GRIEF is necessary in MMORPG's

Billius8

Was thinking back on some of my best times in EQ, and the ones which gave me the biggest chuckles were things like:

- zone arguments over camp spots

- zone griping over trains

- people complaining over kill-stealing

Now, while none of these should be sanctioned (indeed, should be punished) by the game companies, all of these are important ingredients for being in a game world where people interact, compete, and occasionally step on one another's toes.

Nothing more contrived than a game world with invisible barriers, too much instancing, and too many divisions between player interaction.

Therefore, I think it is actually good that some griefing occurs.

Thoughts?

 

Cryomatrix

I agree with you that PvP is good, but griefing has too bad of a connotation. When I hear griefing i think a lvl 234342342 character mercilessly killing lvl 1's outside of newbie areas. This detracts from the game in my opinion.

But a game without PvP isn't so much fun to me and a game where a player's actions are limited isn't so much fun either. Griefing should be allowed but there should be ways to prevent it from being to overbearing.

I see no problem playing in an area and then pking someone on a whim, i'm always tempted to do that in lineage 2, i just think the more possibilities in  a game the better.

Also, my most fun moments in a game have involved another playing dying or camping a lootable body or doing something somewhat nefarious. Therefore, I wholehardedly agree with you that some griefing is good. Too much is bad.

In L2, on Hindemith server, there were only a handful of people who ganked, but they also forcelogged and crap and there was no point to mess with them really.

I'm being way too convaluted but the ability to grief is important in a game I think, just not a way to exploit it in game.

Cryomatrix

herbalcomrad

to an extent i dont think the company should do anything about it, if you go to a spot and grind mobs for and item you want or whatever it is who says you have right to that spot more than anyone else, when it arises to a level of people being harrassed or the area is simply too small and is heavily overcamped maybe something needs to be done about that, IMO if you want to engage in that kind of a thing might as well be in a game where you can PK people who are at "your spot"

napalmsweb

The pvp aspect of EQ2 is one of my favorite features and I think it is implimented very nicely. PvP in EQ2 adds a level of good tension to everything because you feel like you are in a hostile world and you need to constantly look over your shoulder. Plus, ganking people and wondering how much you will take from them is great fun.

pinkdaisy

"griefing" no

"drama" yes

Drama is necessary and essential in MMOs.  It's part of the glue that makes your world interesting.  Soap operas without drama wouldn't succeed, nor would riki lake.  Drama is a good thing.

~PD

nikoa

I say let there be no rules....see what happens is MMOs are self regulating in a way.  Sure a high level player can go and start killing lower level players but then another player can respond by defending them. 

Does it suck getting killed when you have no chance of defending yourself?  Yeah, but that is life.  If you think about it same thing happens when you aggro a mob by accident that is much higher in level than you.

SnaKey

That's the main reason I support FFA PVP, moreso than the shear fun of it.

If someone KS's. I don't want to PK his ass and take my stuff back plus some.

Kurush

Most people don't watch soap operas, don't like daytime talk shows, and don't enjoy drama in a leisure activity. If they wanted needless bullshit, they could go hang around the jerk at work or post on an internet forum. I hate to say it, but the kind of people who post on MMORPG forums are a small minority, one which is not representative of most players. This forum in particular is even less representative than others, being comprised almost entirely of super hardcore MMORPG players who discount any game without huge levels of grind as being "for newbies."

Drama in a MMORPG might be cool or "necessary" if you don't see it in the real world, which I can see being true for many hardcore MMORPG players whose playing habits have almost completely destroyed their social live. For most people, it's just a nuisance, plain and simple. It's about as necessary as getting kicked in the groin.

I'll give you a hint. There's a reason why WoW holds onto over one million players in America while neither Everquest or its sequel topped 500k in concurrent subs. It's because those two games are full of annoying, needlessly painful things that the average gamer simply can't tolerate. Those kind of things don't make a game "hard" or "challenging," however much hardcore MMORPG players might want to believe the contrary. It makes them annoying and a huge timesink.

nikoa

WoW as a game is ok until you hit 60.  Then the time sink is alot more significant than any other game.  Anyway, logistics aside you are right when you say most of the posters are hardcore MMOers...or people that are looking for a new MMO. 

Another thing I want to point out for WoW's success is that not only did it get old MMOers but also anyone that played Blizzard games.  In any case WoW has been discussed multiple times and it kind of detracts from the point of this post

Faur

"Griefing" is such a broad term. I'll give an example of what I feel "griefing" is at it's essence.

I played an early beta of a mmo, where if someone sent you a team invite, a box would pop up in the middle of your screen. You could not click anything, perform any actions, not even move your character while this box was there. They could still send you a team invite and make this box appear if you ignored them.

I was killing mobs in a certain area, and this guy shows up and tells me to leave because it was "his" spot, he had it all of yesterday, all that usual crap. I say no, you're gonna have to duel me for it or go somewhere else. He sat down and started spamming team invites, making it very clear he would not stop until I logged, even if I left. This is what I call griefing.

Another example is a level 200 guy running around in the newbie tutorial areas, spamming AOE's to kill all the mobs that the new players need for their newbie quests. He's never even met any of the players there, he doesn't get any xp or loot from the mobs he's killing. He's doing it *just* to piss people off.


If someone trains me for no other reason that they want my hunting spot or because I told them off on a forum, I'd be more willing to call that a player dispute than griefing.

VengeSunsoar

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Originally posted by Billius8

Was thinking back on some of my best times in EQ, and the ones which gave me the biggest chuckles were things like:
- zone arguments over camp spots
- zone griping over trains
- people complaining over kill-stealing
Now, while none of these should be sanctioned (indeed, should be punished) by the game companies, all of these are important ingredients for being in a game world where people interact, compete, and occasionally step on one another's toes.
Nothing more contrived than a game world with invisible barriers, too much instancing, and too many divisions between player interaction.
Therefore, I think it is actually good that some griefing occurs.
Thoughts?
 

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I will agree to this with a certain extent.  I hated the arguments over camp spots, and the inevitable arguments.  It went like this.

"Camp check"

"Lower bandit taken"  (or whatever the name was - in paludal caverns)

"There is no camping, it's in the rules."

"It may be in the rules, but it is rude to take mobs..."

This happened sooo many times a day, was sickening.  So a big NO to arguments over camps.  There has to be another way, other than full instancing.

 

Trains though were often really really fun.  Yes it sucked dying in one.  But when the call, "Train to zone" rang out, and you were resting at the zone your adrenaline started pumping.  Escaping a train, or better yet, helping to stop it was great.  So a bit YES to controlled trains. 

Kill-stealing?  hated it.  This is not to much of a problem now with tagged mobs, one who touched it first gets loot and xp.

 

*sits back and chuckles of the train times*

Venge Sunsoar

Liddokun

Griefing makes me want to bash that jackass's head in real life with a 20 pound sledgehammer and makes his brain matter splattered all over the grey concrete pavement.

Classicstar

Typical whiners crybabys topic you guys wont play darkfall im sure of that.

Thats why so many instance and big save zones mmo,s are made these days to keep you crybabys save:P

Gameloading

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Originally posted by forest-nl

Typical whiners crybabys topic you guys wont play darkfall im sure of that.
Thats why so many instance and big save zones mmo,s are made these days to keep you crybabys save:P

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Typical Hardcore kiddie. Go back to your hardcore pvp games...oh wait, thats right, most of them get the hardcore pvp part removed because close to nobody cares about them. 

Classicstar

hehe if it make you happy dont cry pls i dont wanne grief you to much:P

 

Gameloading

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Originally posted by forest-nl

hehe if it make you happy dont cry pls i dont wanne grief you to much:P
 

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I think, with all the hardcore parts removed from most MMO's, your the one that should be crying.

Jhughesy

I would agree but I wouldn't call it 'griefing'.

Jhughesy

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Originally posted by Gameloading
Typical Hardcore kiddie. Go back to your hardcore pvp games...oh wait, thats right, most of them get the hardcore pvp part removed because close to nobody cares about them. 

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The polls on this site show otherwise. 30% need PvP, 30% want it if its done well.

holythough

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Originally posted by Billius8

Was thinking back on some of my best times in EQ, and the ones which gave me the biggest chuckles were things like:
- zone arguments over camp spots
- zone griping over trains
- people complaining over kill-stealing
Now, while none of these should be sanctioned (indeed, should be punished) by the game companies, all of these are important ingredients for being in a game world where people interact, compete, and occasionally step on one another's toes.
Nothing more contrived than a game world with invisible barriers, too much instancing, and too many divisions between player interaction.
Therefore, I think it is actually good that some griefing occurs.
Thoughts?
 

---

Your just loooking for an excuses to grief.

The definition of grief is that you on purpose make somebody else life miserable 

So there's always a looser in this case.

i like win&win sitaution more

Pantastic

[quote]Originally posted by Billius8
[b]Was thinking back on some of my best times in EQ, and the ones which gave me the biggest chuckles were things like:
- zone arguments over camp spots
- zone griping over trains
- people complaining over kill-stealing[/quote]

Wow, and I always thought EQ actually had some worthwhile comment. It says a lot about either the game or you that the most fun you had was people squabbling about extremely gamey actions.

BriarFox

You are confussing Conflict and Griefing



To me griefing is taking advantage of the technology's limitation to
mess with another human being in real life but just using the online
computer game to do it.



It is like some asshat runing on to a football field with a hockey
stick and and cracking the football players on the shinbones.  But
in this case the the referees and the police don't stop the guy because
there is nothing in rules against using a hockey stick.  The guy
isn't playing football or hockey, his is just being a jerk.  If I
hit you on the head with a frying pan I am not COOKING.



Being able to kill someone who is griefing is a good thing, but the cure can't be worse than the illness. 



Well planned PvP provides Conflict which is what folks enjoy without the "Griefing."

The-Raven

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Originally posted by Jhughesy



Originally posted by Gameloading
Typical Hardcore kiddie. Go back to your hardcore pvp games...oh wait, thats right, most of them get the hardcore pvp part removed because close to nobody cares about them. 

The polls on this site show otherwise. 30% need PvP, 30% want it if its done well.

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If you actually think the polls on this site are correct then you need to simply watch the new users being created to realize that many of the same individuals are making multiple accounts to sway the polls and rankings on this site.

Hell even I make 5 accounts using alias email accounts.   This site has no control over the accuracy of their polls and rankings.

In other words, you are totally incorrect because the data you are refering to is totally incorrect.

sacred_band

i like 'griefing' i think you should be able to say/do whatever you can manage IN the game without actually cheating example: macros, abusing bugs, hacking accounts. I've been banned too many times just for feuding with somebody and 'hunting them' or stating my opinion on a real life issue that differs from the gamemaster/moderators.

 Kill stealing, political arguments, pking somebody far below your level etc? If the game makers dont like it then make it impossible to do. But if you let moderators decide for themselves or youre hypocritical about which words to ban while another one just as bad against another group is ok, you create room for confusion and bias and lose me as a customer in the process.

 I dont know if it has to do with 'political correctness' or publishers just not wanting to be sued for the remarks of a player, but it sure makes you feel like youre paying to go back to 3rd grade detention when you kill somebody and call them homo or inferior and some magical guy in a cape appears and deletes your account because you went against the communist way of rpg equality.

Billius8

In my original post, I did not sanction endless rampant griefing.  What I meant was that folks in the world could get in one another's way from time to time, making it a truly shared interactive world, instead of a glorified RPG with training wheels.

Trains are good.  Rampant intentional pulling of trains on a person or party should require CS intervention to punish.  But the occasional train makes the world immersive and fun. 

My best analogy is that of a bunch of mountain climbers on one wall of a mountain.  Some of the climbers are professional, some are amateurs, and some are downright dangerous.  If one falls, this can impact not only his group but maybe other groups.

I think the best world is one in which the participation of other players can impact you some of the time.  And I'm not talking PvP, which in my experience either always gets out of hand or is too hamstrung by "training wheels" such that no one likes it.  (Just an opinion).

 

Kurir

To the OP, I raise the BS flag and say that griefing/ganking is not necessary in a game to be successful. We have enough of it in RL, when I play a game I choose to be entertained and not be someone elses source of entertainment. Games that don't cater to my style of play simply don't get my subscription fees.

Billius8

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Originally posted by Kurir
To the OP, I raise the BS flag and say that griefing/ganking is not necessary in a game to be successful. We have enough of it in RL, when I play a game I choose to be entertained and not be someone elses source of entertainment. Games that don't cater to my style of play simply don't get my subscription fees.

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If you don't have any griefing (or ganking), then you have a controlled game on "training wheels", with its invisible barriers, invisible rules, and sandbox environment.

There is a trade-off for "immersion"; some folks are willing to pay that price and I understand that.