Pirates VS Griefers

[Neon_42]

There are several discussions that have been floating around the internet about role play as a pirate vs griefing. This is an inheriting problem in space sims and it is time we had this discussion in Starmade. Griefers are different than pirates and it is important to make this distinction so that griefers cannot hide behind the screen of role play.

So lets define Pirates

1. Pirates don't attack without incentive.
   • This is probably the biggest difference between a Griefer and a Pirate. Pirates will attack to steal your ship, your resources, or credits. They will not blow you up for the sake of just blowing someone up. They won't go after players just for the sake of destroying their ships or structures.
2. Pirates don't engage in fair fights.
   • Pirates don't pick fights on fair footing. The look to attack and profit. Pirates won't attack a well fortified position at great risk to themselves. They look for easier prey.
3. Pirates rely on fear and ruthlessness.
   • Pirates have to have a reputation of being a pirate. So if their prey resit they resort to violence, if their prey surrender to their demands they are left unharmed.

Basically anything that doesn't fall into these three categories can be considered griefing. Vengeance quests, arbitrarily targeting players, repeatedly killing players, ect. We need to make sure the rules on a server, and of the game, reflect this difference so we do not limit the PvP experience i.e. people need to be able to loose but loosing shouldn't be detrimental. That being said, If you cant stand losing a ship or you base bing damaged, then maybe single player, or a creative server, is for you. A Role Play , survival, or PvP server will likely have pirates and involve some risk to your creations.

 

[sayerulz]

Yea, any time someone "raids" or "pirates" in any game and then just destroys all the items the collect I have to call BS.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Actually they usually use the "We are a psychotic evil cult that attacks whoever does not follow our ways." trope.

 

[sayerulz]

Actually they usually use the "We are a psychotic evil cult that attacks whoever does not follow our ways." trope.

Which I also call BS on, because it is used way to commonly be EVERYONE. I mean, look in the faction forum....

 

[Reilly Reese]

Which I also call BS on, because it is used way to commonly be EVERYONE. I mean, look in the faction forum....

:/

Trinova =/=
Trident =/=
Vaygr =/=
OOB =/=

So who are you referring to?

 

[sayerulz]

None of the major factions, just the 100000 small ones that crop up and then vanish.

I've seen a ton of them, with stuff like:

"we will spread terror throughout the universe"

"We will bring chaos and death to all"

"the [insert generic evil name] seek only to cause destruction and mayhem"

 

[Tydeth]

There is ObiShawn's Rogue Shadows faction in the forums that is all "We will attack everyone, ever! We are evil." or some such.

The real question is how to separate some of those activities, which can be legitimate pvp (such as wars in the case of repeat kills), from griefers. What scope defines one versus the other?

 

[Master_Artificer]

Inverse is OOB who is "ally everyone because we are good"

 

[StormWing0]

Which I also call BS on, because it is used way to commonly be EVERYONE. I mean, look in the faction forum....

>_> Yes lets lump those of us that didn't nothing wrong in with those bad apples that ruined the truck on the way to the market. >_>

:/

Trinova =/= EVERYONE
Trident =/= EVERYONE
Vaygr =/= EVERYONE
OOB =/= EVERYONE

So who are you referring to?

StormWingDelta =/= EVERYONE

As you can tell saying EVERYONE and expecting that to hold is like trying to hold water with a strainer. >_>

 

[HeartUponSleeve]

There are several discussions that have been floating around the internet about role play as a pirate vs griefing. This is an inheriting problem in space sims and it is time we had this discussion in Starmade. Griefers are different than pirates and it is important to make this distinction so that griefers cannot hide behind the screen of role play.

So lets define Pirates

1. Pirates don't attack without incentive.
   • This is probably the biggest difference between a Griefer and a Pirate. Pirates will attack to steal your ship, your resources, or credits. They will not blow you up for the sake of just blowing someone up. They won't go after players just for the sake of destroying their ships or structures.
2. Pirates don't engage in fair fights.
   • Pirates don't pick fights on fair footing. The look to attack and profit. Pirates won't attack a well fortified position at great risk to themselves. They look for easier prey.
3. Pirates rely on fear and ruthlessness.
   • Pirates have to have a reputation of being a pirate. So if their prey resit they resort to violence, if their prey surrender to their demands they are left unharmed.

Basically anything that doesn't fall into these three categories can be considered griefing. Vengeance quests, arbitrarily targeting players, repeatedly killing players, ect. We need to make sure the rules on a server, and of the game, reflect this difference so we do not limit the PvP experience i.e. people need to be able to loose but loosing shouldn't be detrimental. That being said, If you cant stand losing a ship or you base bing damaged, then maybe single player, or a creative server, is for you. A Role Play , survival, or PvP server will likely have pirates and involve some risk to your creations.

I completely disagree with every point you have made.

In PVP games, or games where PVP is a significant aspect (like StarMade) there is no such thing as griefing, there are more reasons to attack players then to gain something, for example being a Glory Seeker, or being at war with someone or even trying to put your enemy at a strategic disadvantage, for example, blockading a homebase to kill players upon them spawning in allows the attacker to prevent a hostile force from being able to mobilize against the attacking factions assets, whenever it be the blockading fleet or something else, such as a outpost or mining operation, and there are ways to counter every form of "griefing" for example, in this case you could request an friendly force to engage the blockading vessels, draw their fire and allow you to mobilize a counterattack.

If there are rules against "Griefing" in a PVP game, or PVP scenarios within a game, then it is no longer PVP.

 

[StormWing0]

Even among the PvP Communities there are some very general DOs and DON'Ts that should never have to be written down.

1. NO Spawn Camping!!!!!
2. No Intentionally Trying to Ruin other player's day unless they are trying to do it to you in the first place.
3. No trying to intentionally run players out of the server of game. (AKA no being an ass and making it unplayable for others)
4. (In Starmade's Case): No Attacking while no one is online and unable to fight back. <-- This might change when we can automate things better since the NPCs could fight back and rebuild as able.

Keep in mind these are just some basic rules that apply in a lot of games and there for those to prove they have even the slightest shred on honor in them in a fight.

 

[jayman38]

The fact is, there is no difference. It's all-too-easy to slip from mere piracy to griefing. In fact, it's a subjective viewpoint anyway, because a fair and balanced act of piracy to one person is unfun griefing to another person.

In fact, the viewpoint can change within the same player from day to day. I have noticed that on days when I don't have as much energy and patience, a combat scenario that would seem like a fair loss on a good day suddenly becomes a horrible time.

To accurately define griefing players, you would need a weighted reporting system with rudimentary "business intelligence" automated analysis. And then, griefing factions would use that system to mass-report relatively-innocent targets as griefers, thus defeating the system.

If you feel you are being unfairly griefed....

 

[FlyingDebris]

War is when both parties have a goal and are willing to fight. Griefing is when someone puts a basecamping station right outside of your HB.

 

[Gonzalo]

As jayman38 said, to me as well this seems to be very subjective of what is piracy and griefing. I mean on the starbits server, base camping was necessary to speed up the drainage of faction points. Otherwise the players would simply go out, claim more territory and regain their points. In this case it was a strategic move to grief.

 

[StormWing0]

War is when both parties have a goal and are willing to fight. Griefing is when someone puts a basecamping station right outside of your HB.

I love sticking my missile storm turrets on my HB at that point and causing them to get spawn camped for their own stupidity. XD

 

[Reilly Reese]

As jayman38 said, to me as well this seems to be very subjective of what is piracy and griefing. I mean on the starbits server, base camping was necessary to speed up the drainage of faction points. Otherwise the players would simply go out, claim more territory and regain their points. In this case it was a strategic move to grief.

You could just as easily do patrols or daily raids of claim stuff. Sitting on top of someone isn't fun for them at all and honestly should be equally boring for you.

 

[HeartUponSleeve]

War is when both parties have a goal and are willing to fight. Griefing is when someone puts a basecamping station right outside of your HB.

Please google the definition of a war.

War is almost never mutual.

 

[Lukwan]

So...I guess we also need to discuss the definitions of PvP.

If PvP implies 'no holds barred' then anything goes. Do we all lack the imagination to find ways to grief on a PvP server? I'm pretty sure I could find ways to make my self unwelcome in any environment without rules.

What then is the term for a server that wants to allow Player-Conflict but also maintain some rules to keep it fun for people who don't want to play on a cut-throat PvP server. I ask because I sincerely want both options and I want to able to choose between different server styles. Schine has plans for formal arena-contests so there will be mechanics in place for the community to set up a server with a range of PvP options.

Absolute statements like 'Griefing does not exist' do not contribute to the dialog.

 

[Nauvran]

Please google the definition of a war.

War is almost never mutual.

Real life war isn't the same as Starmade war.

 

[Sgtwisky]

I would say one rule to determine if its a valid "war" or "pirate" is that the player being attacked is not being robbed of their ability to play the game. So in the case of HB camping, it can cause an instance where the player cannot actually play because they just insta-die when they try to do anything other then sit inside their station. Odds are even if they have ally's they may have to wait some time for them to arrive... or even get online.

If your actions make the game, to where the other player might as well just log off until you finish, or must wait for possibly hours, or even until the next day for someone to get them out of the mess its almost certainly griefing.

Now... if your actively engaging a station with the intent to destroy it (and you have the ability to do so) and an unlucky player has their spawn there.... I wouldn't call it griefing. I would say its still not fun for that player though. BUT if your attacking a station its expected you brought the right ship for the job and it shouldn't take you an hour to do the job. Though in the moment it would be easy for the player being stuck there to think it was griefing.

As far as camping stations goes, maybe we need to be able to choose multiple spawn points (say 3 or something) and select them when we are killed? This way you don't have to spawn at the station that is under attack and you can attempt a counter attack from another station.


Any war where the attacking parties goal is to run that group out of the server, or to destroy every thing their target owns until they are stuck floating in space with nothing, would also be griefing. IMO.

I would like to add "Revenge"as one of the RP reasons pirates can use to attack. but it has to be a one time thing. not a revenge war, but more like killing the offending player once or destroying a ship that destroyed them ect. You shouldn't be going "I will KOS you forever now !". I think much more then the scale of a single death or single station kill or ship kill is going too far.

Myself and the group I used to be in (heavy in PvP in many games including rust, ark, 7days, ect.) always had some kind of "Unspoken Rules" when fighting. We never bothered with lowbies for example because there was nothing in it for us. Unless they did something to really piss us off. Like building their hut right next to our base, or throwing chat insults at us all day. That kind of thing.

Those are just my initial thoughts anyway.