I'm not sure who the focus is, but it's easier to "grief" Demis simply because they have a more (and potentially a ton, if they're low enough) to lose.

I'm rocking specs, a gem, aethersight, a puzzle, and scent, though, so I'm a slippery target who might not see this whole being jumped issue the same way a midbie with a cobbled together system might.

None of the suggestions so far deal with organizational griefing. Is it not considered a problem, then? Eventru said it made a lot of people QQ.

I don't think there is a big problem with griefing; I think the problem is with people's mindsets that they should be able to go anywhere, do anything in the game without consequence/being bothered.

If you go off-plane, then you should know there is a risk of getting jumped. Instead of complaining, change your mindset turn it into a challenge..can you accomplish your goal without getting caught. I used to camp water when I was trying to bring in enough power to connect my manses, and Thoros/Romero would frequently try to jump me there. After I got over the initial shock of "Someone is trying to kill me!," it actually made it fun because it broke up the monotony and taught me to always be aware of my surroundings.

To help real newbies, the one idea I do like though is to extend the mobs that those with grace of innocence can kill. That way they don't need to drop it and expose themselves to the risk of PK before they're really ready just to be able to hunt different areas and to extend the protection to level 40 and/or 50 hour game play, whichever is longer. I don't think established players need tethering/changes to elixir vitae... they know (or should know) what areas are protected by Avenger, safe, etc.

I also agree that the penalty for demigod deaths in enemy territory is too high and that 500k is sufficient.

Actually, some suggestions are indicating that raiding has been curbed too much. I guess you could say that raiders are being griefed by nexus distort, shrine gravity and enemy territory death penalty in their current forms.

The reason I would be reluctant to extend grace of innocence is the simple fact that it would be problematic to keep trying to keep track of what mobs that person could or could not be able to kill. The whole reason to confine innocence to weevils, rats and Newton is that I did not think it would be fair for someone to kill quest mobs and no one would be able to stop them, especially since some quests impact other organizations. Trying to flag every single mob that someone with innocence can or can't kill in every existing and future area seems way too burdensome.

...I know there's no point in arguing, and I've already posted what ideas/input I've had so far but, can it be kept in mind that not all people have a system, nor the same client? A person should not /have/ to purchase a gem just to feel safe and enjoy the game how they want to play it. Also, I don't think having discretionaries is at all comparable to griefing. Now, if those discretionaries plus blind enemying were used to keep a person who could not fight back, who has no desire to fight in the first place trapped in a plane to be killed.. that would be griefing. As to what that theoretical person would be doing on that plane in the first place, I don't know, maybe they got lost. But true griefing=bullying. It is malicious. There is an intent to kill or hinder the progress of the victim just because they can. And it's not a casual one time thing, nor 'complaining' about deaths here and there. It's something that happens repeatedly. It is not raising discretionaries to defend a plane against raiders.

Now that is a fair point that us non coders would never know.

Again, I'd like to reiterate my original concern about enemy territory death and perhaps add additional perspective to it.

I don't see the 2 million cost stopping anyone from raiding per se unless someone is close to losing demigod. People still raid, we just do it else where or try to start fights in areas that are not enemy territory. Without that, we still raid in all of those enemy territories. Over the past week, I know on single raids, we've got from two elemental planes, cosmic, ethereal, and even god realms on a single raid. It is a disincentive, but it isn't going to stop us.

On the other hand, nothing is better for people who jump other people than jumping demigods in enemy territory while their bashing because boy I'm sure the basher has hurt feelings when he or she dies.

If you don't feel like 500k is a high enough cost of death, then let me pose this question. Why were demigod phoenixes from all planes reduced from 500k to 500k only on prime? Later on, the administration reduced it to 250k on prime, 100k off prime, 50k in your organization's prime territories. Why were ascendants reincarnation costs reduced from 500k to 250k? These numbers were apparently too high back then and when the community complained about it, you listened then. We're all trying to tell you the same thing from what I've read in this topic, minus Eventru. But he's part of the collective you.

I see this "I want to play how I want" thrown around a lot, and it always amazes me. There are a lot of ways to play this game, and that's great, but it's an absolutely worthless argument, because the people "griefing" you can make the exact same argument and it will carry exactly the same amount of weight. Thus, it's worthless. No, you shouldn't be able to play how you want, you should be able to play how Estarra decides the game can be played. If she wants to lock it down so no one can be killed, that's her call. If she wants ganking to be possible, that's also her call.

I'm finding it hard to play the game the way I want, too, but that's my problem, not anyone elses.

The argument about playing how you want does, indeed, have some meaning. It's only meaningless when it is (as it almost always is) taken to either extreme. We're all playing a multiplayer game, not because we were forced to at gunpoint. We explicitly chose a game where one key element in it is that sometimes other people get to decide what kind of game it is for us that day. Anyone who insists they should be able to play the game they want all the time is wrong, and should go play a single-player game. But by the same token, everyone has the right to have the game be the kind of game they want to play, the one in which they get to do what they want to do, at least some of the time, and probably at least most of the time. Those who say you never have any right to choose what kind of game you're playing today are just as wrong as those who say you should always have that right.

Estarra's job is to make sure that as many of us as possible are close enough to our preferred balance point between "always" and "never" that we'll stay. That those who want to grief need to have enough opportunities to get what they want to be satisfied, while still leaving those who want to be ungriefed enough opportunities to get what they want to be satisfied. No one's going to get precisely what they want. But neither should anyone have to give up everything about what they want.

And while it might be your problem to see if you can find ways to make the game have enough of what you want to be worth coming to (and phasing yourself out if not), that doesn't invalidate Estarra asking us for our ideas on how she can make it so more people's answers to that question turn out to be "yes". She specifically made this thread asking for that. I don't think it's fruitful to suggest that there's nothing she can do about it. She can't do everything for it, and neither can you. Everyone's part of it.

Mechanics cannot prevent malicious bullying. If someone is mechanically no longer allowed to kill you off-plane, for example, they still have other ways of bullying: killing what you're trying to influence, taking your needed quest items so you can't finish, etc. etc. or even old-fashioned grade-school taunting/rumor-spreading. This is really where community, not admin or mechanics, come into play. If you're being griefed and need help, let people in your org/alliance know. Combatants can go fight or chase the griefer away/others can help you with your quest or help keep a lookout. Tethering or another mechanical solution is likely to negatively impact overall gameplay more than it will reduce 'griefing.'

On Prime, I have not seen anything more than double, if my memory serves well of what the old drops were. Whoever did the tweaking should have the old values, heh.

Mal, you're right, in some situations monk bashing loses that which we envy it for in other situations, I think warriors pretty much remain king everywhere though? I know it's a whole other discussion but I liked the suggestions in the mob updates thread to pull things on a somewhat more even level.

The thing is, and I'm with Aison there, and it also ties in with the whole demotivated Demi's thing, I bash for gold because I don't want to spend money on credits. Lusternia promoted itself as F2P, but if I look at it extremely pessimistic it is starting to look like a F2P MMO that suffers from people pouring lots and lots of money into the cash shop, and it being absolutely required to get anywhere. I'm ignoring XP since about level 80, and focussed on gold gain / credits since it felt faster and actually has a rising trend because without noticing you do level in the background. If Demi is really as bad as people claim it is, well meh, I'm not bothered at all then. Just going to focus on cash bash. Which means lower level players are going to absolutely hate me, because either solo or in group, Prime is getting "stripmined" of mobs because the gold payout seems about as well as it is on Prime as off-Prime because I don't waste time looking over my shoulder and being extremely careful. It can do with far less care, or at least worry that if you die you don't lose as much, heh.

Funny enough, this is another trend I've seen in EVE Online. People prefer to work for currency either in the safe areas, or form large groups into the most dangerous areas. Can compare that to Prime & Aetherhunting. The stuff in between is profitable if you know what you're doing, but if someone is out to get out, then you're basically screwed.

That's only true within limits. If the game suddenly got overrun by a club of sci-fi lovers, Estarra would be under no obligation to please those people. The game was released with a certain profile. Conflict is a part of that. Adjustments will certainly be made with respect to the player base, but that only goes so far. And I always have to wonder about people who rumble around with the 'I'm king customer' attitude. As small as the player base in this game is, I believe you'd have to buy a lot of credits every month to be entitled to such an attitude. I doubt any of the admins and coders makes a fortune from it (and many help out for free), so everyone, and especially those who cannot afford to purchase credits oocly should be thankful that there are some people who dedicate themselves to the game to such an extent.

I shouldn't need a gem. Krokani gave 2kish the last time I bashed them, Rocs were 75gp per corpse and dropped ~50gp per mob. Quints are in Inner Sea, which is enemy territory for Lanikai iirc. Furthermore, I consider quints, rocs, mants, krokani, and aslaran to be midbie bashing areas, and why should I deny midbies bashing opportunities when I can handle bigger mobs that they can't? Asylum is nice, 6k in 5min, but that's only 25 mobs. As an aslaran, I'm not an influencing king even with all the possible buffs, and when I did do it, it was approximately 10-25% of what I could be doing elsewhere. I imagine that the mob changes made it even worse.

During the greathunt, people were busy hunting for themselves and lol at trying to kill suspend animation + harmony in 1v1.

I return to my main point, however. Why does other, worse bashing areas have to do with my point that a death is the loss of many hours of work? It can't. Less essence and less gold doesn't mean I make more essence over the long run (it could), but at that point in time, I'll just play something that's actually fun. I don't make it a habit of griefing random people, and I don't appreciate it when I'm jumped regardless of where I'm at. It's killed the game for me.

On another note, your belief or disbelief has nothing to do with the truth of the matter or how I feel about the game and what's contributed to its death.

I understand your point Lendren, but what some people seem to be asking for IS the extreme. No, you have no right to feel safe off prime, that's been a key point of the game since launch. That a no-pk flag was even mentioned without being brutally and immediately squashed worries me to no end.

Judging from the figures you quoted, this was before the last change in mobs. I get 2K gold just from clearing the rockeaters in Eternity now, nevermind what I might do with the corpses.

I don't really care to get too involved with the argument, but it does look like you're working with dated info.

EDIT: To reaffirm my point, I just went and killed a roc and the first one dropped 293 sovereigns.

The definition of 'griefing' seems to be getting pretty hazy and more and more encompassing, and the goal post seems to be moving all over the map. It seems to be thrown around and applied to situations that I would not personally consider griefing. Of course, everyone may define griefing however they want, but for purposes of this discussion, here is what I personally think is griefing:

• Killing someone over and over, hunting that person down wherever they are, to the point where they are restricted to safe areas, fear to go anywhere and eventually quit the game.
• Killing newbies/novices except for very strong RP reasons.
• Going into cities and communes and killing quest mobs on a regular basis.
• Gaming mechanics to make a nuisance of yourself. This is pretty vague and subjective but things like kicking quest mobs to make them yell out on a city/commune channels then running away, and doing it over and over and over again can cross the line.

Maybe, given the above definition, some of the "of course players are grief" posts here in answer to the question of whether or not there is griefing may change.

I will note that I have said in the past that you can issue someone you feel is crossing the line and going out of their way to drive players away. It's been done before and I have intervened, and usually those persons immediately curb their behavior after being confronted.

Regarding those who think that making it easier to raid or decreasing the penalties of raiding is somehow the answer, I simply do not see it. We didn't increase the effectiveness of discretionary powers and penalties to raiders because we were bored. For those who remember, when raiding was easier and less costly, there was so much raiding that it was demoralizing to organizations. Maybe you want it easier to demoralize organizations, but, even if it does reduce 'griefing' that is complained about here (which I strongly doubt), that is beside the point to the reasons they were implemented in the first place. This really isn't the place to argue to adjust death xp penalties (and I'm not saying one way or the other if there are valid concerns, just that here is not the place).

Just bumping this as the point seems to have been lost in the tangent.

Moved posts dealing with area enemying to a different thread. If you want to discuss that, go there.

Carry on!

Oh really? And here I thought we weren't all supposed to complain about choke being so OP it griefs.



Well, this is awkward.

That change was from a discussion on the envoys and had nothing to do with this discussion.