What is the line between PvP and Griefing?

I have... a long time ago. I've also accepted this as healthy for the game as a whole, providing an additional outlet for the entertainment of those that find that entertaining.

 

Actually your next statement is what I am talking about. Of course you can't impose rules, you don't have that kinda power. But you can attempt to impose them by vilifying someone that is playing by the rules.

Right here you have set a standard that for anyone not following your beliefs on how this PvP should be approached then they are villains. Also, you incorrectly assign a reward when there is no inherent reward. They do not get increased resources for PvP. They could, but they are choosing to attack other players instead. For them to gain this increase they must fend off other players attempting to stop them. Want the people to stop attacking people at the res/spawn points? Make the resources more valuable. What to see them attack more people give the killer the reward for the act of killing, spawn camping would directly translate to profit.

This isn't the case for the PvP zone. What we have is someone sitting inside a house and killing people as they try to walk in the door. If people mistakenly think this house is their home, the outrage would be understandable, mistaken but understandable.

Let's not get me wrong on this. I haven't stepped 1 foot into that hex. If the devs are attempting to put out a carrot to get me in there, they have failed. The people in that hex are playing it their way, nothing wrong with that.

The increased spawn rates of rares is a distraction. The big picture is making PvP have a set of rules that channels human nature into the gameplay the devs desire.

 

I have not idea what you are getting at with the 5%. If you are attaching 5% landmass to the player base then you are way off the mark.

They have not established a balance of people that are there to PvP and people that are there for the carrot. And it shows because:

Their carrot is you. Your carrot is not them. This can never be balanced.

 

I thought unrestricted meant unrestricted so now you feel we should be quiet too?

Are opinions to be regulated also?
No reward, Portalarium's argument is the reward is necessary. So do you agree there is no need for increased resources in these zones? Then your own argument goes into why the reward is necessary, Which is it, necessary or not?

Here it seems you agree that the resource spawn is a bad idea and so maybe you have answered my question above? However Portalarium created the distraction issue of rares and by their own admission to lure PvE into the zone. If into the zone then why not the discussion too?

 

I like this initial openness before they get rulesets for PvP areas locked in.

When you give people that kind of freedom, you get to see who the most despicable people in game are.

I would never complain about have to fight people 4 v 1 in a consensual area, but I am keeping a list of the people that participate in res killing. especially when we have this insanely harsh death penalty.

I may not have the time to be the first one to grind to lvl 70 or even if I could, I am not that great at PvP, but if given a chance, once the game launches, I will use whatever political means I have make things difficult and humiliating for the people on that list.

 

Apparently you like to use the victim role to push away the conversation. It doesn't work on me so I wouldn't bother using it. If you really think I am attempting to squelch your voice then ignore me. - I look to bring the conversation to the productive an move away from bashing or attacking a play style.

What I am saying is we have 2 different conversation going on at once. The PvP hex how it is now and the PvP hex how we want it to be.

Bringing in the term griefing is only a method of attacking people that are playing the PvP hex the way it is now. Lets not attack those people for playing the game.

If you look at that PvP hex from the perspective of you are in there to get your carrot. This hex is a horrible design.
If you look at that PvP hex from the perspective of a pure PvPer then everyone in the hex is a carrot. The design is fine. Short lived, but fine.

The 2nd conversation is the right conversation. Why are we in that PvP hex? It needs to be unanimous. If everyone is there for the rares then the PvP is over the rares and the increased abundance of rares is there to offset the difficulty in access to those rares.

The balance is attained when everyone has the same carrot.

 

I would only suggest one thing. I would think that the pvp gets 2 carrots. The pve gets one carrot. The pvp can get the rare and the *pve carrot*, the pve only gets the *rare* carrot, if even attainable.

 

This is always going to end in the griefing conversation.

Why? Because the second you consent to PvP it's no longer PvE. The mental change must happen or you are going to end up feeling griefed. When you walk into that hex feeling like you are PvE looking for your carrot the last thing you are wanting is PvP to stop you from your reward.

From there you are going to end up searching for ways of balancing PvP into ways you can succeed. When all you really needed to do is forget about the carrot and embrace PvP then you will succeed.

 

I agree

Disagree you see the area as risk reward and others see it as griefing for spawn rez camping.

That is the crux of the discussion. But both are right as it takes two to tango.

So PvE gets no difficult area to obtain their own increased rare spawns. If Portalarium implemented that then PvP gets 2 areas at their disposal. So inherently unfair. Difficult access... not for large guilds they could camp, own, and blow the economy out of the water.

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I agree the area is unbalanced.


However, my discussion concerns where is the line between PvP and griefing. What is acceptable and therefore what would be the appropriate design for a PvP area?

I would love to hear some ideas on that and move away from the discussion of resources as it is a distraction and a problem on how to get a solid design on a PvP area that is not reduced to a giant arena brawl.

 

agreed, so remove the lure for pve to go to these places. then you will not have these threads. Make pvp fun then pve will want to try it, not lure them in as sheep.

 

Agreed. +1

 

The problem with the line between griefing and PVP is its subjectivity, as Ristra's pointing out. Nobody likes to be rez-killed, but there are players who accept it as part of the game as they want to play it while others feel it as something unfair and out of place... so it could be hard to reach consensum in where that line exactly lies.

In my opinion, to avoid players feeling as victims of griefing design should take two things in consideration: A) potential griefing situations should be avoidable by the victim and B) players should enter in PVP hexes fully acknowledging that they're going to do PVP. because of B) I agree with Ravicus regarding the current discussion; giving PVErs a PVE reason to go to the hex is a bad way to make them try to PVP. PVP hexes should have some kind of reward, but it should be linked directly with PVP.

Regarding A), if you get killed you should have the option to respawn in the map (don't know why we don't have this option everytime we die, if i'm a ghost why i can't float wherever i want before resurrecting?) to avoid spawn camping. Assuming players entering the hex know that's a pot full of PVP'rs (and that we're taking B) in consideration), getting ganked is at their own risk.

 

So what rules should be in place in your mind?

No rules at all?

Some rules?

What you wrote there was a nice amount of talking about how rules aren't needed without any mechanics in how that will work.

For instance, take my limited time in zone, where I went to get a hat...I expected to be attacked and was ok with it. However, what I did not expect was to get spawn killed before I even had control of my character after dying. Should there be rules on when you can kill a person after death? If not, why would I bother to enter that situation again? I will note again, I was ok dying the first time, but the insta kill afterwords just made me switch to SPO. Does that make me less of a warrior or true hardcore PVP person, or does that make me someone who says "well why bother coming back to this..."

I'm a firm believer that there has to be rules in just about every game function, now, the extent of those rules and just how controlling they would be is up for debate.

 

Vey well prosed, I mostly agree with you . The only remaining issue in your point of view is large guild camping with the intent to manipulate the world economy. I have in other games been a member of 300+ member guilds and the power they sway can be an awesome sight to behold. But in the hands of the unscrupulous it can obliterate a game in a heart beat. When my guild went that route I left the guild as I choose not to be associated with a group of people (<.0001% of the population) bent on destroying the world economy in their own self interest.

 

I see it as a PvP hex that is consensual. There is no risk or reward for those in that PvP hex with the intent to PvP. They are only there to PvP. Of course those that are there not to PvP but to get a reward are going to feel griefed when they can not avoid PvP. But why are we in that hex if not PvP? Remember it is consensual, you can obtain the reward without consenting.

I hate going to the "this is pre-alpha" but in this case I can't avoid it.

This PvE zone does not exist yet, if it did, you could get your carrot without going into PvP.

1st, some people want that brawl but I know that's not what you are getting at. So lets look at griefing.

Griefing is not griefing without intent.

Example:

Bob is out killing MOBs and spots a chest in the middle of a pack. Bob pulls the MOB at max range attempting to thin them out before they get to him. After taking out a few he needs to deal with the leader in melee combat. While tied up with the lead MOB.

Larry strolls in from the other side and loots the chest.

Bob feels griefed.
Larry feels pretty luck for finding an unguarded chest.

If Larry was intent on griefing then he was waiting for Bob to pull to have free access to the loot.
Without the intent their was no griefing, no matter how Bob feels.

In the PvP hex, those people are there to PvP. They have no intent to grief. (I am not naive enough to think some are not there to grief)

So we have 2 hurdles. 1: How do we get people to not feel griefed and 2: how to we isolate intent to grief from the game play.

Proper zone design is the major key.

Zone 1 = leveling zone to get to level 2
Zone 2 = leveling zone to get to level 3 - access to zone to requires level 2
Zone 3 = redirection zone that points level 3 players to profit points in zone 1, 2, and 3

When you add PvP into this model you get the issues with the human nature. If it's easier to kill players for profit then a lot of level 3's funnel to zone 1 for fast kills of level 1's

This was the UO model. It's a cannibalistic design and will kill off new player retention.

What we need is something that puts level 3's looking for their rewards in challenging places. The increased in rares in the PvP hex does that but the rares currently have no value.

Want to remove griefing? What do PvPers want most to keep them from attacking people that will feel griefed?

 

Thank you!

Regarding guild wars i think that's another layer of the game, and from my point of view is a legitimate way of fighting. Depending on the guild, they could choose to just monopolize the place killing everyone on sight, or just control it demanding payment to players that aren't enemies of the guild and killing the ones who refuse. Personally i'm fine with it.

But let's dig a bit; that situation is doable with current pvp hex design, because if you remove PVE rewards from there and turn them into a reward obtained by PVPing as suggested above, a guild monopolizing the zone is actually losing whatever PVP resource is in there, because no enemies would enter there until they leave (or at the very least that should be the wisest thing to do, imo) unless you're bringing in an equivalent fighting force (thus, guild war). Even assuming PVE resources are still in, solo players facing high guild crowds could be handled from the instance selection phase; if i'm alone and i enter in a pvp zone i could be redirected to a low populated instance of the hex with only reduced parties; those guys still have the hex to exploit it, but nobody would fight them unless it's a party with an equivalent fighting force.

The point i'm trying to make is that everything can be controlled in some way or another; i still think removing resource abundance is the best way to address it, but that depends on what the Devs want. I should also state that i don't think restricting it for the sake of morality is the right thing to do. SotA already addresses morale as a game mechanic, and that means players should have the option to behave as despicable as they feel, BUT by no means a player should be forced or lured into an undesirable situation to make sure PVP stays consensual; you can be a villain, but your victims should acknowledge being such. To me that's some sort of consensum.

 

This is going to be an issue for sure. Flooding a hex to fill the instance to max with friendlies removed the PvP. Seems logical to me that if everyone in a PvP hex is on the same team then the bonus for the hex should be removed. Just as it would be removed if you went into the hex in SPO.

Reward the success. Put those rares in a place they need to win at PvP to obtain them.

 

Rules? Is gravity a rule? What about breathing? Eating? Being a squishy mortal?

There is a difference between rules and realities. What we want is believable realities that we all can be on board with.

It's not a rule that is needed to keep people from res/spawn killing. We could simply as them to make it a bannable offense. That would be a rule.
It would be better to design the hex so that res/spawn killing was either impossible or painful.

Diverse set of locations and options for ressurection and spawning.
Temporary immunity to attacks.
Moral system that makes undesirable game play such as this a long lasting and increasing burden on the attacker.
Guards aid the target when attacked in these locations.

Short list of example. Not all are rules. The rules come from more than just the PvP hex. The rules are the same rules all players must live by. The design is currently the issue. Later we will find out more about the moral system and how guards will work.

 

Lot of great posts guys.

So if the idea is to make PvP rewarding why not:
1) Create a PvP enchanment capability

• add an enchantment capability to every item in the game that can be used in PvP combat
• this enchantment would need a rare resource only found in PvP zones
• this eliminates double gear and weapons issues

2) Create a PvP enchantment skill tree where points are earned only by PvP
3) Create PvP zones in the world with choke points similar to Vertass Pass leading to these rare resource zones for PvPrs

• this creates world combat zones with a purpose

4) Create several zones for PvP to split up large guilds from controlling the rare resources
5) Between PvP choke points and PvP zones have it laced with regular zones so resources and gold can be gathered to and from the PvP combat areas

This eliminates:
PvE griefing and complaints.
Economic control of the world.
Creates a focus and purpose to PvP both in the zone and elsewhere for PvPrs


This does not eliminate PvP vs PvP griefing so that is another issue to address entirely. But does get people off the anti PvP band wagon.

Edit: The PvP enchantments would be bonuses applicable to PvP only. This was implied in the description. But I wanted to add this for clarification.

 

I have one thing to say about the large guild base of conversation. If only 100 people can be in an instance or even just 60, this could be a way for large guilds to exploit that, because supposedly we could get 60 people to fill the instance, and then a newcommer into the area wouldn't even experience the 60 member instance because a new one would be instanced for the individual. This could also happen at 120 limit instances as well. No matter the instance size, i'm assuming 15-30 would be ok for most instances outside of towns, maybe 60 would be fine. I mean there are always alliances and wars that could make it all interesting as well.