Griefers and Elite's Emerging Karma System

Survival of the fittest died out when we stopped chasing our food with sticks and started farming. It became survival of the smartest. During the time that we were still chasing food with sticks, if there was a disruptive element in the tribe/society then they generally became the food. The concept of a coup was a bit much for a group of mammals that survived on threat assessment and instincts alone. That has continued pretty much non stop accept for that inbred period of the middle ages. But then again the moral justice of the age was still enforced.

There is no moral justification in this game universe because its a game. However in all games there must be rules and or concepts that must be adhered to. Otherwise its no longer a game and has been moved into the realm of a social experiment. Like it has in ED.

Right now for the giggles of some members of the Dev team, they want to see how long people will put up with it. They created a crapsack nonsensical universe and are touting it as a "game". It is not a game if one side always has a clear advantage over all other players in the game. Until some sort of Karma/ C&P system is put in place, the biggest trolls of this entire game community is the Development team itself.

The lack of adherence to Real life social norms like not cyber bullying others or forcing your will upon others is purely a social community issue. For example if the people that performed these in game Griefing events acted this way in their normal every day life, then the best they could hope for is a basement at their parents to live in or a low paying job away from all other human beings. They would not be tolerated in a normal social construct.

In fact that may be the very cause of this in game behavior. In their real lives, they are bullied and or ignored/marginalized because of their shortcomings as a productive member of a community. So they act out. Similar to the kid laying on the floor at the grocery screaming for a toy that mum wont buy them. Any attention even if its negative is better than no attention.

People who want this game to succeed do not purposefully sabotage any and all efforts of the development team. These people do. So in order to allow them to continue to play the game, the devs may finally put a system in place. The people who are purposefully trying to burn the game down around you will now face the same consequences that they force upon others every single day.

They have been given enough rope to hang themselves and time and time again they have slipped the noose. Now its critical proportions due to media coverage of the toxic environment that has been created by the griefing community.

Anybody attempting to make an analogy between anything in the real world that is not tied directly to this games community is grasping for straws. This game as realistic and similar to real life as Donkey Kong. So lets leave Darwinism out of it. Especially since we are talking about a video game and not the evolution of a biological system.

I pretty much agree with all of this except for the part where this is not a moral issue, (unless of course you don't believe in morality). I mean sure Elite dangerous is a video game, but it's being played by real people who are investing real time in order to gain real enjoyment. When another real person's game play is to ruin other real peoples game play, for whatever reason it's a real issue of right and wrong.

It's the same as people saying "It's OK that I blow up your ship randomly because it's not real money that you have to use to buy another one with". My reply is "it sure as Hell is" I put real time and real talent into earning it, how is it not real money?

My theory on this subject if any one cares to hear is that people play video games one of two ways: Either how they play real life, or how they wish they had the balls to play real life.

None of the angst in the above is directed towards you Zambrick, BTW. You only brought up a convenient point.
 
Reading through this I see that there's a lot of over-reaction and misinterpretation. Shocking!

After reading Sandros comments it's clear what they want to do.

There are players who play bad CMDRs. They pirate, they hunt, they shoot. They defend systems, powers or whatever they've decided is worth value to them in the sandbox. They are playing Elite in the spirit of the game.

Then there are players who are only interested in using the game to annoy or upset people OUTSIDE the game. Elite is just a tool to them to impact players outside that 4th wall. It could be any game, they've just chosen Elite. The spirit of the game means nothing. They are playing players. This behavior doesn't really fit into a community who enjoy actually playing Elite.

How do you decouple player types? How to measure intent? Sounds like frontier want to put numbers to behaviors (rep, kharma, whatever you call it) and track trends over time. Intent can be inferred from the patterns.

Sounds good to me. At the end of the day, you want players who are playing together and enjoying themselves with whatever they've decided. You don't want Players just using your game as their tool to get at real people.

Oh and yes peoples REAL time has true value.
 
Sorry a little confused, when you refer to CZ, do you mean the Resource Zones (RES)?

In that case I agree with maybe the exception of of the Haz Rez. However, I feel that all combat zones should be PvP and players need to be aware (including the noobs) ;-)

The Karma Idea is something Sandro has mooted in the suggestions forum (No ETA, no guarantee Sing that to the only fools and horses theme tune). Player actions over time will modify their Karma rating, the more combat logging under fire, the more griefing lesser players, the more bad Karma you gain. Player's with lots of Bad Karma are then punished either by shadow banning (Always forced into their own solo instance) or they have in game effects, which will restrict their play (unable to dock, lack of insurance, etc).

Personally I think it's a good idea, it's just a case of working out what actions cause Good or Bad Karma and what the effects might be.

By CZ I meant combat zones, and was using that as a concrete illustration.

In principle Frontier should discourage griefing everywhere. At the same time, I'm entirely open to different degrees and approaches based on the instance -- CZ, high and other RES, etc.

Devil is in the details, but I agree with you in spirit!
 
When I first started playing I joined the power play thing as an Imperial – just so that there could be an official “enemy”

We left players that were not pledged or clean alone.

Sometime we’d pull them from supercruise for a chat due to boredom and then let them go. Like a navy patrol.

However any commander we came across pledged to a non-imperial power was deemed fair game to intercept and kill.
CZ sites were a good hunting ground.

That’s not griefing that’s role play.
 
I pretty much agree with all of this except for the part where this is not a moral issue, (unless of course you don't believe in morality). I mean sure Elite dangerous is a video game, but it's being played by real people who are investing real time in order to gain real enjoyment. When another real person's game play is to ruin other real peoples game play, for whatever reason it's a real issue of right and wrong.

It's the same as people saying "It's OK that I blow up your ship randomly because it's not real money that you have to use to buy another one with". My reply is "it sure as Hell is" I put real time and real talent into earning it, how is it not real money?

But it's not real money.. It's time, you're not getting paid to play, there is no value equivalent to the amount of time you've put into the game. If a player destroys you he's not wiping your save, he's not taking everything away from you (unless you made a bad financial decision) and very rarely is it a recurrent theme for the same player. There have been very few cases of specific, targeted harassment in this game and in all of them that I've seen, the targeted player brought it upon themselves via comments made in or out of game.

This is really about inconvenience. People are being inconvenienced by griefers in the game and feel that said play style should be wiped away because of said inconvenience.

That's just silly.
 
I pretty much agree with all of this except for the part where this is not a moral issue, (unless of course you don't believe in morality). I mean sure Elite dangerous is a video game, but it's being played by real people who are investing real time in order to gain real enjoyment. When another real person's game play is to ruin other real peoples game play, for whatever reason it's a real issue of right and wrong.

It's the same as people saying "It's OK that I blow up your ship randomly because it's not real money that you have to use to buy another one with". My reply is "it sure as Hell is" I put real time and real talent into earning it, how is it not real money?

My theory on this subject if any one cares to hear is that people play video games one of two ways: Either how they play real life, or how they wish they had the balls to play real life.

None of the angst in the above is directed towards you Zambrick, BTW. You only brought up a convenient point.

I agree but attaching a Morality code based upon reality into a video game world whose morality may not parallel ours is the difference. While I agree that Real World morality would dictate that you should not bully, discriminate, or harm other people either physically or emotionally. If you were a proper member of a community it would be a none issue as this would not occurr. However in the ED universe that they set up the game Morality to be heavily skewed to favor the ruthless and violent. So the people who have issues struggling with morality in the Real World cling to that ideal put in place by ED and are using it as a shield to protect themselves.

Morality in real world terms would put in game griefers into the realm of socially unacceptable. But in game terms they are fine. Now that the new Karma system is being discussed, then the ideals held by the vast majority of the free world can be properly mirrored into the game universe. If those people still continue to grief people in game, then you can make the parallel between RL morality and in game morality. You can then state without a doubt that the person is troubled in some way. Right now they can hide behind the veil of anonymity and the complete lack of in game consequences so we cannot hold RL morality as in game standard.
 
before Sandro come talking about karma system....hummm

I suggest a quick finding who are these Grieffers..... of course there are many people involved in this activity,
but nótorios Griefers are so well connected with FD Dev , It's not conspiracy or favoritism.

Nótorios Griefers are people who are in the game since the very beginning, know very well the game, know all the people and everyone knows who they are.
The recent clumsy Salomé episode clearly shows how close they are (Let's stay on topic )

My conclusion is quite simple, they are normal people who like to play this way, at this point nothing in the game prevents them from acting like that...

I think Griefers are bad for the game when they attack nobies... When They do steam sniper...then the damage is done... always reflects badly on the game.

Now, the community discusses the subject FD can say a few words about but I think that any change for now.

"We have an eye on the subject bla, bla, bla" [alien]
 
I still don't see why sniping a Charity stream was such a horrible thing. I also didn't watch the stream so I don't know the full story on how it played out.
 
There have been very few cases of specific, targeted harassment in this game and in all of them that I've seen, the targeted player brought it upon themselves via comments made in or out of game.

I smell torches and hear pitchforks rattling - they love to call this "victim blaming", because, you know - that whole Entitled, Freedom from Consequences thing folks seem to love today. "Personal Responsibility" and "Personal Accountability" are an anathema to these folks.

But I don't disagree with you in the slightest - if you run your mouth and someone puts a fist in it, it was probably deserved. A little "sack up and suck it up" never killed anyone, in fact, it made people better people.
 
But it's not real money.. It's time, you're not getting paid to play, there is no value equivalent to the amount of time you've put into the game. If a player destroys you he's not wiping your save, he's not taking everything away from you (unless you made a bad financial decision) and very rarely is it a recurrent theme for the same player. There have been very few cases of specific, targeted harassment in this game and in all of them that I've seen, the targeted player brought it upon themselves via comments made in or out of game.

This is really about inconvenience. People are being inconvenienced by griefers in the game and feel that said play style should be wiped away because of said inconvenience.

That's just silly.

Its not inconvenient and yes money is a factor. If you are an adult you can always be out there making money. Not to mention that the game itself cost money, the computer you play the game on costs money, the peripherals you use cost money. The home you live in, electricity you use, all of it has a real world cost.

Playing games is not free its an investment. Any PC gamer will tell you so. So yes the investment that you made into the game both time and money wise is a factor. You dont have to be payed to play a game in order for it to cost you money.

That aside the idea that griefing is just an inconvenience is also bunk. Griefing in video games and life are not required nor needed. Sure it happens in RL but in RL there are consequences. Some criminals may never be caught but others will be. The risks are known and accepted by an individual in real life. FDEV has created a game universe where there are strict code of rules on accepted behavior/legality accept if you break said rules there is no real consequence.

Time is money for an adult and video game griefing has a lasting effect on the user base and community as a whole. If it was a non issue, then there would not have been a new post about griefing issues in the game every other day for the last 2 years. I am not jumping you but I am just stating the obvious.

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I still don't see why sniping a Charity stream was such a horrible thing. I also didn't watch the stream so I don't know the full story on how it played out.

They sniped charity streams and in game funerals for people in the Real world.

They broke up a charity event that did not get the potential proceeds that could have been generated by its organizers. The organizers did everything in their power to protect the event by holding it in a Private Group. They jumped into the group caused mayhem and ended the event. If you dont see the issue with problem with that, then nobody can help you understand I am afraid.
 
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But it's not real money.. It's time, you're not getting paid to play, there is no value equivalent to the amount of time you've put into the game. If a player destroys you he's not wiping your save, he's not taking everything away from you (unless you made a bad financial decision) and very rarely is it a recurrent theme for the same player. There have been very few cases of specific, targeted harassment in this game and in all of them that I've seen, the targeted player brought it upon themselves via comments made in or out of game.

This is really about inconvenience. People are being inconvenienced by griefers in the game and feel that said play style should be wiped away because of said inconvenience.

That's just silly.

You entirely missed my point. Speaking as someone whose time on this planet is at best half over, time is the only currency that means anything. There is nothing silly about that.

Griefers are people who's gameplay is to ruin other peoples game play, and no other reason. I will agree that there are probably few of them, but their impact is all out of proportion to their numbers.

No one wants to prevent people from role playing or PvPing or whatever they want to do, but some people would like to put limits on people who hide behind these things for the sole purpose of ruining others play.

FYI I don't even have a dog in this show (or a pony) I play solo or Mobius, I just hate bullies.

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Its not inconvenient and yes money is a factor. If you are an adult you can always be out their making money. Not to mention that the game itself cost money, the computer you play the game on costs money, the peripherals you use cost money. The home you live in, electricity you use, all of it has a real world cost.

Playing games is not free its an investment. Any PC gamer will tell you so. So yes the investment that you made into the game both time and money wise is a factor. You dont have to be payed to play a game in order for it to cost you money.

That aside the idea that griefing is just an inconvenience is also bunk. Griefing in video games and life are not required nor needed. Sure it happens in RL but in RL there are consequences. Some criminals may never be caught but others will be. The risks are known and accepted by an individual in real life. FDEV has created a game universe where there are strict code of rules on accepted behavior/legality accept if you break said rules there is no real consequence.

Time is money for an adult and video game griefing has a lasting effect on the user base and community as a whole. If it was a non issue, then there would not have been a new post about griefing issues in the game every other day for the last 2 years. I am not jumping you but I am just stating the obvious.

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They sniped charity streams and in game funerals for people in the Real world.

They broke up a charity event that did not get the potential proceeds that could have been generated by its organizers. The organizers did everything in their power to protect the event by holding it in a Private Group. They jumped into the group caused mayhem and ended the event. If you dont see the issue with problem with that, then nobody can help you understand I am afraid.

What he said. 100%
 
When I first started playing I joined the power play thing as an Imperial – just so that there could be an official “enemy”

We left players that were not pledged or clean alone.

Sometime we’d pull them from supercruise for a chat due to boredom and then let them go. Like a navy patrol.

However any commander we came across pledged to a non-imperial power was deemed fair game to intercept and kill.
CZ sites were a good hunting ground.

That’s not griefing that’s role play.

I don't think that's the issue or behavior being discussed. I don't agree with your actions, because unless the Empire is actually at war with the other factions, then you have no RP business killing other faction-ed players.. however, that's what NPC's do too, so that argument is equally valid.

I personally don't really understand the BGS NPC targeting reasoning. Unless, like I said, everyone is in open war, then targeting another player because of their faction just doesn't make sense.
 
I don't think that's the issue or behavior being discussed. I don't agree with your actions, because unless the Empire is actually at war with the other factions, then you have no RP business killing other faction-ed players.. however, that's what NPC's do too, so that argument is equally valid.

I personally don't really understand the BGS NPC targeting reasoning. Unless, like I said, everyone is in open war, then targeting another player because of their faction just doesn't make sense.

I don't think that's the issue or behavior being discussed. I don't agree with your actions, because unless the Empire is actually at war with the other factions, then you have no RP business killing other faction-ed players.. however, that's what NPC's do too, so that argument is equally valid.

I personally don't really understand the BGS NPC targeting reasoning. Unless, like I said, everyone is in open war, then targeting another player because of their faction just doesn't make sense.

That's the thing about Elite war.. The Super Powers themselves don't really dirty their hands - they leave it to the individual factions, hence these "wars" seldom span a system or two.

Then, to further complicate things, we have a number of individuals who represent these powers, and some who represent nothing at all.

Alliance: (1)
Edmund Mahon

Empire: (4)
Zemina Torval
Arissa Lavingy-Duval
Aisling Duval
Denton Patreus

Federation: (2)
Felica Winters
Zachary Hudson

Independent: (4)
Li Yong-Rui
Pranav Antal
Yuri Grom
Archon Delaine

In terms of personalities, the Alliance and the Federation are outnumbered at least 2:1. And there is nothing that really prevents one personality from conflicting with another, and there are no real "official" positions, alliances, treaties or much of anything between these individual powers or personalities.

In short, the so-called Political System itself is barely a skeleton, and only slightly less organized than an explosion. And then to have players or groups of players "playing politics" for themselves.. consider:

However any commander we came across pledged to a non-imperial power was deemed fair game to intercept and kill.
CZ sites were a good hunting ground.
That’s not griefing that’s role play.

So let's say, for the sake of argument here, that this fellow is pledged to Zemina Torval.
What if Zimina is "playing nice" with Pranav Antal, to gain access to some new technologies, but then this tool comes along (nothing personal here, IG, just making an example) and starts blasting away at Antal's people - because they're not Zimina's people. You might think Pranav might get a little annoyed, maybe send a strongly-worded message to Zimina to keep her dogs off his lawn, or their deal is off. Zimina might take note of this first, and send a message of her own - leave these people alone, you're screwing up a deal I'm working on here about which you know nothing.

But where is this? All these power leaders are little more than inert figureheads turning up in GalNet posts from time to time. They seem like little more than cardboard cutouts than any kind of leader.
What we have instead is The Illuminated Order of the Paramecium based out of Some Little System, pledged to Pranav is in a state of Civil War with the Brotherhood of the Flux Capacitor over control of an Extraction Outpost in orbit of a frozen ball of rock, 92,654 Ls from the primary star.

Woo.

Where's the real Politics and Power? Where's Zach Hudson going "Archon, the Federation is fed up with your raiders robbing our freighters." and the entirety of 63 individual star systems issuing Kill Warrants for any and all Kumo Crew ships, pushing themselves into Archon's paltry 38 systems until a state of Unconditional Surrender is met, and not 3 days later, but weeks, months or even years later? That's WAR. Where are the Capital Ships parking just outside of station No Fire Zones, also with Kill on Sight orders for enemy ships attempting to dock? That's a blockade. That's what's missing here. That's meaningful.

These little squabbles and petty bickering between minor factions is barely a joke.

And thank you, IG, for being my example. It could have been anyone, you just happened to post exactly what I needed to make my point.
 
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Its not inconvenient and yes money is a factor. If you are an adult you can always be out there making money. Not to mention that the game itself cost money, the computer you play the game on costs money, the peripherals you use cost money. The home you live in, electricity you use, all of it has a real world cost.

Playing games is not free its an investment. Any PC gamer will tell you so. So yes the investment that you made into the game both time and money wise is a factor. You dont have to be payed to play a game in order for it to cost you money.

That aside the idea that griefing is just an inconvenience is also bunk. Griefing in video games and life are not required nor needed. Sure it happens in RL but in RL there are consequences. Some criminals may never be caught but others will be. The risks are known and accepted by an individual in real life. FDEV has created a game universe where there are strict code of rules on accepted behavior/legality accept if you break said rules there is no real consequence.

Time is money for an adult and video game griefing has a lasting effect on the user base and community as a whole. If it was a non issue, then there would not have been a new post about griefing issues in the game every other day for the last 2 years. I am not jumping you but I am just stating the obvious.

They sniped charity streams and in game funerals for people in the Real world.

They broke up a charity event that did not get the potential proceeds that could have been generated by its organizers. The organizers did everything in their power to protect the event by holding it in a Private Group. They jumped into the group caused mayhem and ended the event. If you dont see the issue with problem with that, then nobody can help you understand I am afraid.

I find the whole notion of tying real world money loss to in-game time loss ridiculous. There's not a thing I do on my computer that I take seriously enough to make that correlation with. Games come with risk, they are games for a reason, if I'm set back by a players actions or by corrupted software or even my ISP going down then that's a consequence I am fully prepared to deal with. Whether that means I take off to another game for a bit to utilize what time I have to play better or I go at it again to recoup what virtual currency/status I lost, it's not equated to real world anything other than time that I have already allotted to gaming. I built my computer for a variety of reasons, the least of which was Elite. I don't upgrade it for Elite. I upgrade it for gaming in general and if I can't afford to upgrade it then I just don't buy the most recent cutting edge games and stick to the tried and true that I at least know are fun for me.

Then again, I'm salaried so my paychecks aren't affected by my weekly hours.

As far as charity streams go.. If they made money and gave it to a charity, that's still better than no money? Right?

Now if FDev had a set piece moving into position in live action and had 40,000 players watching it and someone came into play and destroyed said set piece, forcing FDev to just shrug and place it manually from behind the scenes, ruining the show for everyone involved, I could understand that kind of griefing being a relatively bad thing.

Streams get sniped all the time. Even I've been stream sniped while trying to show my daughter the game. It happens. I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
 
The forum Dad is strong with this one. The problem with griefing is that griefing is subjective. Even if the 'victim' asks the 'attacker' to stop and they do not, the act may still not be considered griefing by any reasonable interpretation of a game's rules.

For example, my home system is Kaliki, and I support one of the factions there. Should that faction enter a civil war state, I would hunt down commanders supporting the opposing side without remorse, and certainly not stop if asked to until those commanders leave the system. This would happen regardless of the ship, combat rank or wanted state of the commander. This would be considered griefing by the OP's standards, but a zealous defence of my favoured faction by my own standards.

Elite doesn't need solutions to stop griefing.

It needs ways to *respond* to it.

Why can't I place a player bounty?

Why don't police and stations attack wanted players on sight?

Why isn't the location of a wanted player reported system wide and followed by police?

Why is there no distinction between a 400CR bounty and a 4,000,000 CR bounty?

These are the questions that need answering. +rep.
 
This does not match up with what the research tells us about griefers.

Decades of research shows no causal effect between virtual and real world violence per se. The research is increasingly clear, however, that folks with anti-social traits are drawn to griefing in online, multi-player games. The traits that characterize griefers are the dark tetrad of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathology, and sadism. Basically a subset of players engage in griefing for malicious reasons. The anonymity of online interaction also provides them safety from consequences, unless anti-griefing policies and practices are implemented.

Does this mean everyone who griefs is an everyday sadist? No. There are personality tests for the dark tetrad, and one cannot say a priori that all griefers are anti-social or ill. But it does mean that a good proportion of griefers are malevolent, and likely drawn to the current mechanics of Elite because it allows them to grief without consequence.

It is also important to distinguish pvpers from griefers. Pvpers enjoy the combat side of things, and often the role-play of activities like "piracy". The overarching narrative of a game defines the roles that players might adopt. Griefers are motivated by anti-social urges irrespective of narrative framing, and introduce an unhealthy element in-game.

As someone who enjoys pvp and has led a largish organization dedicated to it, I do not want to see the end of pvp in Elite. At the same time, the research suggests there is good reason to worry about the impact of griefers on the Elite community, particularly those new to us.

Whatever karma system that Frontier designs should keep the above elements in mind, and do what it can to discourage griefing.

I agree with you on this point.
It is also shown those who enjoy bringing pain and death to animals often become serial killers or murders very easily. There is something inherently wrong in their mind set that compels them to do these horrid acts for fun.
 
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