Griefing

I never use wiki as a credible site for debate. Not that I'm debating this much as griefing is still a loose defintion when it comes to games. Both sides can be argued though which is just makes this another moot debate on uor.

Victims, just do your best to learn and improve your defensive skills.

Sociopaths, just do your best not to go overboard.

Could not have said it better myself.

I think everyone has there own moral compass here..The way I see it, if there is something to be gained from it and you haven't cheated game mechanics to achieve it - it's ok in my books.

Repeatedly killing someone training taming at the bulls with an alt so you can steal their spot - is lame - but not griefing.

Luring mobs onto afk players to steal their shit or take them out of an equation - isn't anything, don't be afk somewhere where mobs can be lured on you.

Blocking someone's house runes because they killed you last week, month, whatever, isn't anything, even if they didn't kill you and you just wanted to dump that table there, isn't anything.

If you can do it to someone else - within game mechanics and without cheating (using 3rd party apps) it can be done to you and there fore in my books - isn't anything.

There are ass holes in real life, there will be Ass holes in UO.

Just my two cents.

I should start a podcast. So much material.

I would love to hear your velvety voice on a podcast.

It's simple.


If a player does something that bothers another player and has nothing to gain from it except to ruin their game experience, it's griefing. The problem is that it's nearly impossible for the victim to determine what is and is not griefing. I might reskill you, and you might think that is griefing, but I simply want to waste your time while my guildmates are in your house looting it. Some people think that looting simple things like empty bags and runes that I potentially have no use for is griefing, but you have no way of knowing my motives. I may want the runes, or I might simply want to send a message to the player. Think of it as brand marketing, and it's beneficial, not griefing.


If you think you're being griefed, ask yourself these simple questions:

1.) Did the player that griefed me use allowed mechanics and actions that are allowed according to the server rules? If yes, then it's not griefing, period. (reminder, that verbal harassment is against the rules)

2.) Was there any way I could have prevented this from happening? For example, was it my fault that my home was not secure, or that I was repeatedly reskilled because I kept attempting to res instead of simply walking away from the situation? If yes, it's not griefing.

3.) Did the "offending player" have ANYTHING to benefit by performing these actions? If they even had a tiny bit of enjoyment to gain, or monetary compensation of even 1gp, it's not griefing. Furthermore, if there were other non-intrinsic benefits to the action, like wasting my time while they are secretly trying to loot my house, or simply making me angry so that I might make a mistake in the future and allow myself to be looted or killed or whatever, that's not griefing.


At some point you guys need to step aside and take a look at yourselves. This is just a video game. In nearly all cases where "actual" griefing occurs, the solution is readily available. You can put players on mute, you can just stay dead and res somewhere else. You can move your house away from problem neighbors. You can find another place to farm gold or whatever. You might think of it as "losing the battle", which is what I think the problem is. Many of you are too attached to this emotionally, and I think if you remove that attachment you will have a better time playing games like this. Otherwise if this is such an issue that you feel really harassed (and not just verbally or racially, where Telamon WILL fix the problem) you might have a problem and should probably take a break from the game anyway.

Wylwrk Maniac that's a great idea brother. Where all the UOR-Maniacs can call in and discuss the latest forum drama, dudes. Your angelic voice brings tears of Hulkamania to my eyes, brother. -HH

One mans grief is another mans pleasure right?

I like that we're getting some decent disccusion other than just blindly screeching.

Id like to reiterate that my point here has been to stem the flow of the overuse of those negative words 'griefing' and 'griefer'.

It is a negative term, too.

Why? The large majority of gaming communities in the world define griefing as ruining another persons gaming experience for no gain in game.

To be called a griefer when you are just playing the game in a way to benefit yourself is essentially slander and shouldn't happen.

it annoys the hell out of me that people throw it around whenever they're feeling a bit sad in their trammypants.

@snap dragon I think you've now worded things a little better than me. I did try to mention situations where it seems like griefing but it isnt. The primary intent may not be obvious to the player crying foul, that doesnt mean it's griefing.

So again. One more time. People puhleeeease. Stop using the word when you're sad, or were bested at some element of the game, be it direct combat or a well laid plan of socially engineered distraction or trickery.

#metoo

Do you think its possible people sense how triggered you and others get when you are called a griefer, and do it for that reason alone?

BTW you are a known griefer.

The thing is, what a person considers no gain, might actually be a huge gain for someone else. Something as simple as taming a ton of cats to block the recall spot of a recall reg buying bot might have 0 gain for 99% of the people, but allows the competitor to be able to buy out the vendors while the bot adapts. This can be applied to pretty much anything. Killing the mare a tamer is trying to tame. Blocking/killing an IDOC bot. Killing a rare camper. Hell, stealing the bandages from the newbie training healing! All of those seem to have no benefit, but can indeed be VERY beneficial to the perpetrator.

Again, it depends on if you allow yourself to be griefed (meaning to have your gaming experience ruined by the acts of another), instead of learning from it, moving on, and shrugging it off. Soooooooo, again, it depends more on the victim than the act.

So true.

@El Horno

I've never been called a griefer myself.
That's possible though I suppose...

Would that then make those people using the word griefers themselves? Doing something to for no other purpose than to cause grief.

Hmm. Interesting thought though!

Edit: Oh. Now I have been. But no, my intent is to profit from you all, never to cause grief.

This is now more in line with what Im trying to say. But the misinterpretation of an action as griefing is what I'm trying to say is over done.

Thats why I keep saying the intent behind the action. Rather than if the grieving feel griefed.

Hmm Griefing to me is a nonsense term. Bacause for some one to so to say "grief" you. You have to allow it actually... Which means "griefing" can be prevented.

Someone kills Jhelom Tamers ---- "GRIEFER". Not really. Maybe he is a RPer PK. And also you can easly not AFK macro in an unguarded zone.

Someone kills the tamers pets ---- "GRIEFER". Not really. Pets are most of the time ain in the ass if the triple fire breath. So for PK's to keep them on low skill levels is very logical. Or you can just farm gold with the victims pets depending on the location. Its a very viable option.

Someone reskills you --- "GRIEFER". Well if it is not a friendly group that you are on the field with and there is some rage going, jus tsimply don't get ressed... Wait for them to leave, crossgate yourself or just jump to an alt account.

Most of the above ones were for PK's now comes for the blues,
If you camp entrance of Dungeun, Gazers Room gate etc. With triple box tamers and box traps, it is no different than above mentioned. "GRIEGER" Not really it forces PK's to be more clever with their rune spots and gives them awareness.

For an action not the be griefing, profitting from the action is not logical to me. Let me explain the situation lets say a very rich PK (I will not name any, we know a lot of them) kills you and dry loots you. Well he is so rich that, drylooting will not really add anything to his tresure he won't have a meaningful profit from it. Even this can be understood as griefing, which actually is not. People like different playstayls. A character, watch out I am not saying the player, I am saying a character that the player is playing can be deemed as an asshole. Maybe he likes to play the game like that. Kill the afkers - kill the pets - dry loot everyone - res no one, res kill, house dive etc etc etc....Maybe he wants everyone to hate him, hunt him, stat him... etc

@Lnomer You're right, it is a nonsense term when used the way many people do.

The term is used by most of the world, when; someone is doing something in a game where they are specifically doing it for the sole purpose of ruining someone else's game. Which is not cool.

True griefing is a very rare situation on UOR and elsewhere, which is why I'm trying to get people to realise that it is a heavily over used term.

Unfortunately, you do not have a monopoly on this word. Truth is, if you don't come from the original internet forum that popularized the term; you don't get to redefine what the word means, and even then, the definition has been pretty solid for about 2 decades now. Though, lots of kids that haven't had their balls drop have tried to redefine it by using overusing the word "troll" and thinking "u mad bro" falls under that flag. It doesn't. If you've ever uttered those words; you were a player I abused on a daily basis and lacked the mental fortitude to do anything but give me entertainment.

Griefing isn't dictated by if it's a legit mechanic or not, it never has been and it never will be. I'm gonna give you a lil recap because I *am* from that forum.

Griefing comes from early mmos and online games when jankiness was the norm, when you could use various game systems to be a hooligan or just be a jerk, UO is the first big one, then it was AO, and SWG, even WOW when it launched originally. EVE is another big one. There was also lots in a variety of FPS games, like 1.6. What all of these games share; are innate systems that don't necessarily *encourage* griefing, but offer mechanics that are VERY friendly to it.

UO is a great example, since it's the first major mmo; they had 0 experience and were quite naive in terms of what players actually would do to each other. Mechanics like stealing or house looting are quite literally griefing mechanics. There is no two ways about it. There is no single action in probably any mmo(besides blowing up a titan in EVE), from the past or currently, that gives you(the griefer)the reaction from players that get house looted, or have valuables stolen at a bank in a major city(only to get killed by the thief because he has a DP weapon, though this mechanic isn't on UOR sadly).

Every mmo I mentioned earlier has friendly mechanics for this, either by accident or on purpose. AO had overequipping, which was "twinking" before it got the stupid term from WOW. If you put the time in, you'd be able to equip level 150 gear on a level 30. This let you one shot most people, and pvp functioned off a flag system, so it was very easy to have fun with that since people couldn't tell how strong your equipment was. This was a legit game mechanic and made for amazing pvp, with a ton of variation. But a side effect of that was that griefers(like myself!)would use this to our advantage to trick players into giving us easy pvp points. In your argument, since this is a legit game mechanic and I was getting points towards pvp gear, that isn't griefing. I played AO for over ten years, much like SWG and UO, and if you were to tell those players they weren't being "griefed", they'd probably try to grief *you*.

SWG also had mechanics for this, early on a few classes could cause "wounds". What these did was black out your various health/mind/stam bars, to the point where you could only have 1/1/1 total with the entire bar being black. You'd then have to go sit with a player who's playing a doctor and take 30 minutes to heal. This is a premium griefing mechanic, I made great use of it. But again, because this is a game mechanic, in your mind, it's not griefing even though I've just stolen your ability to really play the game at all. This mechanic was highly useful for big pvp because you could actually win battles without people just leaving due to boredom/IRL schedules/etc, but boy it caused a LOT of grief. Also it was hilarious.

WOW, too, had mechanics that allowed for this. The best example I can think of is when I caught some Alliance scrubs farming gorillas at stranglethorn. These gorillas had like a super low chance to drop a tooth, and once you had 10 or 20 teeth; you could spawn the miniboss. I had this quest, and I went there only to find 2 Alliance players having farmed the teeth(took like an hour)and spawned the boss. So I killed them both and the boss, and got the quest item for my efforts. This is griefing, I just cost them an hour or so of time and even stole the quest item for myself, saving ME an hour. This was a legit mechanic too.

EVE is more recent, but the game *allowed* scamming, among other things, because they knew that the environment they had created would lead to it no matter what, they were simply smart about it and accepted THAT'S JUST HOW SPACE IS. Though they may have cracked down on that lately, it was definitely perfectly legit gameplay for many, many years. Giving my old forum friends tons of entertainment, money and power. Again, was a game mechanic that devs were very aware of; yet it caused more pubby tears than almost anything else in other mmos.

Griefing is getting your rocks off doing something that "generally" is upsetting to a player. Trolling, originally, was a form of griefing. It was pretending to play a character and getting your marks to believe you. This doesn't exist anymore, at least, it's more a rarity because we live in an age where irony and sarcasm are lost on people and anyone who says they're "trolling" is a 14 year old kid that yells "u mad bro" over and over whenever they get owned. It's a sad state of affairs, truly, but having grown up with actual griefing for 15+ years, with the very forum that made the term, does spoil me a bit.

To clarify since someone else mentioned it: If an actual griefer said they were "roleplaying" to you after having caused you problems, they were lying. I know this, because I did it many, many times. An easy mark would believe you, and you'd use that newfound belief to cause even more grief. Roleplayers have ALWAYS been easy marks, and some of the most entertaining to boot. Nobody that was a "true" griefer was a roleplayer.

Also, just because I like griefing doesn't mean that's all players like me want from a game. For example, I was always a major crafter and I always offered help to people that weren't turds. However, if you were a turd, no quarter was shown. That's how it should be.

Last edit: I feel like if you didn't live thru those games you didn't really understand griefing, but it's okay! A somewhat recent streamer perfectly encapsulated what griefing actually is! He gained a ton of popularity for it because he's one of the best at this old art form. DayZ and Arma are actually some of the absolute best games for griefing from recent years, here's one of my favourite vids from him:

I feel griefed over these statements. Pirul you're a griefer!

@JimmyTheHand is absolutely right.