Lead Designers advice on dealing with griefing (part 2)

[Xenith]

Gonna rep you too. Point about discussions, in my view, apart from stating our own ideas is to listen to others. Everyone here is passionate about the game. Be a bit boring if we all agreed.

As far as I am concerned folks can use the block function against me as they choose. My only real concern is the general demonisation of a particular plsy style, and how someone blocking me might stop me instancing with others who haven't.

Whilst this has been a robust debate I have enjoyed banging heads a little.. Little by little the truth may come out of it

If people had just stuck to good ol' fashioned piracy, then FDev would never have seen fit to create a block function in the first place. But as usual, people being people, they have to take it a bit too far. Well, that's a perfect example of why we have laws and law enforcement, people just cannot be trusted to behave in a reasonable manner, they have to be forced by fear of punishment.

 

[Soliluna]

Must admit I grew tired of it long ago. I suppose fact of the matter is that Frontier have left folks so few options to have a decent emergent and adversarial game that they find themselves toying with others.

Much of this whole debacle comes down to DB.. In his crusade to combat those 'snot nosed teens' and having used up all the tricks from his sleeve hes ultimately responsible for how people play the game.

But now. hey guys here is a block feature.. Its lazy, same as the mode thing...

But what does he care? With the stock going up he is probably worth 60 mil +

Kaching! And to boot, he cant even hire a staff to pay to mod the forums.. yeah, just wow..

So far from topic now I'll probably get some mod noise..You see how this works now?

My amateur psychology was really on point, I should get paid.

 

[Cosmos]

My amateur psychology was really on point, I should get paid.

I repped you because I happen to like the cut of your jib. However dont give up the day job

 

[jasonbarron]

I repped you because I happen to like the cut of your jib.

Oh, c'mon. You repped him because he said he was "ensorcelled" by your words yesterday.

 

[Cosmos]

Oh, c'mon. You repped him because he said he was "ensorcelled" by your words yesterday.

Nothing seems to escape you. It was a good word though.

I think you just became the sharpest tool in the box.. ouch bro [haha]

 

[Morbad]

I am blocking combat loggers. I just do not want to play with crap-tier, thats why.

I found this to be counter productive.

Combat loggers can usually be ignored and when I was blocking them, I was experiencing notably more instancing issues than I am now.

No one likes clogers or station ramers. Why play with them if you don't want to?

Because excluding them with the pitiful tools we have on hand damages the game more and liking them isn't a requirement to benefit from their presence.

This isn't an instancing problem. It's how matchmaking works.

Player control over matchmaking causes all sorts of instancing problems.

 

[John41]

Because excluding them with the pitiful tools we have on hand damages the game more and liking them isn't a requirement to benefit from their presence.

Player control over matchmaking causes all sorts of instancing problems.

I'm still a little fuzzy on this aspect.

The way I understand it, (and please correct me if I'm wrong), If a player A blocks me, then they are less likely to get instanced with me.

So, hypothetically, if I was at a station, in an instance, with 5 other players, and player A jumps in, they will probably be put in another instance.

If player A is at a station, in an instance, with 5 other players, and I jump in, I will probably be put in another instance.

Is this how it works? and is this why people are upset about it? because they might not be able to interact with people who don't have them blocked (the 5 other people in the instance)?

Because that's really the only potential downside I can see. (I don't really see what griefers and combat loggers and cheats and whatnot have to do with the block function, at least in a mechanical sense.)

Or am I way off?

 

[Stigbob]

I'm still a little fuzzy on this aspect.

The way I understand it, (and please correct me if I'm wrong), If a player A blocks me, then they are less likely to get instanced with me.

So, hypothetically, if I was at a station, in an instance, with 5 other players, and player A jumps in, they will probably be put in another instance.

If player A is at a station, in an instance, with 5 other players, and I jump in, I will probably be put in another instance.

Is this how it works? and is this why people are upset about it? because they might not be able to interact with people who don't have them blocked (the 5 other people in the instance)?

Because that's really the only potential downside I can see. (I don't really see what griefers and combat loggers and cheats and whatnot have to do with the block function, at least in a mechanical sense.)

Or am I way off?

That's pretty much it, it's not a big deal at all in fact when you take player numbers into account it's trivial. Even the potential downside could be argued to be a good thing for the other players you do instance with if the blocked player is for example a griefer.

I think people are upset because they don't understand the numbers, and some are probably scared of ending up on everyone's block-list due to their play-style.

 

[Susanna]

You would be allowing for witch hunting, naming and shaming, and greifing via the block feature if that were the case. It would be ripe for abuse.

Say for example someone doesn't like that a CMDR blew them up once or don't like what he wrote on a forum, or they don't like a Youtube video he made. So out of spite they go and smear his name all over every public and private channel they have access to in an attempt to empty out their Open play experience. That right there is textbook greifing and I do not want the developers to ever implement more ways for greifing.

The bare minimum requirement to block someone is to instance with them at least once in-game because this keeps the block feature from being abused and/or used to block someone for any random out of game reason. It is not a hard thing to ask of you to be honest.

The problem with what you are saying is that you have to be instanced with a griefer before you can block them. Just knowing who they are isn't enough. It's a bit after the fact that you can only block a griefer after the event. This I find annoying and is one of the reasons I don't want to play in Open. I can't easily protect myself from these people until after the event. If the op cares to pm me, I'm sure he has some useful information, but how I act upon it seems like it's going to be a lot of logging just to try to be in an instance with them before I can block them. Sorry fdev but I think your charity goes too far. If I want to block someone, I should be able to just type in their cmdr name and hit block! If people want to privately circulate griefer lists, so be it. These people are only getting their deserved come back.

We used to have a shame approach to crime (aka the stocks in the middle of the village). I fear we have gone too far the other way to protect their identities now. If you want people to play in Open, then clean up the place. If you are happy letting these people grief others then carry on... I'll just not play there. But it leaves a sour taste in my mouth that fdev do not seem to have an effective strategy to deal with these people. It also comes across that taking these people's money is more important than the player base experience.

I'd really like to see a much tougher approach by fdev and see people banned from the game for this anti social behaviour. These ppl don't bring fdev any credit other than the cash in their pockets while we pay for it in bad user experience.

 

[Stigbob]

The problem with what you are saying is that you have to be instanced with a griefer before you can block them. Just knowing who they are isn't enough. It's a bit after the fact that you can only block a griefer after the event. This I find annoying and is one of the reasons I don't want to play in Open. I can't easily protect myself from these people until after the event. If the op cares to pm me, I'm sure he has some useful information, but how I act upon it seems like it's going to be a lot of logging just to try to be in an instance with them before I can block them. Sorry fdev but I think your charity goes too far. If I want to block someone, I should be able to just type in their cmdr name and hit block! If people want to privately circulate griefer lists, so be it. These people are only getting their deserved come back.

We used to have a shame approach to crime (aka the stocks in the middle of the village). I fear we have gone too far the other way to protect their identities now. If you want people to play in Open, then clean up the place. If you are happy letting these people grief others then carry on... I'll just not play there. But it leaves a sour taste in my mouth that fdev do not seem to have an effective strategy to deal with these people. It also comes across that taking these people's money is more important than the player base experience.

I'd really like to see a much tougher approach by fdev and see people banned from the game for this anti social behaviour. These ppl don't bring fdev any credit other than the cash in their pockets while we pay for it in bad user experience.

The only issue I have with a searchable block function is that exploiters would exploit it. However it does seem to be a very popular idea, so I'm definitely open to going with the player consensus on that one. If you work on the theory that exploiters are going to be exploiting anyway no matter what you do, there's no justifiable reason not to include it. Shame we can't do a poll on it really.

On bans they wouldn't even need to try and target people who grief they could have gone after the engineer exploiters (whose account details they already have) and got at minimum 90% of them anyway. Any concerns about being overly harsh just pop them all into the shadow server where they can't affect other players or the BGS and let them ram greif and cheat at each other all day long.

 

[to_boldy_go]

Surely the main reason station siliness with mines etc happens is the horrible interdiction process and the basic question. How can a trade ship fight off an engineered vette?

The answer from fdev was make pvp voluntary. Unless you are new avoiding a fight is easy enough in a trade ship if you are engineered up and know what you are doing.

As a consequence those opposing CGs resort to what would be nonsense in the real world.

I paid for a space sim. For sake of game play we do need some bending of that. But currently say an American Carrier Battle Group sinks a ferry in the channel tunnel. It gets a 6 day bounty it can avoid by the admiral getting in a dinghy and sinking himself. Then back into the CBG arrives at port in dover to a big welcome from the brits!

Daft!

 

[Susanna]

The other issue I have is the new rebuy rule that the rebuy is of the most expensive ship used during your crime spree (aka killing other players). Thing is, with engineers, we'll just see engineered sidewinders being used to grief unarmed traders... They still will only pay a slightly higher rebuy. So what. No change there then. You'd have to be stupid to believe that they are going to do this in an expensive Corvette...

 

[Stigbob]

The other issue I have is the new rebuy rule that the rebuy is of the most expensive ship used during your crime spree (aka killing other players). Thing is, with engineers, we'll just see engineered sidewinders being used to grief unarmed traders... They still will only pay a slightly higher rebuy. So what. No change there then. You'd have to be stupid to believe that they are going to do this in an expensive Corvette...

I don't hold out much hope for the C&P and Karma thing, I think it will inevitably be exploitable (at first anyway). I'll wait until it's been around for a while and patched a few times and see if it's working then I suppose I could in theory reassess my block list, if I thought there was anything to gain by removing people from it.

In the meantime the block function works as a personally tailor-able perma-ban.

 

[Maxmilian Czhilli]

Player control over matchmaking causes all sorts of instancing problems.

If this was the case, then friends lists should be your target. They have much more widespread use than block lists and a greater influence when matchmaking instances.

Sorry, but I just don't buy the hearsay and speculation about block lists causing "problems". Especially when they ignore the role that the friends list plays in the same matchmaking system.

I have far more sympathy with someone who comes straight out and says: "I don't like block lists because I'm worried I will be instanced with fewer people and and have fewer targets."

 

[MiiC]

The block feature should only work for comms, if you are getting griefed there should be other ways to report it and the victim should probe it. This is going to turn into an open PVE private group or Elite Man's Sky.

PS: I'm spanish, sorry for my english.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

The block feature should only work for comms

No.

 

[MiiC]

No.

Yes, calling griefer others is an accusation and you must probe it.

 

[Madcow01]

I am so tired now of ganking at CG's I am giving up playing with friends in the open. Today alone, no idea how many gank attempts I had, yesterday needed a rebuy, the last gank attempt was a wing against just me, then I find out it was for twitch.tv, known ganker who ganks professionally (continual foul language over the channel, hope he does not kiss his mother with that mouth). The blocking is not perfect and there are just too many doing this. Wish there was an answer to OP ships doing this.

 

[Morbad]

If this was the case, then friends lists should be your target. They have much more widespread use than block lists and a greater influence when matchmaking instances.

The premise that the friend's list inclusiveness is anywhere near as harmful as the block list exclusivity is a fallacy. The greater weight/priority placed on friends doesn't change that. They are not the same.

The ideal scenario is no instancing at all, with everyone in the same area being able to interact with everyone else. Barring technical limitations, the problem isn't with more people in fewer instances, it's with many, sparsely populated, instances. The friends list can't exclude others from an instance without the instance being at it's limit for other reasons (a relatively uncommon occurrence), or it being used in conjunction with block lists.

Regardless, I accept that instancing exists and is not going away. It needs to be improved and one of the first things I'd do to improve it is remove any player ability to legitimately influence it, outside of wings/crew, which have to place people together even in less than ideal connection states, to work. Even these cases could be improved upon by giving more feedback as to connection quality and automatically enabling RelayViaServer on a case by case basis, if either peer involved has a better connection to Frontier/Amazon Web Services than to each other.

In the meantime, I'll continue to advocate avoidance of the block list because it doesn't have any other significant use than to meddle with instancing and is objectively more harmful to instancing than the friends list, which does.

 

[lokvette]

Yes, calling griefer others is an accusation and you must probe it.

If you dont like someones playstyle you should be able to chose if you want them in your game or game time so to speak.

People can block other people as people see fit to do so.