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Griefing and what it mean to you.
BlackWizards
Member Posts: 173
I want to talk about grief'ing and what it means to you. I will described my opinion of it, give some examples, and would love if you all do the same. The mmo's I have played are for more then six months are:
Anarchy Online, 4 years on and off. WoW, about 8 months with a few breaks. Eve Online, about 8 months.
I also dabbled in some AoC and WAR more recently.
My question is this: Is griefing a 1 sided act, or does it require the participation of both the griefer and the victim? Can some one be grief'd if they don't play the game along with the griefer?
I cannot say in my many year on MMO'ing that I have been griefed in any substantial way. I have never been griefed in EVE, and that is a full loot sandbox game. There have been some annoying occasions, I have been trained, camped, ks'd, and verbally abused in mmo's, but at no time did I ever take it personally or let it totally ruin my enjoyment of the game. I am ofc excluding any time I have been "griefed" by some one using exploits, because I feel that is a different matter; exploiter's are exploiting bugs where griefer's are allegedly exploiting game mechanics. So please keep the discussion on exploitation of game mechanics.
I feel that every time some one has taken the approach to "grief" me I was always presented with a way out of the situation, even if it meant logging off for 5 mins and having a smoke or what ever.
I will say that the most vitriolic plays I have had experienced where people who felt I was making a victim of them, even if it I was using a feature of the game (i.e. taking towers in AO). I have often felt that the loudest proclaiming victims of grief where in fact
So tell what does griefing mean to you, is it avoidable, and if not can you be brave enough to share some personal or general examples of griefing?
Comments
tried to attach this poll, but I cannot get it to work right, hopefully this works.
The WWIIoL definition is a little different to the standard MMO definition.
In WWIIoL each side (squadron, brigade and division) has an equipment pool. That pool replenishes with time but, if it is not used carefully it is possible to completely deplete equipment from the pool.
In WWIIoL a griefer is a player who repeatedly (and sometimes deliberately) wastes equipment from the pool.
i.e. a player might join a RAF squadron and repeatedly take off and crash all the Spit IXs until there are none left.
It's rare to see a griefer in WWIIoL - both sides frown on this and it is bannable.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
That's a pretty example of 1 sided griefing, something like that should pretty much deserve a ban.
i have been grief'd and i also have been the griefer.. as i'm sure most if not all of us have... nbd.. the only problem i have with griefing is the losers, the hardcore griefers, who sit there all day griefing the ever-living shiz out of others..
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
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I always considered the griefer to be a person who tries to annoy other people as much as possible, to make them aware of how bad the griefers feel themselves.
Just pure psychology: - 'I feel like shit, so I want you to feel that way to, then I won't be as lonely.'
Ive never griefed anyone,apart from the "boom" or "1 .... 2 ... 3" or small comments like those before their ship blew up (eve online),nothing insulting tho,even to my worst enemys.Ive rarely encountered any smack and all the smack that I did encounter came from either miners (yes,miners ... with escorts in low sec,not my fault they mine in my system) and haulers (it's not like I forced them to fly threw low sec/0.0 with no scout while hauling 200mil+ of mods ... and it's not like I was waiting at the game in a MS/carrier ... always ninja gate killed in my little cruiser ,a thorax).
Ive never understood corpse camping or killing lowbies in WoW or other similar games,there is nothing to gain ... well there is nothing to loose,soo that may be the problem,however I still find it funny when a lvl 70 runs around and kills my lvl 25 alt and I find out the names of his alt and whenever im running around I kill them.
well from my experience griefing ( in most fantasy based games ) is when a high level player, comes to the newbie zone or the closest zone to the newbie area that he could pvp in and starts either running around naked and killing every player in his sight or target a player that is just trying to ignore everything and just finish a quest so he can move on. I have also noticed there are many griefers pretend to be a lower level player by equiping lowbie armor and engage in fight making the the low level players thingk it is a fair fight and then boom out comes the high end armor and weapon....
I understand many say well, I will just memorise his name and get my high level toon to kill him, well, not everyone that is griefed has a high level toon, it could be his main toon that he is trying to play with the limited time he has of free time to play the game.
yeah there are times where we just sit in town and wait for the griefer to just get bored and move away but sometimes the griefer becomes even more stuborn and camps the town exit. and many mention oh well just relog for a few minuts, true I could do that ( on the expence of my free time to play a game) but then what makes you so sure that he wouldn't move on to another target and as soon as you come back he griefs you yet again!
Now despite all I have said, yes I have been grifed before but I try as much as I can not to let it get to me, and there are times where I just log off for the day ( yet again the griefer wins with ruining my game time ) but then again I'd rather do something other than trying to finish a quest and someone is just camping you to prevent you from completing that your task. I have been annoyed by griefer but I also get annoyed by farmers, though none has ever been a reason for me to quit a game, at least not yet.
I've griefed people, but only because they deserved it. I remember this one guy in UO who offended my delicate sensibilities. Made a note of his name and on one of my idoc trips around the world found his house, a public house. Of course its in Tram though so that limited my options so I hid my stealther in there and found out his play times which were just after work for about 2 hours. I'd log in everytime to see what he was up to.
One day he started re-decorating his house. Bingo. I'd follow him around and as he placed things were he wanted them I'd snatch them before he could lock them down. This confused him for a while until he walked over me and caught on, revealed me and kicked me from the house. I still scored some nice loot and made sure to rub it in and remind him why.
Whenever I saw him camping swoop I'd accidentally pull too many changelings and have to run out through the teleporter leaving him the fun of dealing with them. I was just helping him improve his pve skills, honest.
I've never seen as much griefing in a game as I did in UO. I think the problem is with limited pvp rulesets theres no recourse when someone is being an asshole so griefing them is your only option. Usually they'll page a GM but they can tell from logs who initiated the hostilities. I remember a mate telling me this guy kept calling him a word synonomous with a man of african origins. He proceeded to lure monsters on him and get him killed then laugh at him after he respawned. So he calls the GM, this guys griefing me, haha you're gonna get banned. GM takes a look at the chat log and bans the racist instead.
Anyone care to give a definition on "griefer"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer
That should explain it.
In that case, I've seen griefers in every single MMO/FPS.
This is exactly my experience. The people who seem to complain about griefing are often griefers themselves even if unintentionally. They feel griefed by you using a game mechanic properly and then they smack.
I see a few people voted that they left games over grief, would any of you give some examples? Also any examples of grief that required GM assistance?
Well you have already answer your own question, if all act like you do most would have not so much problems with griefing.
Im about same as you in approach to griefers so ive no problem with this, becouse i dont give in to any grief.
You also see differents between whats a griefer and whats a exploiter so many should take up your advice and just ignore or take it all lightly so griefers have no chance to grief you.
Good topic becouse you explained it very well:)
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
You do not know grief until you've played Tibia.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
i define griefing as sensitive people getting upset over trivial things. there really isn't any behavior online that can't be resolved with, as the OP said, log out and come back, or other player to player action. disassembling the game code and using it to unfair advantage (speedhack, maphack, etc) or things that endanger irl personal information (account tampering, port scan)- those are hacking, and those are the only things that i think should ever be bannable in online games
I don't know what kind of definition of griefing you guys are using, but Revenant007's case is a pure example of it. He went out of his way to make this guy miserable. And profited it from it!
If you deliberately hunt someone down and kill them over and over, or otherwise engage in activities that make the game less fun for specific people or for a large group of people, that is griefing. Often this is allowed by poor game mechanics (like allowing a level 60 to even PvP level 10s at all) and that's where the issue needs to be addressed. GMs are there to stop harassment, like name calling, spamming of alts to get around ignores, and also in the case of repeatedly killing a particular player, which is both harassment and griefing.
Most griefing issues are generally just poor game mechanics being abused by people to ruin the game experience for others, and should be covered by better game design.
Ive been griefed in Lineage 2 when i was a lowbie, hell even as a high lv i was griefed by larger entities. But it was part of the game and it only gave me determination to get better. Sure it could be aggravating when one is not in the mood of pvping. But if thats the case then i shouldnt have played those days since the game is FFA pvp lol.
This definition assumes that the game world has defined objectives. I don't think that could truly apply to a MMO.
As a few others have stated, in my book (IMO) griefers are those who take offense at other people playing the game a particular way.
More often than not, that same griefer is the one complaining about griefing.
Yeah Id say my definition of a griefer is someone who goes out of their way to ruin someone else's gaming experience........The victim has no chance whatsoever of killing the griefer also....i have run into this kind of jerk many times and the only solution I ever found was just to log out and come back later......
Unless you have a higher lvl toon or a friend or guilde that have one, and give him some of his own medicine.
Probably wont stop his behavor but a whisper after you ganked him a few times usually get the moron to at least leave your characters alone.
Best way to handle griefers is if you help people getting griefed, if many people do that the griefers will either stop, change game or at least get ganked all the time. Some PvP servers do have guilds doing this and it keeps the griefing down.
Sounds like a breathe of fesh air to me.
Griefing isn't always about PvP.
I've had numerous people spam duel me until I reported them or left the area. They didn't like it because I got to a named mob by myself before their party did and killed it. They act like spoiled little children with puppies and acted like the mob wasn't ever going to respawn. I guess they didn't feel like waiting 3 minutes and they wanted it now. I've also had people spam curse/private message me because they didn't like something I did. So its not always related to PvP.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
IMO game design that is meant to alleviate griefing will just change the form of griefing and in some cases encourage greater levels of griefing. You mention level 60's killing level 10's, the level 10 is to blame in that case because that was pre-determined outcome based on the level 10's game/server choice. The level 60 was just playing the game, how ever unfair ganking a level 10 is, if it is a game option then then it is part of the game. That is not griefing. Let's say you removed the ability from the level 60 to attack the level 10, he still has tons of option to "grief" the level 10, and in some cases in worse ways. He can kill steal every mob the level 10 attacks, spam him with tells/duels, follow him around and sabatoge his quests etc, all of those options are imo worse then getting ganked and doing a corpse run, and they options that fall into abuse of the game system as opposed to the gank which is use of the game system.
Even if the level 60 is camping the level 10, the level 10 can: Log, not res, hearthstone(wow), call in guildies for support, spawn elsewhere or log his own level 60. If he keeps letting the 60 camp him, once again, he is imo at fault because there are so many out's available to him, and he rufuses to use them.
I played wow some time ago on a pvp server and I was never successfully camped unless I wanted to be. STV was the worst example of 60's running around ganking, and everytime they ganked me, I accepted it and figured out a way out of it with out letting myself get camped.
The game I experience the most "grief" in was wow, while in EVE I cannot say I have EVER been griefed outside of a little smack talk here and there (and I am a newish player living in 0.0). Wow has tons of anti-grief preventions yet more "griefing" then any other mmo in my experience, and EVE has almost no anti-grief preventative systems, why is that?
Good example and thank you.
What most people consider to be griefing is actually their idea of sportsmanship.
Griefing for me is when a player goes out of their way to make another player's game experience less fun for no real benefit.
If there is a reason to kill you it's not griefing it's gameplay.
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