quote: The first step is identifying them. My ideas is to have each player has a buffer that records their gameplay for the last minute. If you act like an ass and someone reports you, both your and the reporter's log gets saved and sent to an admin's inbox.

The fact that all my actions are being recorded and can be held against me really takes away from the sense of freedom that I want MMO games to give me.
I really think that any system that requires heavy use of admins is a sign of a bad solution.

quote: Finally, after a couple of months, give the person that was banned a single chance to reedem themselves in writing. If they can give some coherrant reasons why they should be allowed back into the game, let them in. Their previous characters should still be lost and they will have to start over.

Sounds like a whole lot of the money that I'm paying to play the game goes towards administrative costs. Who's going to handle all these cases? Who's going to read all these letters of redemption?

Fix the design, don't fix the players. You simply can not control each and every player's actions.

Someone's shouting obscenity in my vicinity? I'll personally handle the matter by letting my avatar kick some butt.

Someone's stealing items? I'll let me avatar kick some butt.

Someone's forming gangs? I'll let my avatar and my group of avatar friends will kick some butt.

Someone's cheating? I'll let my avatar kick some butt.

Someone's going on reckless murdering sprees? I'll let my avatar kick some butt.

Two words: PERMANENT DEATH .

That's really all you need to take care of ANY gamebane problems.


[edited by - Silvermyst on November 26, 2002 2:22:04 PM]

Has anybody here read "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein? The way a lawless society regulates itself is through murder and intimidation. MMORPGs are essentially a lwaless society, so in which case you have to present a means for the devilish little creatures to get their come-up-ins. Of course, P-Suit sabotage probably wont fit in medieval based MMORPGs, but theres always altering the mindset of your game''s rules. Allow player-killing for instance, but maybe plaster a message to all players "BOBTHE455H013 has just killed Marcusnewbietriesrealhard." Or giving that message to everyone in a guild, and encourage competition between guilds... would lead to some interesting in game riots.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

quote: The way a lawless society regulates itself is through murder and intimidation.

Count me in!

Btw, can''t wait to see what Shadowbane will be like.

MMOs are more and more like real life.

So you need a law system and therefore police, court and of course lawyers :-).
Guilds could encourage and help players in justice and so on.
Maybe there are police troops.
The police could consist of some admins and free players.
You''ll get bribery too, but that''s the world.

In extreme cases you could create a prison too.


schiggl

Interesting response so far. May I offer critique? Perhaps I can expand on these ideas, and formulate a list of possible approaches.

Naaga: It is an option to open the game to all forms of play and leave the game wild and free. However, this means the grief players will be the only ones having fun... so you''ll have a game of nothing but grief players. If you fancy the idea of a community of violent, foulmouthed brats, this solution works just fine. However, if you as a game designer would like to create anything other than that, this isn''t really a solution so much as an admission of defeat. Creating a game which accepts and encourages some level of grief play is like creating a web forum which accepts and encourages some level of trolling. Trolls will love it; there''s nothing they like so much as flinging vitriol back and forth. I doubt anyone else will want to stick around, though.

Taulin: Who runs the court? Remember, if there is a position which a player can attain from which punishment (grief) can be levied against others, a grief player will seek to attain that position. They''re not just mean, they''re crafty too. However, it would be more feasible to have the player judges regulate the public, and have the administrators oversee the judges. In that sense, it might work... but the judges must conform to a higher standard, and the administrators must make sure they do.

Khaile: Instead of having administrators "mute" a particular grief player, which requires administrators identifying the player, it may be more feasible to include, as you said, an "ignore" command, and let players take the initiative. It may be possible to build a ranking system, which ranks players by the number of other players who are ignoring them, and then give the players the option to automatically ignore anyone with more than a certain percentage of players manually ignoring him. Thus, players who cross a certain tolerability threshold will find themselves shunned by the entire community.

This works well for text-based games as you said, but not as well for games where there are other methods of interaction (and therefore other ways to be annoying). How would you deal with a player who stands in a narrow door, or blocks the path of other players, or attacks them or steals or breaks their possessions? You could extend this idea further: give players the option to "shun" other players, thus ignoring their speech, and when enough players "shun" a given player he becomes a "ghost": he cannot interact in any way with players, and cannot see or be seen by them. In effect he is in his own private limbo. It might be fitting to have all shunned players share the same "limbo space", effectively creating two worlds: one of polite players, and an otherworld of griefers. Of course, the limbo threshold must be adjusted very carefully. Too high, and it becomes hard to get griefers out of your face; too low, and griefers will band together and banish everybody into limbo, including each other, so there''s no refuge from their idiocy.

I can understand ideological opposition to banning; it''s sort of like ideological opposition to capital punishment, arguing from the idea that irreversible punishment is too harsh and too risky. Harsh, because it prevents those who repent from returning to society; risky, because it may punish the wrong person in such a way as to make it impossible to correct the mistake. I don''t like capital punishment myself, and oppose it in theory, but some people sure do seem like wastes of oxygen. It''s the same way for banning - easy to oppose in general, tempting to support in specific cases.

MatrixCubed: Given my reasoning above, I would guess you support the death penalty as well. Harsh punishment is definitely one way to deal with grief players once they''ve been identified. But how do you plan to find them?

SilverMyst: I again return to my forum trolls analogy. How can you make trolls a "feature" of a forum? Admittedly, some people are amused by being mocked and/or duped in clever and inventive ways... but some aren''t. You win all the people who like being abused, and lose all the ones who don''t. I''d say it''s a net loss.

The critical problem as I see it is that grief players will tend to resist being folded into the structure of the game. You mention that griefers will make a set of believable villains. Would that it were so. The difficulty here is that you want to structure the game around a system of heroes and villains, and you will probably therefore attempt to create a balanced system so that the heroes and villains meet in fair and enjoyable conflict. Remember, most players do want to have fun when they''re playing a game. The problem is that griefers will try to avoid playing into your structure, because doing so means that they''re playing the game right and letting others have fun, which is not their goal. Instead, they will probably attempt to coopt any balancing system by joining a team and then using their team insider status to hinder their team''s efforts. Can you think of a way to prevent this? Think like a bastard.

core: I agree that a system of player self-government is called for. But again: Who becomes judges? Who levies bounties? Who collects them? If the answer to any of the above questions can be "grief players", you might have some trouble on your hands... because if a grief player can wield power over another player, he will.

Dino: Once again, who watches the watchers? You seem to assume that only non-grief players will become Heroes, when in fact griefers will lust after the power to ruin others... and will play very nice until they get that power. The Admins will probably want to watch these "Heroes" very carefully, but again, this is easier than watching all the players.

Korvan: Good point on the corrupt Heroes. But as for the reporting thing: who will wade through all those complaints? Admins? Especially since griefers will probably flood the complaint box with constant reports of everyone they meet. Nothing like making the Admin''s day worse even as you cloud your tracks.

Silvermyst again: I agree that a solution which tasks the admins with handling the players directly is not a scalable and therefore not a feasible solution. However, self-policing with violence, as you suggest, has its problems too. The most obvious of these is that those not capable of bringing the smack have no ability to assert their rights. Now, will grief players be able to bring the smack? You bet they will, with the experience and loot gained from back-alley murder. Furthermore, they will probably have a league of griefer friends who will wait patiently for you to take a side street, then leap upon you and pound you flat. Permanent Death. Ouch. Now you and your combat monkey buddies may do the same to them, and you might even hold your own. But who looks out for the little guy? You guys? Well, you do realize they might be nascent griefers taking advantage of your patronage until they''re tough enough to spit in your face and join the other side. Meanwhile, the opposition is chewing through newbies like popcorn. Not much fun there.

It might work, and it might not. I can''t say for sure. I don''t think it will, though.

Inmate2993: Broadcasting crimes might be a deterrent... but I don''t know if interfactional warfare will be. There are two potential problems I see: the first, as mentioned before, would be a griefer gleefully sabotaging his "own team", and the second would be a griefer combat monkey guild who happily crush all other organizations when not engaged in internal warfare. Still, it''s a start.

In Summary

The key thing to remember about grief players is that they''re not interested in playing your game. They''re playing their own game, and its only rule is that the rules are irrelevant and the misery of other players is the only real goal. If what they''re doing makes the game more enjoyable for others, they''ll stop doing it and find something that makes the game less enjoyable. Integrating grief play into a game design is a contradiction in terms in my opinion: the whole point of grief play is that it attempts to disrupt the design. Griefers want to bring your game down, and you should keep this in mind when thinking about how to identify, control, and/or remove them. They''re like script kiddies: without elegance, without a desire to understand, explore, or play along, with only a desire to ruin.

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

quote: I again return to my forum trolls analogy. How can you make trolls a "feature" of a forum? Admittedly, some people are amused by being mocked and/or duped in clever and inventive ways... but some aren''t.

Well, you can’t just make trolls a feature of current forums. I guess you’d have to create an entirely new type of forums, one where you start the design with the trolls in mind from the very first moment. Not sure if it’s possible, but I certainly think it’s possible in gaming.
I don’t think forum trolls are much of a problem. Like you said, some people are somewhat amused by it even, and those that aren’t should really just learn to ignore it. I mean, if you can’t ignore postings on the web by anonymous people against your anonymous self, I can’t even begin to think how you respond to criticism or grieving words in real life.

quote: The critical problem as I see it is that grief players will tend to resist being folded into the structure of the game.

I didn’t say it was easy, but I do think it’s possible to create a game where griefers that want nothing else but ruin the gaming pleasure of others, will find that they have very little room to maneuver. They’ll try A, and find that other players can counter with a simple B. When they try B, they’ll find that their victims can counter with C. And so on. They will even find that those that they thought would be defenseless victims, actually stand up against them (PvP and permanent death).

quote: You mention that griefers will make a set of believable villains. Would that it were so. The difficulty here is that you want to structure the game around a system of heroes and villains, and you will probably therefore attempt to create a balanced system so that the heroes and villains meet in fair and enjoyable conflict.

No, I don’t expect anything of players, but I count on the worst. The design should function in the complete absence of griefers, it should also function if 99% of all players are griefers, and everything in between.

Remember, most players do want to have fun when they''re playing a game. The problem is that griefers will try to avoid playing into your structure, because doing so means that they''re playing the game right and letting others have fun, which is not their goal.

There should not be a way to play the game right in the first place. Complete freedom is what’s needed. In a completely free system, griefers will be a welcome addition to the game.
The one requirement is that you absolutely need to give victims enough weapons to defend themselves, but once that is achieved, I think a virtual world feels much more alive with the danger of human intelligence being used against your avatar. I personally don’t like AI opponents.

quote: Instead, they will probably attempt to coopt any balancing system by joining a team and then using their team insider status to hinder their team''s efforts. Can you think of a way to prevent this? Think like a bastard.

Do I want to prevent that? Let players take care of it. Their combined minds are much smarter than I as the single designer will ever be. That avatar that teamed up with me and suddenly struck me in the back during combat, taking my possessions… I’ll get you!
That avatar that joined our team, and of which we only recently found out that he is in fact a spy, relaying information to our arch enemies, causing many, many deaths in our guild… We’ll track him down. To prevent it from happening again, we’ll have to find a good solution. Perhaps we should interview new additions from now on. We’ll find a way to solve this problem.

quote: I agree that a solution which tasks the admins with handling the players directly is not a scalable and therefore not a feasible solution. However, self-policing with violence, as you suggest, has its problems too. The most obvious of these is that those not capable of bringing the smack have no ability to assert their rights.

Too bad. They’ll have to find a way. I’m not going to create rules for the majority to protect the minority. I’m already sick and tired of the way my government makes me suffer, enslaving me to a lifetime of hard labor to ‘protect’ the less fortunate. I’m certainly not going to do like them.

quote: Now, will grief players be able to bring the smack? You bet they will, with the experience and loot gained from back-alley murder.

Yeah, but with permanent death, they can only make one mistake. If they attack one avatar too many, all that experience and loot will be lost. Permanent death simply is a good defense against griefers. They can kill 1, 2, 3, maybe even tens of victims, but eventually they’ll die themselves.

quote: Furthermore, they will probably have a league of griefer friends who will wait patiently for you to take a side street, then leap upon you and pound you flat.

Well, as a defenseless victim, perhaps you should team up with some friends of your own. Don’t go into back alleys alone.

quote: Permanent Death. Ouch. Now you and your combat monkey buddies may do the same to them, and you might even hold your own. But who looks out for the little guy? You guys?

Little guys will have to find other little guys until they are no longer little guys. If they don’t want to bother with that, good luck to them.

quote: Well, you do realize they might be nascent griefers taking advantage of your patronage until they''re tough enough to spit in your face and join the other side.

Yep. But intrigue like that is what creates flavor. It also makes players loyal to their real friends.

quote: Meanwhile, the opposition is chewing through newbies like popcorn. Not much fun there.

A permanent death system goes hand in hand with a fast gain of power. You will really only be a newbie the first time you play the game. If your character dies, your new character will start from scratch yes, but after only a short playing time, you’ll be powerful enough again to at least enable you to defend yourself and evade enemies.

quote: The key thing to remember about grief players is that they''re not interested in playing your game. They''re playing their own game, and its only rule is that the rules are irrelevant and the misery of other players is the only real goal.

As soon as a player buys a game, it becomes their game. It is only MY game when I am playing it. Make up your own mind about how you want to play. Make your own rules and morals. Griefers eat your heart out. Attack newbies. Kill in groups. If that’s what you enjoy, go ahead. You think you’re ruining the game for others, but really, your very presence only heightens my own gaming enjoyment.

quote: If what they''re doing makes the game more enjoyable for others, they''ll stop doing it and find something that makes the game less enjoyable. Integrating grief play into a game design is a contradiction in terms in my opinion: the whole point of grief play is that it attempts to disrupt the design.

I’ll give you that. But again, I’m not EXPECTING the presence of griefers. I’m just keeping it in mind. The game will function with or without them. Gameplay will be different from month to month. First, griefers might try to find ways to abuse and destroy. They’ll figure out that they’re only making the game better by their destructive actions, so they’ll stop. The world will be a pleasant place for the players that stay behind. A few months later a new wave of griefers might give it a try. Perhaps they are successful, shifting the soul of the game towards a gloomy atmosphere. Non-griefers will unite to fight off the threat, or not.

quote: Griefers want to bring your game down, and you should keep this in mind when thinking about how to identify, control, and/or remove them. They''re like script kiddies: without elegance, without a desire to understand, explore, or play along, with only a desire to ruin.

And they’re very stubborn. They won’t easily give up. That’s the one aspect of their character I find interesting and think useful. They’ll keep trying.

Something caught my eye in the original message:

quote: A reasonably rigorous system, which guides behavior by meting out in-game rewards for proper behavior, and in-game punishments for improper behavior

I''d like to leave behind such terms as ''proper'' and ''improper'' as a designer. Let gamers themselves determine what they find proper and improper, don''t impose those morals on gamers as a designer. Don''t guide behavior. Let it roam freely.

To make a system like the one I want work, existing ideas need to be left behind. We have to start from scratch. And yes, we might find out that it in fact doesn’t work. But, what if it does?

I like the idea of a ''shun'' dimension. Even in real life, the best way to handle a lot of idiots is to just ignore them. If they go into a limbo area, it will cut down on the grief PvP. While 1 shun may not send them into the plane, 20 might, and every person you piss off would add to that count. Once you enter the other plane, you are only left with other griefers.

I think if a player is caught cheating, they should get sent to the shun plane also.

What would be allowed in the shunland? If they found an exploit, then they may still do it in shunland. So maybe you can not earn exp. there?

Another question is, how do you get back?

I hate banning, no matter what a player does. The game rules were set in code. If a player can do something, then they should do it. Handling the situation is what we are discussing here. But if players are sent to the shun plane, what would allow them to return?

1) Take away levels/exp? No, they can just earn those back so it is not a deterrent.

2) A time limit? No, because people would either not play are get angry that they are paying for a game they can not fully play.

3) A quest!! I think this would do it. Not only are quests part of the game, but it would make them have to actually play the game for a while. If they do not care about completing the quest, then they will just stop playing. They could not Troll around either. What would they say in the forums "This game sucks because I had to complete a quest after pissing off 20 people". I think that sounds fair, and I would tell them to take off.

I can see it now, some guy is in the middle of a town shouting out obscenities. A group of people gather around him and shun him at the same time. He then slowly fades away...
The grief player will see everything blur, and some NPC will appear and give him a quest. Other players, and creatures, in the world appear as ghosts, and he can not interact with anything at all. His quest is to climb to some distant mountain and bring back a cup or something. Seeing the land may make him appreciate the game, or make him loose his habit of making everyone angry.

SilverMyst: Thank you. You''ve given me a lot to chew on, and I don''t just mean volume of text.

I think we''re coming on a fundamental difference of philosophy here. Who should be able to set the tone of the game, and decide on the nature of the community? I have been acting on the decision that it is the designer who can and should do this. You, on the other hand, feel this role is to be taken by the players. I''m a control freak; you''re an anarchist (relatively speaking of course).

Looking at it another way, I want to create the system. You want to create the tools and give them to the players, so they construct their own system or systems. I''m not sure which is "better"; probably each approach will attract different sorts of players.

I''m not a big fan of the combat, and am not interested in bringing law to the masses by sword and fire - yes, I''m one of those fruity "role-players" who complain that there''s nothing to do but fight monsters, as if it were a bad thing. Hence my aversion to the rude and bloody minded.

Well, you have fun with your iron-fisted empire building... I''ll be over with the other hippies in our art commune. No offense, I''m just guessing we''re not going to be able to see eye-to-eye on this one, unless you can figure out some way for my limp-wristed pansy elf harpist to survive in your nature red in tooth and claw...

Now if you can, then I''d be most intrigued.

Taulin: I was intrigued by a particular statement in your reply:

"The game rules were set in code. If a player can do something, then they should do it."

I answer with this old saw:

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Just because I can punch the guy next to me in the face doesn''t mean I ought to. And if I punch too many people they don''t let me play anymore. Still, you''re probably right in that banning is often too severe.

In re exploits: An exploit or cheat is a bug and needs fixing; to me that''s a different issue than grief play (although grief players are likely to use exploits to full effect if they can find them).

In re getting out of shunland: I don''t like option 3. If its interesting, a quest is a reward, not a punishment; imagine people actively misbehaving to get shunned, so they can do the redemption quest! If it''s a terribly boring one, then it becomes like option 2, only worse, because you have to actually pay attention to the game and can''t just have your character sit through his imprisonment while you go read a book.

My thought is that the duration of your internment in shunland should be determined by the people you peeved. Here''s one example to indicate the direction of my thought: when you are in shunland, you may "whisper from the other world" once per hour or so. The people who "hear" your whisper are the ones who shunned you. After they read your message, they decide whether to renew their shun another hour or to drop the shun. Thus, in order to escape punishment you must make amends with the people you offended.

If you really want to add quests to the reprieve process, you could allow shunned players to gather goods which they can offer as compensation for damages to their victims.

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

I agree. Players do have to take responsibility for their actions. The problem, as it was already said, some players are not there to play by the rules. Iin every MMOG I have played, people always were getting banned for some reason, and their major argument was that if they can do it in the game, then it should be allowed. With this I agree, but as we are discussing, there HAS to be punishment other than banning. Very rarely do people get the death sentence, and MMOGs should be less severe since they are paying.

To enforce this "anything goes" philosophy, shunland is great. The wisper and gift redemption is briliant. The only problem is when people shun someone just for spite. Griefers now have an extra way to create havoc. If a group of them get together, they can send who ever they want off to shunland. Maybe there should be a limit of only being able to Shun one or two people at a time. Also, for those that have been to shunland can''t shun anyone else for a period of time.

For those that got shun''ed unjustly, maybe they would have to visit a public shunland office to appeal (much like the judge idea). The number of shuns it takes to get sent there will have to be high enough to stop a small group of griefers from doing this, but still low enough that people in a town, or passing by, can still get enough shuns to send them on their way.

Maybe there could be place to post bail and automatically get out. If you don''t have the money, maybe there would be some trivial quests that help out the economy.

If people want to go to shunland purposely, that is fine. Interaction there should be extremely limited though, since you are being punished. I think the main purpose of shunland is to temporarly get rid of griefers, but allow them to play the game still, and perhaps either make them quit gracefully or change their ways.

Another option could be to highlight players by reputation - essentially a list of player IDs and reputation values that each player has. Any player can add to and adjust their own reputation list and additionally (most importantly) swap it with other players.

All players below a certain reputation show up as (say) red, average as green, and above average as blue. So Bob the newbie dwarf spawns and is greeted by Jo the elf who generously gives him food and weapons. Bob trusts Jo enough to accept her reputations as true, and adds them to his own list (at the press of a button). On walking outside, Bob sees Gerok the orc who shouts a greeting. Gerok shows up red so Bob quickly runs back into town. Gerok follows him and asks him why he ran. Bob explains that Gerok''s reputation is bad. Gerok says that he annoyed a few people early on but would now like an adventuring buddy, offering Bob some gold and armor as evidence. Bob accepts this and alters Gerok''s reputation. Now when Bob swaps reputations with anyone, Gerok''s will scale towards Bob''s level - probably upward. The reformed Gerok will gradually start seeing changes in the attitudes of others.

If one isn''t sure about the "quality" of someone''s reputation rankings, they can adjust (slider) the weighting that that person''s reputation list will have on their own list.

This way grief players can easily be identified by the community, because trusted players have an easy means of communicating to the player which players are reputable and which are not, in a fast and efficient manner.

This kind of system, I think, will work. Has it been implemented?