What is the line between PvP and Griefing?

Well I bowed out of SotA now, I see where it is going and I am not interested into another gankfest (I made already the error to support Elite Dangerous and that went so well too)

There will be an game with rich story, Player WITH Player action and maybe meaningfull PvP.

The way it is set up in SotA tells me it will end in the same old same old PvP versus PvE war on the forums and half$$$$$ neither nor game mechanics.

It was always my opinion that putting a bunch of people on an server and "rich lore and action will happen out of PvP is nuts.

So well, waste of a few hundred of bucks but i will at least not waste time with SotA

 

Well I wouldn't give up just yet. Yes, the PVP zones are poorly setup. But PVP is optional so you still have most the rest of the game to enjoy.

 

In my opinion, the more abuse of the system flaws in pvp, the better, such that they can be corrected for to lead to a more solid pvp experience at live. A solid pvp system will have a system which avoids "spawn camping" and minimizes resulting exploits.

One design for avoiding spawn camping:

Set up a perimeter all around a given pvp zone. Within this perimeter doughnut players first entering the zone appear, with some timer (say 3-5 minutes) after which they will be expelled from the doughnut into the interior of the pvp zone itself. Players entering the zone will have that time to move around the zone within the doughnut, in effect chosing where they will enter the zone once the timer expires. Players in the doughnut will be immune from attack but also be able to do anything to affect other players in or out of the doughnut. Players inside the doughnut could be invisible to those without, and vice versa. Players killed in the pvp zone outside of the doughnut would be bumped into the doughnut from the place of their death and remain inside the doughnut on a timer similarly to how players entering the zone would be. Additional details/features of such a system could be worked out as it was tested, hopefully with all finding whatever exploits might be used with said system such that they could be addressed for best balance between avoiding spawn camping and minimizing exploits stemming from the system set up to avoid spawn camping.

The idea here would be to:
1) limit slaughter of players as they enter the zone (they begin immune in the doughnut, but cannot remain their nor do anything affecting combat while in the doughnut, and must use that time to effectively deploy themselves to enter the pvp zone that lies interior to the doughnut).
2) limit "camping" of players slain in the pvp zone, who also must use the timer to effectively deploy themselves before re-entering the pvp interior, to avoid running right into an ambush. Note that players killed and sent into the doughnut could use the timer to vacate the pvp zone entirely rather than re-entering it, if they were not ready for more pvp.
3) prevent players zoning in or returning as "ghosts" from immediately attacking/ambushing pvp'ers in the zone. The timer gives pvp'ers already in the zone a certain amount of respite to recover before they are attacked again by a vanquished player (timers could be extended or reduced to balance respite with wait time for defeated players, depending upon how much of each we want).

Note that pvp'ers within the interior pvp zone would be best served not to hover around the perimeter where new players will be entering and ghosts returning, such that they could avoid sudden ambushes from such players, but each player could chose his own best strategies for dealing with the in effect extended entry perimeter around the pvp field.

Surely other ideas for preventing spawn camping & spawn abuse could be utilized, but the main point is to control such via mechanism of the game rather than expecting pvp'ers to refrain from using various strategies to exploit the system during pre-release. The more pvp'ers or others can show the limitations of the system in play, the better developers can prepare and modify the system for best outcome upon release.

 

I'd like to see wandering healers brought back rather than randomly respawning after a few minutes or using the ankh. I think it would be nice to have (killable) wandering healers throughout the maps that had no set spawning/wandering areas which would keep PKers from being able to thin them off while trying to kill players. This would give some balance to PVP maps and help control rezkilling.

Of course, to do this, they would also need to increase ghost travel speed to normal running speed as well.

 

The Difference between PvP and Griefing is all about victim. Players who loose and can't handle the loss are the ones that bring up griefing. I have never had this issue, win or loose. Griefing is a word that is used to get the game-play lowered to a level that the player can handle. Most players want to win all the time every time and that's how they like it. They don't seem to care if the game takes skill or that the game is ridiculously easy they just want the win. These same players gank and then complain when they are ganked. They use a weapon that they think is OP to kill and when other players kill them with that same weapon they complain.

Since the majority of players are like this games are cut down to a point where things like Death and PvP don't matter. Take a look a most games today. When you die nothing happens. You start at a check point a few feet back and you loose nothing. Mostly it's time based penalty's.

PvP should be a permanent choice.

 

If I spawn and am killed before I can move then I am quite happy to call myself a victim and call it grief. That is both a victim of griefing and a bad game. If I choose to go into PvP, I don't expect to win all the time or at all really, I am horrible at it. That said if I go into PvP end up getting killed by someone and his buddies then just kill me over and over while I'm trying to respawn then it has nothing to do with my ability as a player what so ever and is an effect of a sub-par design.

 

Might I ask what you are basing this gankfest on?

 

Thanks for sharing, sorry to see ya go. Take care.

 

I would say it's intent. If you're just killing and looting people per the game mechanics, that's just PvP/PKing. Anyone who says otherwise is butthurt. But if you're targeting someone specifically with the goal to inflict personal discomfort, I'd say that's griefing. For example, on UO, if I killed someone, chopped off their head and mounted it on my wall, that's PvP. Their head is a trophy. If I decorated my house with their heads, that's PvP. But if I launch a campaign to kill specific members of their guild to push them to drop a war, leave an area, force members to quit their guild or disband their guild or even quit the game, that would be griefing.

That's not to say it isn't legitimate, though. Some of the best moments in MMO history are, technically, griefing-related. I'd argue there's "light griefing" and "heavy griefing", though. One is all in good fun, and the other is something that borders ToS violations.

 

Not having an open world causes these issues. Less about the player and more about the game-play. I'm not sure if this type of world is set in stone or not. It feels fragmented.

 

The hex based design is crucial to the story/content delivery they desire.

 

Welcome to Shrouds Red2.

 

It's pretty set in stone. It's from when this game was going to be a mobile app, unfortunately.