We are having internal dialogue among the admin staff about what to do, if anything, about grief players. By grief players, we mean the 1 or 2 players that are making life miserable for an entire organization, especially hounding those who are low level. Should Lusternia have an anti-griefing rule? In other words, should the admin subjectively decide who is a grief player and who is not? Should the admin step in and start peacing those who we decide, in our sole discretion, is griefing?

Alternatively, should we try to develop more objective systems that would curb grief players. As you know, the karma and avenger systems are in place to be mechanisms that would objectively handle PK. Our intent here was not to have long rules on when one can or cannot PK. We also preferred to stay away from having the admin make subjective decisions on RP reasons for PK. If karma and the avenger aren’t working as desired, do we need to tweak these systems some more?

Because any decisions we make would be far reaching, I thought to let you know what we are thinking about. Please share your ideas and opinions with us.

I would prefer a subjective opinion by the admin than any complicated and abusable system, but it would have to be agreed upon by consensus.

Do we really have that many 'grief players'?

Consensus? No, it would most likely me saying, ok let's peace Narsrim and Munsia for a month.

We don't have many, no.

Well, a system doesn't really get anywhere. What constitutes the griefing? Killing denizens, killing low-level members, dropping flamed cakes with **** words? But... a subjective review of it is going to take a lot of your time away from further developing the world. So... :/

By definition it only takes 1...

A subjective system will give you a headache as griefing is something players are likely to complain about in order to get a person they don't like peaced or the such.

However, I can't imagine how an objective system would work unless you allowed Roark to come up with an economic insentive or you just removed the ability for people to steal completely.

What would probabbly be best is a combined system. Perhaps a nexus power that costs 50,000 that allows the city leader only to peace someone.

That's just it. It would be subjective. Rather than reams of rules and regulations, an admin would step in and say to someone, "This is a warning. You are causing too much grief because of A, B and C. Stop it or you'll be peaced for a month." If they stop doing A, B and C, fine. If not, they'll be peaced for a month.

Uuuh...for how long? And...that's even higher abuseable, I can see Narsrim/Daevos/Ethelon/Geb constantly peaced if it would last longer.

Subjective

If the admins are going to take a more subjective role then I'm curious to see what sort of guidelines would be used to assess "grief." Do you have anything specific in mind you could share?

Furthermore, is "grief" limited to only player deaths? Does raiding count? stealing? killing Demon Lords/Supernals/etc (I'm not joking, I've been called a griefer for this). For example, Jadryga just had a shop robbed. I imagine the impact of that upon her (from an OOC stand point) is 100x greater than say 20 straight deaths.

And finally, will the decisions for this be on a "who hit first basis"? For example, let's assume I walk into Glomdoring after spiders because I want to do the Tosha Monastery quest. In the process doing so, I am noticed and attacked. In response, I kill the persons who attack me... if one of them was level 15, am I at fault?

Objective

I like the idea. I'm just not sure how.

Even at 1 million power in the nexus, 50,000 power to peace someone sounds like a bad plan unless its needed. And the length of time would be appropriate for the cost I think.

I'm not sure how you're going to do it, which I know isn't helpful, but I'd really like to see something in place. We lose a lot of people because of it.

The village of Dairuchi has declared itself free from influence by the Alliance of Serenwilde.

*you have peaced by the city of Magnagora. It will last X-time*

Again, there wouldn't be any guidelines. If we, in our sole discretion, believe you are causing excessive grief that is harming the game play for multiple individuals, then we would step in. An admin could come up to you and say, you are causing too much grief in Glomdoring because of raiding and killing, therefore we require you to stay out of Glomdoring for a month or you will be peaced for a month.

I like the idea of the admins taking a controlling hand in a situation if and when it becomes beyond the realm for us, as players and as characters, to fix the problem ourselves. Obviously this would be at your discretion and clearly you have ways of monitoring players who are causing problems outside the realm of roleplaying.

I think we all trust you enough to do it but the question is, are you willing to take on such a crappy job?

I dislike the idea of a subjective opinion. I know many people, I am among them, would like to believe the administration, as a whole, can maintain objectivity - however, I cannot help but feel that some (I'm not even saying current, but future) administrators would give weight to characters they may like more.

I do not think the administration needs the grief, now or done the road, of players accusing X divine of being favourable to one group.

We already hear enough from certain Serens about Viravain - do we honestly want to hear, "omg she peaced me for a month but a glom for only 29 days. LAME."

To be honest I sort of assumed this subjective case-by-case handling of issues already occured anyway. Was I wrong? What does happen when one person is causing trouble outside the realms of roleplay?

It would be the Norns who would oversee this, not RP gods. Players would only ever know that it was the Norns and all complaints about favoritism would be dismissed, although one could always submit an appeal to support.

If it were going to be a subjective system, I would prefer any Admin that does not have a connection to the person or situation being reviewed handles the decision making. I know that is probably not possible, so I feel any system will have its flaws, be it controlled directly by a warm body or an impersonal set of coded rules.

I suggest attention be focused on protecting those players from grief who are least able to protect themselves, novices and people with very low levels. The more seasoned players should know how to effectively use the present system to limit the grief he or she may receive. If the grief is something outside of the jurisdiction of our present system, then a simple issue should suffice to get it investigated.

So raiding now counts as grief? Then maybe first you should disable all those raiding quests? I mean, why is there an incentive to raid?

Also, I was more interested in what you would tell your staff. For example, what would be a "good" case to peace someone versus a "bad" case that both had similar circumstances, but acute differences. For example, I think "who landed the first blow" is a huge factor.

Because of the karma and avenger system, we get few issues about PK. However, that is not to say we don't recognize or see when a few individuals are driving the game into the ground.

As long as lusterina has rules *doesnt* look like Archaea's PK rules, i will abide by anything.
I like the first suggestion of an admin stepping in though.