrible, who cares?