Goblin Squad Member
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So I've heard the 'griefer' cry come up again, particularly with reference to organized griefing and I have a question or thought:
These organizations are going to come from MMOs. They've essentially honed their communication and organizational skills there. They've probably also employed methods (i.e. bots) that got some of them kicked off those servers. Those MMOs (Eve, et al) keep records of all the people they ban for griefing.
Why is it not possible for Eve to share its griefing list with PFO and vice-versa. Part of the trouble is that each MMO is its own world (pun intended) and they don't share data. The people who have been kicked off of Eve, for example, are going to use the same CC#s in PFO to make characters and alts and we're going to have to endure their griefing as they burn through those #s.
Lets be a little proactive! :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why is it not possible for Eve to share its griefing list with PFO and vice-versa. Part of the trouble is that each MMO is its own world (pun intended) and they don't share data. The people who have been kicked off of Eve, for example, are going to use the same CC#s in PFO to make characters and alts and we're going to have to endure their griefing as they burn through those #s.Lets be a little proactive! :)
Why wouldn't CCP want its banned griefers to arrive on the doorstep on their competition's game?
GW is going to have to devise their own ways of dealing with their own problems.
If GW can not figure out how to detect them and how to ban them, my suggestion is to try to beat them at their own game. Only by griefing the griefers will you perhaps drive them away.
GW, once they identify them can:
1. Find their settlement(s) and throw the PVP windows wide open.
2. Toggle off all of their settlement management alarms and buffs.
3. Deactivate their settlement's NPC guards.
4. Inform the rest of the community it is "Open Season."
After a month of this, they will leave and look for a softer target in another MMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW, once they identify them can:
If GW can identify them, why would GW make us do the work? It can't be more than a few keystrokes for all the baddies' efforts to simply disappear into the datavoid, leaving a hole in the world for us to fill.
Us colluding with GW to get rid of what needs to go will be human interaction, yes, but it certainly won't feel meaningful in the game sense.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Whining about being banned everywhere that allows it is part of the strategy of griefing. It can be prohibited on official forums, but that provides ammunition for use everywhere else.
The game extends beyond where most people think it ends, and it needs to be made boring for griefets everywhere in order for them to leave.
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Goblin Squad Member
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GW, once they identify them can:If GW can identify them, why would GW make us do the work? It can't be more than a few keystrokes for all the baddies' efforts to simply disappear into the datavoid, leaving a hole in the world for us to fill.
Us colluding with GW to get rid of what needs to go will be human interaction, yes, but it certainly won't feel meaningful in the game sense.
Exactly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan's post was talking about hackers, not griefers. He had made it sound as if GW will have a hard time even detecting their hacking. Their goal, according to Ryan Dancey, is to take your land.... not just killing a bunch of noobs.
You can not bore them into leaving, until their objective is achieved. PFO is going to have such a small map (very limited settlement hexes), that they will see it as an easy target to "Win the Game!"
I doubt they will be bored when they steamroll through your settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really don't think any but the most foolishly designed and managed settlements will be very easy to "steamroll". Those that are will be steamrolled by any legitimate aggressor.
I just don't see this:
GW, once they identify them can:
1. Find their settlement(s) and throw the PVP windows wide open.
2. Toggle off all of their settlement management alarms and buffs.
3. Deactivate their settlement's NPC guards.
4. Inform the rest of the community it is "Open Season."
After a month of this, they will leave and look for a softer target in another MMO.
as a healthy response to (what?) suspected, un-ban-able (for some reason), un-detectable hackers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lets be a little proactive! :)
There doesn't seem to be much interest in being proactive or even reactive.
If these hackers or the Goons do come in, I hope they at least manage the settlements well. If they control enough of them and they provide upper tier training and crafting, I couldn't care less who runs some, most or all of the settlements.
Griefers, by definition, are players going out of their way to make the play experience less or even UNenjoyable for as many other players as they can. Even at the risk of penalties to themselves. Their only enjoyment from playing games is making other's lives miserable.
Of course PFO doesn't want them around. Open pvp games make this type of activity much easier to engage in, as they can disguise their griefing more easily as 'playing the game'. It's why flags, alignment and reputation are so important. Checks and balances are required to cut down on as much of this kind of gameplay automatically as possible. While such systems have the unfortunate side effect of limiting players who want to play antagonistic characters(I mean this as the antonym of protagonists, not in any negative manner) the loss is more than worthwhile cutting down on the amount of griefing possible.
Hackers are a different story. In most games, hackers use the systems in game to steal accounts and strip them bare, reselling what they can before whatever support systems Developers place in their games allow account recovery. Occasionally, they find a backdoor that let's them gain GM or even admin priviledges. Those are the ones that are the real problem. If a hacker can even gain GM priviledges in an MMO, they can do a lot of damage just by spawning resources and reselling them to unsuspecting customers. There are also autokill commands, normally for making players respawn if they get 'stuck' or fall through the world.
Or course GW wants to keep this kind of thing from happening as much as possible. There's really no way to stop it completely. Every major company has accounts hacked regularly - there's simply no way to stop people from doing the silly things that allow keyloggers onto their systems. No matter how smart programmers are in their antivirus and security protocols, it always takes less effort to break something down than to build it up. It will always be about damage control, and systems to detect and minimize the damage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I couldn't care less who runs some, most or all of the settlements.
You'll care if, as some did in EVE, they restrict access to everyone but themselves, leaving no training or markets for you. That'll be "completely within the rules", unfortunately.
Given the fact that EVE, generally, doesn't care about such behaviour, but GW wants to ameliorate, in PFO, some of EVE's more egregious excesses, it'll be interesting to learn more about the control schemes GW's planning. The mechanics of those may, of course, have to be kept quiet, so I expect to see at least some statements related to "trust us".
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Goblin Squad Member
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If someone gets accidentally banned in the fight against griefers, I won't lose my good night sleep. Why that would happen though, I don't know. There are always innocent casualties in war.
Ban 'em all, let Pharasma sort them out, hmm?
Do you really have so little imagination that you can't put yourself in the place of such an "innocent casualty"?|
Goblin Squad Member
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...I couldn't care less who runs some, most or all of the settlements.You'll care if, as some did in EVE, they restrict access to everyone but themselves, leaving no training or markets for you. That'll be "completely within the rules", unfortunately.
Given the fact that EVE, generally, doesn't care about such behaviour, but GW wants to ameliorate, in PFO, some of EVE's more egregious excesses, it'll be interesting to learn more about the control schemes GW's planning. The mechanics of those may, of course, have to be kept quiet, so I expect to see at least some statements related to "trust us".
So, at what point will you and your company (other than to protect your own settlement) will you fight against these guys controlling too much?
If GW points out that they are using hacks, or suspected of using them, but they are not banned, will you raise arms against them?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Summary: I think we can craft in-game methods for dealing with these invaders that do not make us as bad as they.
I freely admit that I have not had the experience that others have so clearly stated regarding the habits, care, and feeding of the invasive species that is commonly referred to as griefers/hackers. It seems clear that they have no natural predators in the MMO environment and as such they run amuck destroying the environment that they have invaded.
It seems to me that the question we should be asking ourselves is "How can we develop natural predators for these invasive species without becoming predators ourselves". I truly believe that if we have to resort to their own methods to defend ourselves against them, then we are no better than they are.
I do not want to raise the specter of the Treaty of Rovagug. I think the choice of that path has been deeply discussed. I do believe that there are some ways to make our PFO Environment more disease resistance, so to speak.
I am not sure how fast alliances of players will be able to amass enough resources to build a settlement. I do not expect this to occur until at lease month 6 of EE, mostly because I have no assurance that the game mechanics for settlement building will be in place before then. If this is the case then, the first safeguard in detecting these weeds is to monitor the cash flow within the game. If the speculation of the posters here is correct, then the weeds will want to grow faster than any other in order to strangle those in their path. It may be possible to wage economic war within the game to combat this rapid accumulation of resource. (Which is a legitimate tactic within the spirit of PFO.)
There may also be another method of weed control. It may be reasonable to develop something we could call the Bloodring Accord. This would be an agreement between those settlement organizations to regulate growth and expansion to a fixed rate. The members of the accord would meet regularly to set the next level of territorial expansion. Those that break the accord could possibly be weeds. If the suspected weed settlement broke the accord then there would be a game legitimate reason for the uniting of an "overwhelming force" to deal with the suspected weed. (Of course, breaking the accord would be expected anyway when one group wanted to wage war on another, again a legitimate PFO tactic.)
What other tactics could we use to resist these invaders without becoming invaders ourselves?
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Goblin Squad Member
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hmm...
I should point out that I personally don't think that the hordes are going to come out from the east on horseback on Day 1. But to listen to some people, you'd think that the whole of the hackers and Goons will be there when the game goes live. Though that would mean that they are something like 90% of the total game population.
That would be amusing in its own right.
Horde Leader: Ok, its day one... everyone, form up and ATTACK.
Horde 2nd in command: Um. Sir.. there's no one here.
Horde Leader: Oh.. right. Um. Well... Okay. Set up a stable and progressive society.
But yeah, if a thousand players jump on later and act as a horde - so long as they are staying within the rules of the game - then they are not greifers, imho. Because that's literally what happens in european history time and time again. And the thing about history is that as time went on, the hordes made less and less of an impact with each invasion (contrast the invasions of the 5th century AD to the 11th, 12th or 13th), partly because we'd gotten to expect the random invasion.
It would be interesting if there was a call (similar to a papal crusade) that went out against organized hackers wherein PCs could re-flag themselves as crusaders (so as to protect their initial settlement) and go after the hackers. But I suspect if GW has enough evidence, they'll just ban em. (and honestly, I've never seen the point of hacks.)
Or they could just call an NPC crusade - similar to the Worldwound or Lastwall. lol. that might be interesting should, say, 75% of the map be controlled by evil kingdoms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, if they are using hacks, and GW either can not detect them or does not ban them, or banning does not stop them (reroll or start new account), there really isn't much else to do.
As I said earlier, there seems little support to attack them. Some say it is "much ado about nothing".
We could try the diplomatic route and try to convince them to at least create settlements that meet a broad swath of the needs of the community. We could even assist them in meeting their goal of total conquest and control. They may in fact become bored enough to either leave, or they may stop short of total control, and hope for opposition to make their own experience a bit more interesting.
This is kind of a hybrid of "If you can't beat them, join them" and the "much ado about nothing", as long as we all get access to highly advanced settlements that grant us all something that we need. It is a win for everyone! They get control, we get fast track access to high skill and high quality crafted gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some say it is "much ado about nothing".Only one guy said that, not "some". ;)
I never assume that just one person holds to any idea. One person may be the only one to say it out loud, but many probably feel the same way.
That is the teacher in me. When one student asks a question, many probably had the same question.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I trust that Goblinworks is putting good thought into their griefer control systems. If you find that a number of them are slipping through the cracks then we will have to review their behavior with the broader community, just in case your definition of griefing is too loose. If the general consensus is that they are griefing but somehow flying under administrative radar, then we the community will also have methods at our disposal. The Empyrean Order specifically has a strong anti-griefer stance and will be ready to support the PFO community in defending against such foes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm surprised that the MMO Corporations don't just get together, compiled a Black-Book of known Griefing IP Addresses and just put a block on them so long as the current owner is at their address.
Griefers then move to Internet Cafe A. Internet Cafe A is flagged as being a new login site for the troublesome accounts. Internet Cafe A is blocked and is sent a message from the Black-Book Group that at X time certain people logged in at their place of business and are the reason that the Internet Cafe is now blocked. A warning that their continued patronage of these persons will result in a permanent ban is issued, and the ban is lifted.
Internet Cafe A does not wish to lose access to these MMOs and goes back through their records and identifies the majority of these perps, and puts up a warning sign that anyone caught associating with these people will be removed from the premises.
Griefers return, photos are taken and everyone in their group is blacklisted and told to leave immediately.
They move on to Internet Cafe B, who has been warned by Internet Cafe A what has happened, and the Griefers are told to shoot through.
Eventually, the Griefers either have to give up their accounts and start from scratch, which puts more money in the MMO Companies' pockets, or they give up in general after being banned from the Internet Cafes and their home/business IP Addresses.
The object with Griefers is not to fight them, as that's the equivilent of putting chum in the water and then going skinny dipping.
The object of dealing with Griefers is to make their experience as un-fun as possible. Force them to move around to different Ip Addresses just to log on, before they can finally log on and see their account has been locked. Welcome to the World of the Boring White Room-Craft. Remove their ability to influence or affect other people, and the Griefers will get bored, or get pissed off, and move on to their next target, who will hopefully have been given the identity/IP address of the Griefers in turn to prevent more douchebaggery.
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Goblin Squad Member
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you guys got to remember, alot of companies probably don't really care about greifers, but just look for the reason to ban that person, hoping they buy a new account. More profit for them. why go through a bunch of work to have to deal with every single griefer, when they can just ban them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's that. And there's also the whole 'Griefer Pride' angle. Come down hard enough on the Griefing Crowd and you'll end up with with a visit from the 'Chan' crowd in the end, and that can have severe and long-term effects on the safety and stability of the game.
"Because your tears are delicious!" is the Griefer's battle-cry. I seriously cannot comprehend the shallowness of the human spirit required to enjoy 'Griefing', let alone how these 'people' can focus as much energy and time as they do on their 'fun'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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you guys got to remember, alot of companies probably don't really care about greifers, but just look for the reason to ban that person, hoping they buy a new account. More profit for them. why go through a bunch of work to have to deal with every single griefer, when they can just ban them.
Griefers and hackers are two different animals, as I'm sure you know.
Griefers a company will tolerate because they did not compromise the integrity of the product, just the game play experience for some. A hacker can do incredible damage and in worse case scenarios be a means of identity theft or the spreading of a virus.
This new round of discussion was related to Ryan's post about hackers, not griefers, so I'm not sure why it always shifts to griefers.
To borrow a phrase...
Griefers are more "much ado about nothing"
Hackers are something we should have greater concern for if they do show up.
I'm surprised that the MMO Corporations don't just get together, compiled a Black-Book of known Griefing IP Addresses and just put a block on them so long as the current owner is at their address.
You can't ban people for their IP addresses. CAN NOT. That isn't how IP adresses work. Short version is this. Most people's router randomly chooses a temporary IP address. There are billions of possible combinations, and the router simply checks to see that no one else is using that one at that time. Certain things that you do can cause that IP address to be reset to a different one. Legitimately, an IP address used by a hacker today could be some innocent person's IP an hour later.
This is a very simplified version of how this works - look up information on 'temporary IP addresses' if you want a more technical version. Even a mediocre hacker will never be caught this way... it only works if the person is still connected in the same session as the IP trace is run for.
You are correct about taking away the loopholes that griefers use to be jerks. It's why GW has so many different automatic systems in place to keep PvP regulated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Certain things that you do can cause that IP address to be reset to a different one.
This. I have what I think of as a semi-static IP address: about every 60 days or so, with no action on my part that I've been able to figure out, I suddenly have a new one.
I'm sure they're pulled from a pool or something that can be traced back to my ISP, but I don't see how an IP-based ban would hit the proper single target accurately. I've been told some folks have full variability, and get a new address every time they connect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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you guys got to remember, alot of companies probably don't really care about greifers, but just look for the reason to ban that person, hoping they buy a new account. More profit for them. why go through a bunch of work to have to deal with every single griefer, when they can just ban them.Griefers and hackers are two different animals, as I'm sure you know.
Griefers a company will tolerate because they did not compromise the integrity of the product, just the game play experience for some. A hacker can do incredible damage and in worse case scenarios be a means of identity theft or the spreading of a virus.
This new round of discussion was related to Ryan's post about hackers, not griefers, so I'm not sure why it always shifts to griefers.
To borrow a phrase...
Griefers are more "much ado about nothing"
Hackers are something we should have greater concern for if they do show up.
Good point Bluddwolf, and it keeps being made. The terminology confuses the direction and the "issue" that won't be dropped. I still don't think that we can do much about hackers that can't be identified, no one feels can be banned, and like someone said "herding cats" into a quasi alliance for an un manifested threat is.... a nice thing to do to relieve boredom, I suppose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Griefers a company will tolerate because they did not compromise the integrity of the product, just the game play experience for some.
For a company selling an entertainment service like an MMO, compromising the game play experience IS compromising the integrity of the product, it's just a difference of scale.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Griefers a company will tolerate because they did not compromise the integrity of the product, just the game play experience for some.For a company selling an entertainment service like an MMO, compromising the game play experience IS compromising the integrity of the product, it's just a difference of scale.
Yes, one is potentially a crime, and the other is bad sportsmanship.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I keep thinking about hecklers at live performances. If hecklers go at it for long enough, they will be escorted from the premises by management. If they keep at it time after time, they will be banned from it. In some entertainment districts, individual clubs will keep and trade lists of persona non Grata.
It even happens at sporting events. I've seen particularly vulgar and offensive people kicked out of Yankee stadium (having paid $50 for a ticket). This is different than people who run out onto the field who get thrown into the little jail at the stadium, criminally charged and banned for life.
I'm not sure where the greifer / hacker analogy winds up along that spectrum but an MMO is an entertainment product more similar to a live performance than people realize. I don't see why it shouldn't be treated as such.
I'd like to see a agreement between the PFO kingdoms come up wherein if the hackers show up that that would supersede any current arguments that we might have and unify us.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure where the greifer / hacker analogy winds up along that spectrum...
"On the Internet, no one can tell you're a dog"...gamer bad-guys will create a new account, from a different IP address, with a different credit card, and GW will, in all likelihood, not be able to tell it's the guy they banned 10 minutes ago.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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How hard is it for someone who got banned from Yankee Stadium last month to get in to a game tonight? Where would he be stopped as he took the same steps to get in that anyone else took?
Conversely, there have been confirmed cases of people who share a first and last name with somebody on the US no-fly list being denied passage.
Can you propose any solution that makes it harder for a banned user than the first case but has fewer false negatives than the second?
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Goblin Squad Member
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How hard is it for someone who got banned from Yankee Stadium last month to get in to a game tonight? Where would he be stopped as he took the same steps to get in that anyone else took?
Conversely, there have been confirmed cases of people who share a first and last name with somebody on the US no-fly list being denied passage.
Can you propose any solution that makes it harder for a banned user than the first case but has fewer false negatives than the second?
Not to mention other lairs of options that would have to be negated. IE prepaid cards in other states. F2P accounts purchasing training time in game. Even if we flat out block names. there's still quite a few ways to get an account alive without even a credit card.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find it odd that people think grieving is banned in Eve. So long as your not camping in a noob school killing one day old characters in Eve grieving is positively encouraged by the Devs. They regard it as some sort of "evolved content" .
- The entire PvP system is based around killmails which detail exactly how much of the victims stuff you destroyed. Kudos in Eve does not come from attacking some combat ship that is difficult to kill it is based entirely on the value of the ship/modules you destroyed even if said ship is a defenseless mining barge which will drop no cargo of value.
- "High Sec" has some degree of security but the npc response to attack is deliberately made slow enough to make suicide griefing by very small cheap ships viable.
- If you want to avoid any repercussions for grieving in "hisec" just find some new players and declare war on their corp. You can then destroy them without any issues as often as you want. The victims can pay you money to accept a surrender but there is no cooldown period so you can simply take the money and declare war again immediately. Eve even state n their FAQ that war declarations will never be regarded as grieving.
- They offer 2 to 3 week free accounts with just enough training time to let a player transfer money from their main account, buy a batch of disposable ships and camp outside a trade hub and attack any new players in shuttles or poorly fitted ships. The pay off from this is to laugh as the new player complains in local and threatens to "report them".
- Because serious grieving offenders were having trouble getting in to hisec to carry out grieving attacks due to bad status they recently introduced a new system where grievers can trash their security status harassing people and then buy it back for cash (usually coming from a respectable alt character that trades).
There are many other examples. Hopefully pathfinder is different but grieving and bullying is a major part of the Eve ethos and entrenched in the rules themselves.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find it odd that people think grieving is banned in Eve.
I'm not sure many people here think that, especially after Ryan explained:
There's zero attempt to limit in-game grief in EVE. The developers think its a feature, not a problem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Of all of the games that I have played and all of the info that I can find, the MMOs that were utterly ruined by hackers and griefers are a very small percentage. They are/were games with poor implementation of PVP mechanics/standards, no, too little, or too late moderator oversight.
I don't see that developing in the design here.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm surprised that the MMO Corporations don't just get together, compiled a Black-Book of known Griefing IP Addresses and just put a block on them so long as the current owner is at their address.You can't ban people for their IP addresses. CAN NOT. That isn't how IP adresses work. Short version is this. Most people's router randomly chooses a temporary IP address. There are billions of possible combinations, and the router simply checks to see that no one else is using that one at that time. Certain things that you do can cause that IP address to be reset to a different one. Legitimately, an IP address used by a hacker today could be some innocent person's IP an hour later.
This is a very simplified version of how this works - look up information on 'temporary IP addresses' if you want a more technical version. Even a mediocre hacker will never be caught this way... it only works if the person is still connected in the same session as the IP trace is run for.
You are correct about taking away the loopholes that griefers use to be jerks. It's why GW has so many different automatic systems in place to keep PvP regulated.
True the IP addresses do change, but the MAC addresses don't change.
Make a List of the MAC addresses and they will be forced onto a new computer.
@Azure Zero
It takes approximately 3 minutes to change the mac address on your machine and it really isn't difficult to do
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can't change MAC addresses so easily as it's ROM (Read Only Memory).
Only a custom built Network Card could allow different MAC addresses.
SMAC MAC Address Changer will do it if you aren't competent to edit properties and keys yourself
Get it here
http://download.cnet.com/SMAC-MAC-Address-Changer/3000-2085_4-10536535.html
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Well that sucks,
the only way to lock a machine could be if GW included a few system Identifiers and some code to lock out the system from logging on.
Wait, your proposal is to have code run on the client which identifies the computer, and is undetectable to the user?
For one, every specific implementation of that strategy will be defeated, because the hacker has access to the code running on his machine, and (more importantly) to the network traffic.
More importantly, that principle is in most jurisdictions illegal, and violates precious privacy rights everywhere. Far beyond throwing the baby out with the bathwater, you are deploying a halon system to stop a kid from playing with a soldering iron.