Policing in the Wild West?

hustin1

There has already been at least one thread on ninja-looting/griefing in Dwarven Valley (that understandably was closed due to the direction it was taking). I'd like to attempt to start this one in the "right direction".

I was ninja'ed one too many times tonight and decided to do a little policing. I hung out for over two hours observing and reporting this behavior when it was clearly occurring. Fortunately I only had to report a couple to a GM, but it's causing me to raise some questions:

- Would community policing be a good or bad idea, if it means sticking to certain protocols?
- What should the protocols be?

Tonight, in cases where I wasn't sure I decided to either not do anything or ask who it appeared the aggrieved party might be if they were just ninja'ed (if you saw the crazy ranger chick with the redcap hat on a small stag, that was me). For instance, it sometimes looked like a pair of players were working together, so I had to be judicious. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), when someone was intent on ninja-ing it was really obvious (points at the HR burning up all his stamina trying to race to the cauldron before the guy who was doing all the fighting -- whoever he was, thankfully he failed).

Two hours seems excessive to ask of anyone, but since it's the Wild West out there until there's a change to the quests someday, I'm wondering if there should be some community best practices laid out before people start thinking like vigilantes again.

When it came to the people doing the dailies, I otherwise stayed out of it and just observed (except for the poor guy who accidentally aggroed a million trolls from four separate groups -- I took pity on him and sealed the trolls' fate with my phase spider). Is another protocol in order, perhaps?

overddrive

Snitching too often turns into a witch hunt. I would say no.

Unknown

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masizin777

I am for the idea, we should have an active player police force for role playing and for rules of conduct, maybe even a reward for bounties. We would have to implement a reputation system for some of it, and an open world pvp system . We could take it all the way and have a neverwinter jail where we could poke the idiots for being idiots and trolls exploiters or cheaters etc.......
"Pay the fine or do the time."

godlysoul2

A report system is fine where things can be evaluated and then dealt with. We don't need individuals with immediate power who could make mistakes or abuse those powers.

ambisinisterr

I've seen good things come from Community Moderation (the correct term, no company calls it policing) but it has to be a relatively small group of players with strict guidelines as well as limited power.

For instance I can not ban players from the forums. I can't delete posts. I can't directly see IP's.

For those things I have to go to the Community Managers with information regarding incidents and let them decide what course of action they would like to take. The same concept has to (by law BTW) apply to any in game moderation. About the only thing player mods I know for sure can do, by law, is mute players. They would never be able to ban or impose punishments.

What they do, more often than not, is simply provide a "weighted" report which is read sooner as well as (unofficially) given a bit more credibility.


The most important thing which Neverwinter needs such player moderators for is for UGC. The Community Team have been nudging the company trying to get some players to be able to better police the Foundry Content for a while now. Again no player would ever be able to remove another author's content but such player reports would be put on a higher priority so that the abusive quests would be removed quicker. Unfortunately I have no more details on that but it is something we have discussed internally.

myles08807

masizin777 wrote: »

I am for the idea, we should have an active player police force for role playing and for rules of conduct, maybe even a reward for bounties. We would have to implement a reputation system for some of it, and an open world pvp system . We could take it all the way and have a neverwinter jail where we could poke the idiots for being idiots and trolls exploiters or cheaters etc.......
"Pay the fine or do the time."

For the sake of the game I hope you are being sarcastic. Look, I most often play my DC created almost a year ago, my first character in this or any MMO. DCs take a lot more time to "finish encounters" (or "kill stuff", if you like) than any other class, so I've suffered far more than my share of ninja raids: Quest objectives, skill nodes, you name it and I've lost it to some 20 Dex jerk moving a lot faster than ol' Myles ever will. I don't particularly enjoy group play because I've become accustomed to getting far fewer rewards out of dungeons etc. than most. Still, given all that history, I have no interest in being told how to play the game by a vigilante committee, nor should any player. I know that the "alignment" concept was left out of this process, but some people just play an "evil" style. While I'd like to think that these behaviors might be punished by ostracism, I think that it betrays the basic nature of a role-playing game to deny access to certain roles.

cayapp

The only quest it kind of bothers me on is the Troll Totems in DV, and when it is a class that fully able to complete the objective on their own. I in fact seek out weaker players, lesser geared, and certain classes when I get ready to do my dailies on each of my toons to give them a helping hand.

On Live when certain quest objectives can be "stolen" from you, while your clearing to get to it can be annoying, I have found pretty good solution that works for me.

Here is my solution I just simply fight whatever mobs right on top of, square in the middle of the objective. With the number of AEs all these mobs use, it forces them into combat and eliminates them from being able to click.

For example, on the troll totems, I stand under the totem so the shaman will put its purple ring centered on me and it. If you enter that purple circle you are now in combat.

kuskusgila

A good solution is already exist. Lost in the Pass quest (Icewind Pass area), when someone rescued the npc, it share credits to players that are near enough. I always fight very close to the npc, preventing being ninja-ed and get the share of credit when the ninja rescue them.

It's unfortunate that this doesn't implemented in Dwarven Valley. I suspect Lost in the Pass quest is bugged (in good way), that it behaved in such of manner.

Edit: Cayapp solution worked well by forcing ninjas to enter combat. After that it's a matter who click first.

PS; The only **** moves that irritate me is when player quickly runs away before additional mob spawned (Collapse Mineshaft quest), making other people to fight extra hard clearing the respawn + additional mob leftovers. Only to have another ninja swoop in, and probably spawn another adds and run away.

Just please remove the additional spawn after player collapse the mine.

silverkelt

I do the same now, I make combat right over the quest spot, harder to do sure, but still doable by some classes.

Its terrible right now, you have poeple who dont care and think its fun (some even claim its roleplaying, hey I play a rogue, and I role play so to me its a function I should be doing (doesnt matter if YOUR not roleplaying they are!)

Then you have people who shouldn't be in Dwarvan Valley at all with 11k gear score getting their but handed to them and looking for others to kill mobs so they can get the quest done. (of if they are and having a hard time, should be finding groups to help out instead!)

mircalla83

The thing is, on the Troll Totems for example, once the first player hits the Totem, you have a window of about a second to also interact. It finishes the interaction moments before the totem despawns, allowing at least 2 people to advance on one Totem.
Given the latest track record of the company, I expect this to be nerfed next week.

eion311

I wish they would have a program like Everquest had to aid GM's. I was an Everquest Guide for many years which basically made you a GM assistant. You would answer/fix tickets sent in by players, you would deal with players griefing (including players not respecting another players "camp"), you would fix/respawn npc's, we ran GM events, we had the ability to become any npc to have fun with the players, etc, etc.. Every day we were in game we had to submit our logs to the GM's of what we did that day for evaluation to make sure we were not abusing our powers.
It was honestly like a second job but I loved every moment of it. A program like this would assist in putting people in check in this game. I can't tell you how manys times I got tickets in for players griefing for quests and what not. We had the ability to turn invisible so no players could see us. Once a ticket came in I would teleport to the player and watch to see what was happening. Then I would take the correct action against them.

giggliato

Some quest interactions disappear when used and some remain for others to use, its just a non-standard coding thing that the devs have to work on.

gabrieldourden

Yesterday it was quite disappointing when it came to the Troll Totems. I had to clear up 7 of them to get the 3 I needed. Same happens very often in Sharandar with the Guardians. I enter the fight, the Shaman shifts back moving away from the trapped guardian and when I close in to kill him, somebody frees the guardian... With my HR I don't really care, as killing the next group of mobs is rather easy, but with my DC it really hurts.

pitshade

You get credit for the Guardian if you are near when they are armed. Keep the fight near the plant and ninja'ing won't be a problem. If you're a melee class, make sure that the Shaman is between you and the wall so they can't teleport far. If ranged, don't get close enough to the Shaman to trigger their teleport. The Dryad quest is the one where you can get hit by ninjas easier as you don't get credit unless you or someone in a party with you, activate the tree wound. Again, fight over the quest objective if at all possible to make anyone else who gets close to the quest objective go into combat as well. That won't stop someone else from grabbing it first, but at least they have to be in the melee with you to have a shot.

hamletswords

If you get a quest objective without killing a single mob, it should create a special pvp flag making you attackable by anybody.

sihvebi

Every game I've played over the years has experienced the same problem with "policing".

The act becomes an exploit. People report others in order to remove them from the mix and give themselves or their own group an advantage.

There are no exceptions.. this happens every single time. Unfortunately, people will exploit such mechanics when given a choice. Especially in today's "I WIN" mentality in MMO games.

beckylunatic

mircalla83 wrote: »

The thing is, on the Troll Totems for example, once the first player hits the Totem, you have a window of about a second to also interact. It finishes the interaction moments before the totem despawns, allowing at least 2 people to advance on one Totem.
Given the latest track record of the company, I expect this to be nerfed next week.

My problem is that if someone comes in and clicks "my" totem, I usually manage to pull up their interact menu during that very tiny window instead of hitting the environmental item.

pitshade

hamletswords wrote: »

If you get a quest objective without killing a single mob, it should create a special pvp flag making you attackable by anybody.

Ummm. No. It's extremely common in Sharandar/DR to be running quests and find the objectives unguarded because someone else killed the stuff for loot drops/other quest objectives/fun and then moved on. Yesterday I ran the quests in Realm of Malabog and half the Dryads and pod plants were unguarded. What you suggest would add to the griefing as people could just run around killing the objective guards all across the zone, preventing others from completing the quests or ganking them if they tried.

What needs to be done is that when quest objectives are activated, everyone close by gets credit for them, as the Guardians quest is implemented now. Sure it allows freeloaders but it stops ninjas from being able to basically steal the reward.

pitshade

beckylunatic wrote: »

My problem is that if someone comes in and clicks "my" totem, I usually manage to pull up their interact menu during that very tiny window instead of hitting the environmental item.

Stand on the other side of the totem and it shouldn't be a problem. Still, I try to avoid going to totems if other people are around.

beckylunatic

pitshade wrote: »

Stand on the other side of the totem and it shouldn't be a problem. Still, I try to avoid going to totems if other people are around.

Yeah, I've mostly just been trying to make sure the coast is clear before engaging anything. But if they zip in really fast, I can't always react quickly enough to do anything to prevent it.

Shared objectives is the solution. I couldn't care less if someone wants to leech off me, as long as it's not <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> me over in the process.

two30

pitshade wrote: »

What needs to be done is that when quest objectives are activated, everyone close by gets credit for them, as the Guardians quest is implemented now. Sure it allows freeloaders but it stops ninjas from being able to basically steal the reward.

My ranger actually got griefed on the guardians yesterday. I saw the griefer, tried to get to the plant, and got CC'd by a mob before I made it.

Is it so wrong to just make the objectives persistent? Sure, players will sometimes get free credit between respawns, but the current design distracts your focus away from the mobs and makes you view other players as the enemy. It's evil.

I guess the solution is to play a GWF and tank the mobs on the interact.

hamletswords

pitshade wrote: »

Ummm. No. It's extremely common in Sharandar/DR to be running quests and find the objectives unguarded because someone else killed the stuff for loot drops/other quest objectives/fun and then moved on. Yesterday I ran the quests in Realm of Malabog and half the Dryads and pod plants were unguarded. What you suggest would add to the griefing as people could just run around killing the objective guards all across the zone, preventing others from completing the quests or ganking them if they tried.

What needs to be done is that when quest objectives are activated, everyone close by gets credit for them, as the Guardians quest is implemented now. Sure it allows freeloaders but it stops ninjas from being able to basically steal the reward.

That would take some work to kill all of the objective mobs in a zone. And if anyone attempted it, just change instances.

pitshade

two30 wrote: »

My ranger actually got griefed on the guardians yesterday. I saw the griefer, tried to get to the plant, and got CC'd by a mob before I made it.

Is it so wrong to just make the objectives persistent? Sure, players will sometimes get free credit between respawns, but the current design distracts your focus away from the mobs and makes you view other players as the enemy. It's evil.

I guess the solution is to play a GWF and tank the mobs on the interact.

I'm guessing your HR is archery with all the max range buffs? If so you've got a make a choice to sacrifice those bonuses or run the risk of a ninja. Open with Split/ES then fight on the point if you want to ensure you get credit. ROA on the Shaman and don't get too close to him so no teleport = tons of damage. Thorn ward as well. That should also get rid of the Witherer if Split didn't kill it first. Then concentrate on the Thorn redcap before pew pewing the Shaman's remaining health. Fox Shift or Boar Rush will help out with the Thorn even for a Archery spec.

pitshade

hamletswords wrote: »

That would take some work to kill all of the objective mobs in a zone. And if anyone attempted it, just change instances.

Not really. A well geared GWF can clear mutiple pods in less than a minute. Probably the same for a HR. TR would be slower but the respawn timer is long enough that it won't matter. Forcing someone to change instances is still causing them grief and a lot of players won't know to do that at any rate.

two30

pitshade wrote: »

I'm guessing your HR is archery with all the max range buffs? If so you've got a make a choice to sacrifice those bonuses or run the risk of a ninja. Open with Split/ES then fight on the point if you want to ensure you get credit. ROA on the Shaman and don't get too close to him so no teleport = tons of damage. Thorn ward as well. That should also get rid of the Witherer if Split didn't kill it first. Then concentrate on the Thorn redcap before pew pewing the Shaman's remaining health. Fox Shift or Boar Rush will help out with the Thorn even for a Archery spec.

I switched up my tactics once I knew a griefer was around, but I wish the quests were designed such that I don't have that worry.

pitshade

two30 wrote: »

I switched up my tactics once I knew a griefer was around, but I wish the quests were designed such that I don't have that worry.

Agree 100%. It's frustrating especially when the quests aren't in any way uniform when it comes to how these matters are handled.

iuliandrei

Beside the fact it won't work, you want to change human nature, you shouldn't have to do this. Seriously you might report the whole server because everybody does it, even if they want to or not.
The problem lies in the design, they have to made it so stealing wouldn't be an option. You want a game of cops and robbers but the only way to win is to deny the battle.