Misapplied, yes, but Geneva actually worked (better), hence why I used it.

New/really an old idea: Remove xp loss upon death, replace it with temporary stat reduction

Honestly, the xp loss was something I hated in Lusternia when I played regularly, whole hour of tedious bashing lost because of one stupid mistake or one conflict. I know when I was working up the high 80s (as I still am) every scrap of xp was golddust to me and losing a huge chunk of it due to a Celestian jumping me and offering my corpse was painful. I even flipped, did a minor forum rage post, which in retrospect was fairly OTT and undeserved from my part. Remove the crippling permanent xp pain you get from being 'griefed' and you've solved half the problem.

Couple of notes:
-XP is too easy to get in this game. - I don't think that matters, getting people to demigod means more equal combat, less elitism, more opportunities for players.
-Without xp loss we will see too much hit and run - Hence stat reduction, though not so heavy that one death puts you out of action for ever...more along astral insanity time frames and perhaps shorter for events like village revolts, or negligable on friendly territory.

Edit: There were more jumps than just the celestian, it was just the most painful one.

For people being griefed, don't underestimate talking to those attacking you, both IC and OOC. So long as you don't whine or be rude you might just have a chance at reducing the pain. Eg. Not "You ****, always ******* around with my work, I'm going to issue you", more "Excuse me, I was wondering if you'd mind toning down...etc.". It's certainly worth a try

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but wasn't the suggestion of putting player killing achievements in rejected because of the potential for griefing?

Simple solution - make the curses scale up to max effectiveness within 10 minutes of being placed (as opposed to the hours/days I hear it currently takes), and make it take full/much more karma to remove, both regardless of how big your list is. Maybe even make existing karma blessings only partly block it?

1. Of course there's griefing. How could there not be? Players are encouraged to spend RL money on PK skills and PK artifacts. They are going to want to use them. The less experienced people are going to get the brunt of the grief not because they are the ones people actually WANT to kill but they're the only ones that people CAN kill. Experienced players have their own skills and artifacts and systems that will get them out of most trouble. Being a new player in Lusternia is extremely intimidating. How are you supposed to know you joined the wrong org before you join it? When people are calling for defenders, how are you supposed to know it's a really really bad idea to give the raiders an excuse to go after you in the future?

The learning curve is steep and brutal if you do anything more than bash on prime. And honestly, you probably should just influence on prime to avoid getting enemy status and thus jumped because of that. It's the nature of the game. It's what makes it interesting. It's also what makes it no fun if you're stuck at the bottom of the curve.

2. Some people only play to fight. It's the conflict that is interesting to them. We don't want these people to go away. They buy lots of credits and artifacts.
a. Increase incentives for older, more experienced and skilled players to fight one another. Maybe some sort of gladiator type exercise. Not in the arena since arena doesn't mean anything. Real fights, real winnings (gold, essence,artifacts (temp?)), real bragging rights and e-peen stroking. Of course, many would probably find some reason to not engage in the system. "Well, I'd fight 1 on 1 but well, their skills are just way out of whack so why bother?" which isn't a completely invalid argument. Plus most players don't really like risking a loss....
b. Instead of making it impossible to raid, reduce the detriment to the losing side so people can raid to they are purple in the face but the impact on the org getting crushed is minimal.
c. As others have said, decrease incentive to kill people clearly not in your league.

Essentially, give experienced PK minded players something to do in end game *besides* wander around killing whoever they can manage to actually catch and pin down. If we just find a mechanical way to give these people even less to do then they will stop playing and you're essentially trading one group of players for another.

I may have said this before, but I really do agree with Everiine that this is fundamentally a player problem. Any mechanic implemented will be abused in some way and I hope we don't go too far in that direction. The orgs need to punish citizens who do things like jump people helping newbies on faethorn or kill unenemied people on neutral ground.

I will say for the record I am not really in favour of an NPK flag and tether would need to be seriously considered for all possible rammifications, because as a lot of people has said, any Mechanic can be abused. My initial post was mostly a..."Oh open a dialogue on griefing? yeah sure...here's my experience."

If I'm being honest, there is no real way to fix people who want to kill other people for funsies. If that's what they like doing hey..what can you do? Its frustrating, and it would be nice if there were some player driven push back, but I'm not sure a mechanic will really solve it.

In the end the question is about how the players relate to each other and whether or not people want to take that into consideration. Kinda like any social situation really.

Okay, I finally plowed through this whole thread. Whew. Haven't been so tortured for a few months now. Skipped a few tl;dr posts, so I'll keep mine short too.

tl;dr for those not interested in wall of text: Man up and stop whining, because the Avenger is good enough.



1) "Newbie Griefing" and the Planar Quest.

This is not a problem. The Planar quest can, and mostly are, done with Innocence up. Personally, I warn off people doing the Planar quest in EtherGlom, not with PK, but with words. That's the way it should be: The planar quest introduces the newbie to the planes... and the danger the comes with it. Estarra said off-plane danger isn't going anywhere, tweaking the planar quest to make it harder to "grief" is just missing the point. Newbies SHOULD be getting threatened when they walk into an enemy plane: it's part of the game and the atmosphere here. We want to make newbies feel welcome, but giving them the misconception that everyone in the game, even their enemies, will be all smiles and flowers won't solve anything, least of all griefing.

2) What is Griefing?

Griefing is when a person is harrassed via PK mechanics repeatedly for no or unacceptable reasons. For example, you want exp, so you jump a guy repeatedly. For example, he stole your girlfriend IRL, so you jump a guy repeatedly. For example, you dislike his guts, so you want him out of the game, and harrass him via PK, as opposed to harrassment by tells etc.

When you get PK'd repeatedly for a valid reason... well, it's valid. For example, he helped to kill your avatars, so you jump a guy repeatedly. For example, he is an active combatant who has recently gotten involved in PK versus you, so you jump a guy repeatedly. For example, he stole your girlfriend in the game, so you jump a guy repeatedly.

Depending on what the "valid reason" is, there is (should be) a limit to how many times "repeatedly" is acceptable. Achaea defines this as "PK Cause". You have the right to X number of kills on the person for a certain reason. Lusternia has the Avenger: you have a hard limit of 1 kill on a person for any and every reason.

3) Is there griefing in Lusternia?

Yes. There are people who PK for exp and nothing else. There are people who harrass others for OOC reasons. Most of the time, though, such instances have been stamped out pretty well. The Avenger already puts a hard cap of 1 for prime deaths (non prime deaths take 1% exp due to conglut. Negligible.) except in enemy territory. Issues to bring up cases of harrassments have seen administrative responses. The only griefing left is done in prime enemy territory, which the admin defines as "areas which you have done something to incur a valid PK reason by simply being there."

It's a good system, could see some tweaks, but the concept is solid. People who are complaining about repeatedly dying when they have participated in an action that validates the PK are confusing "griefing" with "pk". This is no excuse to put in any mechanic to reduce griefing when there is already a solid system in place. I'm not going to go deeper into how the Avenger system in Lusternia is solid enough, because that's another topic. Maybe I will when a thread about it pops up.

4) What more can be done to further dilute any griefing that occurs?

Estarra mentioned some cons for subjective administrative intervention. But with any suggestion, it has its pros and its cons as well. As many people (Everiine, for one) have repeatedly pointed out, mechanical restrictions can, and always will, be gamed. The cons for subjective intervention are valid. People demand standardization. People demand "fairness". People who get punished will, of course, blame the admin for being unfair and biased. People make noise and make complaints of small stuff and generally swamp volunteers with requests for intervention. Burns out volunteers and ties up precious volunteer time. This is, in fact, the case in Aetolia. Most PK complaints there are handled via issues, with people issuing over frivolous reasons.

However, the pros of subjective administrative intervention are that the admin can pick out attempts to game the mechanics. Some are obvious, some are not, some can still be missed. But without any subjective administrative intervention at all, ALL are allowed to pass without intervention. It ties up resources and invite accusations of unfairness and bias, but also gives players a sense of admin connection (as long as the volunteer handling the issues/requests is civil). People who win their arguments and see administrative punishments handed out feel a sense of being heard. Much more than the envoy system, as many people have already spoken out against. (Personally, I think the envoy system here is fine too, except there is too little slots, but again, I digress) Administrators get to speak with players, get a sense of how bad things are, which works as a feedback channel. Repeat offenders cannot hide from this system, because the number of valid complaints against them will always give the administrative a picture of what he's been doing.

Sifting through the mass of complaints for valid ones can be a pain in the literal ass (sitting until your ass hurts, anyone?) but it can also be rewarding for both players and administration. I'll agree with whatever Estarra decides because the Avenger does his job well enough, though I personally feel that rejecting the suggestions to have subjective administrative intervention will be a blow to the entire game community as a whole.

Short, indeed!

It IS short. For me. >_>

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Seeing karmic curses actually being a real deterrent would be cool, but would require some serious adjustments to how people gain and spend karma. Curses could always cost 100% karma to remove and it would still be utterly trivial to deal with them.

I think tethering sounds kind of interesting, if it was something you had to sit at your nexus for a few minutes to activate. Still plenty of ways for people to abuse it, as others have pointed out.


Oh please no. Dealing with constant raids is infinitely more frustrating then if they just cleared out an entire plane and got out. People will be camping cosmic/ethereal on a regular basis again.

I stopped reading the thread here. This sums up what Everiine's been saying for 10 pages now-- that any solution has to be nonmechanical. If it's mechanical, there's a way around it.

That being said. Generally speaking, the problems that exist that cause griefing seem, to me, to be twofold:

1: The 'Griefers' are bored.
2: There is a lack of adequate powerful people on the defending team to counter-grief the griefer.

I recall, back when Seren was on top (Way back when now, alas!), getting griefed in the Grey Moors by somebody Big and Scary. A simple call of "CT PERSON" "CT HELP" usually dealt with the issue, because there were some bigger, scarier defenders in Seren (Shuyin, Sarrasri, Xiel, Hadrian, etc) who would send the griefer running in fear. Those folks were also the ones that kept off-plane/'neutral' fights interesting, because each side stood a chance.

Possibly the best development for the game being 'balanced', IMO, came when Shuyin jumped ship for Glomdoring. Why? Because Glomdoring got somebody with enough name-recognition to send griefers running in fear. When an organization lacks somebody like this, they're dozens of times more succeptible to griefing on all scales, from individual to organizational-- see: Hallifax and Gaudiguch, who have no 'I'm gonna run away now' names a la Shuyin/Xiel/Thoros.

The other thing about orgs having those people, is they're better able to police their own. Gaudiguch, for instance, has had a long history of being unable to control their combatants, I think in part because of a lack of 'unelected leaders' a la Shuyin/Thoros/Etc. They're not only able to defend their own, they're able to defend those across the conflict from them that are being griefed, able to help keep the game fun.

This is a nonmechanical solution. Item #1 it looks like the admin is working on via flares/revolts/wildnodes/etc, but item #2 is something much more difficult to deal with as an admin, since I can't think of a good way to mechanically encourage the game's top combatants to spread out. Currently they're clustered- the Magnagorans, the Glomdoring people, the Celestians. At this point, they each even have their own homegrown curing system, even. There's no effective way to spread them out, save a Shuyin-style ship-jump. And, because it's about the people and not the skills or mechanics, there's no mechanical way to do something similar.

tl;dr version: The problem's easiest solution is a highly difficult, inherently nonmechanical one.

I'm reading through and am not all the way through, I'll edit if I'm repeating when I get to my own post, buuuut. Estarra said this a while back:

But if the leaders of orgs wanted to do this, why would the admin have to get involved? They could simply punish their citizens for breaking the rules that the orgs set up among themselves up to and including kicking them out of the org.


I wish this was viable! Kicking someone out who is a high-level player usually does nothing. I'm neither defending or accusing her, but look at Munsia! With psionics and phantasms she can continue to kill people, and generally do whatever she pleases and has been kicked out of every org in the game at least once, and is on many many permanent ban lists. There isn't anything we can do player side to punish someone after a certain point, they can totally blow us off.

I would totally support a mutual terms of war type agreement (and already work to heavily punish members of my guild who violate such things) but it would only work if there was some sort of legitimate way to sanction people besides removing them from all player control (releasing them as rogues).

I also like the idea of karma curses meaning something. Currently it's just an invitation to attack that person more, they no longer have status on you and tried to curse you (though it took you a maximum of 30 seconds to shrug it off).

Munsia has never been kicked out of either Glomdoring or Hallifax.

She is on the permanent ban list of Glomdoring; at least, she's marked in a manner that requires every sitting GM to vote to approve her even getting unenemied, and I am currently one of those who can vote.

Psionics is just OP and requires no nexus ties, a number of other guild skillsets do not allow quite so much freedom, so that reasoning is not quite so... widespread, luckily.

I wish.

On the topic of griefing:
No matter what, people will find ways to be assholes. Sometimes you'll be able to find a way to deal with them through talking to them, or talking to their org leaders, finding ways to avoid them, or a few others ways. But that won't always work. The song People are People by Depeche Mode sums up my thoughts well enough. If it's someone attacking a non-com on a constant basis no matter where they go, or someone targeting a specific person on a regular basis, even if they're a combatant, or hell, someone targeting someone just because of who's in their org or who they're married to ingame, then I consider those examples griefing.

My two cents:

Player killing, as a whole, hasn't really changed much in the game over time. I'm actually inclined to say that it dropped notably in the last year or so and has only been going back up to about par, with the difference being who is involved and for what reasons. Which, really, can make all the difference.

I feel like Tacita nailed a very good point. Raiding has become so difficult and un-rewarding that PK types don't have as many ready outlets, so if you think you're seeing a lot more deaths in neutral prime territories now, chances are it is at the expense of far fewer deaths resulting in defences and actual legitimate fights, because they aren't happening.

All the "bug fixes" to distort have made it ridiculously powerful. Distort probably needs fixing more than anything else. If you don't think so, then just look at how many commune scuffles actually stay in org territory instead of eventually drifting out into Faethorn, where people will try to bait each other into engaging there. Or city people entering into ethereal conflict in general, when you can just walk in and out of the archways instead of getting locked down to the point where your only viable means of escape is via aethership.

There's very little incentive to not stick to neutral territory in a fight when all the defence effects are in play. However, it's also pretty hard to just start a fight in neutral territory. Hence, fighting via raiding has dropped and jumping has increased.

What you mean to say is "Psionics is the only Mage tertiary that's combat viable in the current metagame." Not Psionics is OP. When nothing else works, I can see how that mis-perception can occur.

What you mean to say by 'current metagame' is that it is the only Mage tertiary that is powerful enough it allows Mages to fight outside of their demesne effectively, and when combined with their demesne it becomes even more so.

When compared with Druid tertiaries, I do indeed stand by the statement of OP!

Everyone I've talked with about it agrees that Druids need major upgrades co-current with the removal of sap. Not gonna happen. And we're derailing, so let's take this to PM's if you want to continue it.