What do you guys think Pantheon's policy should be on players intentional training other players? By "training", I mean a train of monsters. Like a normal train, but instead of engines, cars, and cabooses, with monsters. AAAH!
With Pantheon's zones being primarily non-instanced, especially in the cases of dungeons and raid zones, there are bound to be some contested bosses or camps. So it is only natural to conclude that training may be a tactic used to kill other players, either to steal a camp/boss or to grief another player. Especially being a PvE game, there isn't a whole lot you can do to another player to prevent them from training your group. It's not like you would be able to simply root them, like in a PvP enabled MMO.
So the question becomes, how should intentional training be handled? Should it be allowed, and used as a pseudo-PvP mechanic in an otherwise PvE only world? Should it be a banable offense enforced by the GM's? Or somewhere in between?
Or do you think there should be in-game mechanics that prevent trains from killing other players all together?
I'm curious to hear what you guys think?
NOTE: I'm only talking about intentional training. Not other cases, such as, you pull too many mobs and have to zone out, which results in a train.
A story:
There was a guy on Karana in EQ (at this point I don't recall his name) - he spent a week trying to solo mobs in Sebilis that he just could not solo. I know this because I was in groups on the receivieng end of him trying - getting in trouble, and then training that mob to our group (whether we were otherwise occupied or not)
So - One day I was out in the open world - and I see him attack some mobs that can't see invis. I pop invis, go over near him, and sit down. Sure enough, he gets in trouble. Over he comes to me.... but I'm invis - the mobs can't see me. In come the tells: "Help me!"
My response?
I wait for him to die - wait for the mobs to reset, stand up and /cheer the mobs.
The guy was livid - but - he got just what he deserved.
I think (hope) a community that needs each other - will also band together to let bad behavior folks know that their behavior is, indeed, bad.
Wellspring said:
What do you guys think Pantheon's policy should be on players intentional training other players? By "training", I mean a train of monsters. Like a normal train, but instead of engines, cars, and cabooses, with monsters. AAAH!
With Pantheon's zones being primarily non-instanced, especially in the cases of dungeons and raid zones, there are bound to be some contested bosses or camps. So it is only natural to conclude that training may be a tactic used to kill other players, either to steal a camp/boss or to grief another player. Especially being a PvE game, there isn't a whole lot you can do to another player to prevent them from training your group. It's not like you would be able to simply root them, like in a PvP enabled MMO.
So the question becomes, how should intentional training be handled? Should it be allowed, and used as a pseudo-PvP mechanic in an otherwise PvE only world? Should it be a banable offense enforced by the GM's? Or somewhere in between?
Or do you think there should be in-game mechanics that prevent trains from killing other players all together?
I'm curious to hear what you guys think?
NOTE: I'm only talking about intentional training. Not other cases, such as, you pull too many mobs and have to zone out, which results in a train.
Rather than spend valuable resources on paying staff to handle this, I prefer to give the community the option to handle this themselves. Archage does this rather well with "criminals' in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoRM6RHG7uE
The gist is basically this --- In ARCHEAGE, the player racks up criminal points by stealing friendly players crops, killing your own faction, and for vandalizing property of other players. When a player does this, it leaves behind footprints that the victim or a random passerby can "report" to give the player a criminal point along with leaving a comment of what they saw. This gives the victim (or witness) a chance to explain the crime. When they reach 50 criminal points, they become wanted and upon death in pvp, they are sent to court.
Court pulls in 5 other players (a jury) who read the comments and see some hard in-game provided information about the crime (Murder, Vandalism, ect) along with comments provided by whoever reported them. The jury can decide if they are innocent or guilty. If innocent, all points are removed and the player is free. If guilty, the jury chooses a length of time in jail that is PREDETERMINED by the game and the criminal points awarded. While often, people are guilty and sent to jail, sometimes they are set free (Usually if crops are forgotten about and going to die)
FOR PANTHEON AND TRAINING!
The system could be modified to something like this --- When a player gathers more than a certain number of monsters (something larger than a typical "pull") over a set period of time, the player can be marked to be a criminal and "reported", accumulating crime points and, due to no pvp, when they hit a certain number of points... They are sent to court.
Jail: Yes? No?
In Archeage, I did go to jail once. I would love to see jail time in Pantheon. It was for about 40 minutes because I stole someone's fully grown crops about 80 times. They had a lovely patch of pumpkin that I wanted in a grass patch hidden on a mountaintop. Was my jail time horrible? No. There were various things I could do in jail --- But I eventually looked for the spoons so I could dig for freedom. However, once I was out, I found out that still couldnt do anything but chat and run around. THIS I DID NOT LIKE. I escaped, I should be free to play as normal.
I would prefer to have jail time if I am a bad player, but if I can escape --- Let me play as normal again. If I choose not to escape, I can do the jail time.
Oh, and by the way, your sentence did not tick down if you logged out. ;)
Preventing Abuse
A) The players own group will obviously not be reporting their own people if they are pulling large amounts of monsters.
B) This can also be used as a tool to prevent higher level players from monopolizing low level regions and cull power leveling in popular area's.
C) If by chance they get reported by someone being spiteful, they can recognize it and pull smaller amounts.
This system could also be utilized by NPC's as well --- Imagine a dwarf NPC that see's another dwarf player (a rogue perhaps?) stealing... Maybe entering someones locked home (via a key obtained from another NPC, a dungeon, ground drop) and the owner is there awards a crime point.
Removing Crime Points
I can understand many people may not want to be labelled a criminal, ever. There can just be various quests to remove them... Charity work via tradeskills.. or just pay a fine. ;)
One thing to remember - every line of CODE you want developers to do as a remedy for player bad behavior is a line of code that takes one step farther away from sandbox and player freedom.
For me - policy is fine (but then you need to have staff available to enforce the policy). But doing too much behavior correction (or worse, behavior elimination) by coding it into the game... not good. Not good at all.
That is what leads down the road to bland, boring worlds.
Normally the community handles these issues pretty well. In a group centric game, assholes, will tend to be ostracized which is a pretty good form of discipline. In some extreme cases, where a players only in game goal is to ruin the experience for another player or group, then GM intervention may be needed, but I wouldn't spend time on a mechanic.
Wandidar said:
One thing to remember - every line of CODE you want developers to do as a remedy for player bad behavior is a line of code that takes one step farther away from sandbox and player freedom.
For me - policy is fine (but then you need to have staff available to enforce the policy). But doing too much behavior correction (or worse, behavior elimination) by coding it into the game... not good. Not good at all.
That is what leads down the road to bland, boring worlds.
Agreed, there should just be rules against it. No need for leashing mobs up like WoW's "step back ten feet and they forget about you" model of leashing.
Generally speaking any kind of griefing behavior should be a no-no. At minimum it should be against the rules and if it can be reasonably accomplished some system should be put in place (not leashing). They had this same kind of mob training in FFXI for the first few years and they eventually changed it so that when someone zoned or broke aggro (like going invisible while you had the train or breaking mob sight by a significant margin) the monsters would path back to where they came from unable to aggro along the way or would despawn and respawn if pathing was too far / impossible.
Wandidar said:
One thing to remember - every line of CODE you want developers to do as a remedy for player bad behavior is a line of code that takes one step farther away from sandbox and player freedom.
For me - policy is fine (but then you need to have staff available to enforce the policy). But doing too much behavior correction (or worse, behavior elimination) by coding it into the game... not good. Not good at all.
That is what leads down the road to bland, boring worlds.
I am assuming you are responding to my post about a jailing system. I'd like to reiterate that this system is pulled from Archeage, the best sandbox MMO that's currently available. It absolutely does not take away from player choice --- It simply gives the players a way to take care of their own problem players.
When it comes down to it... All we can really do is put in a GM ticket or tell them we're going to blacklist them without some game-support. PvP doesnt seem to be the focus of the game, so we cant solve anything by killing them. (That's a very short term solution anyway)
In my opinion, MMO communities no longer has the ability to isolate problem players. The genre has grown to be accessible to all ages and with that all different maturity level and personality types. Players will migrate from other MMO's (Think: WoW) and their playstyles will conflict with others. The EQ1 "Play Nice" style is in the minority due to all the other MMO's out there. Introducing a coded solution such as the system I proposed earlier is the perfect solution: It maintains the sandbox MMO theme while also removing (What I feel is) 90% of the tickets placed for GM's these days: Harassment.
Most modern games the mobs simply only aggro once and do not attack other people on their way back to wherever they are going. Personally I like the way it is in EQ and I like the way it was handled in EQ. As in no one liked you if you were that asshole that always trains.
jezebel said:
Most modern games the mobs simply only aggro once and do not attack other people on their way back to wherever they are going. Personally I like the way it is in EQ and I like the way it was handled in EQ. As in no one liked you if you were that asshole that always trains.
Hear hear, more freedom is more better. The possibility of trains should definitely be in Pantheon imo, because it is just one more challenging and dangerous thing about the world that players need to fear and respect. Why wouldn't a monster walking back to his area want to kill anything in its path? Makes sense to me.
I had enough of trying to have the game police bad behavior with PKing in early UO. The devs were committed to trying to build a system which would punish bad behavior. They had the best of intentions, but no matter what the devs tried to do it would backfire and the bad seeds would find a way to make the good ones suffer. In the end I think the only way is to let people make their own reputation. To do that all you have to do is make sure other players can identify someone they've had trouble with in the past (i.e. don't allow name changes, maybe even allow you to know a characters user name.)
While I am fully aware of community and reputation being powerful elements in persuading behavior it is just not good enough as far as I can tell. I know because I have seen it. Despite people being outcast for bad behavior and that in so doing they could not play the game as easily as those who were not outcast an actual group of notoriously trollish players formed on my server in ffxi. This group and specifically their leader ended up trolling the server for years (in fact that seemed their primary purpose) and nothing done seemed able to phase them. The game needs some minimum level of defense against griefing (has to at least be against the rules so that action is taken if they are a repeat offender) and I still think that some kind of defense against training to kill other players (like my above post where I mention the method ffxi eventually put in to solve it) should exist.
Well, to be clear it's not like it was a completely hands off approach from the EQ staff either. If someone was intentionally training people on the regular and they got caught they would be punished. People who unintentionally train now and again cuz they suck however tend to be looked down on by the player community. In my opinion the only reasonable options are to make it difficult to train someone (i.e. trains don't aggro unless someone hits them) or have it EQ style. Anything else I think you are just asking for needless complications or people exploiting the system.
Rules are good, but if they are not enforced, they're pointless. I agree with Wandidar however, rule enforcement should not be done through automated systems. As good as you make them, there will be players who find ways around them.
Make a good reporting system, and then act on reports. Its really disappointing to read of players who report the same bot over several days or weeks, and nothing happening. A good report system should also include operator (dev) feedback! Like: "We have checked out your report, and could confirm that he was a bot". A player should also be able to see all of their reports ingame (with a status like "new", "evaluating" etc). That might help on players repeatedly sending reports because they think nothing is happening when they report something!
No automated or fully player influenced system will work. Just because someone does something shitty doesn't mean they did something against the rules. Giving players the ability to police something gives players the ability to abuse something. If you need human oversight anyway why bother with a fancy system. Just have good logs and some sort of player history record for CS to keep track of. It's pretty easy to tell Joebob is trained when you see in the logs that he got hate on 47 mobs and then zoned and said mobs aggro someone else. If you see that 6 times in a row, it's pretty obvious either Joebob needs a quick port to Toxx or at least a stern talking to. He then is flagged with a warning on his account and if it happens again he may get a short vacation from the game. If it happens a lot it may become more permanent. If the game offers no free trials and requires a credit card to sign up (or some sort of advanced payment) it's pretty hard to get around something like that without throwing away a lot of cash. *shrug*
You really do need some serious logging though to get away from the He said She said **** you see on P1999 (or EQ for that matter).
Sarim said:
Rules are good, but if they are not enforced, they're pointless. I agree with Wandidar however, rule enforcement should not be done through automated systems. As good as you make them, there will be players who find ways around them.
Make a good reporting system, and then act on reports. Its really disappointing to read of players who report the same bot over several days or weeks, and nothing happening. A good report system should also include operator (dev) feedback! Like: "We have checked out your report, and could confirm that he was a bot". A player should also be able to see all of their reports ingame (with a status like "new", "evaluating" etc). That might help on players repeatedly sending reports because they think nothing is happening when they report something!
I agree with your second paragraph. A good reporting system should be in place for those situations that someone is cheating, abusing bugs, character is stuck in the world, ect. Even a harassment button for those "Verbal Harassment" situations.
I do still disagree with the first paragraph. I've played a large slew of MMO's growing up and to present day and none of them ever offered quick customer service. Usually, an hour or more goes by and the offending player has already had their fun at the expense of others. Yes --- They may get punished at some point but the cost of having someone take the time (time=$) to look at the logs, make a judgement, and dish out a GM punishment is money that could be going to other things (expansion, patch content, server improvements).
I'd like to reiterate that without this, all we can do is just "Blacklist" people and tell them we're upset with their behavior. That worked in the EQ1 era --- It will not work with today's gamers. I encourage you to go an experience this on Project 1999. It's classic EQ1. No one cares what another player thinks anymore unless you are part of their "inner circle" or guild. Or on any MMO for that matter. What makes anyone think this game will magically change a players behavior?
Silvanoshi said: What makes anyone think this game will magically change a players behavior?
I believe in the community being able to make a difference. I just think that it alone is not enough so I suggest having griefing in its many forms be actionable by GMs and that some minimum baseline system defense be put in place (not auto flagging for gms or anything, just some system that makes it difficult to accomplish).
Mephiles said:
Silvanoshi said: What makes anyone think this game will magically change a players behavior?
I believe in the community being able to make a difference. I just think that it alone is not enough so I suggest having griefing in its many forms be actionable by GMs and that some minimum baseline system defense be put in place (not auto flagging for gms or anything, just some system that makes it difficult to accomplish).
We'll probably just have to disagree on this one! That's okay though. ;) Either way, as long as problem players arent left unchecked, I think we can all be happy.
I think a strong CS team consisting of VRI oversight, but largely managed by mature, responsible players is the solution to intentional training and a host of other issues.
I'm dead against any sort of automated system as it adds unnecessary complexity to the back end and is just begging for abuse or unintended side effects. Intentional training episodes need to be evaluated on a case by case basis by people, not by bot logic
Anyone who wasn't a complete arse had respect and a good working relationship with the guides and GMs in early EQ. People got excited when they saw a guide as they were often associated with fun role play sessions, GM events and general good fun - in addition to the big stick they could wield to handle unruly players.
Angrykiz said:
I'd like to think that a person who gets labeled on your server as that guy who trains everyone would generally be shunned from groups and guilds preventing them from advancing much at all.
Kiz~
I addressed this above kindof. To an extent this works and I like that it does, it will dissuade many and promote a more positive environment. However it doesn't stop jerk players form teaming up with other jerk players (as I said, this happened to my server) allowing them to advance and therefore kindof bypass that check.
A lot of people in here seem to be mentioning automated punishments. I wouldn't suggest such a system (outside of a flagging system that tells a live gm to investigate but that wouldn't be required for this specific case as a player being griefed would likely report) but instead just a system that makes it not work in such a way that it can be abused.
Lots of games these days are going to systems that allow the game to "snapshot" and record a replay of what you saw 30 seconds to a few minutes before you did /report. Some games are having other reputable players able to review them and pass judgement, while I disagree with players being able to hand out punishment, I do believe players can be used to "vet" the pool of petitions and only pass the solid reports up the ladder to staff for further review.
If a system like this cannot be implemented at launch, I feel it could be down the road, either way it is probably the best and only way to truly handle training and other problems without completely removing them and making the world feel like it's all chained down.