Freedom to curse and to thief..but this?

[RiverPhoenix]

Because of JTG's behavior we've spent four or five dev sessions implementing tracking, village claims, drying frame destruction and black skills that make vandalism harder. Why on God's green earth would I want to ban JTG? He's one of the few players we have who actually try to break the game. Do you not see how JTG's behavior has improved the game? Do you not see that we've spent a lot of time implementing stuff to prevent JTG -- and, really, only him, since he's the only monster out there -- from spoiling your fun?

Maybe the problem we have is that JTG has indeed pushed beyond the limits of acceptability time and again and an ultimate response to this "monster" (your term, not mine) does need to be set - because there does indeed need to be a line drawn in the sand - and it is your sand after all - to say that you may go to this point and no further before being given the ultimate response... the advantage you have is that you have, in fact, and ultimate sanction - this is not true in real life, sadly, except if you take a long term view.

I have a very hard time swallowing accusations of passivity with regards to trolling and griefing. Do you see the game implementation issues that we have to consider? Do you know how hard it is to come up with good rules that allow for legitimate object/terrain/item interaction while punishing illegitimate instances of what is programatically the exact same thing? The game server does not have an intuitive grasp of morality, hard to believe though it might be.

I have no problem with what you have done programmatically - in fact I applaud your (pl.) efforts, you have done a very good job compared to most things I've seen - however what you don't seem to realise (and this is a common issue amongst programmers - I know a lot being one myself), or maybe you do as the above seems to imply you are getting there, is that you have to face the fact that some things have to be solved "outside" the system - call it a hand of godcall it a wizard, call it the baltantly unRPG mod(erator) - the work of one individual in this game can destroy the hard work of many individuals in a very short time as they can in real life... in real life they can lock you up and stop you doing it ever again... in a computer game such as yours we can not (no I'm not requesting this be added - for this reason anyway) because the player will simply take on another persona - you, as the owners of the system, must take responsibility for the fact that the limits of what people can do in the game are defined by you and if you wish you can have people like JTG in the game but do not expect others to take it lightly or incessantly - they will simply leave and you will be left with those like JTG (who will leave too, they need the attention because that's all they care about - they're too childish to care about anything else).

I love having people here. I love the fact that some of you feel so strongly about this game. I understand that you're pissed off. I'm grateful. But I can't help but feel as if in the twilight zone when I've spent a year and a half on this game without anyone giving a shit about it, only to now have people tell me that I've done to little. Leave and come back in a year if you don't like it as it is now.

Why would we come back? Seriously... we have gone to quite some serious lengths to find this game (don't ask how many hours it took to find this game, more than I care to remember I know that much) and we have then invested ourselves in this game and (at least in some cases) tried to help out with its development but then to ask us, those who are as hard core as your game can ever expect to have, to put up with some idiot unnecessarily breaching every social etiquette rule that exists in the civilised world and (and this is the bits that really makes me lose faith in your judgement) praising him for doing so (scrawling "haha" into someone's town centre would have provoked the same requests for a way to stop that as "fuck you Nazis" after all) is just asking those who care about the game to think they care more about it than you (no matter how long your twilight - and a year and a half is pretty short for a game of this complexity) and with that you then caused those players to expect you to accede to their demands or they leave and make a better game (if they can) or find a better game (there are hundreds if not thousands in alpha, beta and live out there after all).

What I am trying to say is this: Feel free to do what you like with this game, it is yours after all, but if you want other people to appreciate it then you will attract (in the long term) on the people willing to put up with the same level of crap you are. What I am trying to point out to you is that you seem willing to allow more crap than a number of your current players... if that is the case you can't expect them to stay and in the economics of MMO's swapping a bunch of people for one person just makes your game that you have worked so hard on more likely to fail because eventually you'll be left with no-one.

Alphaalphaalphaalpha. Workingonitworkingonitworkingonit.

Stay strong.

It is live - maybe the world has beguiled you, it has certainly beguiled itself, but calling it an alpha doesn't absolve you of responsibility and it doesn't change almost a single persons' expectations. You have a live game with live people, what you saying it is "alpha" tells us is that we can expect regular changes and even resets but we still expect the social aspects of the game to work... maybe your next dev session should be how to deal with a real life Nazi/BNP/Le Pen supporter coming onto your game and scrawling their thoughts all over it - if you can't handle that person then it's only a matter of time before your Mona Lisa becomes the playground of two year old evolutionary dead ends (much like the fate of your game).

Oh and JTG? I applaud your creativity but not your style - learn to be eloquent or to flip burgers you'll need one of the two when you grow up.

River

[sami1337]

Because of JTG's behavior we've spent four or five dev sessions implementing tracking, village claims, drying frame destruction and black skills that make vandalism harder. Why on God's green earth would I want to ban JTG? He's one of the few players we have who actually try to break the game. Do you not see how JTG's behavior has improved the game? Do you not see that we've spent a lot of time implementing stuff to prevent JTG -- and, really, only him, since he's the only monster out there -- from spoiling your fun?

I have a very hard time swallowing accusations of passivity with regards to trolling and griefing. Do you see the game implementation issues that we have to consider? Do you know how hard it is to come up with good rules that allow for legitimate object/terrain/item interaction while punishing illegitimate instances of what is programatically the exact same thing? The game server does not have an intuitive grasp of morality, hard to believe though it might be.

And on the whole nazism thing -- censorship means closing your eyes to the real and material evil inherent in national socialism. It means limiting your own understanding of the mechanisms of mass action, mass psychosis, ideological subversion, group radicalization and group psychology, that totalitarian ideologies depend on. Moral panic is by definition not a reasonable response.

And, on another note, how safe do you *really* want to be? If you're looking for an angelically safe position in which no whim or wish of yours can get frustrated, you are playing the wrong game. It seems to me that every time we implement something that allows you better protection, you complain because your Achilles still has a heel.

I love having people here. I love the fact that some of you feel so strongly about this game. I understand that you're pissed off. I'm grateful. But I can't help but feel as if in the twilight zone when I've spent a year and a half on this game without anyone giving a shit about it, only to now have people tell me that I've done to little. Leave and come back in a year if you don't like it as it is now.

Alphaalphaalphaalpha. Workingonitworkingonitworkingonit.

Stay strong.

Simply said, i want fixes not features.

I can't care less about knowing who turned my town upside down. I want it to be impossible to abuse the inability to click stuff behind cabins, RoB and the inn. It's been a problem for such a long time and yet we only get new features to somewhat make it easier to live with. But fact remains that if you abuse this exploit all of those implemented features are rendered useless.

I've tracked down so many people just to find their heartfire behind a building, or them afking half a day because they didn't have a heart fire.


And i agree with River. If people leave, why would they come back? There are plenty of games out there to replace this. They only suffer from the lack of updates, but they are mostly out of alpha and beta stage.
It's a miracle i am still playing this. I usually stop playing mmo's after a week or two. Infact, i've never played an mmo for more than 2 weeks before.
There are a couple reasons why i am still playing. One because i absolutely love the idea of indie gaming. And two because it used to be a nice community until JTG came along. Shockedfrog did some "debugging". JTG is a bored soul.

[provo]

People don't seem to see the divide between an ingame crime and player socialability. For all JTG clowning/greifing/crime , it does provide alot of motivation for game devleopment and mostly "allowed" given the game rules.

But calling people fags constantly in the forum, making nazi symbols or minstral black faces adds nothing to the game or game development. It is the poor social skills of JTG that players are rallying against and will drive players away.

If you can't divide the two actions your are missing the point of most of peoples arguments. I think we very much have a
Man 1: "the grass in green......"
Man 2: "No no the sky is blue"
argument

[Ferinex]

minstral black faces

wat. minstrel? Either way, are you saying drawing people of color is going to drive people away from the game? Are black people scary to you or offensive or something?

We already established that the Swastika isn't a big deal. Get over it. Stop being a seriousfag bawwwbaby.

[provo]

minstral black faces

wat. minstrel? Either way, are you saying drawing people of color is going to drive people away from the game? Are black people scary to you or offensive or something?

We already established that the Swastika isn't a big deal. Get over it. Stop being a seriousfag bawwwbaby.

"minstrals" spelt wrong, where a comdy show in the 1920 circa. Where white men would paint there face black and play black men and all the "silly" ways. The picture that JTG did in the forums was some what similar to those charactures.


my point is that there is a line somewhere... and the player who started the post is looking to see where that is..... all i;ve done is try and articulate peoples points and draw them together to some common meaning, so it dosn't become a slug fest.

[loftar]

First of all, let me just say that though I understand that people are upset to see their efforts being undone, I very much appreciate the experience that can be drawn from these things. The fact that there actually are real players and real trolls in the game makes it so much easier to predict what mechanisms the game needs to be better balanced in the future (though it should be said that we had already foreseen the vast majority of it all, and that many of the features implemented lately were simple bumped in priority on our long to-do list, but nevertheless, it is very useful to get some incentive to finally implement them). Noone is more impressed than I at how long and despite what adversities people are actually staying in the game; I hardly expected any activity to come from our participation in SGA at all, and if anything, I expected people to stay for at most a week or two, given how much I know there still to be lacking in Haven. To see so many people here playing, chatting and taking the time to make well-founded and intelligent complaints is unbelievable fun (maybe a bit too fun, since it's taking a little too much of my time from doing things that I really should be doing instead).

I hope it was clear from my previous post that it was a lash-out at censorship of specific words/symbols, not at peoples' needs to protect themselves from a hostile environment -- I more than well understand and endorse the latter.

With that said,

is that you have to face the fact that some things have to be solved "outside" the system [...] the work of one individual in this game can destroy the hard work of many individuals in a very short time as they can in real life... in real life they can lock you up and stop you doing it ever again... in a computer game such as yours we can not (no I'm not requesting this be added - for this reason anyway) because the player will simply take on another persona

That is why it is our intention to fix this problem by not making it "simple" to take on another persona. The black skills are our attempt at that mechanism, but it does seem to be lacking severely at the moment, and we know that it needs improvement. We are planning a number of changes to the skill system ranging from slight evolutionary changes to completely overhauling some of its mechanisms in order to fix it, but it's not entirely simple.

At the very least, I think you can agree that it would be a lot more fun if we can, indeed, ensure that you can repel JTG by your own might rather than having to pray and hope for divine intervention, no?

and (and this is the bits that really makes me lose faith in your judgement) praising him for doing so

Well now, it's not so much that Jorb was praising him for the action of scribbling lulz in your town center, but rather for the fact that he is showing us the various ways in which the game is broken in that it allows him to destroy other players' actions without fear of punishment. The fact is, of course, that in real life, vandalism, theft and similar actions are quite easy to perform, and what prevents people from doing them is the fear of punishment (either physical or in the form of expulsion from society). While it is challenging, it is our aim to try and emulate that same mechanic in Haven. As I stated above, we'd like to ensure that it isn't "easy" to just assume a new identity to avoid the consequences of punishment. Of course, we cannot prevent people from creating new accounts or characters (since the ease of doing such things is in the nature of the Internet), but I believe that if we can ensure that a fair bit of effort needs to be invested in a character before the black skills are possible, then people would need to be quite motivated in order to use them.

Thus, even though JTG is frustrating people, he is quite an asset for us in showing just what needs to be done in order to prevent him from acting as he does. We are also grateful for each post of yours exalting his evil deeds for us to see.

I want it to be impossible to abuse the inability to click stuff behind cabins, RoB and the inn. It's been a problem for such a long time and yet we only get new features to somewhat make it easier to live with. But fact remains that if you abuse this exploit all of those implemented features are rendered useless.

I've tracked down so many people just to find their heartfire behind a building, or them afking half a day because they didn't have a heart fire.

I agree; that does seem to be the greatest problem right now. Even before you posted that, I was considering various options for fixing that particular bug. Don't worry, it's coming; I just need to figure out a good way of implementing it.

Since you speak of "fixes" in the plural, though; is there anything else on your mind?

[Ferinex]

"minstrals" spelt wrong

You're right, you did spell it wrong. That's why I corrected you in my post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show
Stop assuming you know everything. I could nitpick through your posts and point out the MASSIVE amount of grammar flaws, but that's just lowly.

Also, I don't think there needs to be a line. I like there not being a line. Lines are for sallies.

[provo]

"minstrals" spelt wrong

You're right, you did spell it wrong. That's why I corrected you in my post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show
Stop assuming you know everything. I could nitpick through your posts and point out the MASSIVE amount of grammar flaws, but that's just lowly.

Also, I don't think there needs to be a line. I like there not being a line. Lines are for sallies.

Cheers, on the spelling i didn't bother checking for your spelling to see if it was different. I thought you were wondering what minstrels are. So thought i would be odd to spell something you didn't know existed. As for the grammer, i don't proof read forum chats, ill correct if its that bad, we all know grammer nazis don't having any constructive/useful/intelligent arugments, thats why they bitch about grammer


And im just trying to help explain peopls positions, im pretty sure i got a thanks somewhere back their from someone who was having trouble getting their point across.


As for thinking i "know everthing", i don't..... but unless you got a point to add to that.... and its not just some random advice like "don't eat too much cream" that has no context. i have no idea what your talking about....

[sami1337]

I still don't like the fact you guys praise JTG while in reality he's an idiot. I want shockedfrog back.

[provo]

check out the RoB for a repeat..... of JTD efforts


not a good image for new players.

if someone can get a pic up cool.,