Still Morbad's argument is technically correct... Using the block function can and will affect the instancing not only of the blocker and blockee, but also that of other players. This seems less than ideal.. I'm also partial to a new PVE mode and maybe for the block to only affect system chat. Like that players that don't wish PvP combat could still all be in one single mode instead of splintered in numerous PG and solo instances.
Elite Dangerous Blocking System: A Call for Change
- Thread starter CMDR DT
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Would you agree that the root cause here is the hypothetical ganker though? Let's call them griefer even, for the sake of an extreme scenario. It's the griefer's actions that (subsequently) resulted in your instancing issue, even though the direct culprit is hypothetical Darrack.
There was a certain chain of events that led to this situation, and it was started by the actions taken by the griefer, NOT by Darrack.
Do you agree? If so - how would you fix the root cause? If not, then I am (again) backing away from this discsussion with "agree to disagree" comment.
"Ganker" is just a placeholder for "someone doing something someone finds offensive". The offense, to me is meddling with my instancing and all the problems that can stem from that. The offense to the blocker could be literally anything; there are no conditions on it's use.
The root cause depends on how many degrees of separation we're willing to go through. The hypothetical blocker does not give a damn why the hypothetical ganker is gankifying in their direction. I don't really care what the hypothetical ganker was doing to this hypothetical blocker, because no matter what it was, there was a solution that did not need to involve me. No one is forcing the blocker's hand. The game gives them an option, it's use is on them. Same goes for anything else the game allows.
So, I agree that a given hypothetical blocker may be blocking in response to a ganker. I do not agree that blocking was a justifiable response, but that's a matter of opinion.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
We're getting somewhere. I agree that people use the word "ganker" way too often. That's why I prefer the term "griefer", because griefer to me is someone that trolls and harasses rather than just destroys other ships for the sake of it.
For example - pad blocking. Station entrance blocking. Low-hull ramming to get the wanted status on an innocent ship. Someone that has no actual interest or any role-play or in-game reason to destroy my ship, but keeps doing it repeatedly. You know, playing the game in an intentionally malicious way, kind of bending the rules or working around the rules to cause harm and disrupt other players' game, for the sake of trolling. Basically breaking the 4th wall, to make me - the player, not the in-game character (extremely important distinction) - react in a certain way, usually what is referred to as "salty tears".
I tolerate gankers. I have zero tolerance to griefers. I honestly don't see many other options to get rid of the griefers in the game apart from providing me with an option that allows me to filter them out of the game, while still allowing me to play with other randomly met players. People want the block removed, but nobody so far offers any alternative to prevent griefers and trolls to ruin other people's game. PEOPLE'S, not in-game characters. I only emphasise that as you yourself have mentioned breaking the 4th wall and the block functionality being, let's call it - out-of-lore.
Another observation is that instancing is iffy in any case. 40 commanders can fly together in the same PG and the same system and it's hard to get all to instance together, we have to create wings and use wing invites to get as many commanders as possible into a single instance. If we get to somewhere around 40 commanders it also starts to break as you can no longer return from on foot to your ship, etc. IMO, frontier should be developing ways to instance more commanders together rather than how to splinter the instancing. Still for many, gankers are a (maybe subjective) problem and it's natural that they go for the block. I get the impression game design and satisfying everyone is a hard job..
I've used the phrase 'context defying' to describe such things. I'm sympathetic to those who use block to counter actual harassment or unambiguous context defiance (though this itself is highly subjective, as the AX arguments show...some people cannot accept how anyone could oppose attempts to defeat the Thargoids; I find it difficult to accept the idea that so few would want humanity lose). The problem is that block itself is fundamentally a context defying feature; there is no in-character or in-lore explanation for the player's ability to push someone into a parallel universe. I also strongly feel that policing harassment is something that is the purview of the game and it's moderators, not something that should be outsourced to individual players--a significant portion of whom will use block either as an ad-hoc difficulty setting, irrespective of the validity of the interactions they are blocking, or leverage it as a tool of covert harassment themselves.
Games work best, in my experience, when all players are following the same overarching and coherent set of rules. Blocking is essentially an addendum that allows everyone to write their own rules and push them on everyone else in Open, even if they are completely contradictory.
The alternative that currently exists is the use of modes. This is far from ideal, but it is an option, and I know if the choice I was presented with was tolerating harassment, bowing out of the mode I was in, taking a break from the game, or doing something I knew would, perforce, impose my rules upon each and every other player network peer, I would (and do) have serious ethical problems with the latter. It's a clear violation of the spirit of the 'equal rights of others' premise.
There have also been other alternatives presented. One example, I recall is the idea that blocking would make the blocker and blockee (only) invisible/intangible to each other (in addition to a chat block), without altering instancing. This would be just as ridiculous from an in-character perspective, and would cause some potentially confusing interactions, but would preserve the legitimate utility of blocking with far less imposition upon bystanders.
The problem with any proposed alternative is that it would have to meet Frontier's ever declining standards and appetite for experimentation when it comes to this game.
It often is. Some people use this as an argument against the harm blocking causes. Personally, I find such logic just as flawed as not caring about heart disease risks because auto accidents and homicide are also a thing, as if the existence of any risk justifies multiplying them.
The game's network model is sketchy enough without letting people add another, often inscrutable, contraindication to successful matchmaking.
Game mechanics, yes, human mechanics, no.
A general and overarching set of rules over people's behavior usually results in an anti-MMO pattern which CMDR Hyperi, a good friend of mine, aptly calls the "Weekly Dorky Drama" (WDD). In WDD, for every week the game is running, you roll 1d20, and on a roll of 1, a random player dispute arises practically out of nowhere. Maybe someone used beams when Thargoid shields are down, maybe someone used relogging to farm HGS, and so forth. Over the course of a few days, insults are exchanged, sides are picked, and by end of the week things have gotten so ugly that Frontier Development's seneschal has to step in and make a ruling. There are people on both the "for" and the "against" side of the issue, and they have friends, and they have friends' friends.
Now, the Frontier Development's seneschal tries to interpret these overarching rules to the best of his ability, and then rules in favor of e.g. party A. As a result, party B will be very unhappy and will start "symptoming". It is not uncommon that some (including people who don't belong to either party A or B, but just do not like WDD) express these symptoms by taking a hiatus from the game. Next week, symptoms of party B will be the input for next week's dorky drama episode which will be caused by (now unhappy) Party B, and this time party A gets mad. I can tell you that we are now on a trajectory into a hyper-toxic gaming environment that any sane person will not want to be a part of. It's literally the Godzilla walking out of the ocean and going "no" after seeing giant wasps on the beach meme.
The genius I see behind the blocking mechanism is to allow players to solve the WDDs themselves and make their own decisions and value judgments about them. In other words, it removes the need for Frontier Development to be at the center of WDD. Also, not having to participate in WDD helps Frontier moderators in the long run because they don't have to absorb the "bad mojo" from these potentially toxic situations.
In-game disputes that don't involve rule breaking don't need any intervention. Identifying and adjucating rule breaking doesn't involve taking sides in, or even acknowledging, player disputes, only removing the rule breakers.
I know your examples weren't meant to be comprehensive, but the ones you've provided are nonsensical. The first is either an in-game tactical error or sabotage, which can be solved by either educating or destroying the offending CMDR; blocking, while expedient is hardly required and certainly would not be what I'd consider the less toxic option. The second example is something that blocking cannot possibly counter.
I don't agree I'm afraid. I distinguish between someone attacking me because they're trying to get an in-game benefit, and someone attacking because they want to spoil my limited leisure time by interrupting my gaming. The second type is RL annoyance which I always abolish at first opportunity.
IRL analogies rarely work well but if I park my car somewhere it may be broken into by someone who just wants to see if there is anything they might want inside. Even if they find nothing I am still left with a bill for a new window.
If you are attacked 'for no reason' that reason might be a gang initiation (where a new player has to prove their worth & you just happened to look like easy prey), it could be that they are looking for a fight & you just didn't provide much challenge, it could also be that it looks like you are a valid target based on their role play (pro-xeno for example). If you are not prepared to defend yourself they are pretty unlikely to let you go if killing you is just as quick for them to get back to hunting, especially if your ship mass-locks theirs.
They are distinct things, but I question anyone's ability to reliably distinguish them without an explicit admission or truly blatant out-of-character behavior. Since I always try to give players the benefit of any doubt I can only claim to have encountered a handful of cases, out of probably thousands of hostile encounters, where I'm certain the goal of such hostility was to aggravate me, the player, or otherwise spoil my game.
I also assume that most people must realize that attacking my character in a video game where characters can be attacked is probably extremely unlikely to bother me as a player. Someone wants to bother me, they'll misquote me on the forum or file frivolous copyright claims on my Youtube videos.
Herre gud... 15 pages about open only... again... and the OP didn't even bother to return after coming in and vomiting right into the corridor...
Yes, but you're quite special as in you always seem to play in-character and take ingame actions very in-character
This is a really rare occurrence IMO among the player base.
Most players are taking ED for what it is, a game, a way to relax and pass the spare time.
And the griefers will take advantage since there is no way to punish them in-game in a relevant timely manner.
Filling a Griefing report will not have any meaningful impact for days which means that i have to quit Elite or play in Solo
Or rely to Block feature - i guess it's obvious what i would do if i want to play in open, today, in spite the fact a certain griefer is trying to ruin my game session.
I've never yet had a case where it's been hard to guess.
There is no contradiction between this and the way I treat the game.
I think your confidence in the veracity of your guesses is misplaced.
There are countless potential in-character reasons to attempt to destroy other CMDR vessels. Not all of them are efficient in the terms of a broader metagame, but failing to minmaxing everything from an OOC gamist perspective shouldn't imply a lack of in-game incentive; some people would suggest exactly the opposite.
Indeed, it's not my desire to better portray my character that causes him to initiate hostilities upon strangers as infrequently as he does, it's my jadedness as a player. I personally know that violence doesn't actually have much of any in-game utility, due to the virtually non-existent consequence mechanisms in this game, so it's sometimes too much of a chore to properly play a character who should believe that he can actually hurt his foes. As a result, my character ignores interlopers he should just shoot down, and I sometimes have him talk when silence would rationally serve his goals best.
Ironically, if the game were more immersive, and more conducive to roleplaying a character in a credible version of the Elite setting, I'm almost certain I'd be mistaken for a griefer far more often.
There is (when we discuss the perceived effect of a ganker/griefer/sealclubber has over a player and his gaming experience)
FrameShift Live #10 - a clear example of how a ganker can ruin something that was fun while not bending/breaking the rules
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I believe we can take it as a given the the servers split CMDRs into different instances, even with no blocking present. Therefore if a CMDR jumps into a system with lots of other CMDRs in open, there is likely to be two or more instances. This means that half or more of the CMDRs cannot be interacted with at any one time. Is the new CMDR having their game affected? They certainly must. Therefore to take issue with the blocking facility because there is collateral damage (being stopped from instancing with others) seems to lose a lot of the justification against blocking.
Steve
Steve
I'm saying that there is no way I could view the game as anything but a game and be playing it the way I do. My desire to separate my character from myself is part of my entertainment, and not something I have cause to do outside of a game.
Beyond that, games, being interactive media, do not have predestined outcomes (at least if they are any good). I do take my entertainment pretty seriously, but not seriously enough to allow the occasional unpleasant surprise to ruin anything for me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and failures make for worthwhile narrative too. Hell, many of my most memorable and enjoyable ED experiences were failures from my CMDR's perspective.
I'm not really sure what was ruined here. They're trying to use a live game for a scripted event. There should be no expectation of any given session going as planned in any non-formulaic environment, like an interactive multiplayer game...especially if you're live streaming it. It was still a demonstration; perhaps one that was more representative than it otherwise would have been.
There are bound to be multiple instances a variety of conflicting matchmaking weights in effect in any densely populated system. This doesn't do anything to lessen the harm of adding arbitrary, near absolute, exclusions that are likely diluting things significantly further.
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CG Sus chat says 'Hi', followed by a stream of text that would cause our Mods to block me. By your definition this would be the Mods fault...
You can disable system chat without it affecting anyone else though.
It wasn't sys chat that was the issue. It does I'd the individuals causing the issue together with out of context 'reasons'.
In Morbads terms 'an explicit admission '.
Think 'bank robber posts pics'.
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