A subjective system would do nothing but cause problems. I have great respect for the game admins, but I really don't think that there's any way to fairly judge individually who is "griefing", nor do I think it's fair to do that. Everyone has different standards, and, as Narsrim was saying, if raiding is griefing then why do we have countless incentives to raid and cause conflict in the world? If we descend into a happy peace world where no one fights for fear of being labeled a "griefer" not only by their fellow players but by the administration, nothing will happen and I know I'd probably leave, even though I highly doubt I'd ever even get a warning.

A new system to deal with things would be almost as bad. We already have Karma and the Avenger making PK complicated enough, we do NOT need a third system to muddle things further.

I don't know... I don't think 50,000 power is worth one village. Then make it 60,000 or 100,000.. my point was a cost that was high enough to be possible but also rare.

I'm confused. Could you please define "grief" as in what all it encompasses. We have established PK, but you hinted as raiding (which may involve no PK) in a former post. I'll list some thing I've been told were griefing... what counts?

+ Slaying important denizens: Demon Lords, Supernals, Avatars, Elemental Lords, etc.

+ Quests: killing undead dwarves, stealing furrikins, etc.

+ Being in nearby areas: standing on the road outside of Stewartsville (i'm not joking, people considered this raiding to stand one room outside a village without going in)

+ Stealing pilgrims and now more than ever: scholars

+ Releasing Gorgogs

Do you realize to othat if you peace someone, they can't even bash? You are basically removing a great deal of their ability to do anything.

Furthermore, it all depends on the length of time. If the peace lasts 24 hours, no one would ever pay that much power. If it lasts for a lot longer, people are going to be peaced left and right.

Grief would be when admin perceive that someone is making life excessively miserable for large groups of people to the point where they are being driven away. You are not going to get a better definition than that. We aren't going to have rules and regulations that you can look up and play dimestore lawyer with. You would be told, "Stop doing A, B or C, or face the consequences."

I don't really like the idea. As much of a pain as these 'griefers' are, its just too much to judge. There is the 'who started it' 'what is greifing', 'how long' and all kind of things, and it just looks like a nightmare for everyone.

Then the question is do we need to do anything? It sounds like you feel we should not. There are others, we know, who definitely feel there is a problem, however.

I'm all for the gods stepping in from an OOC capacity to stop the things that are excessively abusive and cannot be handled with a coded system. You all see the big picture better than I do, but I just don't see anyone at that point yet. Yes, Narsrim is a huge thorn in our side, but he's not abusive. He's persistent. He's aggressive. He can take 75% of Glomdoring on at once with just Munsia at his side. Sometimes, after we push him out a few times, I feel the need to log off to ease the frustration. If he aimed this aggression at our novices consistently, it'd be bad. If he found some huge skill imbalance and shoved it down our throat twice a day, it'd be bad. Aside from the way he metagamed the flow changes for that short while though (and, to his credit, he claims to have not known how declare works in enemy territory--I don't buy it, but it could be true), I don't see him doing anything to warrant a major OOC punishment.

This is basically how I feel. If we have someone who seriously is just hunting novices and is capable, or two or three people, capable of tanking an entire organization and essentially making it hell to bother logging in, I don't blame the Admins for stepping in.

But in no way do I want to see a return of the Achaean PK laws. I don't even want to see it an issueable thing, just Estarra saying, "Hey, Daevos, seriously, lay the hell off."

And someone is going to get a warning first every time?

For example:

Magnagora had recently raided and had most of the dwarves. Diamante and I decided to raid Angkrag to get them back when Magnagora had few defenders around. However, Magnagora had swamped Angkrag with guards. We basically had to kill all of the guards (65 total) to be able to get the dwarves.

There was not a single PK in this entire ordeal. However, I can only imagine the spam/annoyance of someone in Magnagora seeing 65 guards be slain in a row followed by 20 some dwarves.

Would this be griefing? With what you have given as the process at which it would be handled: One admin could say yes and another could say no. And that's the problem. It would be a huge problem.

Reality check: We know various gods = admins. If Isune, for example, (as admin) sees this as doing a player quest to save dwarves and to do so, lots of guards had to be killed so there was no "grief" and then Lacostian (as admin) decides it was just too much and it is "grief" when Magnagora tries the same thing... then some serious issues are going to arise out of this.

*note* I use Isune/Lacostian in my example because I view them as super neutral as I don't know either.

Raiding Glomdoring has been done since the game started.. Its the people who went to Glomdoring that knew this was going to happen they knew they would be attacked. especially to what Chuchip has been saying lately.. In any case at least the Admin will define 'griefing' so People can stop saying griefer
edit: Who kills novices and weaklings still . Once you attack someone they are going to kill you on the spot

Narsrim your right..

Here is my revised suggestion.

For an obsenely large amount of power, The city leader and all three guild leaders as well as the Patron must CONFIRM the peacing. In addition when the city leader initiates the peacing they must list a reason. If any member of the divine consulate or the norms or any other member of that city leadership decides to REJECT the peacing, or veto it, then the peace would not go through.

This leaves the system subjective so as not to make it too easy to get around or make it too hindering, and it removes the potential whining and screaming that will flood the forums and email boxes and gossip collums if it was just being done by the Norns.

My biggest concern with the subjective system is that its just as likely to push away another segment of the population, and not just the few people or one person who is griefing.

My biggest concern with the objective system is that it will either be too restrictive to RP events, or it would be to easy to get around.

I think a compromise of the two would be the best option.


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The log would look like this....

READLOG SAMPLE CITY 1 1

01/01/01:00:00 Gregori has declared the curse of PEACE upon Daevos at a cost of 60,000 power. Reason: for killing women and childen.
01/01/01:00:00 Etanru has confirmed the curse of PEACE upon Daevos
01/01/01:00:00 Geb has confirmed the curse of PEACE upon Daevos
01/01/01:00:00 Lisaera has VETOD the curse of PEACE upon Daevos. Reason: Killing is a part of the cycle.

99% of the time, this was following a group that HAD gone in and was pushed out to the road. So being involved with them was considered an extension of the raid.

Corr,

Your suggestion is flawed until you establish a power cost with a length of time.

Look, I am not going to tell you what is or is not griefing so stop throwing out hypotheticals. I will say that it would most likely NOT be based on one or two isolated occurrences but upon an extensive pattern of behavior.

Don't worry about how the admin would decide things behind the scenes. Obviously, conflicts of interest and other issues would be taken into account. If someone doesn't like the decision, they are free to appeal.

If a patron and 4 responsible (ideally) people are going to have this problem, it shouldn't be IC OR cost power.

EDIT: I mean, if it's really that much of a problem, having the Commune/city suffer for it is a bad bad move IMO.

Although I see a lot of people complaining about griefing and things of that nature I believe it would be a better idea to re-evaluate a lot of quests and RP motivation in this game instead of allowing subjective decisions from Admins. The reason there is so much "griefing" is because there are a lot of quests designed to harass and damage enemy cities/communes. Such as Demon Lords, Supernals, Dwarves, Gorgogs, the Catacomb Orc quest, etc. Don't get me wrong, these do make the game much more enjoyable compared to other games where there isn't a way to directly attack an enemy city/commune. However, Lusternia seems to have the cities/communes completely opposed to each other through beliefs and the whole Taint and anti-Taint conflict. Granted, this may not have been in the original design but that is where the players have taken it by the way they interpretted their RP. This causes so much "griefing" to take place because the characters in opposing cities/communes downright -hate- each other. Which can even be seen through people on these forums making personal attacks and whatnot. I think we need more events that don't force us to move together such as the Soulless attack like the Kethuru event, but maybe more events that actually allow us to be tolerate each other more. Granted, this will be difficult and won't happen overnight which was shown by the release of Glomdoring. Serenwilde's RP had to bend to all the ongoing changing with quests and how the game mechanics caused Glomdoring to be forced to kill Fae to bind them. This caused a lot of conflict to begin with and even though the quest mechanics changed the Serenwilde couldn't forget about what Glomdoring had to do. Anyways, I believe a big problem is that a lot of these quests and raiding allow people to basically completely drive enemy cities/communes into the ground. Which can be seen from various instances throughout the past year such as Magnagora losing the Necromentate and being forced to be spend real life days trying to repair all the damage done. However, I do know that these quests aren't the only way to be a "griefer." Massive playerkilling is another problem that stems from the hatred of those of enemy cities/communes. This allows people to kill their enemies just because they are a member of that city/commune. This basically causes being a member of a city/commune to be a liability.

Ultimately, we're getting down to the same question we had since open beta: how much conflict is too much? Bits of conflict here and there are fun. The ability to really and truly change the landscape of the game is a huge draw for me. Being on the losing end of a neverending struggle is not fun. Ancient Magnagora's raids on the wimpy Supernals was something that needed to be fixed to lessen the conflict. The Inner Sea quest being made more sporadic was a good decision. Faethorn was overkill, but your hearts were in the right place. What we have now is better than what it used to be.

Some very minor things can cause a lot of stress. Narsrim brings up one of the big ones, the metal comm quests. When you get right down to it, it's just a comm quest. It's an important comm, though, and people are brutally aware when it is being threatened. I would hate to see a feature like that tampered with, though. Also, I'd hate to see people discouraged from using that feature as it was intended to be used. So, there's really not a direct stress to grief ratio out there. When you get right down to it, it's not grief that needs to be curbed, it's stress.

Unless it was a fluke, I don't remember going into Stewartsville excep to attack people who were shooting me with a cudgel. Whereas others may have instigated the violence, the point is simply that people would rally to one room outside the village... a group would sit one room away... the group inside the village would eventually get bored, rush, get slaughtered, and then claim they were raided.

The entire time, they could have just not left the village and as such, would have never died.

The complaints I received was never about a denizen being killed but the fact that they prayed on the road.

That's not how it happened most of the time. I'm not saying that you PERSONALLY went into the village, but you always seemed to show up right after we had pushed a raiding force outside to the road. We'd then have our druids exchange shots for the next hour or two while we sit there with shield. Sounds like fun, eh? Most of the time we just stayed there until you all drifted away. I think... twice... we tried coming out, it didn't work so well. There were far, far, FAR more than two times that this happened.