State of dedicated (survival) server, suggestion on regulation tool against the grief

[Zedru]

Introduction and word of appreciation to DST dev

 

I would like to congratulate the dev for introduce DST.

After long played DS then RoG which was very enjoyable, multiplayer was what I could have waited for to rediscover or push the game experience further.

On a sad note I expected that experience would eventually lead to frustration since multiplayer come with the bad side that is grief from bad individual.

 

 

What usually happen on the dedicated server?

 

When thing go in the right way and everyone want to communicate and cooperate to make their way through the game and set a durable settlement, is generally when it going to have a bad ending. Since we’re pretty much active on the global chat to coordinate or greet each other, it also a use for the grieffer to know where to go and do his evil deed.

It take couple of days and people to achieve their durable base, it take less than a day and one bad individual to destroy all. And this situation will go over and over since the players can just stand and watch the bad individual do his deed because there is no tool for them to stop or prevent this.

 

 

Introduce a vote kick/ban player?

 

Many co-op multi games got this system which is most of the time for their good. DST could make a use of it at his own sauce.

On the TAB window would be a kick/ban button next to the player name. When a vote is initiate, a window similar to world reset notification would pop-up to other player than the targeted, asking them is they wish or not to agree the vote.

 

A vote kick would simply kick the player from the server leave them the choice to log back in or not. That a good option for deal AFK or ghost people that can’t be revived in the meaning time (example: winter season newcomer dying from freezing and being stubborn about staying)

 

A vote ban would kill the player (its make sense that the player won’t have any use of the item he probably stole anyway for most part) before kick him from the server additionally he won’t be able to join the server back until a new map is generated. On a side note this has been requested for even hosted server and it make a really good tool against grief.

 

 

Similar system of naughtiness?

 

It’s know that in DS when killing innocent animal (rabbit, bird, etc.) we gain a hidden value called naughtiness.

What about put a similar one (Evilness?) for when a player destroy grass, sapling, bush, structure. This value could facilitate the vote or even make it unnecessary to wait the decision of other voter.

[rezecib]

@Zedru, The naughtiness idea is really cool, but it seems like it might be hard to tune. A lot of actions that are grief-y are usually pretty normal actions; e.g. breaking down your old science machine after getting the alchemy engine, or lighting a patch of forest on fire to get charcoal. I'd be curious to see how a system like naughtiness would play out with it, though.

[tetrified]

The other problem (aside from what rez mentioned) is that once the naughtiness goes up, the damage is already done.

 

Removing the option for players to simply "light" things like saplings and grass would help the problem, but it would become a problem again immediately when the griefer drops some rot and lights that on fire next to the plants instead.

 

I've resigned myself to thinking that there simply is no system that anyone can put in place to prevent griefers.

[Zedru]

If I would give a fast though about a similar naughtiness system.

 

Like u said they will rely on fire propagation, let’s say they make a code to track this propagation through log.

Make a variable fire_starter that can only have a player name value

Each new fire created by the original will have this fire_starter tag and value

When a fire reach a grass, sapling, bush add X (evilness?) point to player name equal of fire_starter

 

Eventually the grief-er would start his fire then log off, let’s say when this happen every fire tagged with the player name will be force kill without any further propagation.

 

Also agree there no ultimate system against grief-er, they going to do their evil deed whatever happen, but with correct given tool to player who are aware of them it’s still possible to cripple them.

[The Letter W]

I've taken to knocking them out with a panflute, spawning a stack of gunpowder on top of them and lighting it, then banning them after they die because oh hell, I'm going to rollback the server anyway.

[tetrified]

Here's an idea:

Give players the option to make some sort of (somewhat expensive so that griefers actually have to put in effort to use this to grief) protective structure, that prevents players off of a whitelist from messing with anything within the area of the structure.

 

Ex:

I make the protective structure (maybe it has the range of an ice flingomatic, or lightning rod?)

I build/plant stuff within the structure's protected area

Griefer comes along and tries to hammer/burn my stuff, but can't

Griefer can't open my chests, because they're in the protected area

Griefer can't pick my flowers because they're in the protected area

I make a friend, and put them on the whitelist.

Now they can open chests, hammer structures, and burn things within the protected area (all perfectly fine things to do if you have a reason to do them).