What is the line between PvP and Griefing?

I would like to see virtue zones, where the higher the virtue the better the resource. As murder and mayhem is rewarded in pvp zones, good and righteous would be rewarded in another. One should not be penalized for not wanting to pvp. Maybe incentives to be good and virtuous would be something to incentive also, instead of trying to corrupt the good and virtuous. This could tie in with death also, if you have bad virtues you would have a longer res sickness, and if you were good virtues you would heal rather quick from the death penalty. I would love to see a "good zone" where only people with good "karma" for lack of a better word can enter. PvP'rs would have to gain a good status or buy from other players to get said items then.

 

Well unless you want to complete that quest for the hat...

 

It cant be done in one of the other modes? If that is the case forgive me- I was under the impression you could log in using single player online.

 

At the moment you can, but they are removing that ability.

 

Another good idea.
R14 postmortem said they will conduct a Dev+ talk about all this. I hope we have generated enough ideas for them to implement a world with incentives and rares open to all people.

 

SMH... while the diatribe about the 14th century merchant is factually true, it leaves out a lot of context to the situation. IF the world had worked for your 14th century merchant as some PvPers and most PKers would have SotA work, then there would probably be no SotA today because there would have been no merchants in the 14th century or later until the risk of killing merchants was at least commensurate to the reward of killing merchants. Thankfully, most societies had evolved by the 14th century beyond the ruleset in any existing MMO and the balance between risk and reward was better balanced.

 

This all assumes that PvPers are evil or bad. I played for years as a "good" PvPer. I never took a single murder count in all that time and PvP'd regularly. Some of the big PvP guilds styled themselves as "good" and others "evil." (The quotes are because in a lot of ways the good guilds were way worse ethically than the bad guilds.) Not taking murder counts is actually pretty self interested if you PvP a lot. The best guild on Siege when I was really active RP'd orcs and Pk'd ruthlessly all while role-playing it to the hilt. They were awesome and created a lot of fun for everyone because all the "good" players needed them. Nothing wrong with a virtue system but it should be based on rewards and not penalties.

Anyway I would hesitate to make value judgments around the motivations of players who like to PvP.

 

Have you ever heard the term "one bad apple ruins the bunch" I also played siege for years. Have you seen it lately? I tell you what its a hot bed of activity *sigh*

 

I checked back in a couple of years ago- It is a ghost town and very sad. I kept paying my subscription for four years after I quit (eight years total) PvP rules are not the issue with production UO servers and likely wont be the deciding factor here. What has done in UO is under investment.

I think game companies are comfortable with a certain ROI and have little tolerance for variations in profit. MMOs- particularly the kind of MMO that UO was - require long term stability, expansion, and investment. I am hopeful that Shroud will get it right but the looming issue is the financial model. We will see.

 

We are watching.

 

Risk vs Reward?
The problem in an MMO is there tends to be no viable penalty for murder. Therefore, there is no risk and only a reward for PvP. There is no penalty great enough to stop it without causing real world sales issues. Make it harsh and players leave. Make it weak and players leave. Society has deemed murder reprehensible but in this game no one on the PvP side wants a penalty commensurate with murder. ie... Jailed for 20 years to life, execution of the avatar with a permanent death, etc.... Do that and they leave. Until their is an acceptable compromise from both sides the issue will continue.

The point of my OP was to distinguish between...

• GRIEFING, which in my opinion constitutes the ruthless and wanton disregard for other players, such as res killing, gloating in forums and the posting of said videos to antagonize others.
• PvP, which in my opinion is the attempt to obtain and control resources for the betterment of themselves or their guild.

The second point was to obtain ideas on how to accommodate both groups so those who want to participate in the activities many see as griefing can mutually partake of it with like minded individuals while not antagonizing others. Many good ideas have come forth and I added them to the dev+ forums for further discussion on the mechanics of such systems.

 

I guess I would agree with your definition of griefing (though it is unnecessarily specific and including things like "forum gloating" seems like a slippery slope. )
I complete reject your definition of PvPing- I dont even know how resources come into PvP at all in the context of this game. Player versus Player combat is like fighting a monster but with a human controlling it. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

I actually even reject the definition of griefing. Bragging rights is at the real grass roots of all PvP and to label it as griefing is just fundamentally wrong.

In terms of rez killing, if PvP is consensual then that isn't griefing either. You can also argue when there is no looting and a player is able to get into battle after death...rez killing forms part of a very valid tactic. You can also argue that a player normally (and probably will in SotA) have choice where they get rezzed. If your stupid enough to get rezzed in a dangerous area, then I am afraid I have no sympathy if you are killed again.

Your definition also implies that Pks are nothing more than griefers, whilst in fact it is just a style of play that you personally (along with others) have a dislike for.

 

I think there are many testimonials on griefing and what it is. I believe your playstyle is the reason for most of the rules that have taken place in the games. Trammel in essence was created by the kind of playstyle that your represent.

 

Absolutely, and I have no issues with that....for the same reason I have no issues with consensual PvP. Where I do have issues (using Tram and Fel as the example) is when those in Tram try to impose their ideals and rules on those in Fel......that kind of falls into the category of wanting you cake and eating it as well as rendering the whole purpose of Tram pointless.

 

not doing that at all envy. In tram and fel both, they had resources available. Yes fel had more (double) resources but but tram had the same resources. If the rare spawns are only in the PvP areas that is not like tram/fel. It is an outright exclusion. The only thing about fel is the power scrolls. And what happened there caused many people to leave uo. When only one subset can control the outcome of everyone, its not good.

 

I have to agree exclusionary practices are a principle part of this issue. If there were an equally hard location for PvE to obtain the same rares and or resources then the two camps would probably never come across each other much and the point becomes moot. But so far we have not seen this from Portalarium. Obviously this is just a first pass so hopefully this will be taken care of.

Your opinion is yours and you are welcome to reject it if you desire. A problem exists in the differences of opinion as to what is PvP, what constitutes it and how much is acceptable.

However, casual RP and PvE players such as my wife are extremely irritated by the game and its approach so far. Some of these people have voted to walk away with their money to different games. Same goes for some hard core PvP players. In the end the game needs to be successful and a game of hard core PvP areas functioning as exclusionary zones for those who do not PvP will only damage the game.

As to stupid. Nobody expected there to be no ankhs and no location to safely res. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. No shame or stupidity on my part. BTW it was not you that I was slammed by at the res point. It was a different guild with 6 people there. 6 to 1 at a res point. Wow what a challenge it was for them. I guess they want a trophy, a reward, and a video to post for such a difficult challenge.

 

Its like going through the moongate to bucs den back in the day. If people are waiting to gank me when I come through I LOVE IT.

 

When the game is under development is the time to talk about what folks consider grieving.

But you are right, once the game gets closer to release, we can say anything we do in the zone is allowable and promoted by game mechanics and design.

 

Well if they did it right after you killed someone you wouldn't be able to see them for a certain time period. I mean they are dead to you.