Abuse by Griefers

HumanPerson · 2020-09-23 12:37:03

Hi, I have played this game somewhat extensively in recent months and I made this account specifically to start this thread. Sorry it's so long, it got out of hand but I hope it's somewhat concise.
I will not provide solutions, just describe the problem as is requested by dev.

I would like to bring up the frankly ridiculous amount of griefers and the destructive effect they have had since the salepocalypse.

It feels like every life turns into griefer chasing and begging people to curse them which appears to have no effect. It certainly does not reduce their occurrences, in fact I could swear they are multiplying.

In these hard times, our main challenge to tackle should be lack of knowledge new players will inevitably and understandably suffer from and teaching them to be useful in some way.
This is made frustrating beyond words because of griefers who will intentionally eat berries and carrots knowing their importance, steal entire rubber-tired wagons worth of high value items, and lately, constructing sports cars and dumping them in the forest when fuel is out. Not a very useful item to have under current conditions I must add, if anything, it helps griefers take even more resources away from struggling towns, but that's just my observation.

I saw a man fill up truckload after truckload of pies cooked and raw, turkeys, meats baked and raw, corn, potatoes you name it, and then after a while coming back with an empty cart. There was nothing that could be done as most players around were bbs too young to even curse, who would not survive long enough to curse, if they can even be persuaded to actually do it, since they just had every last bit of edible material stolen by one bitter individual who is compensating for his unhappy life and lack of friendly human companionship. We were able to accumulate perhaps 4 or 5 curses among adults before mass starvation presumably wiped out the village. And so the griefer goes unpunished and likely doing the same thing in other towns, giggling all the way.

There is no recourse against this, cursing simply does not work at it's current state. Punishments for repeated offenders are laughable and the amount of effort it takes to successfully curse one person is disproportionate to what it takes to grief a town out of existence. This leaves veterans utterly dejected and unwilling or unable to take care of others since they would starve themselves if they tried to do communal work. Veterans upon whom this game relies entirely as teachers, since there is no reasonable way of learning most mechanics on your own.

I personally, tho reluctantly, must say I kinda hate the game now and no longer wish to play it. It's mostly just momentum of habit which is slowly being rehabilitated into doing other things instead. Furthermore I now cannot recommend it to a friend like I used to simply because of absolute helplessness against griefers.

And that is a huge shame as this game is quite unique and until recently a great experience.

Surely, I cannot be the only one who has noticed just how much griefers destroy what makes this game fun, especially since sales.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-23 12:48:45

Yes. This has been my experience too. Griefers are a cancer and we lack the necessary tools to address the problem.

JonySky · 2020-09-23 13:25:36

I have been saying for some time that OHOL is very easily unbalanced ...
OHOL "works" for about 50 players ... but when the game increases or reduces the number of players the game is destabilized by many factors (water, food, mechanics that do not work, griefers, cheats, ...)
This is just what is happening now ...

There is another thing that I also warned a long time ago: mods

mixing a vanilla server with a server that allows the use of mods is a mistake and any game that exists in the market knows the problem

A mod attached to a griefer is a powerful weapon

I've also been warning for a long time that a multiplayer game needs an anti-cheat system and a reporting system for toxic players ... and of course some basic rules of coexistence!

any streamer, youtuber, game programmer or developer knows this.

it seems that in OHOL these players are welcome

I repeat: IF THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE AND A PLANNING, THESE PROBLEMS WILL CONTINUE TO BE THERE ALWAYS

Jason must wonder where OHOL wants to take and what kind of game does he want to create:

A game of wars?
A civilization construction game?
a game about trading?
a game of crafting?
a survival game?

If we don't have a goal, we get the current problem ... one week some rails are implemented that nobody uses and the following week a racing car or a delivery truck

Last edited by JonySky (2020-09-23 15:29:04)

ahead · 2020-09-23 13:51:58

i really do think we have all the tools we need, curses only don't work because of the new players not using them, give them some time, let the frustration of death over and over seep in, they will eventually visit the wiki and use their better judgement in game to curse, problem solved, really just give em time

HumanPerson · 2020-09-23 14:04:37

ahead wrote:

i really do think we have all the tools we need, curses only don't work because of the new players not using them, give them some time, let the frustration of death over and over seep in, they will eventually visit the wiki and use their better judgement in game to curse, problem solved, really just give em time

I disagree. It would be like letting a housefire burn free because it will eventually rain.

We need action before it's too late to salvage, before more people get fed up with it. This sort of perverted griefing has a very negative effect on the current state of the community and most of all on the future of this game.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-23 14:11:26

No, give new players too much death and frustration and they will ask for a refund so they can play a fun game.

HumanPerson · 2020-09-23 14:28:01

Not to be overbearing but I will add one thought.

It used to be that I would do things within my abilities for the good of the town. I would farm so we have raw food other players will process for everyone to eat. I would make tools we are in short supply of. Later I would construct boxes and carts so we can store and move items more efficiently. I would gather large amounts of a consumable item and dump them in town. Later that day, or the next day, I would be born in the same town and I would see the supplies I piled up are half exhausted, indicating to me that they were probably used for other productive activities. I did this, because I could have reasonably expected that what I did would help the next generations. Make their lives easier so they can focus on other stuff.

This is what makes the game compelling to me. This is what made me recommend it to friends who have never heard of it but ended up liking it, telling stories about their moms and bbs in the pub after work. This is the very same thing that has been utterly crushed by the total helplessness in combating griefers since sales.

I said I used to enjoy gathering and building stuff for future generations.

I do not do this anymore, why would I? It will get taken into the wilderness by a griefer anyways or if we are very lucky it will be used for a short time before it is finally taken by griefers. Several lifetimes of accomplishments squashed in a time it takes to load a full cart and take it far enough to where nobody will find it.

This needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

JonySky · 2020-09-23 15:04:00

DestinyCall wrote:

No, give new players too much death and frustration and they will ask for a refund so they can play a fun game.

Exact!
Although we may have already been late ...

Arcurus · 2020-09-23 16:31:44

JonySky wrote:

Jason must wonder where OHOL wants to take and what kind of game does he want to create:
A game of wars?
A civilization construction game?
a game about trading?
a game of crafting?
a survival game?

A piece of art.

How about to extend exiles, if a leader exiles some one, he cannot incarnate there anymore for 24 hours.

Would it been possible to stop the griefer with a posse of 3, if 3 would be enough again to make a posse? Or why was the truck griefer not killed?

JonySky · 2020-09-23 16:54:26

Arcurus wrote:

A piece of art.

I have bought a game ... not a piece of art ...
Let's see what Steam thinks ?:

i definitely bought a game

Last edited by JonySky (2020-09-23 16:56:31)

Arcurus · 2020-09-23 22:17:44

JonySky wrote:

Arcurus wrote:
A piece of art.

I have bought a game ... not a piece of art ...
Let's see what Steam thinks ?:
https://i.postimg.cc/c1nn1JHN/2020-09-2 … -Steam.jpg
i definitely bought a game

i for my part read the steam comments first and bought a piece of art knowing what it is....

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-09-23 22:19:36)

Arcurus · 2020-09-23 23:59:05

can anybody outline more what was the main point that the griefer(s) was not stopped?

Did the leader not exile him? Was it too difficult to form a posse? What was / is the problem?

DestinyCall · 2020-09-24 00:15:22

Killing griefers does nothing, Arcurus.

It just gives them a new face, a new name, and a brand new village full of new victims. You are basically just passing the buck - giving the problem to some other town that might not be as prepared to handle the threat. New players are especially vulnerable to griefers, because they don't understand the rules well enough to defend themselves or their family members. A village full of new players can be killed completely without even recognizing that the town is under attack.

We don't need better ways to stop villagers from griefing in-game. We need better options for removing toxic players from the general playspace.

The current individualized curse system is painfully in adequate. I've said it before, but I think this game needs a donkey town server for serial griefers. The curse system collects enough info on which players are most cancerous to other people - most people get cursed occasionally. Only a "special" few get dozens or hundreds of curses to their name. Those players shouldn't be allowed to play on the same server as the general population. They especially shouldn't be allowed around new players. It is bad for the community and bad for the game to allow toxic players free-reign like this.

HumanPerson · 2020-09-24 01:20:32

I see I am not the only one who noticed.

Because of all this, I now automatically suspect any one of my bbs could be and quite possibly is a griefer, and several times they have in fact turned out to be griefers. My own fucking bbs. I even started giving them short names that are easy to curse, just in case. I used to care about my bbs and always made sure they are alright. Now I dread the moment a bb pops out cause he's probably a monster in disguise.

Earlier today I had a bb. Game said he is a first time player - please help him. I complied as always, tho the baby started making faces which is something a new player shouldn't be aware of. I decided to test him by teaching him to farm and giving purposefully vague instructions such as 'put water', only to see bb immediately pick up an empty bowl, take water from bucket, and water the correct tree on first try.
I raised alarm, telling everyone to be careful. When the bb saw this, he ran off into forest and died. I cursed him just to be sure, since there was no doubt in my mind about what just happened. Minute later a baby is born. A bb who is cursed and making the exact same faces. I was out of curses and other people called me a prick for speaking ill of a bb who was just born and is therefore innocent.

There is no defence. You will be griefed if you play these days. This is not fun.

Dodge · 2020-09-24 01:41:21

We had a pretty good cursing system before that worked so well that griefers where posting threads on this forum complaining about it and even sending mails to jason to cry about being in donkey town, it just needed a few adjustements to be more balanced and not have ridiculous waiting times in DT like 5 hours, but someone from the forum had the "brilliant" idea of a system depending on players and proximity so now griefing has pretty much no consequences and you can just die until you get reborn to a family, pretty much useless.

Bring back the old cursing system + some adjustements and griefing will pretty much become a non issue or at least much less frequent.

Instead of having to wait in donkey town doing pretty much nothing, which was one of the main issue, you could simply be banned from playing for a certain time, that time would depend on a couple of factors like hours played related to number of curses, number of recent curses, repeated offences etc.

There could even be a chat or mail system in the client of the game where you could get the ID of all the players that cursed you and message them to try and explain the situation if you think you got cursed wrongfully since it can happen in some cases of mass cursing and misunderstandings, and they could lift your curse if the reason seems valid.

Plenty of options but the current one is pretty bad.

Note that if you want jason to see an issue it's better to post it on github than in the forums, since forum is more about discussion.

HumanPerson · 2020-09-24 01:52:50

I appreciate the tip, but to be honest, having read through several threads on the forums, I have a feeling it wouldn't make much of a difference either way.

I made this thread out of desperation over losing something I really liked. Something I had gotten other people into who, for most part, stopped playing after the weekend because they had enough of dealing with griefers. Not so much that they exist, but specifically the lack of defence against them. Nothing any of us could do would prevent them from coming back apart from organizing lynching parties over discord, but frankly that's not worth my time, and who knows if that would even work.

Last edited by HumanPerson (2020-09-24 01:57:16)

Eve Troll · 2020-09-24 02:24:06

Griefing is apart of human nature. If society hasn't figured out a cure in 20,000 years how can we expect jason to. Every tool that could be added will be a double edged sword and likely be easily abused by griefers as well. Trying to squash the possibility of violence, like with leadership, makes the game stale. Forcing people to work together is boring. I miss when violence was common. The rush of defending your family and saving lives as a medic added a richness that has been lost. Families used to raid each other, steal, and take over villages. This too is apart of human nature that has been squashed by race restrictions. That chaos and that uncertainty made things exciting. It also demanded families find ways to protect themselves, like with walls. Now it feels like playing the same life over and over. This forced collaboration is fake. Instead of mechanics that force experiences down a tunnel how about revamping the curse system, which honestly doesnt do anything in its current state. Or maybe give an outlet for violent pvp types instead of vilifying them and trying to run them out of the game.

DiscardedSlinky · 2020-09-24 02:36:26

Ban them. Easy.

Arcurus · 2020-09-24 08:28:35

Dodge wrote:

We had a pretty good cursing system before that worked so well that griefers where posting threads on this forum complaining about it and even sending mails to jason to cry about being in donkey town, it just needed a few adjustements to be more balanced and not have ridiculous waiting times in DT like 5 hours, but someone from the forum had the "brilliant" idea of a system depending on players and proximity so now griefing has pretty much no consequences and you can just die until you get reborn to a family, pretty much useless.

how did the old curse system exactly work? Could you just curse some one no matter how far away he was, or what was the difference?

How about counting play time (or children you got reached age 3) last month vs curses you got last month.

If you then reach a certain level (maybe worst 20%) you get some mail like:

the worse you are the higher the chance that people see you cursed, even if they did not curse yourself.

The worse you are you get a lower movement speed up to at max X0.8. This would make you more easy to kill.

And you yourself get no curse tokens and cannot join posses and cannot use weapons.

HumanPerson · 2020-09-24 09:52:04

Eve Troll wrote:

Griefing is apart of human nature. If society hasn't figured out a cure in 20,000 years how can we expect jason to. Every tool that could be added will be a double edged sword and likely be easily abused by griefers as well. Trying to squash the possibility of violence, like with leadership, makes the game stale. Forcing people to work together is boring. I miss when violence was common. The rush of defending your family and saving lives as a medic added a richness that has been lost. Families used to raid each other, steal, and take over villages. This too is apart of human nature that has been squashed by race restrictions. That chaos and that uncertainty made things exciting. It also demanded families find ways to protect themselves, like with walls. Now it feels like playing the same life over and over. This forced collaboration is fake. Instead of mechanics that force experiences down a tunnel how about revamping the curse system, which honestly doesnt do anything in its current state. Or maybe give an outlet for violent pvp types instead of vilifying them and trying to run them out of the game.

I am sorry, I was under the impression that we have entire library's worth of laws, constitutions, police, lawyers, courts, prisons, communal service, fines, court restrains, enforced psychologists visits....
In fact we have had such laws and punishments since the earliest of civilizations. Ever heard of eye for an eye? Doesn't quite fit your version of reality.

But nah, there is no solution to real life griefers, therefore we should allow people to grief in the game without any consequences, just like in real life. When you fill your neighbours car with valuables and steal it and then come back without it, you get away with it no problem and there is nothing they can do, right? Since griefing is 'apart' of human nature, as you put it.

I will just assume that punishing griefers is not in the best interests of someone called 'Eve Troll' and disregard your idiotic opinion.

JonySky · 2020-09-24 10:10:04

Arcurus wrote:

Dodge wrote:
We had a pretty good cursing system before that worked so well that griefers where posting threads on this forum complaining about it and even sending mails to jason to cry about being in donkey town, it just needed a few adjustements to be more balanced and not have ridiculous waiting times in DT like 5 hours, but someone from the forum had the "brilliant" idea of a system depending on players and proximity so now griefing has pretty much no consequences and you can just die until you get reborn to a family, pretty much useless.
how did the old curse system exactly work? Could you just curse some one no matter how far away he was, or what was the difference?
How about counting play time (or children you got reached age 3) last month vs curses you got last month.
If you then reach a certain level (maybe worst 20%) you get some mail like:
the worse you are the higher the chance that people see you cursed, even if they did not curse yourself.
The worse you are you get a lower movement speed up to at max X0.8. This would make you more easy to kill.
And you yourself get no curse tokens and cannot join posses and cannot use weapons.

Arcurus, before if they accumulated many curses they ended up in DonkeyTown the next life ..., DT was a place exaggeratedly far from the spawn point of Eves or other cities

They stayed there for a certain time (depending on the number of curses they had)

You could curse someone even 2 hours after their death (if I remember correctly) and you could curse them from another city
Then this changed because many players cursed streamers and caused problems

I also have to say that the murders were simpler and you didn't need a gang to murder someone, it was easier to get rid of someone annoying (We didn't need the leaders either)

Even a long time ago, there was no auto-aiming or posse mechanics and killing someone was a game of skill with the possibility of missing an arrow (to kill you needed a certain skill and it was much more fair)

Armed griefers are less of a problem, most griefers do not need weapons to annihilate an entire city (bears, aggressive pit bulls, wild boars, theft of food or vital utensils, makeshift jails, engine destruction, vehicle theft, offensive behavior , racists, pedophiles, ...)
There have been a thousand ways to do harm in this game

The problem is that a clear answer has never been obtained from Jason for griefers, assassins or toxic players and we do not know if these players are welcome or not welcome in OHOL

Common sense and logic should be that griefers and toxic players should not be welcome and tools should be created to avoid these types of players who ruin the experience of many people ... but on the other hand we have several mechanics implemented such as swords of war, aggressive pit bulls, boar breeding, racist skills, etc ... so I think that Jason although he does not admit it, wants to have this type of behavior in his game

OHOL: a piece of art stained by toxic gamers

Ahh and don't get me wrong! I also agree that murderers coexist in cities (igual que EVE TROLL)... now the game is boring and there are no stories of heroes or villains!

Formerly it was very tense to have a serial killer inside your city and it broke the "stability" of the cities ... you had to stop everything you were doing to deal with that killer and your ability could save the city

We had a post full of diverse stories and in 50% of those stories there were murderers ... heck it was fun and when you ended up with a murderer it was great! the people of your city helped you and thanked you for eliminating the murderer!
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=710
18 pages... enjoy

I even remember that there was another problem with the stabbing mechanics that also created stories, confusion and riots: accidental stabbings (you never knew if it had been intentional or not), and here came the "quick trials" of the players

all that disappeared and has become bland ... just working and creating food ...
and I already said on one occasion that if the mechanics are fair for both sides (murderer and vigilante), it can be a lot of fun for everyone

the problem is that it has never been fair

Anyway, I think there are other behaviors outside the game (racism, insults, etc.) that should be eradicated with a temporary and a permanent ban (like all games)

Last edited by JonySky (2020-09-24 10:52:51)

DestinyCall · 2020-09-24 12:50:52

I don't miss the absurdly high murder rate, rampant serial killers, or circles of death when one murderer gets killed by a vigilante only to set off a chain of retribution killings that leaves half the adult population dead or on cooldown.

Call me boring, but I prefer the lives of peaceful farming, crafting, and connecting with other players. Lives filled with mayhem and grief leave me feeling dead inside.

That being said, the old community curse system was better than the "individual" curses we have now. It was never a perfect system and went through various forms, some worse than others, but I liked the idea of curses being a way for the village to pass judgement on the in-game behavior of players, as a group.

My favorite version of the curse system was when you were sent to Donkey Town after accumulating a certain threshold number of curses. The length of time spent in DT was based on actual time that you were alive while in donkey town, not time passed in the real world, so if you offended enough people, you had to live apart from society for a significant amount of time. It was a real punishment and it felt very appropriate - treat other people badly and you play alone. Learn to play well with others and appreciate being a part of a larger society and you are welcome to stay.

A few random curses didn't matter, since you had to get cursed by a decent number of people in a short amount of time to land in DT. The biggest problem was that serial griefers were not addressed in a more serious fashion from mild, occasional griefing and bad play.

If you didn't mind spending a long time in DT between murder sprees, you could wait it out and keep on killing forever. And certain behaviors - like killing/kidnapping children, killing isolated people, and more subtle non-murder griefing were unlikely to draw enough attention to get cursed repeatedly in a short time. So the worst griefers accumulated plenty of curses over the long run, but they could dodge the threshold to avoid punishment. There were no bans or any threat of larger punishment, so a few repeat offenders were free to ruin things for everyone else, over and over.

The griefer population has always been a minority. But the effect that one toxic player can have on a village (or multiple villages) is pretty huge.

...

I'd also add that I think we have fewer interesting stories lately because of changes to the game, but personally, I blame the changes to iron/water/food, not the lack of spicy murder-play. The generational food tax and biome restrictions prevent many villages from surviving and reaching higher tech. There is always another crisis looming on the horizon. Always more work to be done. No time to stop and chat by the fire or get to know your kids. On the upside, all that work keeps us from complaining about the lack of late game tech. Oh wait ...

Last edited by DestinyCall (2020-09-24 13:25:01)

Starknight_One · 2020-09-24 12:54:42

JonySky wrote:

The problem is that a clear answer has never been obtained from Jason for griefers, assassins or toxic players and we do not know if these players are welcome or not welcome in OHOL

Jason thinks that 'griefer' is an important role in the village. I expect there will *never* be a strong mechanic for preventing griefing.

Seriously, though, that's a *stupid* concept. It's like saying that poker needs cheaters at every table. Griefers *don't care* about the village, their family, or anything in game except getting a rise out of other players. Why should that be rewarded?

The solution to grief-cursing is to limit the range of curses to 'within earshot' (basically the map chunk you're on). If your target is outside that area, you get a ping message saying 'no target found' and your curse token remains available. Simple, easy, expedient... and you can't curse someone just because you know they're streaming (unless you happen to be in their area).

'Antagonist' is a role that is needed for drama, but relying on griefers to do that is like using dynamite to clean your sink.

HumanPerson · 2020-09-24 13:27:21

Starknight_One wrote:

Jason thinks that 'griefer' is an important role in the village. I expect there will *never* be a strong mechanic for preventing griefing.
Seriously, though, that's a *stupid* concept. It's like saying that poker needs cheaters at every table. Griefers *don't care* about the village, their family, or anything in game except getting a rise out of other players. Why should that be rewarded?
The solution to grief-cursing is to limit the range of curses to 'within earshot' (basically the map chunk you're on). If your target is outside that area, you get a ping message saying 'no target found' and your curse token remains available. Simple, easy, expedient... and you can't curse someone just because you know they're streaming (unless you happen to be in their area).
'Antagonist' is a role that is needed for drama, but relying on griefers to do that is like using dynamite to clean your sink.

Are you serious? Is this really the case?

JonySky · 2020-09-24 13:44:30

Because the game has no challenges ...
Jason agrees with the griefers because they add extra challenge to the game but I agree this not be the way to go

the game must have challenges of its own without the need for griefers and idiots

notice that the problem is out of control when there are many new players

with the average number of ohol players (30 or 40 players) (we are always the same) the problem is small and can be controlled

because those 30/40 players already know that ohol is this and nothing else ... we create food and draw water and little else ... when we enter the game we already know what we are going to play and we know that ohol has no extra challenges, we still like and play

but when the player base increases we have many people who need more challenges, more excitement, more variety of tasks and when they get bored the idiot parties start

I remember that before the gang system and leadership, the murder parties always appeared when the city was already developed (when the players did not have much to do anymore = boredom)

If the game had more challenges such as extreme weather, extreme temperatures, pests in crops, natural disasters, etc ... the problem would be much less

Last edited by JonySky (2020-09-24 14:37:43)

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#1 2020-09-23 12:37:03

Abuse by Griefers

#2 2020-09-23 12:48:45

Re: Abuse by Griefers

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Re: Abuse by Griefers

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