This can be in a multiplayer game or an mmo.

If you force 2 or more players to play in a team with each other, What are ways to prevent griefing?
I see it a lot on many games that force players to team, Like for example even WoW battlegrounds.. players join them just to troll or stand around semi-afk.. talking and stuff.
Or in bloodline champions joining a game and just running around waiting for team members to die and then try and try and run away and survive as long as possible from enemies forcing team members to wait bored.. or join and help the enemy by distrupting team members abilities or any other griefing technique.
Left 4 Dead too where you're 4 persons forced to play together... One of your team members gets grabbed and you can be like "i dont need you lol" and leave him to die... rambo players who just run in and suicide.
I mean I can make an endless list for an endless list of games how ways you can grief in teams you were forced to play in.


I think it might not be possible?
And only thing they can do to make it less destructive when you get griefed is to make the game as casual as possible... no penalties for losing.. just small almost meaningless rewards for winning.. just some fun gameplay you can get into and be done with in a few mins.

but Im a fan of games that have more depth and meaning to it..

So some food for thought..
lets brainstorm anyone thats interested in this topic!

Your on the right track, but an example for a left 4 dead grief blocker would be not letting each other get more than 20 feet away from each other. When it comes to griefing though, its really all about the people your playing with. I think the one sure fire way to not get griefed is develop a community of your friends IE gamers you like to play with, and make it so you really only play with them. I know this can be hard due to meeting the right people online, but its really whether or not people are going to be assholes or not.

just send every player that start to do those things back to the start of the game.

be radical.

your team can't won if one member is left to die.

if you mess up with your team, them you are out.

just be radical.

You'll find this article very interesting (particularly the 'Journey Apologise Thread')

Edit: The point to extract from the article is that you can't expect your players not to act like jerks if the game itself induces them in a virtual world where they act like a jerk all the time.

I consider free riding a form of griefing. Thus, in my definition, multiplayer cannot get rid of griefing, unless all players are exactly at the same skill level.

This thread is so true! I never played WOW or Left 4 Dead but I can sympathize. I would discuss to the team of a idea of bringing a reward and punishment system for not helping your friends in battle. However, in a program it doesn't realize who or what anyone is doing. So, the person being attacked would have to send out a Distress state. If he's in distress then who ever is available saves them - get's say 20 points experience or whatever reward you offer. Or...if you wanna be a pain int he arse then you could say Failed Mission then this will surely have them go, "Oh, I'm suppose to help my friends? Damn! Okay!" Cause everyone wants to beat the game, right?

So, while in a Distress State - log out who's attacking who, log who's the attacker and check to see if anyone's firing at attacker. If not and team mate dies, then punish them. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be fend for yourself if a loved ones were being attacked, right? This is the same moral principle that would apply. Team is like family - treat your team right and they'll treat you well. So, say if the player helped out then the other team member could say, "Thanks man, I owe you!" Law of Reciprocation. (I scratch your back, scratch mine kind of thnig). Get it? Anyways, if this helps then cool!

Cause everyone wants to beat the game, right?

Nope. In fact, most of the time if a person is causing trouble for their teammates, doing stupid things, or intentionally not contributing it's exactly because they simply don't care very much what the outcome is.

I think it might not be possible?
And only thing they can do to make it less destructive when you get griefed is to make the game as casual as possible... no penalties for losing.. just small almost meaningless rewards for winning.. just some fun gameplay you can get into and be done with in a few mins.

I think this is exactly the wrong idea. Players will mess around more the less consequence and interest the game maintains. A fairly slow paced game like WoW is not going to keep a player's attention all the time, so you'll inevitably have people playing games inside the game. The highly repetitive nature of WoW doesn't help. I would guess that it applies less so to Left 4 Dead, but it's much the same thing. L4D was awesome, scary, and intense the first (and perhaps second) play through each level, but by the time you've played each level 5 or 6 times, they get a bit mundane (personally, I think this is because of the linearity). Cue the griefers.
My suggestion would be, if you're really worried about people not taking your game seriously, eliminate unnecessary repetition, and produce more exciting content. When a player is having a great time, their much less likely to try and ruin someone else's.

[quote name='SIC Games' timestamp='1342222902' post='4958950']
Cause everyone wants to beat the game, right?

Nope. In fact, most of the time if a person is causing trouble for their teammates, doing stupid things, or intentionally not contributing it's exactly because they simply don't care very much what the outcome is.

I think it might not be possible?
And only thing they can do to make it less destructive when you get griefed is to make the game as casual as possible... no penalties for losing.. just small almost meaningless rewards for winning.. just some fun gameplay you can get into and be done with in a few mins.

I think this is exactly the wrong idea. Players will mess around more the less consequence and interest the game maintains. A fairly slow paced game like WoW is not going to keep a player's attention all the time, so you'll inevitably have people playing games inside the game. The highly repetitive nature of WoW doesn't help. I would guess that it applies less so to Left 4 Dead, but it's much the same thing. L4D was awesome, scary, and intense the first (and perhaps second) play through each level, but by the time you've played each level 5 or 6 times, they get a bit mundane (personally, I think this is because of the linearity). Cue the griefers.
My suggestion would be, if you're really worried about people not taking your game seriously, eliminate unnecessary repetition, and produce more exciting content. When a player is having a great time, their much less likely to try and ruin someone else's.
[/quote]

I don't agree becuase as u said... griefers are not playing to win... they enjoy ruining others fun.
So if you add death penalties to the game.. the griefers will be able to do even more harm by sabotaging the team.
And this would be too much harm for the normal players to keep playing.. because there's nothing they could do then to stop dying constantly because of griefers and losing their progress.
Even players that enjoy death penalties would probably quit just because there's nothing they can do about it.. they get automatically teamed with a griefer... now they die.

Thats why I think it needs to be very casual game where the victim of griefers can just say "that asshole... oh well *shrug* next game, hopefully no griefer this time"

Griefers dont usually do it to ruin the fun of others but rather to have more fun for themselves or see what happens when they do something which they cant do without hurting others.


So dont give everyone explosives and instruct them to build a fragile bridge to the other side of the river.


You could make griefers a part of the game. Make it possible to lets say lock up players somewhere so if someone is being destructive, the team can throw him in a room and lock it and have fun shooting at his legs through a window. They could also take his equipment so losing a player wouldnt be as harmful to the team. And a way for people to see how someone has been doing in his last games, so if its a plain obvious griefer he can be locked up from the start (if someone is locked up/without equipment, the "mark" in his data saying he hasnt done a thing to help the team should slowly disappear)


For example, there could be a points used/points earned thing in every players stats.

If they play normally, they receive gear (adds to points used), and then do stuff which earns them points.

If someone has been griefing (low points earned, high used), people will start locking him up from the start. The player should throw his equipment away (or the other players take it to prevent him from escaping or something), which makes the used points unused again (the points he used to get the gear when the game started). That way he wont keep earning nor using points, and the earned/used points data should approach 0 over time, so after a while he will just look like a normal newbie and can start playing normally again.

IMHO forcing players to play together is not good game design. Most of the time, the team is better off having a leader. But it is no fun being a follower. This can be in the working world where employees usually hate their job because they feel like drones without free will while entrepreneurs love their work because they get to lead and innovate.

I am not sure why games like Counterstrike and DOTA works. Personally I had a lot of problem playing them because it always degenerates into a well organized 5 player team with a good leader dominating everyone else. However, since these essentially "forces" players to play together in the same team, it might be useful for you to see how they do it.