Goblin Squad Member
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well griefing adds nothing to the game. In a pvp game unexpected world pvp adds by adding danger and greater risk.
for example they plan on having caravans and such to transport large amount of goods between settlements. This adds risk for those merchants willing to do that, rather than forcing people to run to them.
Now this needs to be balanced so that it does not end up ganking and griefing so that the pvp is meaning ful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Griefing has absolutely no place in the game, and by griefing I mean intentionally trying to ruin another player's experience. Often true griefing involves abuse of game mechanics and meta-gaming. The only legitimate use of griefing is griefing the griefers for the express purpose of driving them away from the game, so they stop hurting your community and go back to Call of Duty from whence they came. In this game you can report griefers and see them banned so even that is not a legitimate use of griefers.
Ganking... has a lot of legitimate uses, but should be used sparingly. There should be bandits who rob people and gank them if they refuse to give up their goods/illegal-toll peacefully. Wars of course, are the most legitimate reason for ganking. On VERY rare occasion, it's fine to have serial killers and nutcases who gank everyone they can. The threat of ganking adds some excitement and challenge to the game. Keeps you on guard and gives you a reason to hire an escort or take the less known path. Like I said though, use sparingly. If most of the players you run into will try to gank you simply because they can... then ganking is a lame and meaningless mechanic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It makes you be more careful. If you know these bandits patrol a particular area between your settlement and say a mine of materials, you will most likely take precautions to avoid or dispose of the bandits. For one, you will most likely want to recruit some adventurers/mercenaries for protection. It really sounds like going alone is a very very bad idea. It adds a sense of danger.
In addition, there is this blog post:
One thing that we're deeply committed to at Goblinworks is building a game that has a low tolerance for "griefing." Loosely defined, griefing means taking actions within the game that are designed to harass another player to elicit bad feelings without any other reasonable purpose. Griefing encompasses a wide spectrum of behavior, and there will be players who feel that they have been subjected to griefing while their opponents feel they're engaged in legitimate gameplay. An example is a group who attacks and kills trespassers in a certain area to deny access to that territory to other players. The people trying to get in might feel it's unfair that they keep getting attacked and killed, whereas the attackers feel completely justified in defending their territory. Goblinworks will be creating an organic, evolving policy on griefing to identify practices that we consider abusive. We will take severe action out-of-game against regularly abusive players, while less flagrant issues will be dealt with in-game by way of an innovative bounty system designed to deter unwanted aggression.
There have been attempts at bounty systems in many MMOs in the past, and they tend to have the same problem: If I put a reward on your character's head, you can arrange for one of your friends to kill your character, and you then split the reward with your friend. You're not deterred from doing whatever it was that caused me to place the bounty, and I've ended up giving you and your friend even more of my scarce resources.
Pathfinder Online's bounty system is a lot more selective. When you are murdered—that is, killed unlawfully—you will have the option to place a bounty on your killer's head. The twist is that you can specify who can redeem the bounty: a specific character, a chartered adventuring group, or members of a specific player organization. Everyone who is eligible to earn the bounty receives a notification, and if they encounter a character with a price on his head, they'll be reminded of the bounty outstanding on that character. You'll be able to put a bounty on any character who inflicted damage on you within a limited time preceding your character's death, and on their companions and those who rendered them assistance, so you can ensure that a gang of criminals suffers as much as a lone assassin.
We fully expect that there will be characters who become specialized bounty hunters, tracking down and redeeming bounties and earning acclaim (which will translate into more commissioned bounties). These characters would never want their reputations besmirched by the idea that they'd be splitting the bounties with the targets, so the social reputation of these characters will dictate how successful they are at this role. Furthermore, we expect that some players will form bounty-hunting organizations, and those organizations will also need to maintain scrupulous reputations as agents of vengeance rather than agents of collaboration. Knowing that these experienced and deadly foes may be lawfully unleashed to hunt down and kill murderers will be a powerful deterrent to griefing.
Oh, and one more twist: Each time the bounty is paid, the victim has the option to issue it again. And again. A wealthy victim could maintain the price on the head of a murderer for a very long time—forever, if they like. Murder the wrong person, and you might find your character reduced to a life constantly on the run, or you may need to try to heal the breach via penance and apology (and likely restitution).
Bounties can only be issued when a character unlawfully kills another. Killing an opponent as a part of a declared war, or in an area that does not have laws against murder, will not trigger the bounty system. The intent is to deter characters from arbitrarily attacking and killing others simply for fun. Of course, those who simply wish to avoid any PvP at all will choose to remain within the very high security zones close to NPC settlements where PvP is effectively impossible. Such players will have fewer opportunities to find adventure or to earn treasure than their braver and less risk-averse peers, but they'll be safe from griefers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First, there needs to be a discussion on what defines gangling and / or griefing.
My definition of gangling is when you use superior force against an inferior, but legitimate, target. The problem is that there is a fine line between legitimate ganking and becoming a griefer.
My definition of griefing is when your sole purpose of game play is to spoil the game play of others. There are many forms of griefing, but the most common are noob farming and spawn camping. Another form of griefing is found on RP servers where griefers use out of place names to spoil the atmosphere of the RP server.
As for the benefits and detractors of ganking and griefing. There is little or no benefit of griefing for the larger community. Ganking on the other hand may have some legitimacy when at war, engaged in piracy or on any conflict where you wish to bring overwhelming force or numbers down on an opponent to change the risk to reward ratio to your acceptable level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Griefing only takes away from the game and the developers are actively developing measures to make griefing a really bad idea.
To add to what Hark said here:
Besides the automatic systems that will make griefing as well as mass-killing a bad idea, they will ban griefers. They have stated this many times. I can't repeat that commitment enough :)Also, as Avena points out, peoples' definitions of 'ganking' and 'griefing' vary. For instance, many people think of 'ganking' as a one-sided PvP engagement (close to 'griefing'), while some use 'gank' interchangeably with 'kill'. You can have a much clearer conversation if you avoid these nebulous terms and instead describe actions.