Should the "Don't mention the names of griefers" rule be changed?

[Sicko Hog]

you should be able to move, but you should also be wheelchair-bound. that way you can't use any tools

[Toros]

There's honestly no need for anti-griefer measures beyond the tools we currently have, and allowing witchhunting is a terrible idea.

Don't play on public servers with a surface base and not expect the occasional griefer.  Community servers are safer, and private servers with people you know are safest.

If you're upset you're going on public servers and seeing griefers you're doing the equivalent of touching a hot stove and complaining about getting burned.

[MondayNight]

9 hours ago, Toros said:

There's honestly no need for anti-griefer measures beyond the tools we currently have, and allowing witchhunting is a terrible idea.

Don't play on public servers with a surface base and not expect the occasional griefer.  Community servers are safer, and private servers with people you know are safest.

If you're upset you're going on public servers and seeing griefers you're doing the equivalent of touching a hot stove and complaining about getting burned.

This is kinda the equivalent of saying "don't make laws and have no police, innocent might get accused" or "oh silly monkey, don't get down in the streets, thugs own them and that's how it is/should be, just stay home where is safe". Also all so-called "community servers" have more-or-less some kind of rules for admittance (many of them leaning into "pro" territory) - how can newbies/casuals pass them? (or even know about said servers for that matter, a good chunk being private/invitation-only) Plus a very good way of finding DST friends is just by playing pubs and see with whom you "zen", have good synergy in general to acquire said persons as long-therm gaming companions (without slipping into the "friend collector" stereotype).

 

Pubs, even more so if Klei official servers, shouldn't be places of fear because some crazy chaps go yolo griefing in there all the time for "sh|ts and giggles" (or out of pure madness, Clouds style), but friendly/welcoming spaces where you can meet new, nice or at least benign people, learn, have light-hearted fun. And for that to happen some measures need to be taken as griefing just intensifies. Or at least make it official that pubs are ok as griefer ground, "works as intended" with a big proverbial "leave all hope outside" and be done with it. Wouldn't it be just jolly-peachy for official Klei servers to remain empty most of times when title implies a "together" component - and what would that convey about said game?!

 

Another fun fact: most of the people that are "pro-griefing" (maybe not pro, but are not bothered by it either, liking the present status quo) seem to be the people previously stating they solo DST most of the time on private/personal servers... but express strong opinions regarding what should be done in pubs. Kinda ironic, don't you think?!

[JohnWatson]

we should be able to name and shame griefers here on the forums because that will solve all of the problems with griefers

by simply mentioning the name of the perpetrator in your post, you unleash pure hell upon that griefer that will make him regret his vile actions

right as you click on the 'Submit Topic' button, the griefer will feel slight tingles inside of him, however that gradually escalates to debilitating pain, then after several minutes of suffering and deep regret, the griefer literally explodes from the inside, destroying his entire body

with the griefer dealt with, he will no longer be able to bother anybody in-game

there will be no griefing at all in don't starve together, since now every griefer will be either reduced into nothing or be too frightened of the consequences should they even consider committing such vile acts to other players

[Toros]

2 hours ago, xxVERSUSxy said:

This is kinda the equivalent of saying "don't make laws and have no police, innocent might get accused" or "oh silly monkey, don't get down in the streets, thugs own them and that's how it is/should be, just stay home where is safe". Also all so-called "community servers" have more-or-less some kind of rules for admittance (many of them leaning into "pro" territory) - how can newbies/casuals pass them? (or even know about said servers for that matter, a good chunk being private/invitation-only) Plus a very good way of finding DST friends is just by playing pubs and see with whom you "zen", have good synergy in general to acquire said persons as long-therm gaming companions (without slipping into the "friend collector" stereotype).

 

Pubs, even more so if Klei official servers, shouldn't be places of fear because some crazy chaps go yolo griefing in there all the time for "sh|ts and giggles" (or out of pure madness, Clouds style), but friendly/welcoming spaces where you can meet new, nice or at least benign people, learn, have light-hearted fun. And for that to happen some measures need to be taken as griefing just intensifies. Or at least make it official that pubs are ok as griefer ground, "works as intended" with a big proverbial "leave all hope outside" and be done with it. Wouldn't it be just jolly-peachy for official Klei servers to remain empty most of times when title implies a "together" component - and what would that convey about said game?!

 

Another fun fact: most of the people that are "pro-griefing" (maybe not pro, but are not bothered by it either, liking the present status quo) seem to be the people previously stating they solo DST most of the time on private/personal servers... but express strong opinions regarding what should be done in pubs. Kinda ironic, don't you think?!

I've literally been expressing the same opinion, and dealing with the same opinions since DST was launched.  I've yet to find someone who can argue your position without demonstrating some fundamental misunderstandings.  TLDR: You're wrong, and bad at analogies.

Firstly, public servers (and especially Klei official servers) have the sole purpose of helping new players find other new players to play with in private servers.  You learn very little from playing the first 3 hours of a world over and over, since as soon as winter hits everyone dies or leaves so it resets.  Flingos up at your base and vote kicking already prevent the worst of the griefing, even if you feel it's a good idea to make a base right by the portal.

Unmoderated servers will always have griefing because there's no way to prevent griefers without someone having admin powers.  Giving non-admin players more tools than they currently have just creates more potential ways to grief.  (Griefers can use votekick to grief, and could force rollbacks if that was a vote option too).

I know you haven't ever considered this, but it's possible that the problem of griefing on public servers is very complex, and the developers are smart people who already explored a lot of options and settled on some that manage to balance preventing most griefing while not giving griefers more tools to cause problems.

Griefing is a joke if you have an admin who simply bans them and rolls back if the damage is significant.  Your analogy is terrible, since we already have laws (general courtesy among players) and police (server admins), you just choose to play in the only places where there are no police and laws aren't enforced.  You're then complaining about laws not being enforced there.

If you'd like to continue this conversation I'll need you to google what an analogy is and learn some fundamentals of player psychology.  I could give you tons of examples of subtle ways (indirect fires, destroying unique resources, stealing things like gears) to grief, or ways things like personal chests have a tradeoff where ease of collaboration is sacrificed for security.  To be honest though, I feel like I've had this conversation half a dozen times before and none of them provided some unique insight from your position.

[Rellimarual]

I can testify that vote kick can be used griefily. I decide to visit one of the Klei servers a few weeks ago and was happily doing my own thing when someone initiated a votekick against me, claiming I was a known griefer and persuading enough people to vote to kick me even though I’d been on the server since day one. I think they just wanted their friend to join instead.

[fimmatek]

1 minute ago, Rellimarual said:

I can testify that vote kick can be used griefily. I decide to visit one of the Klei servers a few weeks ago and was happily doing my own thing when someone initiated a votekick against me, claiming I was a known griefer and persuading enough people to vote to kick me even though I’d been on the server since day one. I think they just wanted their friend to join instead.

When did it happen? I know that it was possible to abuse the voting system (even saw such), but since Klei updated it (new players cannot start a vote etc) I never heard of problems with it. So can the new system be still (that easily) abused?

[Toros]

12 minutes ago, fimmatek said:

When did it happen? I know that it was possible to abuse the voting system (even saw such), but since Klei updated it (new players cannot start a vote etc) I never heard of problems with it. So can the new system be still (that easily) abused?

If someone was playing a while and wanted to be a jerk, then yeah, of course.  Plus on public servers they reset so often that it's all new players.

[Rellimarual]

I think you have to have 20 days on the server to call a vote? At any rate, this person had been on for a while, too, and all it takes is someone persuasively claiming that they’ve seen their target griefing to freak out the players who are empowered to vote to join the kick effort. They weren’t griefing per se: They wanted to play the game not trash it. But they wanted me out of there for whatever reason, and that’s what they got. On another server, I got kicked because someone wanted to join as Wickerbottom and “she’s a better character.” 

I don’t care much. I finally found a decent, reasonably priced dedicated server provider (go uHostPro!) so I can be admin and boot anyone who starts rifling through our chests while refusing to respond to chat (always a Wolfgang player, of course).

[Toros]

1 minute ago, Rellimarual said:

I think you have to have 20 days on the server to call a vote? At any rate, this person had been on for a while, too, and all it takes is someone persuasively claiming that they’ve seen their target griefing to freak out the players who are empowered to vote to join the kick effort. They weren’t griefing per se: They wanted to play the game not trash it. But they wanted me out of there for whatever reason, and that’s what they got. On another server, I got kicked because someone wanted to join as Wickerbottom and “she’s a better character.” 

I don’t care much. I finally found a decent, reasonably priced dedicated server provider (go uHostPro!) so I can be admin and boot anyone who starts rifling through our chests while refusing to respond to chat (always a Wolfgang player, of course).

You don't have to play 20 days to call a vote in my experience, but I imagine if everyone is under 20 days things work differently.

Also, I take mild offense to your prejudice against Wolfgang players, but I support it.

[Queron81]

20 hours ago, superlucas1231 said:

I can see this being a turnoff for so many people. Not being able to burn anything within 5 days would make someone's life hell when joining a world that just turned winter. Not to add to the fact that people are just going to start begging  everyone else for items they can't get (I.E. meatballs, flint, twigs, etc.) and they really won't be able to get anything done within those 5 days. Also, while I do agree there should be a system that drops all items on leaving, I don't think it's fair when someone's internet crashed, get back on, and then all of their stuff have been stolen (maybe putting in a system that asks the player if they want to leave their stuff behind when leaving would work?).

It's never a good idea to join a server at winter and I don't see the point to set the world every few steps on fire, this won't work at least. You can only survive, if you communicate with the other players, asking them if you can join the game and if someone could pick you up at portal. Most of the games i prepare a little camp at portal, so people can survive. But last time i was going to deliver some winter hats and thermal stones to portal, as three Willows were starting to set everything on fire. As the other camp members just left and I wanted to get some new camp members, vote-kicks and rollback votes failed.

Communication ist very important in this game. So if you need anything, just ask (it is always better than just taking things out of the chest without asking). You only need a few flint and sticks to survive at your own, you don't have to beg the hole 5 days. And if the others see you are doing things and communicate, they will turn off the limitations for you very fast. Most people are very friendly and give you the things you need for the actual season before asking, or the things are just laying on the ground.

And with the stuff dropped: it is the same as if you died. You can get your things back if you ask (if you are playing in a team you don't even have to ask). I don't see a problem with this. And within your first 5 days you shouldn't get imortant things. But another idea: if you leave or get disconnected within your first 5 days, there could be left a statue of your character. If you don't come back the next 10 minutes, it will get destroyed and all the stuff drops.

Quote

Maybe making the "vote multiplication" adjustable would make this a better idea; considering how this would be not effective in a endless server that lasts onto day 500 and some greifer joins in for a month and has more powers than everyone else.

I don't think griefers would play that long on a single server. They would be kicked early enough, so they can't join the server again.

Quote

There should also be a system that prevents certain objects to be set on fire. Granted, it is going to be abused (making it impossible for totally normal trees to be set on fire via player, making it "okay" to cause random forest fires that only burn the things you don't want) but that option should just be left to the host of the server.

All the suggestions i made should be optional.

Quote

A better alternative at least in my Irrelevant opinion  should be allowing players to put a "lock" on chester (whether it's a certain player you don't trust or everyone that isn't you). Much more better than having people trying to kill themselves via Chester and spam haunting.

If they want to spam haunting, they can get killed easily by thousands of other things in the game even faster. And there is the vote-kick, so that shouldn't be a problem.

[Residays]

8 hours ago, JohnWatson said:

we should be able to name and shame griefers here on the forums because that will solve all of the problems with griefers

by simply mentioning the name of the perpetrator in your post, you unleash pure hell upon that griefer that will make him regret his vile actions

right as you click on the 'Submit Topic' button, the griefer will feel slight tingles inside of him, however that gradually escalates to debilitating pain, then after several minutes of suffering and deep regret, the griefer literally explodes from the inside, destroying his entire body

with the griefer dealt with, he will no longer be able to bother anybody in-game

there will be no griefing at all in don't starve together, since now every griefer will be either reduced into nothing or be too frightened of the consequences should they even consider committing such vile acts to other players

How about a Dark Sword skin that is just a ban hammer exclusive to admins and follows lucy-like rules for normal users?

[G00]

A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks.

[MondayNight]

9 hours ago, Toros said:

Griefing is a joke if you have an admin who simply bans them and rolls back if the damage is significant.  Your analogy is terrible, since we already have laws (general courtesy among players) and police (server admins), you just choose to play in the only places where there are no police and laws aren't enforced.  You're then complaining about laws not being enforced there.

That is exactly what I would desire for Klei official servers in the light of recurrent griefing - "police and enforced laws": discussed reports/karma points/etc system that will result in bans for the most persistent, virulent griefers; or admins that would fit same role, looking chat and game logs when complains arise (measures already mentioned by previous posters). Actually I find it very VERY surprising after last January madness with the trio of trolls restarting Klei servers for irl days, each restarting "session" lasting 2-3h, no one from Klei stepped in to ban them (forums, mostly Steam ones, were stormed by a lot of complain-posts from casual players that got trolled); not to mention Clouds and his 5-6 profiles (that I know of).

 

9 hours ago, Toros said:

.. tons of examples of subtle ways (indirect fires, destroying unique resources, stealing things like gears) to grief, or ways things like personal chests have a tradeoff where ease of collaboration is sacrificed for security.

Sure, I also witnessed such things 2 times... in over 2k h of pubs. Yet those kind of trolls are extremely rare. Vast majority of them griefers just roam map and burn/hammer or vote-kick (method really toned down after last update regarding said problem). They aren't resourceful at all, most of trolls don't do elaborate traps or anything beyond a rather quick gratification of their malice thru burning.

[Toros]

1 hour ago, xxVERSUSxy said:

That is exactly what I would desire for Klei official servers in the light of recurrent griefing - "police and enforced laws": discussed reports/karma points/etc system that will result in bans for the most persistent, virulent griefers; or admins that would fit same role, looking chat and game logs when complains arise (measures already mentioned by previous posters). Actually I find it very VERY surprising after last January madness with the trio of trolls restarting Klei servers for irl days, each restarting "session" lasting 2-3h, no one from Klei stepped in to ban them (forums, mostly Steam ones, were stormed by a lot of complain-posts from casual players that got trolled); not to mention Clouds and his 5-6 profiles (that I know of).

 

Sure, I also witnessed such things 2 times... in over 2k h of pubs. Yet those kind of trolls are extremely rare. Vast majority of them griefers just roam map and burn/hammer or vote-kick (method really toned down after last update regarding said problem). They aren't resourceful at all, most of trolls don't do elaborate traps or anything beyond a rather quick gratification of their malice thru burning.

Firstly, I am amazed anyone would spend 2k hours playing pubs, since for me that would be a personal hell.

Secondly, I love how you describe a trio of trolls spending days griefing klei servers and in the same metaphorical breath say that trolls are too lazy to grief if we make their jobs slightly more difficult or require slightly more creativity.

In reality, if you had a karma system trolls would absolutely abuse the **** out of it.  Terrible idea.  Klei also doesn’t want to hire people to admin their officially hosted servers, nor is it worth the time of their employees to read (falsifiable) reports and administer bans.

Officially hosted servers are the first place noobs go and reset 6 times a day.  Griefing means absolutely nothing there (since every playthrough is a one-shot)

I still can’t get over that you spent 2k hours playing pub servers.  That’s like 2k hours in autumn only worlds with the noobiest don’t stave players in the world.  What possible reason would a sane person have to experience less than a quarter of the game’s content nearly a thousand times without touching the other 3/4ths?

[MondayNight]

2 hours ago, Toros said:

I love how you describe a trio of trolls spending days griefing klei servers and in the same metaphorical breath say that trolls are too lazy to grief if we make their jobs slightly more difficult or require slightly more creativity.

Restarting servers back when you couldn't see who started votes, nor was any conditioning about time spent on servers, basically amounted to going in, start vote, leave; let others hop on newly re-started server, develop some bases, go in 10-20 minutes later, restart vote, repeat. Was the simplest of things, beside burning or placing spider eggs in gate. Also I suspect, as others pointed in the past, it might not even have been a trio of players at all, but 1 with bots (Clouds springs to mind again). A simple, yet very repetitive action. Not difficult or creative. Creative (trolling in Co-Op) would be tentacle pit in gate, "The End is Nigh!" used in a base full of players after smashing lighting rod, mini-forest with penned Varg near a base, etc. Bot vote automatization is in the haxor category of wanna-be "hackers" with enough leverage for 5-6 accounts and a destructive obsession. And that's why I wrote 50-100, maybe even 200 UNIQUE klei-ID reports per abuser to warrant a ban or investigation. Good luck on getting 200 accounts for doing that to report an innocent. And if you imply some deranged programmer would fake 200 unique Klei-IDs via bots, VPN etc just to ban 2-3 innocents... that's already something akin to a DDoS attack as gravity goes and is well beyond the level of a mere ban system (or mental health for that matter).

 

2 hours ago, Toros said:

I still can’t get over that you spent 2k hours playing pub servers.  That’s like 2k hours in autumn only worlds with the noobiest don’t stave players in the world.  What possible reason would a sane person have to experience less than a quarter of the game’s content nearly a thousand times without touching the other 3/4ths?

Simple: I go on pubs with 2-3 friends and try to do about everything that can be done: rushes, all bosses (RoG and ride ones), looting ruins, Wilds base, Atrium and FW, all till first summer or so. Yes, we play for hours, sometime said pubs are continued by other friends (from other time zones) invited when we go off, all in Survival mode with the temporality in mind, knowing eventually all will be lost (I think the longest pub we kept alive was for 320+ in-game days in multiple shifts between 7 or 8 of us on a 32 slots server). We use various designs, various strategies, all for fleeting fun. No Endless, no mods, no personal server (I also manage some personal servers, yet that's another unrelated story). But that doesn't mean trolls griefing what we do is ok even with said and assumed temporality in mind.

[Rellimarual]

As I understand it, the purpose of the official servers is to give noobs a chance to try out the game and meet other players. I think we’d all fault Klei if they didn’t provide that, but the idea that they should hire staff to moderate/admin those servers or even to manage volunteer admins 24/7 is unreasonable. While it’s great that you and your squad set yourself the challenge of doing more on them, that’s not what they’re for. I believe the Strictly Unprofessional team provides a bit of moderation, and you might want to get more involved there.

FWIW, I don’t go on the pubs much anymore, but I usually quit if someone comes on and rushes the ruins since it doesn’t leave whoever else is there with as much to strive for. Same when idiots come on and knock down all the pig houses. Just as the game is open enough for players to find all sorts of creative ways to survive, there are also all kinds of ways they can ruin a run for other players, even when they don’t intend that.

[Toros]

7 hours ago, xxVERSUSxy said:

Restarting servers back when you couldn't see who started votes, nor was any conditioning about time spent on servers, basically amounted to going in, start vote, leave; let others hop on newly re-started server, develop some bases, go in 10-20 minutes later, restart vote, repeat. Was the simplest of things, beside burning or placing spider eggs in gate. Also I suspect, as others pointed in the past, it might not even have been a trio of players at all, but 1 with bots (Clouds springs to mind again). A simple, yet very repetitive action. Not difficult or creative. Creative (trolling in Co-Op) would be tentacle pit in gate, "The End is Nigh!" used in a base full of players after smashing lighting rod, mini-forest with penned Varg near a base, etc. Bot vote automatization is in the haxor category of wanna-be "hackers" with enough leverage for 5-6 accounts and a destructive obsession. And that's why I wrote 50-100, maybe even 200 UNIQUE klei-ID reports per abuser to warrant a ban or investigation. Good luck on getting 200 accounts for doing that to report an innocent. And if you imply some deranged programmer would fake 200 unique Klei-IDs via bots, VPN etc just to ban 2-3 innocents... that's already something akin to a DDoS attack as gravity goes and is well beyond the level of a mere ban system (or mental health for that matter).

 

Simple: I go on pubs with 2-3 friends and try to do about everything that can be done: rushes, all bosses (RoG and ride ones), looting ruins, Wilds base, Atrium and FW, all till first summer or so. Yes, we play for hours, sometime said pubs are continued by other friends (from other time zones) invited when we go off, all in Survival mode with the temporality in mind, knowing eventually all will be lost (I think the longest pub we kept alive was for 320+ in-game days in multiple shifts between 7 or 8 of us on a 32 slots server). We use various designs, various strategies, all for fleeting fun. No Endless, no mods, no personal server (I also manage some personal servers, yet that's another unrelated story). But that doesn't mean trolls griefing what we do is ok even with said and assumed temporality in mind.

Oh, NEET.  That explains a lot.

[Residays]

4 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

As I understand it, the purpose of the official servers is to give noobs a chance to try out the game and meet other players.

Noobs are players that are terrible at the game even with an amount of time spent into it, you're looking for the world "Newbies", Newbies are just new and might improve.

[Toros]

11 minutes ago, Residays said:

Noobs are players that are terrible at the game even with an amount of time spent into it, you're looking for the world "Newbies", Newbies are just new and might improve.

One could argue that a new player is in a quantum superposition of noob/newbie and only resolves into one or the other under observation.

[MondayNight]

5 hours ago, Rellimarual said:

As I understand it, the purpose of the official servers is to give noobs a chance to try out the game and meet other players. I think we’d all fault Klei if they didn’t provide that, but the idea that they should hire staff to moderate/admin those servers or even to manage volunteer admins 24/7 is unreasonable. While it’s great that you and your squad set yourself the challenge of doing more on them, that’s not what they’re for. I believe the Strictly Unprofessional team provides a bit of moderation, and you might want to get more involved there.

FWIW, I don’t go on the pubs much anymore, but I usually quit if someone comes on and rushes the ruins since it doesn’t leave whoever else is there with as much to strive for. Same when idiots come on and knock down all the pig houses. Just as the game is open enough for players to find all sorts of creative ways to survive, there are also all kinds of ways they can ruin a run for other players, even when they don’t intend that.

That's how you view the official Klei servers. I see them as the official ground provided by game's developers to experience said game in vanilla Survival mode or "as should be played", default if you like. A desired safe and friendly experience sanctioned by Klei where you can meet people. Where you test yourself with the help of friends. But mostly where you have positive fun. Yet the posts in this thread... hmm.

Also, for me with my location, beside 2 other small pubs (where people don't come much to play), 3 of them Klei official servers are the only servers with good ping. I think I saw that "Strictly Unprofessional" server, but was password protected and/or Endless. Plus most of the dedicated private servers I saw were well beyond second in-game year and all that can be done was done on them, people already based, resources exploited and so on - is exactly the situation you mention with the ruins - what is the point of going on those servers anymore? Sure, we could restart ruins, but beside that, again, all was already done.

 

3 hours ago, Toros said:

Oh, NEAT.  That explains a lot.

There, fixed it for you. Because I know you are a nice, friendly, compassionate and helpful fellow, not some abrasive and preconceived one   Cheers!

[Toros]

6 hours ago, xxVERSUSxy said:

That's how you view the official Klei servers. I see them as the official ground provided by game's developers to experience said game in vanilla Survival mode or "as should be played", default if you like.

 

There, fixed it for you. Because I know you are a nice, friendly, compassionate and helpful fellow, not some abrasive and preconceived one   Cheers!

I thought you had no more surprises in store, but boy was I wrong.

None of the absurdities you’ve shared so far comes close to calling Klei official servers don’t starve together “as should be played.”

I could easily write a thousand astonished words at how anyone could come to that conclusion in rant form, but instead let me challenge some of the underlying assumptions.

1) Don’t Starve Together is fundamentally a multiplayer translation of Don’t Starve.  To experience all the seasons fully in Don’t Starve a single world must be played for (8 min/day, 80 days in a year) 10 hours and 40 minutes.  For almost everyone, that means multiple sessions of 1-2 hours is how the game was expected to work.  The closest equivalent in DST is playing on a world with friends when you all can play together, with 1-2 hour sessions and the world persisting between them.  If Klei had an “official” way they expected DST to be experienced, that would probably be it as it is closest to how they expected DS to be experienced.  It is also the only way that every player experiences all the seasons in order.

In contrast, public servers like the Klei offical(ly hosted, which is all official means in this context) rarely experience more than the first third of a year and often reset with no one visiting the ruins at all.  The sole advantage of these settings is they require no admin intervention because there is no persistence.  No griefing matters because the world is almost never more than three hours from a fresh start.

In contrast, community hosted and moderated servers often run hundreds or thousands of in-game days with each time you play getting a random slice of the seasons as the world continues to run even while you’re not playing.  They often have swift and responsive banning and may even have their own rule sets players are expected to follow.  They often also have player-driven events like base design competitions or even hunger games style pvp events.  After a while, the players vote to reset the world and it all starts again.

2) Klei doesn’t enforce or even encourage vanilla.  In both DS and DST huge amounts of work were put in to support extensive modding compatibility and there are tons of server and world generation options because they want to provide choice and options.  The “soulmate rings” mod was even made by a developer.

None of the rest of your perspective on Klei hosted servers is any more rooted in reality, @Rellimarual is pretty much spot on.

While I may have started out annoyed at the bizarre perspective you have, I now find it facinating that you could spend such enormous amounts of time engaged in repetitive and arguably sisyphean tasks.

To me it seems in every way favorable to simply host a dedicated server for your friends in different timezones to play on instead of taking turns spending approximately 43 hours continuously keeping a public server up (just to lose the product of all that effort immediately thereafter).  It seems like the action of someone with more free time than sense.  

I also find it interesting that the examples of the things you did with your friends were purely limited to challenges and tasks the game already sets in front of you.  There’s no mention of zoos, megabasing, changing world settings for things like light’s out (which you couldn’t do on a klei hosted server anyway).  Perhaps you simply failed to mention it but I hope it is actually just a below average amount of creativity.  The strongest evidence I have for this is your concept of a world already being “used up” if you joined in the second fall. If so, I hope we can continue to talk so I can study you further.

My current hypothesis is that you have some factor that disrupts your ability to think laterally which could explain why you a) don’t see how additional anti-griefer measures are additional vectors for griefing, b) fail to understand the purpose and effect of klei hosted servers (which admittedly are different than standard developer hosted servers as they serve as a limited tutorial instead of a full experience of the game) and c) would spend the equivalent of 83+ full days of your life (more like 166+ days it you played 12 hours a day on pubs... that’s nearly half a year!) ruins and boss rushing on a different randomly generated world each time.

If you might think I’m being sarcastic or condescending, I can assure you I am not.  It we look at joeshmocoolstuff, we can see possibly the best player in the world at DS/DST with about 2400 hours spread between both games.  He both finds incredibly clever ways to beat bosses solo and quickly (bee queen, old toadstool, and especially enraged krampus solo) but has also created mods that impose additional challenges (such as endless bosses and eat your veggies). Obviously considering he’s the best in the world the challenge joeshmocoolstuff is after is probably more than most of us want to deal with, and it’s probably fair to say he’s more creative than average considering the strategies he’s come up with.  However, we still expect that after a player has exhausted the built-in content and challenges they’ll start to make their own, find side creative projects, or simply lose interest.

You don’t appear to, and that’s what is so interesting.

[MondayNight]

@Toros  Wow, wall of text because of my hastily thrown "vanilla Survival mode or "as should be played", default if you like" (much "absurdities", very surreal ). Last when I checked the Klei official servers were indeed vanilla survival (sorry in advance and chill if there are other type of servers from Klei, I for one haven't found them - well not that I'm interested anyway). And that was the default I was writing about. Not that Klei stated specifically they encourage vanilla survival. How this fact translates into "the official servers is to give noobs a chance to try out the game"? Just a basic taste of a basic play style. Also mods are known to cause problems, crashes, sometimes warranting a full reinstall of the game - just saying.

 

Yes, of course tools used against trolls/griefers could be used by them. But that's not an excuse to not make/use some carefully studied methods/tools if problem persists, even escalates - aka what's happening in official pubs. And yes, most people play just for a very small fraction of time, aka casuals, not experiencing the full content of game in them pubs. But, again, that's not an excuse to let those pubs transform in griefer wild west, soiling that "chance to try out the game and meet other players". That's my only concern, as a pub player. Why do I play there and how doesn't even matter. I do not matter in all of this, am just a regular Philip-The-Fly banging compulsively its head on the glass. But my sickly long time there bares witness to the amount of trolling, escalating trolling, that takes place on Klei official pubs and of some specific trolls, recurring, virulent ones very know for their "activity" (seems they just get a free pass).

 

Lastly is my prerogative how I spent my free time, nothing of your concern or assessment. I didn't get into the specifics of my DST global experience, and, once more, there is no point for that (I saw people with 6-7k hours in DST, random Joes/Janes and never stopped to ask what they do - kudos to them, they probably really like DST; as I've also seen people with over 10-20k h in CS - again not my business to speculate about them). Also didn't compared myself with anyone else. This is a topic about what should be done about griefers/trolls, let's not digress.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

On 07/11/2017 at 11:24 PM, xxVERSUSxy said:

1) We are discussing the action that could (and should) be taken against TROLLS/GRIEFERS. Not what and how you manage in, let's say base building, exploring or the like. But if by your statement, "you should be able to play the game like you want" means you want to go into pubs and burn other people bases, then yes, by all means you are a troll/griefer and most certainly warrant some kicks and then bans. If competitive playing is your cup of tea, go for appropriate servers where people can retaliate in the spirit of fair play, not chose the cowardly manner of "doing naughty things".

 

That's why I proposed the "50-100 individual/unique reports" system or karma/bad rep/whatever-points of underlying one's general behaviour. 1 to 10 reports are bound to happen no-matter-what over a variable period of time for various reasons not related to griefing ("that guy camps MacTs/that lad took my bag/that lass got the grass from chests/etc") aka more-or-less petty conflicts and/or misunderstandings. But when a compulsive griefer like Clouds or the happy trio previously mentioned do the griefing for so long (the trio spent in one day hours.. HOURS in a row of restarting the Klei official servers) the reports will flow like rain (as how it happened with forum posts not so long ago, on Steam and here, about said madness). And no people in their right minds will say "well, poor schnappsy-chap got 100-150 reports just because...people envied his/hers mad skills at killing dragonfly and base-building", let's be serious about it! Also if not necessary a griefer but you use bad language so often, horridly and profusely that you get 100 ID-UNIQUE reports.. C'mon! Just tell me you are actually a nice player that helps and all... but Tourette syndrome sabotages you, lel! Clearly you deserve time-out/not to mingle with normal people till you get "that" fixed.. by some professionals in white coats

 

If you are a disruptive little kid or a dysfunctional adult sure, "attention and recognition". And in an ok gaming medium that kind of attention and recognition = kicks and bans. Simple, hygienic ..and doesn't have added sugar

1) I'm talking in terms of global banning. I don't think anyone should be, unless in the case of hacking the game itself, banned for griefing from playing the game completely. Banned from servers, sure. The point of the post was to point out that hosts who are trolls themselves (which in the case of this mechanic could very well result in this) could ban others who join right away, making multiple servers, multiple accounts, setting each player to godmode to make the server look like a legitimate one and then ban them and continue that until legitemate players get banned for real.

Some people find fun in griefing. So, instead of banning them, I think the game should make griefing something that wouldn't be fun even if you had some way of doing it. That would eradicate the vast majority of griefing in the game completely. More on this below...

2) None of what you described is automation. Automation would be the game itself trying to tackle griefing, and in my case, I think through clever mechanics griefing can be worked around. Not completely, but well enough to over time erradicate the vast majority of it popping up. I've addressed this countless times, having a pretty neat idea of how fire griefing could easily be prevented 99% of the time. The game should encourage players to play together, not give them the options to grief. For ONE (and this is only one point regarding fire griefing that I've made) I don't think at any point a player should have the ability to light structures on fire. Who burns their own and others' structures in a PvE world without malicious intent or accident? Why and for what reason? Because I can't really think of one that's not exploitative in nature.

Remember that these people can always make new accounts and fake their IP address with VPN. Klei has no workaround for this, so this is quite redundant.

What do you mean "C'mon!"'? No, if you have the option to mute somebody that's trash-talking but not griefing, then ******* do it. If it's the option, what reason you have for having them out the game? It's the chat they're abusing, not the game. I'd even go as far as to have the same for your online "harassment" in the game; just bloody mute them! This is some ******** that is based off of feels and no proper reasoning at all that I cannot accept for myself.

3) Something that is a norm =/= it's the proper/best/really good way to deal with these types of situations. The reason trashing up the chat is still effective is because you pay attention to it. Just mute them, forget about their chat, and just keep playing the game. Simple. You won't have any trouble, and they will be able to calm down better instead of holding a grudge for a kick/ban there was no real need of.

 

On 08/11/2017 at 12:18 AM, Residays said:

Just don't vote, there's so many opinions somebody could have on this not all of them can be included.

Yes, I made a mistake, I forgot to add "No the staff team is fine" and that happened, but the work-around for that is that Yes/No questions are so simple to answer that in this case Abstaining and posting is the equivalent of disagreement to the question, you didn't vote but posted, so you did see the question in the poll.

What if I want to answer the first question, but not the second or have a different opinion on the other?

This would mean that only biased data can be gathered, and that is not good at all. "Just don't vote" isn't a good excuse. If you want to gather decent data, it's good to not be biased, so why are you still making excuses?

Either way, you've added a decent option, though, why is automation not part of this? Why is everybody so against automation when it's probably the best option for us? My thoughts are that the best course of action would be mechanics that are in the game to prevent griefing actions to a point where they're impossible or long and boring to do without ruining the gameplay that much or at all for players with good gameplay intentions.

[CaptainChaotica]

Well...THIS is a barrel of bullets just waiting to go off, so I'll just say a couple quick things and leave:

--I don't know about banning, because, as said, it can be misused.  Maybe only by the server's actual admin?

--I personally LIKE when people say the names of griefers, trolls etc. because then I know who to watch out for!  I very much want to have warning ahead of time.  If someone is a complete slimeball, I want them to know without _them_ knowing I know, so I can just quietly kick them as soon as they show up.  (IF they show up--my servers are small and unpopular.)

I mean...I kinda see both sides here...code of that nature is WAY too hard to make truly abuse-proof...

...but on the other hand, I once had a guy descend into more and more aggressive sexual  harrassment, ending with a freaking R@PE THREAT to one of the female players before he left.  (And I kept the chat record.)  _That_ kind of person really does need to be known about, so they can be avoided.  Although in this case I've gone way past "griefer" and straight into "Steam should have a sex offender registry", but...

...Notorious