You MUST do something to combat griefers.

Good points have been made about the complexity of countering griefing automatically.

If it proves out that us players and admins have to do the heavy lifting, then we will need better tools for the job. Some suggestions have already been made.

In short, it has to be easy to spot and get rid of a griefer. Right now I'm unable to join to vote to kick an accused griefer, because I have no idea if the person is griefing or not.

 

Did I understand correctly that, currently, you are not temporarily banned after you have been vote-kicked? If so, this is something that could be looked into.

About Auburn's suggestion, sure, if it is easy to gather and submit enough evidence for admins, and admins are quick to react. Otherwise some poor soul might be banned for a good while-- innocent even!

 

Maybe implementing a passive anti-grief program would work. As Kouji brought up, there was a system that prevented teammates from breaking a block that would collapse a building that they have made. It was annoying for those who just wanted to remake a better defensive structure.

So, implementing a passive anti-grief program that would simply say how many blocks a person has collapsed after they have collapsed something to the public could work. After which point, a new option for that player comes up, a vote-ban option. So for a limited time, the server gets the option to vote-ban, but only after the person has destroyed a structure. And depending on how many blocks were collapsed would determine additional vote ban options 30, 60, etc.

You could even have it so a temp-ban is issued if someone collapses X amount of a structure and then leaves.

I know this doesn't take care of the other types of griefing, like pitting, but it deals with the most major one.

Thoughts?

 

Toffie, kegs or something explosive does no damage to bedrock, thats one greifing substitute done.

As for everything else, its pretty much no possible way to stop greifers from doing what they do except for regular gaurd patrols and a few more admins on each server.

@revsta, i think alot of people get where your coming from, but here me out. Not everything can be grief "proof" persay because like kouji said it will limit your team aswell.

As for vote-kicking, i think maybe banning them by their username may be suffice, considering they cant reset their IP on that can they?

 

Would be great if you could track how many "friendly" blocks a player has destroyed. Sure, every player of any class will destroy some, but a player with tons of destroyed "friendly" blocks should be kept an eye on.

If tracking the whole number doesn't tell much, perhaps keep track of players who maintain a high ratio of "destroyed friendly blocks/minute".

I don't mean instantly kick and ban the person, but some kind of a signal would make it easier for players to spot griefers, and perhaps help them determine whether to vote yes on the vote-kick.

What's the worst that could happen? A clumsy player gets kicked and banned for a moment for being careless.

If the player gets vote-kicked again soon after returning, congratulations, you have found a griefer. Now give him/her a longer ban. And then a longer ban.

 

Yes. That is a good point Bernhardt. If a new player accidentally griefs it still means he should be punished, but then he can learn from his mistakes.

If he comes back and does it again, then he is a greifer and should be punished for a longer amount of time.

Also, I don't know how easy it would be to track a team/enemy structure rather than just leaving it open both team's destruction.

TBH, I see knights destroying buildings more than builders. So I don't see having it track team based destruction as something that is needed. Though, disabling the tracking for knight/archer would be something to discuss aswell.

 

@Duplolas What do you think of including griefing in the scoring system somehow, and allowing the scoreboard to track and display negative score too?

I mean, in FPS games (these have been referred to earlier, and concluded that they are simpler to handle than building games when it comes to griefing), you can just check the scoreboard and see if someone has negative kills. If a player has negative kills, he most likely is a team killer.

 

Actually. Thats not a bad idea. Publically listing someone as a previous griefer would be good too. Allows players better be ready if they grief, they then know that it wasn't likely to be an accident.

Only negative is that if someone else griefs, blame may be put on someone who is labeled as one in game, rather than the actual person.

 

Again, this is a bad example. Firstly, because Minecraft has maps that are unlimited and randomly generated, and the fun is in the building, and many servers keep backups of the maps for this very reason. It's also not a competitive game. You can't grief your own team. All you can do in Minecraft is destroy somebody's building, and while annoying and terrible, it isn't the same as ruining the game for 6+ of your team mates.

Also, Minecraft HAS plenty of anti-griefing protection plugins that people run, so if you don't own the land the building is on you can't modify it, or bricks re-appear after you destroy them, or servers with newbies who get no privileges until they're new on the server for a while etc. etc. etc. The anti-griefing goes on and on in MC. I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a completely open to the public Minecraft server that doesn't have any anti-griefing protections on it that actually has people playing on it.

In an FPS, there are also ways of handling griefers ie. turning friendly fire off. The consequences in an FPS of griefing are also different. A griefer has to have the skill to kill his team mates without being killed himself. This is not the case in KAG, as there is no team killing and no way to deal with a griefer if you're a random player. You simply have to watch as he ruins your game. In an FPS you could camp spawn, the entire team could gang up on the griefer until he leaves etc. etc.

KAG is unique in its griefing problems, and those of you who say you 'haven't seen a game ruined by griefing' need to look into what is done in games that are overrun by griefers. Things like MC and FPS have protections that can be put in place, and MMOs have been absolutely ruined by people who exploit bugs and grief other players and the admins do nothing, and their population drops to only the ass holes playing.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 22, 2013, Original Post Date: Nov 22, 2013 ---

This could easily be a server side implemented feature ie. the admin sets the number of destroyed friendly blocks in a set period of time that brings up an alert. So say a team mate just dropped 90 blocks in 2 seconds, an alert vote comes up, JUST for the team that player is on, asking the team if that guy is griefing. If the vote response is yes, there could be an auto kick or a warning or whatever.

If the griefer is slowly churning away and all that, the plugin reads his activity differently and initiates the same vote. Or perhaps have a team only vote so if the team doesn't like the person they don't have to worry about the other team voting no to keep a griefer and help their side.

 

How about this idea.
Considering most of us are Admins on a few servers, yall should know about the block counters mentioned in chat when someone drops some stuffs. My idea is this, place a system where each team has a limit on how many blocks may fall at one time on said team. This kinda system is hidden obviously and cannot be seen by anyone what so ever except mods or admins.

Each time someone breaks something, be it a shop or something, they will get marked... like what Luigi says above with his three strikes idea... only difference is that when someone breaks blocks, if they exceed the max stone count on said structure, they will get a warning appearing on the screen asking what are they doing. If they choose the option "Nothing" then they are let go. Now, the system itself will keep his/her answer on log, a.k.a Check mark.

Now, if for whatever reason, a player on that guys team decides "Oh, this guy is griefing!" The system itself will count up the number of times that player said "nothing" and will remove him on sight... The amount of time this ban will be also depends on the check marks the system counts off. If the guy had 1 tick, he wont be banned instantly. Instead, the system will let the players decide. If they dont, then if the person does it again and gets 2 ticks, the system will let them decide one more time. If a third tick comes up.. then the player will be banned automatically for 15 minutes. And.... if the player continues to grief while the vote kick is active, he will be auto kicked if he breaks anything beyond a certain block limit.

Each check mark btw, only lasts 30 minutes, so if the griefer does a grief in that time span, then bam... another check mark for the system to count off.
Can this be abused. Possibly. Is there loopholes, maybe, but that depends on the owners input of the limits of blocks or check marks...

Sooo yea. Obviously this is one complicated system, but it seems solid to me. :o

 

That's what I said like 2 posts above...

 

>o>
Really? D:
I dont think I've seen it o-o
Wait.. nevermind. Found it. xD

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 23, 2013 ---

I didn't mean like everywhere. Just meant like.. it can be chosen. o-o

 

This is a great suggestion. An in-game command would be just the kind of a tool that would make it easier for players to make use of the existing human resources. Having followed this discussion since the start, it seems that relying on admins and guards is the way many would like to go (and we probably will), instead of a heavy automatic anti-griefing system.

I mentioned that if admins and guards is the way we will go, give us better tools to spot and report griefers. The suggestion above would help with the latter part nicely.

And this would help with the former part.

I'm a fan of light fixes when possible. This would be easy to implement and would allow players to spot griefers more easily. There's nothing like human judgement (like the people voting for more admins and guards are saying). Give us a little more time to make the call. Being able to spawn a couple of times and see for ourselves would be just the thing we need to check what is happening in our base.

 

easy
1. implement the anti grief system again to detect potential griefers
2. disable the security building system
3. Add a "rating system" that decrease the amount of votes needed to kick a player with a bad rating. Stuff like time on the Server, k/d, amount of destroyed blocks should affect the rating value.
4. while someone is marked for kicking with a bad ranking activate the "security building system" again to prevent further griefing