[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[John Buehler]

Dave Rickey writes:

>> As online communities exist today, which is my point.  The formula
>> for online interactions can change, and will change over time.  Can
>> they be changed such that players will be less inclined to commit
>> grief acts?  Or can the online worlds themselves be crafted in a
>> way that players will be less inclines to commit grief acts?

> No, because the desire to commit Grief activities is entirely
> *internal* to the person committing them.  His attraction to your
> world is *solely* because that's where he can find people to mess
> with, in comparative safety and anonymity.  To prevent grief players
> from finding your world attractive, you'd have to do one of four
> things:

The pure grief players have their internal vendettas.  But there is a
spectrum of reasons why players pursue grief actions.  One of them is
boredom.  Another is that they are having a bad day and want to take
it out on others.  I'm looking for effects, conditions, treatments and
such that will tend to avoid players taking out their unhappiness on
other players.

>   1) Eliminate the anonymity: Have a public lookup of names and
>   addresses, and map that to character names.
>
>   2) Eliminate the safety: If the above isn't possible, have your own
>   assassination squads (actually, lawyers would be adequate, if even
>   less humane).
>
>   3) Eliminate the targets: Don't have any players who are involved
>   enough in your world that the actions of others can cause them
>   grief.
>
>   4) Eliminate the acts: Don't allow *any* potentially negative
>   interaction between players (since chat is all that's needed, I
>   don't think this would leave much).

Yay!  Constructive ideas *at last*.

I'm going somewhat with number three so that people won't react as
vehemently when something goes wrong.  It's a game, fer crying out
loud.  I'm also hoping to use number four - again, to minimize the
impact of grief players.  If they want to rant and rave and insult
players, so be it.  Players can more easily deal with that, report it
and get another account and another copy of the game cancelled.  If
they have to buy a new copy of the game in order to create a new
account, I can make some money off my grief players.

> Coercion and banning, along with where possible limiting their
> ability to have a negative impact on the play of others, are the
> only tools at hand.  Unless you've got a brilliant solution to one
> of the four problems above?  It's a holding action, not a solution,
> but it works.  It just takes lots of manpower, and causes PR
> headaches every few weeks.

My brilliant solution is to change the timbre of the game.  Richard
Bartle's article made me ill to read.  It is headed in the exact
opposite direction of where I'm trying to go.  I see a game like
Richard's as nothing but a venue for grief, and where all the players
involved are always prepared for grief whenever they head into the
badlands.  The 'badlands' is just a PK server integrated into the rest
of the world - with the draw being that you can advance your character
more rapidly there.  I don't want the advancement addicts, I don't
want the open-ended conflict and I don't want the high power
characters.  I have my own approach to making character death
meaningful (regardless of what Richard has to say about 'player
death').

> No, "Rampant" would mean the Griefers are completely out of control,
> to the point that the administration has given up *trying* to
> control them.  Something like the first year of UO.  Significant
> resources dedicated to the control of griefers is simply part of the
> cost of doing business.

Actually, 'rampant' means what I said it meant because I defined it.
At least for the duration of that single use.  That's why I defined
it.

I fully realize that pouring lots of support people onto a problem is
no way to deal with it.

JB


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