People will feel less frustrated if they have a realistic chance to escape, though. So the how does matter.

tbh that sucks, but I don't think anyone knows why were you lingering there. If it's to get the quest done and not steal fae, I'm sure you can ask Krelan to give you time.

It's not like it's an org quest that every other org in the game already tries to disrupt.

Unless you have no system, escaping any single person is trivial. You'd see less group ganks if you changed that, but then people would gank more, because it was easier. Or you'd see the same number of group ganks just because it's more of a guarantee. People rarely if ever go pick a fight that's a 50/50 chance for them to win, because it's stupid not to stack the deck in your favor. If you wanted a fair fight to practice your skills, we have arenas.

Personally, my biggest issue with "griefing" is that Faethorn has so much RP backing, but it's a constant warzone because two bitter enemies are stationed a dozen rooms away from each other. I'd love to see Ethereal expanded beyond just Faethorn. It's such a convenient plane for so many things, you could expand the lore and add neat areas AND take some of the pressure off of Faethorn if it wasn't such a hub.

Griefing is a problem, particularly when it comes to combatants killing non-combatants or defenders in non-defense situations.

The fix I believe would be to change the Avenger system to expand to all planes, but the amount of "bullies" it takes increases the more you are involved in non-defensive combat and have these events expire after about a 5 IC years, therefore, those who do not fight except to defend or do not fight in general will be safe from excessive force, but those that are combatants will open themselves up to increased combat on all planes for a reasonable period of time

I also believe reducing the penalty for dying in enemy territory might help, especially for demigods. I am a lot more likely to attack someone on prime, or in neutral territory (when I should have less incentive to attack them) because there isn't a risk of me losing millions of essence and days of aetherhunting to retrieve it. This wasn't much of a problem below demigod because of conglutinate.

1. No
2. You said you don't think skills matter here, but I disagree. If griefing is easy due to strong skills, people will rather do it than if it were hard or took a lot of effort. I personally see one way to fix this without even fixing the combat skills themselves: Make finding and getting to people harder. Most combatants have a mapper. That means you can get to people that you see on WHO very quickly. Most combatants can also scent. This, combined with a mapper, means that in the rather small off Prime areas, you can close in to your victim VERY quickly. Thus, they hardly have time to react and get into safety. I think alot of griefing would stop if it was harder to find people: Make it so you cannot see people's locations on WHO. Not with arties, either. Remove scent or give it a 4 second base balance loss. Also increase the eq loss for using the dingbat map and all other forms of scrying. Since there are still workarounds for that (one person scries and announces the location, the rest of the team charges), reducing movement speed might be helpful, too. That should give people more than just 1-2 seconds to get away once the enemy party arrives.

So what about the poor level 60 newbie who can't afford aethersight? Not like your solution will help them.

I have felt like quitting Lusternia on so many occasions because of the attitudes and actions of the players, true enough. However, I still enjoy just enough things about the game and have just enough friends that I am still here. Plus, I like the challenge of coding a decent combat system. I have taken steps to decrease my stress, due to health issues, and so I volunteered to step down as VA, gave up a very frustrating Envoy position shortly after being appointed (and, I resisted being appointed in the first place, remembering how it was the first time I was Envoy), and stopped providing a free combat system to everyone (which I'm sure has really only sent more people running to m&m).

Mechanically, the game already has many, many issues that may never find solutions. Realistically, no mechanical solution will ever deter anyone who just wants to rain on other people's parades. I've got an ill-conceived idea or two that I'll keep to myself, but please do go on with the back-and-forth discussion...

I think it would already help if you need to scry people and cannot just do a simple WHO. But you're right, making aethersight available at a lower skill level might have to be part of the solution, too.

I feel that showing the locations of players on the who list is important to "incidental" player interaction of all kinds, something absolutely vital for a social game like Lusternia. Yes - you'd make it harder to track someone down to grief them. You'd also make it harder to show up where someone you want to meet or talk to is. Seeing where people are should be as easy as it currently is.

One point of exception might be the mirror artifact, which allows people to pick targets from the comfort of their own manses, and is apparently designed for this express purpose.

Resurrecting the idea of tethering:

• Every player is automatically tethered to a nexus.
• Tethering affects all the known planes (prime, ethereal, elemental, cosmic, astral).
• If you make an aggressive action on another player for any reason, you lose tethering for 15 minutes.
• If another player from outside your org makes an aggressive action against you, you are flung to the nexus. Tethering will not reform for 15 minutes.
• Tethering is inactive in enemy territories.

Would this help? If tethering could be abused, how would you change it so you can't abuse it?

Question to others then: Is what Talan describes something commonly done? Looking for people on WHO and then going to them and initiating a conversation?
As for the meeting or talking to part, if the person actually wants to meet you and talk to you, they can just tell you where they are.

Couple of things that might want to be considered:
1) I see Krellan trying to do a quest in an area. I declare him and kick him. He's now back at the Ravenwood and I can do whatever I want to in peace for a little bit before he can run back (including killing a few quest mobs and then leaving before anyone can get there who DEFENDed him)
2) I'm in Faethorn influencing, someone who I don't really care about hitting me pokes at me (some Druid out of their demesne, for example) and I just wanted to keep doing my own thing... instead, I'm now back at my Nexus going "Huh?"
3) I use it to split up an enemy group, some of whom have not yet broken their tether; some kind of room AoE effect might scatter most of an enemy group. They forgot to break the tether or whatever.

Those are some situations that come to mind when I see it being 'automatic'. I can see combatants abusing it to heck if it is made automatic.

Veyrzhul: I use WHO all the time for things other than tracking people down.

The first thing that comes to mind is that unless there's a way to reject it, the first clash in a raid will see all of the defenders flung away.

It also makes killing some legitimately impossible. You can be a total douchebag and no one can ever touch you unless you're on a bubble or in Muud or something, if you wait out your 15 minutes in a manse.

Personally, I'd be rather annoyed to be bashing, and have someone jump me and suddenly be back at my nexus with no control over it myself.

If something like this were to go in, it should be activated by the user, imo. The only thing this does, though, is prevent a death; every other aspect of the "griefing" behaviour is still there, entirely unaffected. In the end, it won't make any difference.

Yeah, that too. That's pretty much the main issue I have with the concept of tethering in general, you're never going to die to jumping again, even if you deserve it.

Unless you're bashing Kepherans/Illithoids.

Let's assume there's a way to reject it.

Those arguing for npk flags would make it even hearder to kill someone. This way, you take them out for 15 minutes. Maybe that's too little time? I originally suggested one game day (one hour) but some people commented that was too long!

I feel like if you were going to use this, then that would be the risk you have to take. It seems designed to protect those who have no interest in combat... not provide an instant out for those who decide midfight that they're not winning.

I didn't say it, but my intention was that it be initiated at your nexus or something similar, so you couldn't just throw it up partway through something.

I'm still not terribly fond of the idea in general, though.

I still say you may want to fit some teeth onto the Karma Curses. They serve no purpose right now, despite their intended use of discouraging jumping without needing to invoke avenger, mostly because they can be removed with remarkable ease.

Definitely should be no way to either put it up or have it reactivate while you're in combat.

Outside of purely mechanical things, I don't like how this would feel. I play on PvP servers in MMOs even though I'm not really a fan of PvP simply because it increases immersion in the world to have the option.