Freedom to curse and to thief..but this?

[sami1337]

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.,

I just killed Adolf Hitler and overthrew the Nazi regime. The cross is gone.

[StarChaser]

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.,

I just killed Adolf Hitler and overthrew the Nazi regime. The cross is gone.

Pics or it didn't happen.

~SC

[sami1337]

i am sorry, i didn't properly press printscreen before hand. And loftar came by after to remove the cross. Nice and tidy again now.
but hitlers foot is still sticking out from behind a pillar of the RoB as he was trying to flee after he was cocky enough to show a tiny bit of his character.

[kobnach]

This is an interesting thread, particularly the responses from Loftar and Jorb. I agree that JTG has done a service by pointing out limitations of the game mechanisms. The problem from my POV is that those limitations are not being fixed. The game still has the following major playability bug: a person who wishes to focus on upsetting others cannot be effectively combated.

Sure, folks who are offended can kill his/her alt of the moment, assuming we can find it online. But it can exploit game limitations to make itself unsummonable -the same limitations it uses to effectively destroy other people's property. (I.e. the behind-a-house problem.) And even if it were not able to exploit those limitations, the basic problem is that the player does not care about the character being killed. At the very worst, it needs to regain 5000 points for vandalism, and/or 4000 for theft, and go out and do the same thing again. And it can gain those points doing what its player loves best - trashing other people's creations and resources - since it's not reasonable or possible for a farmer to claim all his/her fields or a hunter to claim whole forests. (It's also very easy to get your 5 * 24 hours of game time for full tradition without really playing for 30 hours; explanation to devs by private message on request, in case it isn't obvious how to do it.)

Meanwhile, all we have to combat this behaviour are other bugs. In particular we have the combination of impassable hearth fires and indestructable objects. All anyone can retain is what's on their body (if not killed) and what's in a vault of some kind. I at least am finding this to be a severe limitation. As my stats increase, I'm having trouble even stockpiling all the food for my next food event - while still preserving basic tools and a small supply of working materials.

With ambitions thus limited, people aren't much interested in building - so they are out killing things. From that, it's an easy step to killing each other - as we see happening in other threads. Net result - a reduction of the atmosphere that made the game attractive in the first place.

To make matters worse, steps taken to limit the vandalism problem make things worse for innocent players. I have an overly large claim, creating a nuisance for passing hunters - just to make things slightly more difficult for wandering griefers. And this prevents or discourages legitimate behaviour I wish to allow. I want to let wandering strangers harvest my crops (small quantities, or replanting) and use my tools. I benefited as a new player form neighbours who followed this policy. But now those who still follow this policy generally have no tools left - just a collection of empty baskets and maybe some remaining crops.

This, Jorb and Loftar, is a major _bug_. It's not a coding error or a missing feature - it's an overall design issue. I don't think you can fix it with yet another game mechanism bolted onto the side. You've made a decision to allow PVP of various kinds, and not thought through the effect of throw-away characters, particularly in combination with a player made goal of disrupting and hurting others.

If JTG were a thief, he wouldn't be a problem, because he'd run out of things worth stealing. A farmer could make double quantities of food, knowing the thief would become "overstuffed" just as readily as the farmer. (It would be much like supporting a newbie, or a non-farming miner, except non-consensual.) A miner might wind up making double charcoal, maybe even losing some ore - but bulk materials aren't really worth stealing. Metal and other consumables would be the only thing worth repeatedly stealing. (How many sausage makers does any one player need?) And those small quantities could be kept in inventory or similar - except for big producers who see cast iron much the same way I see wheat seeds

So at the moment I'm playing primarily for social reasons - to chat with folks I know and like here. I suspect that's becoming more and more common - among those still playing. Others are developing itchy trigger fingers, and running around killing people; I find the idea tempting myself, except that this just isn't the game i came here to play. There are lots of games devoted to combat free-for-alls, possibly with a bit of development on the side - and they generally do it better than Haven and Hearth. They also have players who wish to play that game, not a building game.

I'm also exploiting every game limitation and misfeature I can find, and that really does not make me happy - but I feel pretty much stuck doing so. The real trouble is now that I've begun - for anti-griefer defence - I'm seeing other ways to use the same (mis)features - and using them. And not being a cracker by temperament, this is sure to reduce my enjoyment of the game - in part by leaving me feeling guilty.

*sigh* This is a lovely game overall. But - everyone I know seems to be leaving, moving, or considering both of these, thanks to either griefers (most commonly) or escalating pvp conflicts. What a waste.

[RiverPhoenix]

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?

Yes, but sometimes you need divine intervention, and a banhammer properly implemented takes barely any time at all for a god to use - though I guess it depends on how much you log of player actions; the best systems (from an administrators point of view) log at least as much as the players and rest of the system store (in byte terms at least) - I'd guess if you're doing a lot of debugging you're already logging a lot anyway.

And to prove the point this user indeed seems ot have required (or at least received) divine intervention anyway to fix the mess... why bother with the trouble and division created in the community (much more damaging and long lasting - do you know how many people have been put off that haven't spoken up?) and not just nip problem people in the bud? (and before you say "how can you tell?" see my next point...)

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

I realise why Jorb was praising him but JTG is simply trying to cause grief, not push the system which is why I actually said (and the latter bit that you chopped from the above quote is important):

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)

There is a big difference between "haha" and "fuck you Nazis" - the latter wouldn't be allowed on The Simpsons for a start - this is clearly marking this person as a trouble maker - not a systems tester. From what I hear of ShockedFrog he is as nothing compared to this new person and really did show problems up without doing it by breeching social etiquette (despite the enemies he made).

Okay, a couple of things you could fix - an official channel or policy on how to report offenders of the social standards that have evolved within the players of this game. A how-to for reporting bugs (etc.) with screenshots (I can write one for you if you wish). And the most important one: a line in the sand as to how much you are willing to tolerate when it comes to breaches in social etiquette.

Kobnach I agree entirely... I came to this game to build and to farm - I don't want to be a hunter or a killer or anything but work in a community with others... I have been fortunate to find a community that has accepted me but even they are having problems with people getting bored of the limitations caused by the lack of development in other areas of the game in favour of combating griefers - are you not getting bored of that too!?

If there is anything we can do to help the problem we will (maybe without your consent if people break the laws of their own countries) - but we would prefer to keep this civil, it is after all only a game.

River

P.S. And would the name callers please get off this thread "better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it".

[jorb]

Several valid points have been raised. I will meditate a little over this thread.

[sami1337]

kobnach: You have a nice wall of text there. Thanks for your time and effort (and those that posted walls of merciless sense).
But there are a couple things you mentioned that are no "broken". Just very hard for players without a town idol. For example, it's not hard to claim an entire farm with the idol, banner and/or chieftain statue.

I agree with you in that the latest "fixes" Don't actually fix anything when it comes to alt abusing. They just add-on to the town system, which is cool, but useless against griefers.

[kobnach]

kobnach: You have a nice wall of text there. Thanks for your time and effort (and those that posted walls of merciless sense).
But there are a couple things you mentioned that are no "broken". Just very hard for players without a town idol. For example, it's not hard to claim an entire farm with the idol, banner and/or chieftain statue.

I agree with you in that the latest "fixes" Don't actually fix anything when it comes to alt abusing. They just add-on to the town system, which is cool, but useless against griefers.

Being able to summon for vandalism was an improvement, even for those not in towns. Or rather, it's an improvement when the vandalism is basically theft (e.g. of crops, stones, etc) or caused by personal animosity. Like everything else, it's no use when the perpetrator doesn't care whether his or her character is killed.

Other than that well, not being in a town, I have no idea how big an area the village idol system can cover, or what the costs are like. What I do know is that if some person or group walled in the whole area I and a single neighbour farm, such that it couldn't be passed without trespass, we'd be creating a huge detour for other players. (We'd also include a public road, since village parts must be contiguous.) So even if we could afford to claim this whole area - not needing LP to do so - it would still be somewhat of a problem.)

[sami1337]

Ah then an idol would be pretty impossible. Because it basicly claims a huge ass area.

[loftar]

Sure, folks who are offended can kill his/her alt of the moment [...] the basic problem is that the player does not care about the character being killed [...] You've made a decision to allow PVP of various kinds, and not thought through the effect of throw-away characters [...] Like everything else, it's no use when the perpetrator doesn't care whether his or her character is killed.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, it seems that you largely reiterate the point that it's too easy to be a griefer, since they can always create a new character and start anew if they are killed. As I stated above, our overall plan of action against that (regardless of the actual methods we finally choose to implement it) is to make it hard and/or effortful to create a character capable of griefing, so that it isn't "simply" a matter of making an alt to grief with. Did you merely miss that, or do you disagree with that as a sound way to remedy the problem?

In my mind, the solution has to come as two parts: First, to make it matter to a griefer that his character is killed or otherwise punished; and second, for non-griefers to be able to punish griefers (though not necessarily in that temporal order). We do have systems more or less thought out for both of those parts -- as you may have noticed, much of our changes as of late have been focused at the latter -- it's just a matter of getting it all implemented.

Either way, I do have to disagree with your statement that "those limitations are not being fixed". Both tree planting, the ranging skill, the village system and other things are features that we have implemented precisely to make it possible to combat griefers, and at large, they seem to have been working quite well at fixing the problems they were intended to fix. Naturally, there are lots of bugs and/or unimplemented features left (for instance, the behind-a-house problem or black skills being too easily obtained, among many others); however much I would like to fix them, time is limited, after all.