I'm confused, wasn't the only IC action Morbo mentioned that Hallifax stopped being allied with Glom? So if they don't want to deal with being griefed they should buddy up with you guys again? "You're on our side or sucks to be you" ?

Again with the Like button.

No, Hallifax went from "doing nothing to anybody and not really getting much of anything done to them in turn" to being "against" one of the top organizations. Kind of like how Gaudiguch has been getting picked on.

Failure at diplomacy sometimes leads to poor results.

Since we are talking about Hallifax in particular, both Glomdoring and Celest have some pretty good reason to like to see them squish; the way they went about doing what they did is a significant portion of it. They also haven't bothered to try any diplomacy to rectify that situation.

Edit: There's a difference between Serenwilde's "you are set to be Glomdoring's enemy" and Hallifax's RP choice to antagonize other organizations intentionally. I am a fan of players using diplomacy where possible. Lack of attempt to try says something, too.

My perspective on griefing:

All in all, I think there is probably very little actual "griefing" going on, and more whining about getting killed a couple times and being frustrated and running to the G-word because of it. I'm sure there is some griefing, but not to the point that it's being thrown out.

However, there is behaviour that could become griefing if it were really pushed more than what I've seen. Jumping people with a group with nigh-inescapable techniques and such, for example. On it's one, once or twice, it's not griefing but is rather annoying. It can ramp up in a hurry, though, but (again, in my experience, which may be rather limited) this hasn't happened all too much.

Now, the above is predicated on the condition that the person being killed/jumped has not involved themselves recently in some sort of org related conflict, raiding, etc. There's a very big difference between ganking someone bashing who has done nothing to anyone for a long time (or ever), and ganking someone who just spent an hour chopping trees in one of the communes, for instance. As far as I'm concerned, anything is fair game against someone who is actively (or very soon after) raiding or participating in similar activities. For someone who isn't, it's stupid to expect that the person be left alone entirely, but there is no good reason for group gankings on such a person. So what if they can escape? You do not have the right to kill whoever you want, whenever you want, for whatever reason you want, without that person having a fair chance of fighting back (and maybe even killing you instead!) or running (reiteration: people actively involved in raiding and such are exempt).

This does a get more fuzzy when you include certain sorts of asshats in the equation, but really, just a few common sense rules regarding PK would help reduce a lot of actual and potential griefing (though you'll never get rid of the people who call ZOMG GRIEFING just because someone looks at them wrong, but their complaints are invalid anyways):

1) If you are raiding or otherwise directly provoking an enemy organisation, expect them to hurt you. Don't bitch if you're raiding and you get killed. You earned it.
2) If someone is minding their own business and they're off prime/in enemy territory, feel free to jump them alone. There is a difference between off-plane areas being risky, and off-plane areas being home to inescapable death traps.
3) If you get jumped and die, accept it and move on. 99% of the time, it is not griefing or someone trying to make you quit the game or piss you off irl. If the situation legitimately falls into the 1% of the time that is a problem, or has the potential to grow into a problem, discuss the situation with the administration or the other party, whichever is most applicable. If you're not an unbearable ass who spends his time trying to piss off everyone and anyone, I'd hope that talking to the other people involved would be more than enough to resolve the situation. If not, that is one of the things the administration is there for.

Being no-pk would have to have restrictions at least as harsh, if not harsher, than Grace. That is, no picking up player corpses, no ability to rez them in combat, reduced GET/GIVE ability in certain circumstances, the inability to even enter a revolting (non-peaced) village, and the inability to step foot into enemy territory in any way.

After level 20, Grace of Innocence should change slightly to allow you to kill things that are not loyal to anything, and last until level 50, maybe even 60 or 70. So you can still hunt things that don't give enemy status, but you can't raid at all, and can't be attacked by players. It doesn't take very long at all to reach level 50, so protection lasting until then isn't unreasonable. So if someone wants to play a character that isn't involved in combat type conflict at all, they can just not worry about leveling. I know my in-game husband has tons of fun playing politics, and he's only level 58.

I have to say, if everyone followed Ytran's rules I would shut right the hell up.

Thats just speaking for myself but I can absolutely agree that I deserve to get jumped 1v1 if I'm off plane.

Its the group stuff that makes me go "Really? I...I..uh..Ok."

Edit to add: And I do get jumped 1 v 1. And that I don't mind. Usually I throw a taunt at whoever is doing it about getting better at combat *cough Hi Vey cough* and keep it movin. Its a game.

There is a serious difference between organisational conflict and the type of griefing that Morbo seemed to be talking about.

I feel like some things should just be plain off limits socially. Even playing in the past as a class that could ostensibly jump kill people, if I saw someone jumpable in Faethorn and noticed that they had a novice with them and were clearly going back and forth to the elemental planes, I would leave them alone and seriously bitch out anyone who tried to harass them, no matter what org the novice group or the harassers were part of. For the most part, when jumping someone who was on the lowbie end of the combat spectrum, I'd also give ample warning, short of announcing my presence and attentions, that is: No gem of cloaking, no scent shrouding, waiting a minute in the area to gauge their intentions and so on.

I seriously think that having more player caring and in-org crack downs on some of this stuff will help buckets. I also think that some way of real and actual player originating punishment would help with this. Currently, I could kick someone from my guild that is greifing, but they'd just take the skills and tell me to go myself and there would no longer be any controls at all on their actions from a player perspective.

You can't look at it from the standpoint of "Would someone who doesn't want to be involved in conflict find this helpful?" You have to say "Would someone who wants to be involved in conflict, but without repercussions, find this helpful in some way?" Until the answer to the latter is no, I can't support adding something like that.

EDIT:


Mhmm. The only real punishment that matters in the long run to some people is being thrown out of their org, which renders their power skills unusable. Short of that, it's hard to make some people care. It's why I was actually gathering votes to oust Rhaell from the commune while he was still CL, because that was the only way I'd get through to him.

There is a serious difference between 'essentially no conflict' and 'conflict'. That difference is not griefing.

In his case, his organization has not even bothered to try diplomacy.

How is this helpful to the later? They would have to renounce Innocence, which they can't get back, in order to be involved in conflict.

Actually hallifax also started defending etherwilde, mag, then started teaming with you guys since they stopped being allied. They willingly decided to be our enemies so they should be willing to man up to the consequences. Don't be daft, there are lots of ways to get the supposed griefing to stop without being buddies again

Xenthos, you're a reasonable guy, so be reasonable. If Glomdoring and Celest want to buddy up and take down Spheres to punish Hallifax for daring to leave an alliance (in which Glomdoring essentially treated them like crap anyway and were not open to diplomatic solutions to rectify that), sure feel free. It's a conflict game, and the smobs being raided isn't awful by any means (especially because the admins have been quick to fix bugs and look at the mechanics of it). Justifying lack of player restraint in attacking people who are pretty generally non-combatants or lower-level is a bit of a stretch there. Also, I must be logged out when all of this antagonization is going on (unless you're talking about Daedalion and no one else), because about 90% of what I've experienced is Hallifax being antagonized by Glomdoring and Celest, not the other way around.

EDIT to Shuyin: Like what? We don't jump your non-combatants and midbies (or really even raid Celest or Glomdoring) unless I am missing something. No one expects you to stop raiding, but randomly jumping non-combatants and people who aren't even enemied to any of your orgs is generally considered bad sportsmanship. I'm not sure how something like that is supposed to be handled IC.

Same way people can abuse Grace now. Collecting corpses, scouting, acting as teleport targets, etc. This is why you'd need to disable any possible way of entering enemy territory, for a start.

Edit: Wait, I forgot the rule of the forum. Nevermind.

I don't want to derail the thread, but what are you talking about? From my (admittedly limited) perspective, all we did was switch sides. We didn't all of sudden start being more involved in anything, except perhaps as a natural progression of what had been done before. I am asking this in all seriousness. I am not trying to be snarky and sarcastic. What has Hallifax done to justify so much heat from both Glomdoring and Celest?

I think Estarra is presented with a catch 22 in this situation.

I like that there aren't hit and run raids as often now, but I'm a little sad that no one really raids Celestia, either. Same goes for Celest, we aren't raiding Nil - discretionaries are too powerful and the cost of dying is omg expensive in enemy planes! But also, I like that there aren't many raids and people can mostly pick and choose when they want to pvp - unless they're in a commune. Being raided is not fun when you don't want to fight/don't have fighters.

That being said, Vadi has a point: orgs have a CHOICE to change things. You're sick of Hallifax being griefed? Take some IC action to stop it.

Overall I can't say much about extra griefing going on. I remember it tended to spike some and have noticed Krellan killing a low of 'lowbies', but as it was suggested before, raise the grace of innocence to a higher level. I'd probably suggest up to 70, honestly. It might seem excessive but getting levels with collegium and city quests is so easy that you really don't even need to leave prime until about that level to seek out more exp gain. And you're pretty safe collecting sands/souls/pilgrims/etc on prime.

I do have an anecdote though: before I came back on Aison I had tinkered with another alt just to get used to text gaming again. There was a lot of things I didn't remember, a lot of changes I wasn't familiar with, and I wasn't around when Gaudi/Halli were released. Anyway I was maybe level 30, it was my second day playing the character, and I was running about doing the Delport quest, when I came across someone near the road to Celest who was from Gaudiguch. I decided to engage in a little roleplay with this person. What ended up happening was, when I tried talking to this person, as soon as I said two words, someone else who I didn't see (as my little alt didn't have thirdeye), started attacking my little novice alt, and then killed her. I didn't know who the person was, why they had done that, and they offered no explanation for their actions. I sent them an OOC message asking if that's how they honestly treated newbies, to quickly get an IC tell saying something about a statue being in the middle of the road and how "people shouldn't do that". After that, no apology, nothing. I wasn't sure what happened. I couldn't believe someone killed my little character because of a statue that had absolutely nothing to do with her was in the road. For whatever reason I didn't get Avenger status, and the Gaudiguch member who was with the other person (not naming names here), ended up trying to zap my little character to death when she went to get her pilgrims back from the road. Luckily there was sweet justice done at the hands of elder guild members and I ended up with the Gaudiguchian's pilgrims as well. Honestly, served him right for being such a d-bag to a novice player. Even if I technically wasn't a novice - but could you imagine how I would have felt if I had never played Lusternia before? I probably would have quit and never came back.

Moving on! when it comes to House of Blood I don't believe it's the driving force for people going on massive killing sprees, but it definitely doesn't hurt members of those House types, and I agree that it needs changing.

tl;dr: not really going to be a solution that makes everyone happy, but upping the grace of innocence is a good direction to go in, along with changing the collegium quests if it's really THAT much of a problem (though serens could probably just go through Magnagora's megalith!!)

The antagonism still exists from when you all decided to break off; in case you haven't noticed, Esano is still around with his new name, and that gets placed solely at the feet of Hallifax. Glomdoring treated Hallifax exactly the way Hallifax wanted to be treated. They put nothing in, they got something back out of it, and were pretty much left alone. Now Hallifax gets pretty much nothing at all from their new 'allies,' they antagonized the rest of the playerbase, Daedalion runs around being a prat, and nobody in Hallifax cares about trying to address their current situation.

The general raid on Air is kill one person there to bring up defenders, kill defenders a bit, then leave. That's not exactly game-breaking treatment.

I just find it difficult to feel sympathy for Hallifaxians when they don't even seem interested in trying to find a solution IC. That should be the first thing you try! If it doesn't work, then you've got a real basis for complaint, but if you don't even try...

Mhmm. The only real punishment that matters in the long run to some people is being thrown out of their org, which renders their power skills unusable. Short of that, it's hard to make some people care. It's why I was actually gathering votes to oust Rhaell from the commune while he was still CL, because that was the only way I'd get through to him.


Uhh, that's not even true for all classes, not all of the skill sets require a particular flavor of power on all of their skills.