It seems like a fair bit of effort, and will probably need to be done repeatedly (you won't get every griefer in a single instance). And in the end, you are theoretically playing a game of like minded individuals who don't grief, aka, Mobius. Kudo's to the OP for thinking through the process, but I don't think you'll ever catch every griefer to block, and it's much easier to play solo or PG (Mobius) to achieve the same result. As far as the "everyone should play in one mode to even out the BGS field", I'm not sure I buy into that argument. Between different time zones and instancing, people play their own game, not much you can do to change their influence regardless.
Lead Designers advice on dealing with griefing
- Thread starter Stigbob
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Self driven in-game goals are important in a game like ED, one of my current ones is block every station griefer I can. I'm doubling it up with doing the CG's for space-cash, so it's not really much of a grind.
You are right though they've become very scarce in the instances I'm in now, which I'm taking to be an indicator that the block and my approach are both working as intended.
I'm not sure ED was ever meant to have a player economy of any type at all - the moneys just there to give the impression of reality to some degree - I don't think it would matter much to Fdev, the game mechanics (or me for that matter), if every ship was in your hangar on day one when you logged in - it's meant to be a minor bump in the road to give the illusion of progression. Kind of ties into the idea that Anaconda's are "better" than say Sidewinders or that Cutters are more " end game" than Eagles (they aren't).
To put it another way ED is a big box of lego bricks - red isn't better than white and all bricks have equal value, the value comes from what you, the player do with the bricks.
ED isn't an MMO, it's a sandbox that you, to some degree share with others.
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rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
But Anaconda IS better than Sidewinder and Cutter IS better than Eagle.
I'm not negatively effecting, or trying to negatively effect anybody elses game. I'm simply choosing to opt out of playing a game with station griefers and cheats as they have nothing to offer that I consider worth including in my game.
The illusion was almost good enough early on, if you didn't look very closely, but it's frayed quite thin as the game has progressed, to the point that the stated vision of seeming like another reality comes off as completely farcical.
Commodities are so cheap you could buy hold full of palladium and jettison them in front of novice CMDRs and it would be a waste of time even trying to collect them...yet NPCs risk their lives for three tons of grain.
Faction representatives are continually trying to pay me two orders of magnitude more than the value of cargo to move it 300ly to a system that has a cheap supply one jump away, and they are happy to let me do it on my timetable.
I go into a resource extraction site in a dirt poor system with a population of 150 and am then confronted with a legion of NPC pirates tailored to my CMDR's pilots federation rank who then proceed to die by ring full, until I've killed five pirates and collected half a million cr for every man, woman, and child that's supposed to be in the system. Why are all these Elite pirates here trying to steal indite? How can this faction afford to pay me more than the next three generations of their decedents are likely to make over the course of their lives just to suppress pirate activity for a few hours?
A believable economy and demographics are critical to any setting. Those that are less free-form, that focus on other areas, can get away with more handwaving, but not Elite. The quality of these aspects would be barely good enough for a Sonic the Hedgehog title, let alone a galaxy simulator that is supposed to keep thousands of people interested in trade for hundreds of hours.
Whats any of that got to do with the block function/griefing ?.
A hypothetical scenario with a question.....
Let's say there are 3 players; A, B and C and you.
The way I understand it, friending somebody takes priority over blocking.
So if I block CMDR A and I'm friends with CMDR B and CMDR A and CMDR B are friends, I might still end-up instancing with CMDR A - most likely as a result of the game deciding to instance me with CMDR B.
Okay. Got it. No problems there.
What about the "opposite" scenario, though?
What if I block CMDR A when I'm not friends with CMDR B?
Presumably the game will try to instance CMDR A and CMDR B together and I'll end up in a separate instance from both of them and will never encounter CMDR B.
On the one hand, that might be a good thing because it'd mean blocking one person who's part of a group of jerks would probably result in you never meeting any of them.
OTOH, it seems like frivolous use of blocking could lead a person to end up in their own little patch of the ED universe and nobody to be friends with.
As for CMDR C; he's up in Quince, hammering scanning missions.
Let's say there are 3 players; A, B and C and you.
The way I understand it, friending somebody takes priority over blocking.
So if I block CMDR A and I'm friends with CMDR B and CMDR A and CMDR B are friends, I might still end-up instancing with CMDR A - most likely as a result of the game deciding to instance me with CMDR B.
Okay. Got it. No problems there.
What about the "opposite" scenario, though?
What if I block CMDR A when I'm not friends with CMDR B?
Presumably the game will try to instance CMDR A and CMDR B together and I'll end up in a separate instance from both of them and will never encounter CMDR B.
On the one hand, that might be a good thing because it'd mean blocking one person who's part of a group of jerks would probably result in you never meeting any of them.
OTOH, it seems like frivolous use of blocking could lead a person to end up in their own little patch of the ED universe and nobody to be friends with.
As for CMDR C; he's up in Quince, hammering scanning missions.
I've been spanking people with the block hammer fairly hard and the instances are still full of other CMDR's it's just they are not the CMDR's I've blocked, so no worries about that.
Your own friending of A will outweigh your blocking of A and you'll be at least as likely to encounter A as if you didn't have them on either list.
You'll likely end up in a separate instance from both, if A and B are in an instance together already and you don't have either friended.
If you get put in B's instance, A will likely be excluded from that instance, unless he or she is friends with B.
Only if the one trying to get into the instance you occupy first is the one you have blocked. Otherwise the wing/friends will likely suck the blocked 'jerk' in because those associations outweigh a single block.
Sorry, just my musings pulling things out a little bit, Morbad is correct in what he says, just I'm not sure that FDev ever intended the um... depth we imply.
It does relate to why we block\grief etc though - player expectations are very varied in this game - as you yourself pointed out the developers have kept a lot of playstyles in .. er play
Lets make Open great again
Indeed and remove it completely.
Nothing at all, he can't win the argument so he brings up something else to talk about, or so it seems.
I thought this was just 'a few commanders'. How long is the list now? Just curious. Problem with lists, is that they tend to grow. If you have to start scrolling, well, best of luck. o7
Sole Hunter
Banned
Putting a temporary band-aid fix such as "blocking players" is only going to further fragment the community and make it worse. Yeah, let's get rid of players that are not space rainbow friendly because they hurt my feelings or don't play like I want to play the game even tough I joined OPEN and technically agreed to all consequences associated with it.
Great way to promote some of your game features such as "PVP", "Bounty Hunting", "Piracy", "Trading" and pretty much every other social aspect that made open such a great place to go pew pew like the community goals!
The blocking feature is terrible in terms of game design. As much as I agree with the fact that it's a great feature to instantly block hackers, cheaters and exploiters. It is abused by a horde of people against legitimate players that just enjoy playing a different playstyle.
At this point, I don't even understand why we have solo.
Furthermore,
You want an example of such abuse? I don't even bother to play the game anymore. I just come here on the forums and check the regular updates hoping that one day the devs are going to produce something worthwhile. Yet, I still receive friends invite from players WHO are deliberately trying to block me because I was once flying under a certain red banner.
Isn't it hilarious considering most of them have never met me in-game or played with me?
Great way to promote some of your game features such as "PVP", "Bounty Hunting", "Piracy", "Trading" and pretty much every other social aspect that made open such a great place to go pew pew like the community goals!
The blocking feature is terrible in terms of game design. As much as I agree with the fact that it's a great feature to instantly block hackers, cheaters and exploiters. It is abused by a horde of people against legitimate players that just enjoy playing a different playstyle.
At this point, I don't even understand why we have solo.
Furthermore,
You want an example of such abuse? I don't even bother to play the game anymore. I just come here on the forums and check the regular updates hoping that one day the devs are going to produce something worthwhile. Yet, I still receive friends invite from players WHO are deliberately trying to block me because I was once flying under a certain red banner.
Isn't it hilarious considering most of them have never met me in-game or played with me?
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Right, so nothing should ever happen because it won't be perfect. Zeno has you covered there.
-.-- --- ..- / .- .-. . / -.-. .-.. . ...- . .-. --..-- / .... ..- -- .- -. / -... . .- ... - .-.-.-
Here's a hypothetical: what if one player is Russian and another wing has President Trump in it and he's blocked a bunch of Russians, it would mean no one who is loyal to the President will ever be able to play any Russians? That would be... sad.
- .... .. ... / -- . ... ... .- --. . / .. ... / .. -. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . .-.-.-
I don't care about other people's playstyles. I do care about monsters of the pull-wings-off-a-fly kind and do not wish to play with them, or even see them. No one who is on my Friends list would care either. If some guys are friends with psycho hose beasts, and I've blocked said beasts, oh well.
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Sole Hunter
Banned
That's not what he's saying. He's basically saying, across the board that feature is more detrimental than the overall benefits it provide.
It's a giant universe. Player encounters are minimal at best but if you play a certain style (like killing players) you are more likely to be abused by the usage of this feature even tough your game style is totally within the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in terms of gameplay.
I would be fine if that feature was blocking a player from communicating with me, but the fact that someone can prevent me from being able to see him because he doesn't like how I play the game in open is mind boggling to me when the devs have said themselves in the past that everything is allowed in open and no one should be singled out because they play differently. Now they've done the complete opposite with this feature.
Example : How I'm I supposed to defend my friends from being attacked by another player if he blocked me, see where this is going? Oh, yeah the best way to fix that problem is to simply block the other player. That to me is terrible design.
"Oh right, Joe I forgot to tell you....well that dude blocked me so I can't help you so you're going to have to block him as well"
Yeah it's pretty hilarious to see such terrible design decisions.
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People who wish to pew pew can still do so, just not with players who have blocked them. It's no different to not being able to pew pew players who choose to play in solo.
It's not abuse to decide to exclude somebody from your gameplay based on their interactions with other players. You and the "certain red banner" sought to become infamous through controversial actions, and you got exactly what you wanted. The only sticking point is that you mistakenly believed the people who you made not want to play with you would be forced to unless they were willing to give up playing in open.
Sole Hunter
Banned
I disagree, the idea of blocking a player because you do not enjoy how he plays in open is detrimental to the overall benefits we get from interacting between us. What's the point to play in open if everybody are blocking each others? The whole idea behind open was to be able to interact with other players at all time in a single giant universe.
What am I supposed to tell my friend who's getting shot by someone else who blocked me? Oh right, you should just block him since I can't see him.
Being part of a controversial group or playing differently isn't an excuse or enough to warrant to have such a feature in place. Oh, yeah let's ban all guns because one dude decided to shoot someone.
There are far better ways to minimize the losses associated with PVP and make social interactions in a video game more rewarding and not just a mindless festival of pew pew without any depth attached to it.
The devs have essentially decided that it was easier to just do a quick band-aid fix by ostracizing certain areas of gameplay because they are more likely to be less desirable or less popular, putting those who enjoy participating in those said activities at a higher risk of getting blocked.
It's not a good design, period.
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