The reason I think it will stop most is your progression will be slower. There is a boost to your attributes at different ages, You get a boost to physical attributes while you are younger and boost to mental attributes as you get older. Mental attributes actually help you focus and research faster. That's another time in your life where you want to grind out skill. Over time, gankers would be easier to deal with because they didn't round out their characters.

Another big thing is, this is a community game. In world of warcraft, if I see someone get ganked while gathering, I just kind of laugh and say "Sucks for them." In CoE, if you are out ganking gathers in my county, you are slowing my production down and messing with my money at that point. It's selfish but people will care about others that cannot fight. We need people like that.

When you commit a crime and get caught, it also affects your family rep. Your family will have a harder time with npcs, prices will go up, some may refuse to flat out sell to them. It's going to be annoying to have a ganker in your family. Unless you want bad rep. I don't think non-pvpers would want anything to do with gankers. At least anything that can be traced back to them.

There is gameplay for catching criminals! I have always been a pvper. Games normally, reward you for killing and stealing, barely any games reward you for protecting people. CoE does. Myself for example, I'm going to be an investigator and I want to hear when someone gets attacked. My fun in this game will be tracking down and fighting criminals. That may seem like it would just be fun for them too but being a ganker with no backing, no organization, everyone knows who you are, and everyone attacks you on sight, that gets old fast.

Who I think it won't stop are whales that don't care about dying because it's just pocket change to them. That's not going to be everyone though.

This has been discussed, at length, many times.

The short answer is that griefers will not have safe zones or reliable sources of gear to fall back on and get re-equipped once they've burned every bridge. Everything can be lost, including your home. Pretty hard to grief when you're naked, penniless, and no one will take you in...

Harbonah your thought mirror much of my own worries with the game because of past experience with griefing. I love the idea but I don't believe anything they've said here will really hinder or stop griefers. I'm still willing to give it a try since I love the idea of the game. Still, I will not be surprised if they're a lot of upset people complaining in the first month after a few griefs come around and destroy everything they've been working days on or bought in seconds. The simple fact is the effort people put into the building, taming, crafting is likely to be more than whatever the grief will suffer, plus as you touch on they get the joy of wrecking another players game experience.

Posted By Dream Guardian at 7:04 PM - Wed Sep 18 2019

Harbonah your thought mirror much of my own worries with the game because of past experience with griefing. I love the idea but I don't believe anything they've said here will really hinder or stop griefers. I'm still willing to give it a try since I love the idea of the game. Still, I will not be surprised if they're a lot of upset people complaining in the first month after a few griefs come around and destroy everything they've been working days on or bought in seconds. The simple fact is the effort people put into the building, taming, crafting is likely to be more than whatever the grief will suffer, plus as you touch on they get the joy of wrecking another players game experience.

It will take more than seconds to do damage to buildings. You might be able to steal stuff, but you won't be burning down someone's home, unless you have siege weapons. Then you have to take the stuff somewhere. if you want to get away with more than an arm full of goods, you need a backpack, a wagon, or something to carry it all in.

Now that you have your stolen goods, what do you do with them? Well, you leave town, no one in that town will likely want your stolen goods. So off to the next town you go, 20 mins later you arrive, sell your stolen goods, and figure you need a new target. Well, you look around in the new town, find a likely target, and strike. They fend you off, and now you are wanted for assault and attempted theft, so you run off and find another town.

Meanwhile, the first place you stole from the sherriff investigates, and finds evidence on who you were, follows your trail to the new town, finds that you sold goods there and promptly tried your luck again. Now they tie all the crimes together, send out word of your deeds, and a bounty is set on your head, with your description posted all over the County, and maybe even the next one.

Eventually, you aren't able to purchase food, you are beset upon by guards wherever you go, and someone is hot on your trail. Alone hungry, and out equipped you meet your untimely end at the end of a sword. Your crimes add up, and your spark is down 1 month of time, potentially you have some skill loss as well.

Not bad for a day or two, don't you think? Now people are looking out when you come around, you are poor, less skilled, and if you go at it again, will likely only become more so.

So do you give up the remaining 11 months of your character to start a new one? Defect to another kingdom to start your scourge there? Or do you find a place, where people are looking for someone wanting to go out and pillage someone for political gain?

I'd say maybe you change up your plan, work with some people against others, and while it still might suck for some of the people you are antagonizing, you'll actually get some good storied play out of working with "someone" rather than being a murderhobo. Even the people getting attacked by you actually have some way of working around your actions then.

As said before this has been brought up more then a few times but I might as well re express my thoughts. Being a bad guy in CoE is not griefing, its just filling the role that all kingdoms naturally have. You are in essence a bandit of sorts. Now if you are using loopholes to go around game mechanics that is an entirely different story and needs to be handled much higher then the player level.

Now I hope the crime and punishment mechanics can be balances to protect people while allowing deviancy to happen but the idea that someone could steal from you or even try to kill you is simply part of the game. That is what guards and investigators and constables are for.

Also as pointed out you cant simply pester me and then log out for the night. You will stay in game just as I will at all times so the notion that we are helpless is just false.

Imagine its the winter where being outside of town is extremely dangerous. Do you think some random person is going to kill all your chickens just for laughs when he cant chance being stuck in the freezing woods overnight?

Since this game rely both on PVE and PVP the entire situation rely on players themself, Sure some can be ganked, but then its up to the PVP community to protect and retaliate against those. Sure the NPC's should be able to act against it, but I doubt they will be powerful compared to a player. Both PVP and PVE is needed for a game to be alive, but they are different mindsets. So as I see it it's up to these communities for once to work together and not as normal be divided.

Most grievers are solo players or small groups (4-5) players. This amount of players in general wont be much of a threat to a town or bigger as these in general have trained soldiers. In addition every single NPC will defend themselves. You also dont know whose an NPC and who is a PC.

Like how Brynath explained actually griefing towns will be something that will only be possible for a really short time before you are identified and get caught. After being caught you get a lifespan penalty and wont be able to trade anything in said settlement.

It ofcourse also depends on the count of the region, of hes a mild count he might give you a 2nd chance. But for example myself I wont accept theft or banditry at all. Depending on the game mechanics i will make it so that the griever may be incapacitated or even killed on sight.

OP - I think you need to be more explicit in defining "griefers".

• Larger organised groups?
• Small groups not allied to an area?
• Solo players?
• People living in the area when you wander in armed?
• People who repeatedly kill you?

Its hard to comment without a proper definition.

I mean I really hate people "griefing" me by hardcore roleplaying and demanding I reply in "character" but I suspect always in character roleplayers disagree. ;)

Posted By Kyleran at 03:11 AM - Thu Sep 19 2019

Posted By Vucar at 10:52 PM - Wed Sep 18 2019

This has been discussed, at length, many times.

The short answer is that griefers will not have safe zones or reliable sources of gear to fall back on and get re-equipped once they've burned every bridge. Everything can be lost, including your home. Pretty hard to grief when you're naked, penniless, and no one will take you in...

Short rebuttal. Most likely players will run multiple accounts, using one for illicit activities and a second that is an outstanding citizen that will be used to launder ill gotten goods and resupply and harbor the criminal account.

Those living under the bridge know griefers are tricksy and find all the loopholes.

😈

That's fair, and as a would-be criminal, this is a strategy I have considered.

The danger therein is that every exchange between your known deviant account and your upstanding citizen account risks known association. Much like the real like Mafia - if a pattern of association is established, the upstanding citizen will have just as much scrutiny if business becomes too good.

Unlike real life, there will not be modern laws protecting the upstanding citizen from quick and harsh judgment from their overlords when its discovered who they really are.

The effect is that either this griefer burns too bright too quickly and his "blue" alt is blacklisted along with his red, or he is necessarily limited in the damage he can wreak because he cannot risk overt association with his blue alt.

I give griefing a broader definition on purpose because it is the word the developers used on their FAQ. I am certain there are varying levels of grief causing. They range from the occasional bandit attack to incessent harrassment and killing of any player from a particular village outside of a declared war. There are of course exceptional circumstances beyond that threshold but they are the exception to the rule.

My the point of this post was to general the kind of discussion we are having. Many people are sort of hand waving the issue around hypotheticals on how behavior will be curved.

I think everyone is ignoring the two most critical characteristics of folks who get their jollies off harming other players. First, they are annoyingly persistent. Second, they tend to be very incentive.

If I were someone who wanted to cause grief to a village, id do it in another kingdom. I'd probably operate from a border county, and I'd have an informal support network inside the county I live in but don't harrass. Right there, half the mechanics described here have just been nullified. Other than skill loss, they have no risk.

Just suggesting that we all consider the possibility that addressing the range of complex negative player interaction is going to require more than just a few assumptions on how threats of punishment will deter people.

Trolls will troll. If it isn't exceptionally painful to do so, it won't work.

Dang auto correct on the mobile phone. The second trait of griefers is being inventive, not incentive. Won't even let me edit the post. Sad face.

Posted By Harbonah at 07:54 AM - Thu Sep 19 2019

I give griefing a broader definition on purpose because it is the word the developers used on their FAQ. I am certain there are varying levels of grief causing. They range from the occasional bandit attack to incessent harrassment and killing of any player from a particular village outside of a declared war. There are of course exceptional circumstances beyond that threshold but they are the exception to the rule.

My the point of this post was to general the kind of discussion we are having. Many people are sort of hand waving the issue around hypotheticals on how behavior will be curved.

I think everyone is ignoring the two most critical characteristics of folks who get their jollies off harming other players. First, they are annoyingly persistent. Second, they tend to be very incentive.

If I were someone who wanted to cause grief to a village, id do it in another kingdom. I'd probably operate from a border county, and I'd have an informal support network inside the county I live in but don't harrass. Right there, half the mechanics described here have just been nullified. Other than skill loss, they have no risk.

Just suggesting that we all consider the possibility that addressing the range of complex negative player interaction is going to require more than just a few assumptions on how threats of punishment will deter people.

Trolls will troll. If it isn't exceptionally painful to do so, it won't work.

Well your village grief situation totally lines up with what I would suggest anyone who wants to go the route of banditry should take. At that point it is story for everyone, and there are ingame remedies to take to alleviate your actions, upto and including starting a war with the count that has allowed you to operate from his lands.

Many people might not like the specific actions you would be taking, but it fits in to the narrative as a whole and can then be dealt with. I actually wouldn't really consider that griefing at that point.

A murderhobo character will be annoying but probably not that big of a deal in the long run if they get the mechanics right. And hopefully we have enough time and people to test those situations in Beta or Alpha, so that people naturally get coerced into playing a story role, that adds some content for the people that like to hunt down murderhobos.

Posted By Harbonah at 08:54 AM - Thu Sep 19 2019

I give griefing a broader definition on purpose because it is the word the developers used on their FAQ. I am certain there are varying levels of grief causing. They range from the occasional bandit attack to incessent harrassment and killing of any player from a particular village outside of a declared war.

Posted By Harbonah at 08:54 AM - Thu Sep 19 2019

If I were someone who wanted to cause grief to a village, id do it in another kingdom. I'd probably operate from a border county, and I'd have an informal support network inside the county I live in but don't harrass. Right there, half the mechanics described here have just been nullified. Other than skill loss, they have no risk.

This is just raiding. You're describing raiding. Raiding is not griefing. Raiding is pvp and is a fully supported part of this game.

If you do not like the idea that other people may kill you and take things from you, you should not play this game, because it will happen.