There are three reasons why griefing is an "issue" in lusternia.

1. Because you can.
2. Because it's lulz.
3. Because there's nothing better to do.

There is no way to stop people from griefing mechanically without it being exploitable, or paper thin, that does entail months of careful observation and tweaking, which either the administration cannot or will not do. The Avenger system exemplifies the former. It's been used to attack people and then get revenge upon them when -they- kill you, it's been simply circumvented in ways that are incredibly hard to police(Attacking at the same time as a Mob, the Mob gets the kill, attack with a friend, drag a collection of aggressive mobs into a room and then get empressed out, etc) and is a constant point of complaint by the playerbase. The Karma system is the latter. No one even notices curses. They are wasteful and have no real effect. Can both of these systems be altered to provide an actual effect rather then implementing a new system? Yes, but doing so will require not one massive overhaul, but several weeks or even months of careful observation and tweaking.

Should have the SAME RULES as normal grace.
This means no hunting, no debating either.

In my view, a lot of the problem is administrator-player disconnect. There are things that are far too easily abusable and have been complained about for months, but have been met with "take it to the envoys" or "we do not see this to be a problem." I'm not saying admins must moderate players, but it would certainly be nice to feel like we're being listened to from time to time. You can't change player nature, but you can stop making things easy for them. I don't think any of the current problems in the game have to be there or are unresolvable. Can you honestly say as administration that you've been doing a good enough job on this?

I don't want to call out names here, but as a player I can't say that. I don't wish to point fingers, but I am just frustrated right now with the way things are and the way it looks like they'll continue to be. It is wonderful that you started this topic at least to get feedback, but I really hope you actually are taking to heart the things that are being said.

I'm not the only frustrated player, and I know a few who have already left or planning on it due to more issues beyond this one that stem from the same problem I just outlined.

I should also say that I'm not fond of the indignant attitudes I'm seeing from certain people in the administration. We're the customers, we're the players. WE don't have to play. You're not doing us any favours. This doesn't apply to this thread, but to other instances.

You could go gank people and then call yourself a breather. You would need to make it unusable if you had performed any aggressive actions previously that month.

/me hits the Like button. The methods of fixing this are already in place, but due to the disconnect and what many of us perceive as some sort of 'Vision' taking precedence over the dire needs of players, those issues are being ignored. We've taken it to the envoys. Many many times. The Envoys are ignored, or told that they're just making things up and it isn't a problem. Every time I see a 'This is not necessary' due to player-admin disconnect when it comes to a -major- imbalance it really hurts.

To me, these threats at this point are a bit lacking. We've been hearing the same threat from the same cluster of people for 6 RL months now (facebook, forums, various blog pages). The thing starts to lose its punch after a while, y'know? :/

So why not drop the threats and focus on the rest of your topic (admin / player discussion), because the threat just detracts.

Yes, in my mind it's just regular but permanent grace. I am quite serious. There's no need for a flag before that since they definitely can't grief after since they can't attack till next month.

While we're at it, we should make grace drop when you enter enemy territory/go offprime.

These are not threats. People have left and are leaving. And if the admins have problems with it, I'm sure they have mouths of their own, so stop acting like you are theirs.

Lils has not been on an Avatar raid as of yet (did you mean Aspects? she's kill those, yes), and her raiding of Daughters is probably less than an IC year, I'd even curb that down to every three years, if that. She does participate in every defence, and will hunt try to hunt down people who have immediately killed a noncom/novice. It's kind of a necessity. Serenwilde may have a lot of players, but they are players who want to be left alone, not deal with constant raids.

Bringing up Divine enmities in an opposite org is like bringing up the fact that it is cold in winter. I know of an instance where a Hallifaxian was enemied to Glom/Celest/Divine and Guilds of both orgs...for an Etherwilde defence. There wasn't even any Fethorn skirmishing...he died in Etherwilde to defend, didn't come back up and was enemied to all those places.

As for attitude, the only people I treat malignantly are those that have earned it...there's quite a few members of Glomdoring that Lilian does have respect for and can chat with civilly. And even then, I've started not dealing with these people at all, as mentioned previously, they take infantile enjoyment out of it. If Lilian doesn't respect you, she won't talk to you. Having a lightning rod personality is detrimental though, I agree with Xenthos.

The bringing up of choke in a thread directed at ganking is significant - the skill is an enabler. It is cocaine to the griefers of Glomdoring. It is ridiculously broken.

Case in point:

"Melissa: And Eventru said choke has nothing to do with griefing.
Melissa: So I give up.
Other: Yep. at that point I'm out too."

I'm still seeing all the primary abusers of the ThreatBomb™ running around.

And if you think that I am the Administrator's mouthpiece here... I'm sure that gave Estarra a chuckle. She knows how much I post /email / nag / etc. about needing greater Administration / Playerbase interaction. I feel like repeatedly throwing something around which none of the primary folks actually have or intend to follow through on undermines the argument and gets it dismissed out-of-hand.

This is sad, but I'll point out that you have Full and Serpent at your disposal, along with aeon, which with enough aeoners, makes a much safer and better alternative to Choke.

We still don't know what organization the victim was in, by the way. Everyone can provide plenty of griefing examples from all organizations as they have. Well, maybe except Gaudis, who used to get pretty beat up.

Exactly. If you change mechanics to deal with griefing, all you are doing is telling the griefers that their behavior is acceptable and to find another way to go about it.

And I do consider only a VERY small number of people to be griefers--it's just that they are able to grief anyone at will all the time, so it seems like more.

It's mostly a factor of ease, frequency and wide range synergy.

What I'm saying is that it isn't your place to comment on.

In any case, we're not throwing it around, do you want me to list names of people who you probably didn't notice haven't logged in for a while? Any case, the detraction is only starting here. My main problem was stated in the post already. I hope that eyes were wide enough to see that and not only the last two lines!



Serpent requires one to be at full power and is a laughable counter to a skill of much lower cost and lesser restrictions. Aeon is curable through sipping phlegmatic and does not stack, despite how much you seem to want to point out that multiple aeoners mean something. Not to mention, aeon is stopped by the speed defense. You're comparing apples and oranges. Rather, a very small apple, and a huge juicy orange.

Full is stopped by quite a bit of general hindering, which is easy to stack on someone who can cure one thing in one second. Also, Full does not cure choke, it only delays the inevitable or slowly buys time.

I'm sure everyone has their examples of griefing, but it is an issue and that fact doesn't change this. I'm not sure why it keeps being brought up.


EDIT: I'm not going to make another post in response to Xenthos on this. You'll be surprised to know that the names you listed aren't even all the people I've had in mind. And I have people come to me in private and say "I quit" and not come back. You say I am undermining your point, but you seem intent on undermining mine. Please, if you don't know the situation I am referring to, leave the conversation between I and the administration who asked for input.

Which victim? I've mentioned a few...If you mean the one where someone was circumventing the Avenger, that would be Serenwilder. As is the situation where the victim stepped 2 seconds into an enemy village and was chased in non-enemy territory by a differing org. I believe I've already messaged Estarra about Houses of Blood and the Avenger situation, though, and it looks like she chose to ignore it.

I am a pretty active player in Achaea and Lusternia, I've found in general that the griefing is worse in Lusternia primarily because there is less that can be done about it aside from "travel with a huge group" or "buy artifacts". My IC wife Aithera recently was having a pretty big problem dying I believe about three times in a few hours while hunting for essence, no warning just big groups swooping down on her, killing her, and leaving. I don't know if this should be considered griefing, but I know it causes an awful lot of rage. I ended up shelling out to buy her spectacles of clarvoyance to keep her interested in Lusternia and give her a viable option for getting away in.

I think ultimately the issue boils down to most people will have to leave prime at one point or another, and most of the most interesting things in the game are not on prime. When they do get killed, if they aren't strong enough to get revenge themselves, or their organization isn't strong enough to strike back (as is the case with Hallifax and Gaudi) there is simply nothing that will happen as a result. They will keep dying anytime they leave prime for even the smallest amount of time (it took Krellan and Siam about 2 minutes to see Aithera on Wydyr Glade as she worked on her project for the guild) Even buying spectacles isn't enough because glomdoring people can unenemy themselves to you, and if you are lack even in a few moments of massively re-enemying people, they can be on you with no warning. There are also issues of choke, pfifth.

Mostly I know this, when Hallifax was allied with Glom and Celest, I enjoyed fighting Magnagora, I died/killed the same amount, but it was interesting combat, and nothing was so obscenely frustrating as to disinterest me from combat. Having to fight Glomdoring, However, there is no fun in it. I've essentially stepped back to work on training for raid defense and sparring people instead of fighting on prime or the planes.

I agree with Everiine. My experience has been that there are deaths I can take and enjoy and then there are grief deaths.

The first time I got killed was actually by Narynth, who killed me in Faethorn. I will never forget it because she interacted with me IC and warned me about being in Faethorn as a Mag. It happens to be one of my fondest IG memories.

The first time I got killed in a raid I was on I was like "Hell yes, I died for the cause."

The first time I got killed defending I thought "Oh well..thats how it goes"

The first time I got killed on Earth for just popping up off prime I though "Hm..whoops..off prime is dangerous"

The tenth time I got killed for no apparent reason, having not raided or defended in a while but still being on the scry list? That was frustrating. Its all but saying "Hey...theres a guy I know I can kill..lets kill him."

And maybe thats not really helpful. Maybe this is a case of "Those are the breaks, some people are going to kill you if they can and not really give a reason or RP about it or even much care if you've died 4 times today"

Watch deathsight sometime...its a running joke how often I end up on it. A lot of those deaths I don't mind. Some of them I do. Is there a fix for that? No idea. Are there people who could say the same thing about some people in my org? I'd bet money on it.

In a perfect world a discussion is opened up and the griefers take a second and say "hey wait a minute...Donovain's mostly a non-com, lets not kill him for no damn reason." But I won't hold my breath for that. The discussion has helped me realize that a lot of people do go through this though and maybe that's just the way it is. I don't exactly like it, and I think maybe theres some room for people to look at the situation and say "Ooo...maybe there are some lines here" but I can understand the idea of "Dude I went through it."

Hey, just a few days ago a gaudi on a planar trip was killed by serens.

What about Narsism? Remember him? Remember how nothing was done?

edit: don't see Donovain being a non-comm. I'd say Vermilla is one, but Donovain who was defending in raids yesterday isn't really. He shows up in fights often.

What I am saying is that it is my place to comment on, when it is an argument near and dear to my heart which I have been pushing for RL years and which you seem intent to undermine by throwing down threats with no basis in reality. You can list names all you want; so can I. And all of the people who have been posting for months about how they are going to quit any day now are still here (yourself, Iasmos, Lilian in general). So stop it already. Push your arguments forward on their merits, because all that this stuff does is make the rest of your post unlikely to be read. Nobody likes to be threatened.

I can also list names of other people who used to log on and don't in Glomdoring any more; there's that general player attrition thing, so it's pretty hard to know why a person in particular is not. I have seen a lot of people returning now that school is out, for example. Speculation, conjecture, name throwing, none of that helps your argument.

Morbo: The general 'anti jumping' artifact is the Gem of Cloaking.

PS: Improved interaction is a great idea and should happen regardless.