Trolls

[Cookie]

The Germamic-Scandinavian setting of this game means that one of its essential features is the trolls. (joke)

The trolls have two happy pastimes: One is hurting other players in game. The other is hurting other players in the forum. (And, I assume on irc.)

What trolls like to do is find someone who is vulnerable, either because they are not as powerful as the trolls, or because they are absent and cannot defend themself, and then they do as much damage and cause as much distress as possible. Trolls range from the sophisticated, where they try to engage you in supposedly reasonable neighbour relationships, or in conversation before they start hacking away at you, or the simple, where they play whack-a-mole with anyone in sight. If you don't find the idea of hurting someone else hilarious it is a bit hard to believe, but trust me, there is a small but extremely noticeable population in Haven and Hearth who really do react like that. It's just one of those things that there is no point asking why unless you are prepared to dedicate a lot of time to ethical or neurobiological research.

I first assumed that people who liked pvp would find other players who liked to play pvp and engage in sporting competitions with them, but there if there is a faction of players who like friendly competetive pvp they don't seem to be visible. I think this is because in order to be at all good a fighter you have to invest a lot in your character, and despite efforts by the dev's to make character death less of a huge loss, at the same time it still remains a huge loss... so two fighters with level 200 in combat skills are not going to go head to head until one of them dies. They will either be friendly allies, or one of them will try to backstab the other. If you want to survive in game you only attack weaker players.

This means that the game at the moment largely involves either avoiding trolls, or being one. Being one is easy. Avoiding them is also easy -it involves keeping a very, very low profile. Lurkers with settlements far out do fine avoiding trolls. Don't want to read their insulting provocative forum posts? -There is a function to hide the posts made by people whose posts don't make you feel good. Quite a few new people arrive and are horrified to find out that they are way, way out in the wilderness with no neighbours, but of course this is their security net, the hiding place they need until they can sort out the skills and make the contacts so that they can flourish.

It's worth remembering that the trolls also dominate the forum. The stated aim of some of the trolls in this game is to kill as many innocent players as they can and then get a buzz from hearing about it in the forum. Trolls love drama, and by drama they mean hearing about the sorrow and indignation of other players and then trying to make the distressed posters even more distressed. So that means if you get pillaged or murdered by other players, rage posting about it gives them more of what they want. They want conflict, they want proof of their prowess and their ability to make a mark on this world. The more of that they get, the more they stick around and try to generate it.

Disengage. That's the one thing that works best with trolls.

Here is what I am suggesting: Don't invest too much in anything that might be vulnerable, from characters to locations to your possessions. Be prepared to melt away. Keep a back up in a different grid. When building a village, a farm or any type of settlement keep in mind that it is temporary. Some day the map will be reset. In the meantime grow all you want, but for longer term plans be thinking about the new farm, that new settlement. Expect theives and make strategies for dealing with them. Say you have a sausage grinder. You can hide it, but hiding it on pavement or indoors makes a mark on the mini-map, so it will inevitably come to the attention of someone who can take it away from you. So hide it as best you can, but make a back up plan for getting a new sausage grinder when this one goes. Make sure all your allies also have sausage grinders. Make contacts who can provide you with the cast iron to build a new one. Scope out possible other places to evacuate to if trouble comes to your neighbourhood. Store any valuables that over flow from your inventory in storage alts.

If you are under attack, don't talk to the trolls. They want to hear screams of protest or frantic requests to know why, who they are, what are they doing. If your character has been put into aggro you can always fight back, although it is extremely unlikely you will ever be attacked by someone who isn't certain they can kill you without damage to themself. They will be discouraged from continuing the attacks more from getting no response than by anything else you can do.

[Yolan]

was that necessary?

[Manson]

So are you going to publish this as a book?

[sabinati]

i'm waiting for the movie, i heard james cameron was directing

[Cookie]

Nah, it was all stuff I didn't know when I started this kind of gaming, so I thought it might be useful to someone else who was trying to figure out "the rules". Besides, it killed time while I was on-line fishing.

[Jackard]

i'm waiting for the movie, i heard james cameron was directing

ten years in the making

[NaoWhut]

Hear anything bout the casting?

[Cookie]

We're negotiating for Brad and Jen.

[Caradon]

It's just an alpha, but when the game is fleshed out I sincerely hope that J&L have something planned to weed out trolls. They are already interfering with testing by their constant bullshit.

We want to have all sorts of "PLAYERS" including thieves and raiders. In this game, raiders wouldn't kill needlessly, especially if they have a well set up village and defense, but I wont go into the details of why, (retarded get rage and type tl;dr)

Trolls do not play a game, they seek to cripple and ruin it. If J&L can't realize what the fuck that means they should just look at the blasted landscapes of games that were previously attacked by them in the past.

[Jackard]

caradon is a troll