What's wrong with people?

[desyrio]

This morning I logged in at my cabin. I didn't see any of the usual cupboards, and i thought it was the lag. But the game was smooth, so I turned tracking on and saw some of those terrible orange vandalism scents... Every cupboard in my two cabins is destroyed (among those, 100 chantrelle, a lot of sausages, q40 silkworms, various metals, etc.). Nothing or almost nothing was stolen (a couple of chests outside with some silk threads were left untouched), just destroyed.
Then I got out of my property to see if also my friend property had been vandalized, and I saw his main character laying right in front of a cabin. Being peaceful, he was obviously full change (the maximum crime he did was a trespassing, weeks ago). I called him to see what happened, and he told me he was simply farming and feeding cows and sheeps when someone passed by and killed him in a few shots.
I guess it is some very nice guy who is quitting ...

I think there are some basic issues with the mechanics of the game if someone who is quitting can do so much harm to people who intend to continue playing, making them stop playing too. I don't really wanna make 4-5 generations of worms to regain the same quality from the few backup eggs I had on an alt.
It should be a priority imo to find a way to minimize the effects of this kind of behaviour.

See you at next reset. Maybe.

[Errol]

Loftorb will eventually get around to adding passive claim defences, and the combat system fix is close. That might make this problem better.
But remember this is an alpha. Your feedback is important, but you're the tester for a rather broken and incomplete game, and thus you will need to expect getting screwed over regularily.

I'd suggest taking a breather in any case. A break until you're willing to maybe start anew. I personally start from scratch rather often. Building yet another home. I can feel this frustrates you, but don't let it drag you down.

[desyrio]

Well I totally understand that this is an alpha, and that the game is incomplete. I am not whining nor protesting. With this post I wanted to underline 2 things:

1) I am strongly saddened by the presence of people wanting to destroy others' games. I thought we were here for having fun; i don't understand how it can be funny to kill some character with a straw hat and a scythe, or vandalize some sleeping character's home with no benefit. I now accept it is not so, and something must be done to avoid this kind of behaviour.

2) I wanted to bring a "case study" of what I consider a major flaw of the game right now (who cares about animal domestication and keyrings and whatever if your work can be instantly destroyed by some bored idiot?). I don't know, it is as if someone who had been eliminated from a tennis tournament started breaking other participants' rackets, because it is the only way he can have fun.

These two points make me too frustrated to try to rebuild; I prefer to spend my time otherwise for now.
I sincerely hope something will be done to fix this giant problem, and that a sufficient number of people will remain to test it, since this has the potentiality of becoming a fantastic game.

Have fun

PS. I thought i had posted this in the "Inn of Brodgar" section, sorry for the mistake.

[Rhiannon]

2) I wanted to bring a "case study" of what I consider a major flaw of the game right now (who cares about animal domestication and keyrings and whatever if your work can be instantly destroyed by some bored idiot?). I don't know, it is as if someone who had been eliminated from a tennis tournament started breaking other participants' rackets, because it is the only way he can have fun.

I think the above is the most important statement of all. I too have kinda "rolled eyes" at many of the updates considering the huge major flaws, almost as though the development is a bit schitzophrenic. There are things which seem so out of whack yet "let me instead make animals run so fast you cant atch them on full sprint so hunting sux and also let me work on making farming so tedious with stamina "fixes". While major issues go seemingly ignored. Strange, but maybe sometime it will all come together in a complete picture. Your situation illustrates one of the most off putting parts of the game, it takes WAY too much work to have anything yet is so easily destroyed in minutes by some griefer which this game seems to attract the most unsual amount of, more than I've ever seen in any game acutually.

[Caliku]

Sadly, the best thing for you to do would start as a wilderness spawn and your friend can join you by way of Hearth secret once you have a spot.


I made the mistake of starting the game near RoB and setting up shop no less than 5 minutes away. Since the release of wilderness spawning, I've started anew and my settlement hasn't even been stumbled upon as far as I know. I don't even have any idea of where I could possibly be in the overall picture.

[martinuzz]

It strikes me , since this game is an alpha, and the firstmost function of present playerbase, for the programmers, would be to test and provide feedback, that it is somewhat counterproductive to have all those griefers walking around, who might have contributed a lot to playtesting in the past, but at this moment do nothing but 'test' how fast they can trash a place / bully someone to quit.

I can't see this making any contribution to the process of game development. On the contrary, I can see it hurting it; a lot of those people who fall victim to this are peaceful, but active players, who like this game and are interested in it's development.
They test out new features, report bugs, and generally have a wider range of activities than just going out and trashing stuff. I can really understand people quitting this game, because some idiot veteran player they have no chance whatsoever against, who doesn't seem to care for game development (anymore?), trashed the place they just worked hard for, for months even maybe.

I'd say those people quitting are a loss to the community, and not some 'whiners'.
If I were Jorb / Loftar, I'd take offense even, to those griefers, who are making their very promising game look bad.
I'd make finding a solution for the griefing problem top priority.

[burgingham]

It strikes me that, since this game is an alpha, and the firstmost function of present playerbase, for the programmers, would be to test and provide feedback, that it is somewhat counterproductive to have all those griefers walking around, who might have contributed a lot to playtesting in the past, but at this moment do nothing but 'test' how fast they can trash a place / bully someone to quit.

I can't see this making any contribution to the process of game development. On the contrary, I can see it hurting it; a lot of those people who fall victim to this are peaceful, but active players, who like this game and are interested in it's development.
They test out new features, report bugs, and generally have a wider range of activities than just going out and trashing stuff. I can really understand people quitting this game, because some idiot veteran player they have no chance whatsoever against, who doesn't seem to care for game development (anymore?), trashed the place they just worked hard for, for months even maybe.

I'd say those people quitting are a loss to the community, and not some 'whiners'.
If I were Jorb / Loftar, I'd take offense even to those griefers, who are making their very promising game look bad.
I'd make finding a solution for the griefing problem top priority.

If you are referring to us by this...lol. We can provide way more testing to the devs than some nub farmer ever could. I am really not sure if there are so many real griefers around, but you people should understand the difference between a PvP/raiding playing style and senseless griefing. The borders are of course shifting and not clearly defined, but I really doubt there is a veteran player around who just uses the game only for destroying stuff newbies built up. He had to become a veteran player somehow, which indicates he likes the game and its mechanics. If he then choses to use the power he gained in some way others don't like by stealing their stuff, well that is not griefing but a legitimate style to play this game and you just have to deal with it. As I said before there might be some guys out there who destroy stuff for no purpose at all, but I never have met one of those.

[martinuzz]

I am referring to those other people, that go around trashing people's stuff for no reason, like what seems to have happened the OP, and like what happened to a friend of mine not long ago, who never even trespassed anywhere.

Still, I also think that (your type of?) PvP raiding should be restricted somehow, so that players who choose to play this game in a peaceful style, can do so.
You wanna raid for stealing stuff? Fine. The victim should have hidden his most precious stuff / locked the gates. I even wouldn't object against lockpicking and lockpicks being introduced, if balanced.

Killing people in the Wilderness? Fine. You should always be wary when travelling.

But vandalism / murder, on your own property, for no reason? Players that haven't given any reason shouldn't lose their hard work or be killed.
Isn't it an idea to introduce 'retaliation'? Say, for every criminal act, a retaliation timer is activated, within it's timeframe, the perpetrator can be killed in his claim and his posessions trashed. If there is no 'retaliation', stuff in claim cannot be destroyed, and players cannot be killed in their claim.

[burgingham]

But vandalism / murder, on your own property, for no reason? Players that haven't given any reason shouldn't lose their hard work or be killed.
Isn't it an idea to introduce 'retaliation'? Say, for every criminal act, a retaliation timer is activated, within it's timeframe, the perpetrator can be killed and his posessions trashed. If there is no 'retaliation', stuff in claim cannot be destroyed, and players cannot be killed in their claim.

I am opossing this strongly. Of course there should be better measures to protect your land when you are offline, those have been discussed at length in other threads. For your timer, there are already scents in this game, so take matters in your own hands and summon the thief, or let others do it for you. But it should always be possible to trash places and kill people even if they are on claimed land. Removing this would leave this game with little to none of its original charme.

[martinuzz]

I think, that with retaliation, you would still have enough raiding to do. It would just balance things out more, since most raids would be against about equally strong players, since they are the ones who will dare to steal or trespass at your place.

I disagree that it should ALWAYS be possible for people to trash and kill on other's claims. This might be the charm of the game for you, but I am under the impression that it is no charm, rather a big negative to quite a lot of people.
Also, in admitting that this is the charm of the game for you, and disagreeing with some form of retaliation rules, you admit also that you like to trash people's stuff for no reason, which seems to contradict your earlier argument that you do not conduct, or even believe in the existence of senseless griefing.

Trashing stuff / killing for no reason on other's claim seems to exactly fit the term 'senseless griefing'