Non Violent forms of PVP

[Kietharr]

Griefers, however, are not tolerated. It is up to the staff and not the players, however, to determine what constitutes griefing. Dontaze's OP is a perfect example of why it's the staff of Notorious who decide whether or not something is griefing.

This sort of paternalistic mindset of 'we must let the powers that be decide how to create a safe and prosperous world' is depressing within the context of a video game. Who's to say the rules that a Guide enforces are any better than the rules of a PK's world? In the end this comes down to a game of tattling on fellow players to the guides, who are not omnipresent nor omnipotent, and making the guide take often only partly informed stances on said 'griefing' in order to stem the flow of tears. Not to mention the fact that many guides, GMs, and other authority figures within games have their own motives within said game and will not hesitate to abuse their power to further these motives.

What this truly amounts to is an imbalanced and arbitrary reassignment and redistribution of power to whatever clans are most effective at swaying GM opinion. It discourages actually playing the game and encourages gaming the game. Most people who fear this 'chaotic' world without guides are those who have never experienced them. Chaos does not reign. Where there are PKs who want to cause chaos there will always be Anti PKs to punish them, provided the system provides incentive to do so (Darkfall being an example of a system that failed to provide incentive to stay blue/penalties for being red, thus turning the game into Quakefall).

tl;dr Anarchism produces a more just society than a decentralized, often corrupt, police state, which is what most MMO internal policing systems amount to.

[ifireallymust]

Though I don't speak for that guy, I assume his response would be YES, AND BTW games with non-consensual PVP and full loot are not built for "typical MMO players".

So, you do not want me to book anything about me being in the minority regarding my play style after all? Or are you saying that Xsyon will attract the atypical MMO player in large numbers, soon turning the typical MMO player into a minority?

How puzzled I am that I immensely enjoy Xsyon with its current pvp ruleset, since, as a typical MMO player, these non consensual pvp and full loot feature should not be enjoyable to me. I am obviously still too ignorant to grasp what you meant when you said that people like me will find ourselves in the minority.

[Surly]

So, you do not want me to book anything about me being in the minority regarding my play style after all? Or are you saying that Xsyon will attract the atypical MMO player in large numbers, soon turning the typical MMO player into a minority?

How puzzled I am that I immensely enjoy Xsyon with its current pvp ruleset, since, as a typical MMO player, these non consensual pvp and full loot feature should not be enjoyable to me.

Then what's the problem with turning off all safe zones and removing all PvP restrictions? Especially once sieging is enabled.

[Dubanka]

Dubanka, who exactly is calling for an end to open PvP outside our 'mud huts' as you say?

I have yet to see anyone argue for an end to open PvP.

Griefers, however, are not tolerated. It is up to the staff and not the players, however, to determine what constitutes griefing. Dontaze's OP is a perfect example of why it's the staff of Notorious who decide whether or not something is griefing.

Dontaze ended the post with: Who can think of more ways to hurt people without actually hurting them?

The sentence has at least four possible interpretations:

1. Dontaze wants to find ways to hurt people without actually hurting them means Dontaze wants to make the person controlling the character angry in ways other than killing their character, since he can't get to their character in their safe zone, and since at the moment, pvp is entirely off. This might be considered griefing, since it is aimed at the player and not the character and is intended to evoke a negative emotional reaction in the player. And Dontaze intended to communicate his intention to evoke those emotions in people and did so in his post.

2. Dontaze wants to find ways to evoke a negative emotional reaction in other players but did not intend to be so up front about it in his wording.

3. Dontaze neither wants to evoke negative emotional reactions in other players, nor did he intend to mislead others into thinking he does want to.

4. Dontaze does not want to evoke negative emotional reactions in other players, but he did intend to mislead others into thinking that he does want to. (This might be considered trolling, depending on his reasons for being misleading.)

As a player, I have no way of knowing which of the four applies. But the staff has access to information I don't, such as who is Dontaze in game, what other accounts are owned by Dontaze and/or members of his household, what else has Dontaze said on this issue, what has Dontaze done in game?

If Dontaze is actually accused in game of griefing, I'm sure his posts will be taken into consideration when it's time to determine if the accusation has merit.

I kind of feel like the NRA here...while banning assault [style] semi-auto weapons may seem reasonable, it's a slippery slope of where that leads once you allow the precedent.

The problem with regulating this, or regulating that is where does it end. In our current discussion, my 'oh this is gonna suck' spidee sense starts activitating when folks start talking about grief behavior. Why? because we have yet to get a definitive response (besides by wholly non definitive) about what griefing is (by the devs). Typically, griefing is directly tied to abusing a game mechanic, whereby the abusee has no recourse but to be subjected to the harassment of the abuser (ie. rez killing) or, is tied to using an exploit to gain and advantage over another player or, utilizing a mechanic in a manner that while allowable by code has been expressed stated as 'bad' by the devs.

The problem of applying griefing to the point of the original poster, is that the activities unto themselves are perfectly acceptable...i meand are you going to get banned for digging a hole on your homestead? i'd think not. even if these activities are done maliciously, i believe they are valid as an offensive economic element of conflict. blockades, trade embargos. The romans plowed salt into the fields of carthage after the 3rd (??? history is failing me) punic war. The game allows the mechanisms. The tactics are valid....and the discussion is, from my pov, to drive a real solution...which IS NOT to restrict the activity. You can't restrict it. It's too subjective, and rules that are unable to be enforced equally should nto be enforced (if you want to have a product that people actually buy).

Instead, we as the players need to be able to counter it.

We need to be able to plant seeds to replace trees cut down by raiders.
We need to be able to knock down walls terraformed up around us.
We need to have the tools to deal with agression.
We do NOT need the aggression to be regulated (because only makes controlling it harder).

so i guess what i'm trying to get out there is think, how would i counter that versus 'he shouldnt be able to do that to me'.

AND this is my major problem witht he homestead safet net...there is no way to stop someone from doing something on their homestead.

[ifireallymust]

This sort of paternalistic mindset of 'we must let the powers that be decide how to create a safe and prosperous world' is depressing within the context of a video game. Who's to say the rules that a Guide enforces are any better than the rules of a PK's world? In the end this comes down to a game of tattling on fellow players to the guides, who are not omnipresent nor omnipotent, and making the guide take often only partly informed stances on said 'griefing' in order to stem the flow of tears. Not to mention the fact that many guides, GMs, and other authority figures within games have their own motives within said game and will not hesitate to abuse their power to further these motives.

What this truly amounts to is an imbalanced and arbitrary reassignment and redistribution of power to whatever clans are most effective at swaying GM opinion. It discourages actually playing the game and encourages gaming the game. Most people who fear this 'chaotic' world without guides are those who have never experienced them. Chaos does not reign. Where there are PKs who want to cause chaos there will always be Anti PKs to punish them, provided the system provides incentive to do so (Darkfall being an example of a system that failed to provide incentive to stay blue/penalties for being red, thus turning the game into Quakefall).

tl;dr Anarchism produces a more just society than a decentralized, often corrupt, police state, which is what most MMO internal policing systems amount to.

The game that springs to mind after reading this is Eve. Where outright ripping other players off isn't just permitted, it's encouraged. You have complete freedom to grief in Eve, so far as I recall.

And yet hisec continues to exist, and it protects most players, the vast majority of the time. In order to attack a player in hisec, the attacker must be willing to lose their ship to Concord. This usually means that players who are not high value targets have nothing to fear from PKers. A certain week out of each year being a noted exception!

A certain segment of Eve's population has argued, continues to argue, and probably will continue to argue until Eve ceases to exist or until humanity does (whichever comes first) that hisec should not exist. But it continues, nontheless.

[Sirius]

How puzzled I am that I immensely enjoy Xsyon with its current pvp ruleset, since, as a typical MMO player, these non consensual pvp and full loot feature should not be enjoyable to me. I am obviously still too ignorant to grasp what you meant when you said that people like me will find ourselves in the minority.

Well, I'm glad you like non-consensual PVP and full loot, but since you've already said that these things will make people quit in droves, it seems you must be in agreement with me that this game is not built for such people, who will not enjoy it. Like I said, such people will be in the minority. If you're not part of this demographic, fabulous – but then I'm puzzled as to what you're trying to prove here?

[maelwydd]

You missed this one Dubanka (not that I don't expect you to either ignore it or try and gloss over it. You sure some of you guys are not Jcanto, sure use the same logic): -

http://www.xsyon.com/forum/showthrea...ull=1#post3087

Re:Conflict, Death, Consequences and Decisions
Xsyon's Response to my questions about death and PvP during
Prelude. Prelude is bolded to avoid confusion.

Xsyon:
Here's the current set up for the early Prelude:

Tribes can set the level of PVP in their town. It can be set to
protected and not allow PVP at all within the village, so villages will
likely be safe zones until they have time to build walls and we
implement more safe guards that players can control.

Evil tribes can't be set to protected, so evil players are open to being
attacked at all times.

Perma death is something for the future, but it's not just from old age.
This will have to be explained later. :-)

The overall goal will be to constantly balance things so that both good
and evil can enjoy the game. A PVP gankfest will definitely not be
allowed if that starts to happen.

I hope that answers the question. I know I'm a bit vague about some
planned features, but that's the fun of the game. :-)

[ifireallymust]

I kind of feel like the NRA here...while banning assault [style] semi-auto weapons may seem reasonable, it's a slippery slope of where that leads once you allow the precedent.

The problem with regulating this, or regulating that is where does it end. In our current discussion, my 'oh this is gonna suck' spidee sense starts activitating when folks start talking about grief behavior. Why? because we have yet to get a definitive response (besides by wholly non definitive) about what griefing is (by the devs). Typically, griefing is directly tied to abusing a game mechanic, whereby the abusee has no recourse but to be subjected to the harassment of the abuser (ie. rez killing) or, is tied to using an exploit to gain and advantage over another player or, utilizing a mechanic in a manner that while allowable by code has been expressed stated as 'bad' by the devs.

The problem of applying griefing to the point of the original poster, is that the activities unto themselves are perfectly acceptable...i meand are you going to get banned for digging a hole on your homestead? i'd think not. even if these activities are done maliciously, i believe they are valid as an offensive economic element of conflict. blockades, trade embargos. The romans plowed salt into the fields of carthage after the 3rd (??? history is failing me) punic war. The game allows the mechanisms. The tactics are valid....and the discussion is, from my pov, to drive a real solution...which IS NOT to restrict the activity. You can't restrict it. It's too subjective, and rules that are unable to be enforced equally should nto be enforced (if you want to have a product that people actually buy).

Instead, we as the players need to be able to counter it.

We need to be able to plant seeds to replace trees cut down by raiders.
We need to be able to knock down walls terraformed up around us.
We need to have the tools to deal with agression.
We do NOT need the aggression to be regulated (because only makes controlling it harder).

so i guess what i'm trying to get out there is think, how would i counter that versus 'he shouldnt be able to do that to me'.

AND this is my major problem witht he homestead safet net...there is no way to stop someone from doing something on their homestead.

I was a card-carrying NRA member during the time period this issue was headlined in the news.

If you are saying that the fair and effective enforcement of a griefing policy is in the hands of the Notorious staff, I agree.

Your idea for tools are intriguing.

As for the homestead safenet, it applies equally to bands, clans, and tribes. I note your specific singling out of homesteads, however. So I ask you, how would you prevent numbers from being the ultimate Iwin button in a world with no safe zones? Or would you want to counter the power of numbers? And if you would not want to counter the power of numbers, then won't the game world eventually be populated only by zerg tribes?

Well, I'm glad you like non-consensual PVP and full loot, but since you've already said that these things will make people quit in droves, it seems you must be in agreement with me that this game is not built for such people, who will not enjoy it. Like I said, such people will be in the minority. If you're not part of this demographic, fabulous – but then I'm puzzled as to what you're trying to prove here?

I do not believe these will make people quit in droves. I believe a lack of both safe zones and the tools to create safe (or relatively safe) areas that player groups of all sizes can use will cause people to quit.

[Dubanka]

i was using homesteads generically to keep from writing homestead/band/clan/tribal area

You missed this one Dubanka (not that I don't expect you to either ignore it or try and gloss over it. You sure some of you guys are not Jcanto, sure use the same logic):

I have no idea who jcanto is.
I didn't reference that because it was a heresay, and not a direct post from the devs. See, i can do it to...here is a post i just got from xsyon:
Xsyon:
The current set up for Prelude is as follows:
- open pvp.
- full asset destruction

obviously i just typed that. Just to prevent any future misquoting.

The overall goal will be to constantly balance things so that both good
and evil can enjoy the game. A PVP gankfest will definitely not be
allowed if that starts to happen.

I guess you havent read anything i've written. In no place have I advocated a gank fest. In no place have i advocated that there isn't room for 'good' and 'evil' players (there are 'good' pks too btw...they hunt the evil ones). Of course, i realize that you view a 'gank fest' as any environment where there is open pvp. So we have a fundemental impass...*shrug* Ill get over it.

[niccoli00]

I want to add to the original list of ways to do non violent pvp:

Roll back server 24 hours. Lap up the delicious tears of woe.