Griefing: Everyone's Problem

[Frostvein]

If you were logged in 24-7, it'd take you less than thirty vaccines to ignore the entire rest of the event; vaccines were available for low-cost purchase, from quests that gave significant amounts of money or experience, or for FREE if you'd just bothered to ask players that were actually doing the event. If asking in general for a couple of vaccines is too much effort to ignore the rest of it, you may have more significant problems than just not being able to play the exact way you want 100% of the time.

 

Bingo.

[Elhanan]

The pvp flagging thing shouldn't have happened for pve servers. As for being involuntarily infected, they provided access to a vaccine.

 

Also, a reminder that at least two of the starting planets had no such vaccine, and the Fleet Med Center was being targetted. No prevention available unless one managed to avoid the infected completely.

[Elhanan]

Seriously? Everyone's problem? Whats up with people thinking they speak on behalf of everyone or merrit a problem to affect everyone. I've not encountered griefing nor do i consider it a problem.. Dont try to make a problem bigger by dragging other people into it.. Simply state you consider it a problem and people will back you up if they agree and others will disagree, but dont use words you cannot backup. It's not my problem and as you can see in this thread its not everyone's problem.. Exaggeration makes me disagree with you even regardless of what you wrote.

 

While it may not effect one directly, the enviroment becomes degraded, and will eventually spoil play for all those in such environs. Ignoring the problems around does not mean they are not extant.

 

Seriously.

[Elhanan]

not surprised in the slightest that the OP continues to argue this point even though the event is over.

 

Trying to help insure that the Griefing does not spoil remaining play.

 

And it's niced to be missed.....

[Phyreblade]

And that is great, if that is your choice.

 

But when one desires to avoid the Plague and/or the Event, avoid death as a rule instead of seeking profit from it, or avoid the infection as the mechanics of the disease may effect gameplay (eg; FP, OP, WZ, etc)., they should be able to do so w/o having it forced upon them.

 

LOL, I ran dozens of FP and OP throughout the event. As I said, nothing hard about jumping over a railing to get the disease off me before heading through the door. Not only free and simple but profitable.

 

I am actually anticipating and looking forward to future and similar events. Please, Bioware, don't hesitate to give us more!

Edited April 24, 2012 by Phyreblade

[Elhanan]

Are you suggesting that someone infecting you with the virus qualifies as "pvp?"

 

On a PvE server in a Rest Zone w/o permission; Yes. And it also seems to be Griefing based on the rules seen in Support.

[Andymantium]

LOL, I ran dozens of FP and OP throughout the event. As I said, nothing hard about jumping over a railing to get the disease off me before heading through the door. Not only free and simple but profitable.

 

We were fighting Soa in EV and our tank exploded on one of the platforms. We completely forgot about it...delayed the kill by 10 minutes but we all thought it was effing hilarious.

[MrSchmo]

As my good friend Charlie Brown once said, "Good grief."

[Elhanan]

First issue, level 10 character new to fleet gets infected, can't afford vaccine.

Solution: Wait a few minutes, explode, die, no repair cost, sell the 5 DNA samples. Now your character has money to buy vaccines.

 

Second issue, exploding flags opposing faction characters for PVP. Yes, this is very bad. On a PvE ruleset server, PVP is supposed to be consensual. That is, there should be no way to flag my character without my permission.

 

I think a way to have dealt with it would be to have had a DNA Sample vendor in Mos Ila and in Anchorhead, away from the PVP battles. As well as, of course, fixing it so exploding with the plague didn't flag characters!

 

First issue only; I play to avoid Death; not explot it for profit. And I was infected om the first night, and had no info on what was occuring besides the speaker announcements; hence me pricing serum at the Med Station.

 

Not everyone wished to gather loot, gear, pets, etc; some simly desired the freedom to pursue happiness.

 

Ooh! Good phrase; may have to scribe that down somehwhere.....

[TheLastWolfman]

Hi OP,

 

You asked for constructive feedback so I would like to provide some. FTR I play on a PvP Server and as such had zero issues.

 

A number of cases / examples have been brought up here and in other threads so I'll try and list them and the solutions from my POV.

 

Low level toons questing on planets other than Tatooine. - The issue appears to be that other players carried the plague to these planets and stood around in market/taxi/rest areas infecting others. Now as the explode mechanic was random, and gave a warning (which froze the character in place) which allowed you to move away, I can see the first couple of times being annoying but after that it should have been fairly simple to avoid. So for 9 days, players had to exercise a certain amount of caution in public areas. Even if players were infected, there should have been no issue in carrying on with their questing and just accepting the occasional freeze / death from the plague. Once they were out in the quest areas I doubt they would be reinfected so not a huge issue.

 

Level 10's coming to the fleet and getting infected. Now I can see this happening as on a crowded fleet it would be slightly harder to avoid multiple explosions. That said, There are only really 2 reasons for a level 10 to be on the fleet in the first place. Either they just want to look around, in which case the plague was nothing more than a minor nuisance, or they were going for Flashpoints. I completely concede the point that acess area for the flashpoints perhaps should have been off limits to infected players. I however stress again that unless there was a massive mob of people in this area, just quickly running through, acessing the quest and entering is a very short time to be randomly caught by an explosion. It's possible, but I feel less of an issue than is being made out here.

 

Opposite faction on a PvE server infecting you and causing your PvP flag to activate then engaging you in PvP. I agree that this is wrong and probably an oversight on the part of the Dev team. Now if the vaccine stopped this, then it is less of an issue as regular questing should easily nett you way more than 2K every 6 hours. So the real issue which could have been improved (and again I think was an oversight) was that the vaccine dissapeared at death. That simple change would have allieviated the issue.

 

The final complaint I have seen is in regard to Warzones. To me this is a non issue. If you engage in warzones then regardless of your server type, you are engaging in PvP. The plagued warzones was a 9 day event that effected both sides equally.

 

All in all the only instance I can see from all of these is if whilst minding their business on a PvE server getting some questing done, a group (2+) of toons from the other faction deliberately chased another player round the map trying to infect and gank them. The only way of avoiding this would have been to keep running for as long as it took for them all to pause and explode, however good timing on their part could keep this chase up for hours. I agree this would class as Harrassment/griefing.

 

If anyone did experience that siuation then I fully support you for raising a ticket and I hope Biware would have responded to that particular situation with action.

 

All other instances I feel are not griefing or harrasment and should be left alone.

 

Regards

Wolf

[Elhanan]

As my good friend Charlie Brown once said, "Good grief."

 

If that was meant as constructive crit, I want my nickel returned....

[Eutoxis]

2k is not a problem for new players. And if for some reason you refuse to spend the 2k, you could have just asked in general chat for someone to give you some. Most people were trying to explode and had lots of extra vaccine. I gave at least 10 people some vaccine, and most of the people I know did the same.

 

You should try joining the community and not hiding from it.

 

I rolled on a PVE server for a reason.

 

I like to choose when I group with another player and when I don't.

 

I like to choose when I participate in a quest and when I don't.

 

I like to choose when I participate in PVP and when I don't.

 

Let me know which of those is difficult for you to understand, and I will endeavor to explain it.

[Monoth]

I did not actively participate in the event. I played multiple characters, often in fleet, during the whold event and never once got infected. I even ported a number of times into the infection spawn where you port on a fleet pass.

 

Just don't stand next to an infected player (very much like in real life), and your chances of being infected are very low. And on the off chance you did get infected, pop a vaccine and move along. So I really don't see valid reasons for people complaining about it.

 

I guess it depended on your server, on mine it was pretty hard to avoid it.... People were exploding all over the place, although towards the end it did drop of a bit as I think people were starting to get bored with just hanging around the space station waiting to explode...

[Elhanan]

If you were logged in 24-7, it'd take you less than thirty vaccines to ignore the entire rest of the event; vaccines were available for low-cost purchase, from quests that gave significant amounts of money or experience, or for FREE if you'd just bothered to ask players that were actually doing the event. If asking in general for a couple of vaccines is too much effort to ignore the rest of it, you may have more significant problems than just not being able to play the exact way you want 100% of the time.

 

Evidently, the Elites I encountered questing had other thoughts on that subject, as the serum does not persist path Death.

 

I do not use the Chat function; run in Off Mode to avoid distractions. And I was able to regain my own losses from my Main, but not every lowbie was an Alt.

[DieAlteHexe]

I guess it depended on your server, on mine it was pretty hard to avoid it.... People were exploding all over the place, although towards the end it did drop of a bit as I think people were starting to get bored with just hanging around the space station waiting to explode...

 

At the height of the event, it was suggested to use the "hanger ring" to move about if you couldn't avoid the plague parties. I am on a fairly populated server and with 2 exceptions the entire event, those who wanted to share the plague gathered in one place, easily avoidable and TOTALLY noticeable. Heh. A huge crowd of green, misty people with glowing eyes. Kinda hard to miss.

 

Now, I haven't seen a Fleet the likes of say..:Fatman but I still think that if was pretty easy to see someone with green mist around them and glowing eyes and just move.

[amantheil]

Are you suggesting that someone infecting you with the virus qualifies as "pvp?"

 

I don't think you fully understand the issue. On a PVE server, if a flagged player of an opposing faction exploded on you, two things happened.

 

1) You got the plague.

2) You became flagged for PVP.

 

#1 is perfectly fine, IMO. #2, flagging someone for PVP against their wishes, is not fine. It's an exploit pure and simple. People used it is a way to force someone to be flagged for PVP so they could their friends could gank them.

 

I have no issue with the plague spreading through explosion. But a person should not have been flagged for PVP due to it.

[Lundli]

Oh, joy.. now we'll have 5 iterations of this thread instead..

[Malastare]

But when one desires to avoid the Plague and/or the Event, avoid death as a rule instead of seeking profit from it, or avoid the infection as the mechanics of the disease may effect gameplay (eg; FP, OP, WZ, etc)., they should be able to do so w/o having it forced upon them.

 

Again: Why is this different than the gangmembers in the Nikto Sector who attacked me without my permission? Or the village of Evocii who attacked me the moment I walked in? I was just trying to get to a robot on the far side. I wanted to peacefully walk through, but the game forced me to play in some way that I didn't intend.

 

Or:

 

How is this different from Wamp Rat Fever? I didn't have a choice on that either. I was just infected, against my will. And in order to get rid of it, I had to buy an antidote from a medical droid. Why is that okay, but the Rakghoul Plague is not?

 

I expect your answer to both of these will be something like: Both of those are based on game mechanics. And the counter-point is this: The Rakghoul Plague was a core game mechanic. It was the intention that everyone playing the game at this time would have their gameplay changed in some way by the existence of the plague. That's sort of the point of a World Event. The PvP flagging was unfortunate, but at the same time, it's clear that one of the goals of the World Event was to actually encourage cross-faction encounters.

 

So... yeah, we get that you didn't like it. You're allowed to. However, you're not allowed to claim that core game functions are now griefing just because you don't like them. Infecting your fellow faction members with the Plague is no more griefing than attacking a PvP-flagged opponent or getting attacked by a hostile NPC. They are all game mechanics that are functioning exactly as designed. The only thing that isn't working is your understanding of what is and isn't a normal game function.

[Tiddymun]

On Frostclaw EU... a PvE server... there are a couple of groups of players keeping the plague going after the event by infecting each other and their alts with the intention of maintaining the explode/PvP flag exploit going for as long as they can.

 

Welcome to Wally World.

[jsalemi]

I agree that the infection thing wasn't that big of a deal, as it could (usually) be avoided, but the being flagged for pvp on a pve server if someone of the other faction exploded near you was not a good thing, and shouldn't have happened.

 

The one example of true griefing I did see on our server (pve) was when a large group of us were taking on the world boss by the pit, and one or two members of the opposite faction kept trying to taunt him away to cause him to reset. They weren't flagged for pvp, so we couldn't prevent them from doing it, and what should have been a straight-forward boss fight became a tug-of-war that we didn't always win. We eventually got the boss down, but this did fit my definition of griefing.

 

Same thing happened to the banta boss, but that was in the open pvp area, so we could at least fight back. Though why BW thought putting an event boss in an open pvp area on a pve server was a good idea, I'll never understand.

 

[DieAlteHexe]

Oh, joy.. now we'll have 5 iterations of this thread instead..

 

Yeah. Not sure why El dragged this over here when there was a perfectly fine, nicely aged version already in place.

[Phyreblade]

We were fighting Soa in EV and our tank exploded on one of the platforms. We completely forgot about it...delayed the kill by 10 minutes but we all thought it was effing hilarious.

 

Oh, that would've been pretty awesome. Did someone fraps it? I'd love to have seen it. My guild was pretty careful about ensuring no one was plagued as we started our OP runs. If you happened to zone in without noticing you had the plague, someone in the group was quick to toss a vaccine your way. But dying on Soa like that? Classic.

 

Actually reminds me. Last night we were running through KP and one of our DPS randomly ran right through a door and smack dab of a group of mobs, leaving us all to be squashed. So we all zone back in, right in front of the same door, and this time the tank runs right through the door smack dab into the same group! He's like, "Oh crap, I can't believe I did that," while we're all laughing ourselves silly as we pick ourselves up off the floor. Again.

 

Good times.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Phyreblade

[Elhanan]

Again: Why is this different than the gangmembers in the Nikto Sector who attacked me without my permission? Or the village of Evocii who attacked me the moment I walked in? I was just trying to get to a robot on the far side. I wanted to peacefully walk through, but the game forced me to play in some way that I didn't intend.

 

Or:

 

How is this different from Wamp Rat Fever? I didn't have a choice on that either. I was just infected, against my will. And in order to get rid of it, I had to buy an antidote from a medical droid. Why is that okay, but the Rakghoul Plague is not?

 

I expect your answer to both of these will be something like: Both of those are based on game mechanics. And the counter-point is this: The Rakghoul Plague was a core game mechanic. It was the intention that everyone playing the game at this time would have their gameplay changed in some way by the existence of the plague. That's sort of the point of a World Event. The PvP flagging was unfortunate, but at the same time, it's clear that one of the goals of the World Event was to actually encourage cross-faction encounters.

 

So... yeah, we get that you didn't like it. You're allowed to. However, you're not allowed to claim that core game functions are now griefing just because you don't like them. Infecting your fellow faction members with the Plague is no more griefing than attacking a PvP-flagged opponent or getting attacked by a hostile NPC. They are all game mechanics that are functioning exactly as designed. The only thing that isn't working is your understanding of what is and isn't a normal game function.

 

Player vs NPC? Just a guess....

[Vincynt]

Thing for me and some others; we did not wish to die, collect DNA, gain pets or gear, etc; we wanted to play as we desired. I run solo, and others were playing with friends and spouses (sometimes both, thankfully), but had play spoiled for what we planned to do, and were coerced by others to alter our chosen game play.

 

Whether the penalties are small or large, they are extant, and to have them forced upon a Player seems like Griefing to me.

 

That right there is your problem my friend. You wanted to play solo, you and those others wanted to specifically play with eachother and no one else. The event focused around a rampant infection running through the galaxy and others infected people. The only way you getting exploded on or infected could be considered griefing is if someone had followed you around and no matter where you went that same person was there trying to infect you and explode all over you. If that wasn't the case you were the victim of an MMO game mechanic...

 

Might I suggest a single player game with a co-op option, like say Diablo III, might be more your style...

[Elhanan]

Oh, joy.. now we'll have 5 iterations of this thread instead..

 

Last one; not my thread and started as a complaint on the Plague. This is about Griefing, stopping it, and improving the game.

 

Hope it does not require that long to get folks to agree.