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We're out of early access, and ever since nothing has been done to improve public servers and make them worth playing. Griefing is possible and there is nothing in place to prevent it from happening whatsoever unless you use mods. I feel that the direction of DST have been moving further into more singleplayer content and features over actually making the game be about teamwork and even potentially PvP. Sure, new items and features are nice, but more multiplayer aspects would be better. Just leaving some feedback.

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I just disagree.  I've played on the official servers multiple times and never once faced griefing.  I've also played on a few other hosted servers and did not face any griefing.  I wonder if you're more referring to endless servers, as regarding survival servers...they reset roughly every 10 hours at the longest.  Since survival servers are not only the most popular server type, but Klei's own hosted servers are survival, I can only feel that the intended experience of the game is survival.

As such, I disagree with balancing (and focusing new) content around endless play.

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38 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I just disagree.  I've played on the official servers multiple times and never once faced griefing.  I've also played on a few other hosted servers and did not face any griefing.  I wonder if you're more referring to endless servers, as regarding survival servers...they reset roughly every 10 hours at the longest.  Since survival servers are not only the most popular server type, but Klei's own hosted servers are survival, I can only feel that the intended experience of the game is survival.

As such, I disagree with balancing (and focusing new) content around endless play.

I usually host endless servers as there are a dime a dozen survival ones and wilderness requires a very good teamwork which may not be available on public servers (again, there are not many pubs which have active admins on, so I'm trying to fill in the niche and it works). Survival ones have the problem with voting for a reset now. However, I'm not up for really long runs for an entirely different reason than dying out.

It's the difficulty curve (which, sans hound attacks, suddenly drops after you've spent a year or two, raided the ruins and built at least one base with many drying racks on each shard) and lag spikes.

Our last (roleplaying) server was lovely. We spent nearly 400 days there - spelunking, building a base in the caves, then in the desert (with an entire zoo)... But ultimately, it gets too stagnant. We had lots of food, several chests of gems, so much thulecite we couldn't work it through... See the point? Every so often, you change the world to be faced with more uncertainty, more challenge. That's why endless runs seem rather odd to me.

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3 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

I usually host endless servers as there are a dime a dozen survival ones and wilderness requires a very good teamwork which may not be available on public servers (again, there are not many pubs which have active admins on, so I'm trying to fill in the niche and it works). Survival ones have the problem with voting for a reset now. However, I'm not up for really long runs for an entirely different reason than dying out.

It's the difficulty curve (which, sans hound attacks, suddenly drops after you've spent a year or two, raided the ruins and built at least one base with many drying racks on each shard) and lag spikes.

Our last (roleplaying) server was lovely. We spent nearly 400 days there - spelunking, building a base in the caves, then in the desert (with an entire zoo)... But ultimately, it gets too stagnant. We had lots of food, several chests of gems, so much thulecite we couldn't work it through... See the point? Every so often, you change the world to be faced with more uncertainty, more challenge. That's why endless runs seem rather odd to me.

Thanks for this, this is exactly the kind of reason I just don't think we should focus on endless gameplay for mechanic design/balance.  However, I accept that some people want to keep playing and as so much content doesn't regenerate, I feel that we need some method of regeneration and stimulation to at least keep people on their toes and surviving on long-term sessions.

So perhaps we need more mechanics akin to disease that toss the base into chaos and introduce new methods to acquire resources periodically throughout the years.  This serves to not only keep resources available periodically, but it also wipes out aspects of bases, forcing people to go out and get said new resources.  I don't have a ton of specifically fleshed out concepts for these as of yet, but it's my general stance on long-term play.

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Just now, Ecu said:

Thanks for this, this is exactly the kind of reason I just don't think we should focus on endless gameplay for mechanic design/balance.  However, I accept that some people want to keep playing and as so much content doesn't regenerate, I feel that we need some method of regeneration and stimulation to at least keep people on their toes and surviving on long-term sessions.

So perhaps we need more mechanics akin to disease that toss the base into chaos and introduce new methods to acquire resources periodically throughout the years.  This serves to not only keep resources available periodically, but it also wipes out aspects of bases, forcing people to go out and get said new resources.  I don't have a ton of specifically fleshed out concepts for these as of yet, but it's my general stance on long-term play.

Well, the way I handle this on my servers, I set world regrowth rate to accelerated (one level above default), only because I usually host 16-22 slots. As the admin, I have to frequently help people out, so I lead the life of a semi-nomad, wandering periodically to check on everyone, ensure the spider dens are there, but not overgrown, analyse the beefalo population and so on. This means little bases here and there (one of the following: crockpot, alchemy lab, firepit, tent, then in my favourite two biomes, that is the swamp and the desert, also a birdcage and a lot of drying racks), hunting and gathering rather than farming. It does give more lifespan to a server, because it's more random than just sitting around the base and tending to your farms. But it still means we will eventually move on.

MAYBE I should just regenerate the world then instead of making a new server. But honestly, if I can have fifty at once, multiply this by two machines, why worry?

PS You can always upvote if you feel like it. JOKE :twisted:.

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On 11/17/2016 at 7:25 AM, Ecu said:

I've played on the official servers multiple times and never once faced griefing.

This is something I've heard on the forums since early access. I don't want to call you guys liars, but I've seen nothing but griefing in public servers. As longs as it's possible, people will do it and have done it and I actually see them do it. There is only enough bans and rollbacks you can do before you just get tired of playing public servers altogether. Burning things down in singleplayer only hurts yourself. Burning things down in public servers, hurts everyone who's playing. Why can't the developers and the majority of the community not back that up?

It's a multiplayer game and so far griefing hasn't been taken into consideration into ANY aspect. As said before, the game heads towards singleplayer content rather than having any consideration to multiplayer. I bought this game for the fact that it was multiplayer, if I wanted singleplayer, I'd buy the original.

This is a game, people will abuse flaws. Since it's a multiplayer game, people who abuse flaws, can aggravate others. It's the developers responsibility to do something to remedy or completely fix these flaws. Rollbacks and bans are a very VERY weak remedy. Adding safes, less flammable structures, and locking out bases with non-flammable gates, all would help. This is an example of how you fix a problem. That, or remove the feature altogether and make a new way of obtaining charcoal.

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1 hour ago, Trenix said:

This is something I've heard on the forums since early access. I don't want to call you guys liars, but I've seen nothing but griefing in public servers. As longs as it's possible, people will do it and have done it and I actually see them do it. There is only enough bans and rollbacks you can do before you just get tired of playing public servers altogether. Burning things down in singleplayer only hurts yourself. Burning things down in public servers, hurts everyone who's playing. Why can't the developers and the majority of the community not back that up?

It's a multiplayer game and so far griefing hasn't been taken into consideration into ANY aspect. As said before, the game heads towards singleplayer content rather than having any consideration to multiplayer. I bought this game for the fact that it was multiplayer, if I wanted singleplayer, I'd buy the original.

This is a game, people will abuse flaws. Since it's a multiplayer game, people who abuse flaws, can aggravate others. It's the developers responsibility to do something to remedy or completely fix these flaws. Rollbacks and bans are a very VERY weak remedy. Adding safes, less flammable structures, and locking out bases with non-flammable gates, all would help. This is an example of how you fix a problem. That, or remove the feature altogether and make a new way of obtaining charcoal.

I have a question for you.  When you are seeing this griefing you speak of (especially in the case of people burning things down), is it during survival play?  Perhaps that is where our differences lay, as I only play survival mode.  Just curious...

That said, I think the reason people (or at least myself) are against adding too many defenses against griefing is that they will take away from the roguelike aspects of the game.  Don't Starve Together is indeed a multiplayer game, but it is also a roguelike survival game and allowing players access to methods to keep their resources safe goes against the very concept of a roguelike survival game.  At the end of the day the overall goal of the game is destroy everything you've built and kill your character.

I am not opposed, however, to curtailing exploits like vote kicking.  Beyond that though I think we need to be very careful as to how much protection we give people.

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Griefing is rampant in general. Survival or otherwise.
Probably depends on the time of day more than server type. Entirely different groups occupy games in different time-slots. Got a weird schedule, so I've actually been able to see that...

It is a hard balance, though. Servers don't have admins on 24/7, so if you want to make decent progress, the only worthwhile servers are ones with at least vote-kick, some sort of moderation that the players themselves can do; otherwise, it all falls down the moment the staff leaves. But then, vote-kick is a griefing tool itself, as is one person simply getting onto a server alone, dying and resetting everything just to get a new world.
Light protection mods are nice and do the trick, but they have a bad reputation because of a few op character mods, so modded servers tend to be less populated by default. Whatever anti-grief measures are implemented, they need to be in the base game, whether they're automatic or toggle-able options.

It'll take a lot of things to fix the griefing problem, but it needs to at least start. It's fine if some people don't see it happening, but one of the worst things we can do is ignore it. In anything like this where griefing is as easy, free and semi-promoted as it is, it's going to happen. There's no immediate-term reason for people not to do it, no punishment, no loss. The best tools for it can be made with no effort shortly after you spawn. Click one button and your work is done. Fires don't take long at all to spread, and the only ways of fighting them after they spread take either magic (usually not a player's first priority), or winter.
Wildfires grant difficulty. Hound attacks and bosses and whatnot grant some difficulty. Disease outbreaks grant difficulty...well they don't, but that can be changed. Hopefully disease is made difficult somehow.
Anyway.
Someone coming along, clicking one button to wipe your progress and logging off is more akin to a giant middle finger.

The real problem is that every other challenge in the game has an answer, while unless you're playing (empty) pvp servers, players don't. Wildfires don't happen until after you've had time to create countermeasures, for example.

 

 

This bother's me extra because of my weird schedule. I can't really coordinate play times, and haven't been able to for a while, so I mostly play public servers with whoever happens to be on at the time.
Given how horrible and not-worth-the-effort those have become, I've mostly had to play solo lately.
The Together has actually been removed from the game for me because of the griefing epidemic.

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2 hours ago, Ecu said:

I have a question for you.  When you are seeing this griefing you speak of (especially in the case of people burning things down), is it during survival play?  Perhaps that is where our differences lay, as I only play survival mode.  Just curious...

That said, I think the reason people (or at least myself) are against adding too many defenses against griefing is that they will take away from the roguelike aspects of the game.  Don't Starve Together is indeed a multiplayer game, but it is also a roguelike survival game and allowing players access to methods to keep their resources safe goes against the very concept of a roguelike survival game.  At the end of the day the overall goal of the game is destroy everything you've built and kill your character.

I am not opposed, however, to curtailing exploits like vote kicking.  Beyond that though I think we need to be very careful as to how much protection we give people.

I play non-pvp cooperative survival mode servers because PvP is terrible at best, which I hope changes. I'm fully aware of rogue games and how they work. I enjoy that genre very much and played various of games of it. However, I don't see that has anything to do with someone joining the game as Willow burning everything you have just like that. If this is part of the game and part of the challenge, then it's a rather bad challenge to deal with.

When a rogue game makes me lose because I did something wrong, could of prepared better, or something of that sort, then fine I'll accept my loss. But I wont accept my loss when someone who just joined the server, is able to wipe out an entire base because he or she KNOWS igniting things is abusive. I don't understand how that's rogue-like or even fun, maybe for the troll it's fun. How does that teach someone anything? How does that build a community? It doesn't, it's just a bad idea. If it's part of the game, then it's a terrible part of the game.

I get it, you can only get so much in this game before you get bored and feel like you've nothing left to do. However I want to lose my base in a fair way. That would be fun, would be interesting, and that would teach me something at the very least.

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EXACTLY!  This is why I highly prefer PvE over PvP.  The GAME has predictable, set rules, that you can work your way around once you know them.  It may _seem_ vindictive, but it doesn't actually know exactly when you've built something really expensive and make sure to send a wildfire right _then_.

Other _people_ just do whatever the hell they want, and unfortunately, despite allllll the other ways of entertaining oneself that exist in the world...SOME jerkholes still get WAY more enjoyment out of tormenting other human beings.  _Especially_ if you can do so with only the click of a button. And the protection of anonymity/not being anywhere near the person  you did that too, so you can't get punched.  Whatever will bug you the most, THAT is what they _will_ do.  It's like playing with a gaggle of bratty little siblings, sometimes.

This is why I stay off the Klei servers.  Well...actually, the main reason is the few times I tried it I had MASSIVE lag.  But this too.

Anyway:  Dying from the GAME teaches you something and makes you feel smarter for the next time.  Dying from PEOPLE just tells you that some people are jerks, which is something we all learned in like, toddlerhood.

(And it's kinda sad that modded servers get less people, 'cos people just see "Mods" and assume that server might have cheesy overpowered anime characters or whatever.  Sad for me, especially, since I couldn't stand the new Willow anymore and HAD to download the "Willow the Unnerfed" mod, turning my formerly-purist server into a modded one for all time.  Ever since then I've gotten a few more--all balanced and lore/art style-friendly--but when people search for only unmodded servers, they won't see mine.  :\)

...Notorious

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6 hours ago, Trenix said:

I play non-pvp cooperative survival mode servers because PvP is terrible at best, which I hope changes. I'm fully aware of rogue games and how they work. I enjoy that genre very much and played various of games of it. However, I don't see that has anything to do with someone joining the game as Willow burning everything you have just like that. If this is part of the game and part of the challenge, then it's a rather bad challenge to deal with.

When a rogue game makes me lose because I did something wrong, could of prepared better, or something of that sort, then fine I'll accept my loss. But I wont accept my loss when someone who just joined the server, is able to wipe out an entire base because he or she KNOWS igniting things is abusive. I don't understand how that's rogue-like or even fun, maybe for the troll it's fun. How does that teach someone anything? How does that build a community? It doesn't, it's just a bad idea. If it's part of the game, then it's a terrible part of the game.

I get it, you can only get so much in this game before you get bored and feel like you've nothing left to do. However I want to lose my base in a fair way. That would be fun, would be interesting, and that would teach me something at the very least.

Unfortunately, regarding your example (people burning your base down)...it cannot be fixed.  Even if you take away burning somehow, then people can just use hammers instead.  If you are truly so worried about someone griefing you, then play single-player.  That is the only way that one can truly avoid griefing players.  Again though, I have played multiple 10 hour sessions on the official servers over the past couple weeks and I haven't run into griefing a single time, and this is with the servers filling up.  So either I'm lucky, or it really isn't all that common.

How would you even propose to fix this?  Storage that cannot be burned already exists in the game (granted, a challenge to achieve).  If people couldn't burn it down, they could just hammer it down.  They could intentionally drag creatures to the base and logout.  They could die and AFK to be a sanity drain.  There are a whole slew of methods people can use to grief and a majority of these methods involve legitimate gameplay mechanics are part of the intentional gameplay.  The problem really isn't the mechanics, but that people are jerks sometimes.

The best possible thing I could think of to stop griefing would just be Klei taking a proactive approach to moderation and implementing better reporting processes, so that people that are intentionally jerks on a regular basis couldn't join the official servers.  This would at least give a safe bastion for people to play.  Other servers can do this already on their own.

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15 hours ago, Ecu said:

Unfortunately, regarding your example (people burning your base down)...it cannot be fixed.

It can be remedied and it can also be fixed. Just a matter of opinion.

15 hours ago, Ecu said:

Even if you take away burning somehow, then people can just use hammers instead.

Making a hammer takes time, as does destroying everything one by one. I really don't see the comparison between hammering and burning, besides that it's a form of griefing, which I'm not against. Fair balanced griefing is fun. I'm even okay with burning things down if it's balanced. I've already gave an example, such as making things nonflammable and blocking players from getting inside your base, which I believe you ignored.

15 hours ago, Ecu said:

The best possible thing I could think of to stop griefing would just be Klei taking a proactive approach to moderation and implementing better reporting processes, so that people that are intentionally jerks on a regular basis couldn't join the official servers.  This would at least give a safe bastion for people to play.  Other servers can do this already on their own.

Again, I never wanted to stop griefing altogether. Instead, I wanted the game to be balanced for multiplayer, taking recognition to systems that can be easily be abused and adding things to prevent people from taking advantage of them rather than taking away the feature entirely. I'm a PvP player, by the way, which I believe you also ignored and believe I want some carebear playstyle. If you're going to have a conversation with me, we need to stay on track with what we're talking about instead of jumping around onto random topics.

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1 hour ago, Trenix said:

It can be remedied and it can also be fixed. Just a matter of opinion.

Making a hammer takes time, as does destroying everything one by one. I really don't see the comparison between hammering and burning, besides that it's a form of griefing, which I'm not against. Fair balanced griefing is fun. I'm even okay with burning things down if it's balanced. I've already gave an example, such as making things nonflammable and blocking players from getting inside your base, which I believe you ignored.

Again, I never wanted to stop griefing altogether. Instead, I wanted the game to be balanced for multiplayer, taking recognition to systems that can be easily be abused and adding things to prevent people from taking advantage of them rather than taking away the feature entirely. I'm a PvP player, by the way, which I believe you also ignored and believe I want some carebear playstyle. If you're going to have a conversation with me, we need to stay on track with what we're talking about instead of jumping around onto random topics.

I would appreciate you not making assumptions given words I did not say.  I never once said you were a carebear.  I simply stated that the system cannot be effectively fixed without ruining the purpose of the mechanics in the first place.  Your structures are supposed to be flammable (for the most part) as an entire season exists which attempts to burn your base to the ground.

Regarding gates and such to keep others out, I feel it would be out of place.  They are indeed adding gates to the upcoming update, however, they seem to be choosing wood fences and gates only.  I'm also uncertain as to whether or not gates are lockable/unlockable.  I have reasonable ideas as to how such a thing could be implemented within the game with the current mechanics, however, I question how such a mechanic would affect overall gameplay as it could really end up trivializing defence.

So tell me, how would you balance fire without stopping fire from doing the job it is supposed to?

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Another problem is that grief protection would probably need to change per-mode, or be changeable through settings.
PvP, there's no reason to block it, other than the aforementioned balancing. Raiding could be great. Though if I'm being honest I don't see this game's pvp improving any time soon.
PvE servers...I can't think of any reason why base buildings should even be target-able in PvE with a torch or fire staff. Wildfires could still do their job, it's just extra frustration for a griefer.
Little things like that wouldn't stop griefing completely, but would at least make griefers have to put in an ounce of thought and planning. And if they light something next to a building, you have time to stop the building from smoldering.

Options like some mods have would help immensely. And I mean options, not requirements, so each server can still do whatever it wants.
Anyway, they implemented a variant of Marble Trees, so why not?
Protection of inventories by temporarily keeping new players from accessing any that they didn't make; activate a few days after the server starts, any new people are kept out of pre-existing inventories, crockpots, ect for a few days. Hammering and lighting fires could be extra options, in case a particular server has a bad griefing problem. Let people vote to remove the lock from newly-joined players.

Voting needs to change to remove the griefing, generally-ruining-the-game component of it. The weighted system people have suggested would be good. People with more days spent on a server get higher-value votes, or just don't let people vote until after a few days. Give admins a way to reset a player's vote value.

 

...but, suggestions are all over the forum. Moreso, we just need to get the ball rolling on this.
There is a problem, and it might depend on your time-slot, but sometimes it reaches the level of an epidemic.
Please do something.

People were having trouble getting resources right after spawning when the world was picked dry, so bird-drops were implemented. This is a similar situation.

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5 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Another problem is that grief protection would probably need to change per-mode, or be changeable through settings.
PvP, there's no reason to block it, other than the aforementioned balancing. Raiding could be great. Though if I'm being honest I don't see this game's pvp improving any time soon.
PvE servers...I can't think of any reason why base buildings should even be target-able in PvE with a torch or fire staff. Wildfires could still do their job, it's just extra frustration for a griefer.
Little things like that wouldn't stop griefing completely, but would at least make griefers have to put in an ounce of thought and planning. And if they light something next to a building, you have time to stop the building from smoldering.

Options like some mods have would help immensely. And I mean options, not requirements, so each server can still do whatever it wants.
Anyway, they implemented a variant of Marble Trees, so why not?
Protection of inventories by temporarily keeping new players from accessing any that they didn't make; activate a few days after the server starts, any new people are kept out of pre-existing inventories, crockpots, ect for a few days. Hammering and lighting fires could be extra options, in case a particular server has a bad griefing problem. Let people vote to remove the lock from newly-joined players.

Voting needs to change to remove the griefing, generally-ruining-the-game component of it. The weighted system people have suggested would be good. People with more days spent on a server get higher-value votes, or just don't let people vote until after a few days. Give admins a way to reset a player's vote value.

 

...but, suggestions are all over the forum. Moreso, we just need to get the ball rolling on this.
There is a problem, and it might depend on your time-slot, but sometimes it reaches the level of an epidemic.
Please do something.

People were having trouble getting resources right after spawning when the world was picked dry, so bird-drops were implemented. This is a similar situation.

An ounce of thought or planning?  By disallowing torch being used on buildings to burn them, all you achieve is that they instead have to throw an item on the ground next to the base and burn it instead.  Sorry but that isn't really much of an deterrent.  If you are at your base when it is ignited, you usually have a chance to save it anyways.  But in PvE, you're not likely to stop a determined griefer regardless.  Not like you can stop them from hammering your stuff down.

I agree about vote griefing.  I've stated before I think it should be limited to people that have been in the world for 10 days.  This way it means the people that have invested over an hour (and some) into the game have a say in who stays and who goes.  This should really kill a majority of the vote griefing as generally speaking, griefing is more about instant gratification.

Beyond that though I don't think it is a good idea to nerf and mess up existing game mechanics to stop griefing.  It is a better idea to actually fix the server system so that griefers can be weeded out over time.

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27 minutes ago, Ecu said:

By disallowing torch being used on buildings to burn them, all you achieve is that they instead have to throw an item on the ground next to the base and burn it instead.  Sorry but that isn't really much of an deterrent.  If you are at your base when it is ignited, you usually have a chance to save it anyways.  But in PvE, you're not likely to stop a determined griefer regardless.  Not like you can stop them from hammering your stuff down.

I was thinking more in terms of having time to stall the griefer so they can be vote-kicked, and you wouldn't have people wanting to do a rollback just for a couple buildings. It's actually worked on servers with mods before; buildings couldn't be lit, so some guy came along and started spreading individual grass pieces everywhere. We saw what he was doing and went around behind him picking up the grass until he was kicked.
...point being, the ability to actually put out fires tends to not come until winter or just a bit before, so there's plenty of time for someone to come along and light fires when all you can do is put out smoldering things by hand, dig up plants, ect. Had it happen time and time again. Early game, there's nothing you can do to save things that the griefer clicks manually.

 

In the past I would've said that there should be some game-wide ban list, buuut...honestly I've been on every side of it now. Enforcement, victim, perpetrator.
Turns out, people change with time, and sometimes they have reasons for doing crappy things. So a griefer today could be someone just trying to get to Spring without everything burning to the ground tomorrow.
If a cross-game ban system were put in place, there should be some way for a server to ignore the ban list/put in specific exceptions, and each ban should wear off after at most a few months. Repeat offenders, extend it, sure.
...though even then, it should only be for serial griefers, like the vote-kick mafia. People the community know as griefers. Because...
Not every grief accusation is correct, and there're a lot of people who've been accused of things that they didn't do. Heck, a league of Wilsons thought I burnt down a berry field once, because I played Willow and happened to be there.
That, and people do stupid things when they're learning to play/getting back into the game. Different people have different ideas of what's griefing, what's a joke, ect. Different plans.

 

Anyway, that's why I'm more on the prevention side now than the weeding out side. Weeding out gets big and complicated, and if it's done on a large enough scale to actually have an impact, there's going to be a lot of collateral damage. For every 5 good bans, there might be one bad. That'll lead to complaints building up here. Might need a section for ban appeals when that happens...and that's an exercise in frustration. You have to weed out the honest people from the jerks. Would video proof be required? If not, how is trust established? Ect ect.

Better off making the game unappealing for Griefers.
Not that that's easy to do without making it unappealing to other people...which is why I'd suggest doing it one tiny piece at a time.
Give us more options and tools to work with. For instance, trying the building-torch-untargetability thing, seeing how it goes over a couple weeks...leave it if it's good, remove if people complain. Try out a new countermeasure in the next update.
I really want to see Voting reworked before anything, though. That could be the centerpiece of pointless-grief prevention if it's fixed. Heck, that alone would solve several of the problems. Just being able to get rid of the traveling fire. At the moment, a lot of servers disable vote-kick because it's such a liability.
also make building destruction grant naughtiness YOU SHALL FEEL THE WRATH OF KRAMPUS EVILDOEEEEER

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4 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

~snip to keep post short~

Prevention just creates artificial anti-griefing mechanics that destroy the feel of  the game.  If I want to burn my base down because I'm moving elsewhere, let me do it.  There is no legitimate reason for disabling said ability and in general blocking direct burning doesn't achieve very much.

Yes, implementing a good detection method for griefers would take a bit, but honestly, it wouldn't be too bad.  You could just count up the total number of buildings destroyed by player's actions, determine whether they were their own buildings or not, and add to it whether or not they were kicked.  Using this data, over a period of time, you could determine a trend for a person's actions.  Then, leaving it up to individual hosts, you could let servers decide the threshold of naughty players that they will allow.

To allow for people to clean up their act, you could indeed allow for play time without being naughty (to other players), to reduce their overall naughtiness, which would once again allow them to play on normal servers.  Klei, as part of this, could make the bulk of their official servers nice-only, with one being naughty-only.  Leaving naughty players to deal with other naughty players if they want to clean up their act.  As a punishment for being a jerk.

To be honest, this kind of system (in a general sense) is how modern competitive games handle matchmaking.  It definitely isn't perfect, but it is a huge improvement over trying to change game mechanics to avoid griefing.

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Yeaaaaa, I actually think a ban system like that would be good if implemented correctly and extremely carefully. It just makes me nervous because I've seen witch-hunts around here in the past, and the community of people willing to play public games is already pretty small.
...but if they do that, it's something Klei would have to stay on top of from day one and probably change a lot from it's original state, and I'm pretty sure they'd have to bring in a few extra community people to handle the appeals and whatnot.

I'd make it regular time rather than playtime though. People leave games and come back sometimes years later as totally different people, not just with DST.

It's just...such a particular thing though. I mean, I've brought down the hammer of justice a few times before, on people that totally deserved it.
I might've assisted in the destruction of a popular server in a certain other popular game because the guy running it ran off with donation money, then came back trying to do the same thing again and giving a big F-U to said donors that I happened to be friends with?
So, how to separate those cases...
Appeals.
How do you know the appeal is honest, people fake those all the time in other games and go right back to their previous behavior.

Who stays banned and who doesn't creates community rifts to the point of making factions that actively try to annoy and demean other parts of said community who split off and try to undermine the very foundation of the thing that brought them together in the first place and...
...punishments of players in small communities are really complicated.

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25 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Yeaaaaa, I actually think a ban system like that would be good if implemented correctly and extremely carefully. It just makes me nervous because I've seen witch-hunts around here in the past, and the community of people willing to play public games is already pretty small.
...but if they do that, it's something Klei would have to stay on top of from day one and probably change a lot from it's original state, and I'm pretty sure they'd have to bring in a few extra community people to handle the appeals and whatnot.

I'd make it regular time rather than playtime though. People leave games and come back sometimes years later as totally different people, not just with DST.

It's just...such a particular thing though. I mean, I've brought down the hammer of justice a few times before, on people that totally deserved it.
I might've assisted in the destruction of a popular server in a certain other popular game because the guy running it ran off with donation money, then came back trying to do the same thing again and giving a big F-U to said donors that I happened to be friends with?
So, how to separate those cases...
Appeals.
How do you know the appeal is honest, people fake those all the time in other games and go right back to their previous behavior.

Who stays banned and who doesn't creates community rifts to the point of making factions that actively try to annoy and demean other parts of said community who split off and try to undermine the very foundation of the thing that brought them together in the first place and...
...punishments of players in small communities are really complicated.

I don't think there would need to really be appeals, as it isn't going to be a case of griefing one time and you can no longer join servers.  It is going to be pattern based, and your behavior over time is what affects your ability to join.  This would be left up to server hosts as well, as all this system would do is assign a naughty value to your account, which hosts could use to keep players from joining.

Regarding naughtiness reducing over real time, sure.  However real time reduction should be less than active play reduction.  In addition, the system should recall the naughtiness level you had the last time you played, and punish you accordingly if you go right back to griefing again.  That way it can return your naughtiness up there, if you come back and be a jerk again.

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...and maybe an exception for new players.
TBH I never ended up using flowers for anything in DS, so when I first played DST I haunted a collection into Evil Flowers because they're neat and I didn't know that they were being used.
Stuff like that happens.
Another reason I think some prevention measures would be good. For instance, ghosts turning crockpot food into wet goop is still a thing. Though...usually, if it's a new player, they'll stop once you mention it to them.
But on servers without vote-kick/staff, ghosts sometimes sit at the crockpots and wait for you to try and cook things.
There're a lot of small/optional changes that could be made to improve public servers greatly.
...some method of deterring ghosts from doing ghostly things in general would be nice. They're useful for stuff like changing hounds into their gem variants, but they're also an unstoppable griefing tool.

Heck, deterrents in general would be nice. Even in PvE servers, maybe if people take certain actions, they should be marked as damageable for a while. Ghosts too. Kick them when they die.

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5 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

...and maybe an exception for new players.
TBH I never ended up using flowers for anything in DS, so when I first played DST I haunted a collection into Evil Flowers because they're neat and I didn't know that they were being used.
Stuff like that happens.
Another reason I think some prevention measures would be good. For instance, ghosts turning crockpot food into wet goop is still a thing. Though...usually, if it's a new player, they'll stop once you mention it to them.
But on servers without vote-kick/staff, ghosts sometimes sit at the crockpots and wait for you to try and cook things.
There're a lot of small/optional changes that could be made to improve public servers greatly.
...some method of deterring ghosts from doing ghostly things in general would be nice. They're useful for stuff like changing hounds into their gem variants, but they're also an unstoppable griefing tool.

Heck, deterrents in general would be nice. Even in PvE servers, maybe if people take certain actions, they should be marked as damageable for a while. Ghosts too. Kick them when they die.

Naughtiness would take into account you burning down your own structures.  Also, as mentioned, it would be pattern-based.  This means that a few times of burning stuff down accidentally shouldn't have you removed from servers, but regular, continual burning down of bases will.  It is all about building a good system of metrics.

I don't think you should take away the ability for ghosts to burn things or turn stuff into goop...just recognize that they did so and rate their actions accordingly by the system.  So if they were continually turning food into goop and got kicked, well you know that they were greifing...but if they turned one or two into goop and then were resurrected and kept playing for the next few hours, you know they probably weren't.  This can all be handled by the metrics and weighed accordingly. 

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The overall problem to me is that griefers are something you can't stop within your play session. One comes on, your game is ruined. How many get ruined before that person's banned? People quit DST by then.
Every other challenge has some sort of answer. Griefers dance around and laugh because nothing can be done to stop them, or even inconvenience them or make their job difficult.
There needs to be some immediate-term counter to their actions. Bans happen long after the damage is done, they don't prevent anything or really give satisfaction.

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12 minutes ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

The overall problem to me is that griefers are something you can't stop within your play session. One comes on, your game is ruined. How many get ruined before that person's banned? People quit DST by then.
Every other challenge has some sort of answer. Griefers dance around and laugh because nothing can be done to stop them, or even inconvenience them or make their job difficult.
There needs to be some immediate-term counter to their actions. Bans happen long after the damage is done, they don't prevent anything or really give satisfaction.

Get over it?  I'm sorry, but you are always going to have someone being a jerk on the internet.  If they continually act like jerks, they will be removed from the pool of people on a majority of servers and as such there will be a regular deterrent to people being jerks.  If they decide to exploit the system by making a bunch of accounts to be able to grief more often, not only will Klei profit, but Klei can use connection information to detect such alt accounts and apply naughtiness accordingly.

There is no immediate counter to this issue that is reasonably doable.  The primary one I could think of would be to have official staff handling reports, but as Klei doesn't make continual income DST like a lot of MMOs do, it would be unreasonable to expect them to sift through the amount of reports to make sure reports are legitimate.

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Which is why I'm for the prevention options that wouldn't impact play, or counters that players can use. PvP can keep going how it does, griefers can keep trying to grief, actual players get to do something about it. The game retains players, and Klei does get a little bit of continuous income from skin sales (Steam has some info about it if you're curious, but basically there's a reason that nothing sells for below $0.03). Everyone wins. Cept griefers. They lose a little bit, but it's for game health.

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