[MUD-Dev] Player Justice

[Eric Random]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Baar - Lord of the Seven Suns wrote:

> The last thing you want to do is to make your job harder by
> loosing track of the griefer. Once you have identified them the
> most effective strategy I've seen is to simply remove them from
> circulation without them realising it.

This is a well-noted strategy, but it has its limits. Most griefers
attempt to maximize their entertainment (harassment of others) with
minimal cost to them. The moment they understand their actions are
not having a desired effect, they'll change strategies. If your game
system is free, and allows new users to create a new character and
enter the game world relatively quickly and without much effort,
this strategy is nullified, and is effectively a ban, except the
abandoned account takes up space and stagnates until some
auto-expiration period.

This strategy can be effective for a % of the grief players. It may
take a long time for some of the griefers to figure out they've been
stealth-squelched, and thereby increasing the cost (time) without
reward (effective harassment). If the griefer is alone, and is just
a trolling griefer, doesn't know much about the system, this will
probably be effective. If the griefer has other griefing friends,
has spent some time on the system and understands the system, this
will probably not be effective if other anti-griefing measures are
not implemented. I tend to believe that most of the griefing
populace is the former type.

This strategy does not provide a clear opportunity for
acknowledgment of TOS abuse and restitution by the griefing
player. This strategy is reliant on the player thinking he has not
been caught in a TOS abuse, and hopes he will wander away in
frustration. Some griefers are simply casual griefers or even a
class of naive mischievous game testers, that when charged with a
TOS abuse immediately change their behavior and don't grief
again. If the griefer wishes to make restitution in this case, they
may create another account, and refrain from further griefing
activity. This is only if they understand that they were being
punished in the first place, and not just simply wandering away with
the impression that your game has issues. They could simply contact
customer-service, report their problem, and be told that they were
being stealth-punished for grief behavior, at which point they would
probably be a little angry for the lack of forthright, but attempt
to resolve their account issues, nonetheless.

This strategy can exacerbate the problem when someone has been
punished inappropriately for alleged griefing. For example, someone
being labeled a griefer either through deceit, abuse of power, or a
misunderstanding (which does happen in some cases). This otherwise
lawful player may become quite irate when he finds out that the
problem he's been having and attempting to troubleshoot for the last
hour and an half is some stealth-squelch, and he'll probably leave
the game (permanently). This player would have responded better to
an admin openly discussing a TOS abuse with him, in which he could
act along some process to resolve it.

>From the perspective of the date/chat-line example, this is a good
strategy, as you can continue billing the person for minutes, allow
them to listen to the conversation, but not allow them to
speak. This is simple from a phone perspective when the only
activity is listening and speaking. There is more to griefing
activity on MUDs than just speaking.

>From the perspective of the Half-Life mod example, the grief
activity was automatically detected via a .dll search. In a MUD
environment, griefing activity that exhibits TOS abuse is much less
explicit and usually requires some level of customer service
interaction.

I tend to agree more with Tom "Cro" Gordon: Removal of access
rights.

A solution? Quick detection, rapid response, and immersive
corrective action for TOS abuses. Given the other two would generate
whole posts in themselves, I'll touch quickly on immersive
corrective action for minor TOS abuses. For players that commit
/say, /emote, and /tell abuses, confront them, warn them, and
temporarily remove /say, /emote, and /tell capability. Further, add
an un-edit-able description to their character that they are without
a mouth ("Joe Griefer is here. He has no mouth."). Not only are they
unable to speak, but other players can see they have no mouth, and
thus see that the player has committed a communicative-based TOS
abuse, and thus see that the admins are punishing TOS abusers (this
is important). There are many in-game opportunities for
admin-involved TOS abuse resolution, such as cursing, diseasing
(Jeff Fuller's stat/xp penalties), faction loss, even public
perma-death execution for account deletions and perma-bans. If an
in-game law system is used, TOS abuses can be mapped onto in-game
laws, allow for further in-game punishments, and can be tracked in
an in-game reputation system. My two-cents...

   - Eric Random
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