I’m interesting in the mentality I guess. The one who does things like Lightnin’ mentioned above:
I’d be willing to bet they got zero xp for it and no favor (I think that’s what Rift has). It was deliberate griefing on a non pvp server. So that old “just roll on a pvp server you whiner” doesn’t apply.
What type person gets off on that?
Hell, I’ve encountered griefing in CoH PvE! Once when the team leader, who was also the mission holder, apparently trained the entire office level to the front door before anyone else entered so all we saw was a sea of reds and purples then the floor.
So why do PVPers insist on unconsensual PVP on PVE servers?
The kind of person who gets off on flouting “You can’t do that.” Alas, there’s no legal obligation to be nice, or even to be civil. Moral obligation is disputable and ultimately based on whose morals you’re using as a standard. For a lot of people, “it’s not wrong if it’s not illegal.” (In game terms, “if the game engine lets me do it”.)
I have half-jokingly addressed these people as socially defective, but they are useful in the big picture; they’re the source of chaos and energy behind change. Nice people are hard to get riled up to do the unpleasant things that occasionally need doing, like revolutions or wars.
No one said that rolling PvE is a guaranteed safeguard. Safety is overrated, especially in a game. The near-psychotic fear of “bad things happening to good people” is behind any number of past and current social panics.
Think about it this way. Trolling and ganking is human nature; The harder you try to restrain this mindset (and the resultant acts), the more restrictive the resulting environment. The restraints on behavior required to “completely eliminate” these would require such grievous impositions on the underlying liberty of action in the game environment that it would be damaging to those least in need of restraint.
It’s only slightly hyperbolic in this context to quote Frankly: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The principle is the same, even if played out on a much smaller stage.
I suspect the benefit to the ganker is the rush of accomplishment at overcoming a fairly formidable technical barrier in the game mechanics, and the kill is just the mark on the scorecard to prove it.
Why do hackers deface websites? To prove they can. That’s a huge part of the “lulz”.
And the big reason why LulzSec won’t be brought down. The only way you can stop these people is by taking away their laughs so it gets boring. Make it boring for them.
The Rift thing mentioned above? After the first incident, either be more careful with your AoE in that area, or go play in another area. Griefer continuing to follow you around? That’s why you rolled on a PvE server - so you can file a ticket about non-consensual PvP. Ignore the troll. Is he standing over your dead body waiting for you to rez so he can gank you again? Walk to the corner store and buy a Coke. When you come back, he’ll have moved on to a different target.
I used to try and actively fight the trolls. Then I realized taking away their lulz is like taking away their oxygen.
All good points. Gankers, like trolls, feed on reaction. So don’t react. Delay rezzing. (This becomes part of the metagame, though; some gankers I’ve encountered have been dedicated enough to wait a good long while, preferably in hiding/stealth/on a flying mount waaaay up and listening on the combat chat for signs their target has rezzed).
Annoying as it is, you can at least admire the cleverness of some of the tactics. At least in the abstract. While you ticket the game monitors about the event, so that maybe they’ll get suspended, or maybe the in-game loophole will get closed.
A bully.
No, I guess I can’t.
I figure the PVE’ers have paid a subscription to play a game, and are being harassed to where they cannot play.
Very noble sounding. Instead what happens is that those more restrictive rules are imposed, and people put up with them because they are less irritating than the gankers & griefers. And people simply leave the game permanently, or the area of the game that such people are active in. They get their jollies, and damage the game in the process.
No. Screw that. Everything human is part of human nature, that doesn’t mean anyone has to roll over and take it! Trolling/ganking is a choice, and a dickish one. People have the right to act like dicks when it’s necessary, but that comes with the responsibility to avoid pissing other people off for no reason. You address them, half-jokingly, as “socially defective”. I agree.
I’ll go with socially defective. This is something new though, there weren’t that many bullies in school you know? This is something created by anonymity because these people wouldn’t dare pull this in person.
It’s like someone who would kick you while you’re passed out or asleep (with no provocation).
Wasn’t there a South Park episode about that? And after the characters had FINALLY kicked his guy out of the game, they said, “Now we can finally play the game!”
When I started WoW at the beginning, I chose PvP because it makes the game more interesting. I didn’t go out and gank lowbies often, but if I ran into some… let’s just say that they had accidents. 
Most of the time the PvP stuff was fairly equally levelled and that was okay. I still remember mind controlling people into lava outside the Molten Core. Fun times. My opinion is that if you don’t like griefers, don’t play on line with strangers. Playing Diablo 2 there were griefers, I just used high level characters to arm lower level characters to the max and I’d grief the griefers… even though they had 10 or 12 levels on me.
I’m an EVE and WoW PVPer, in both I could be described as “hardcore”, and I don’t think you have really subdivided the populations enough to draw reasonable conclusions.
From my point of view, with something like 17 years of cumulative MUD and MMORPG experience, you have the following types of people in these kind of games:
PvEers–they want to play “the game”, and have no interest in interacting with other people in a non-collaborative setting. Hardcore raiders who don’t touch PvP live here, as do loredorks and some straight roleplayers.
Casual PvPers–the kind of folks who make up the majority in EVE and (maybe) on WoW PVP servers–they are there to play the game, but will engage in PVP combat if it’s opportune and beneficial. Many raiders live here, as do many roleplayers.
Hardcore PvPers–the kind of folks who play pirate groups on EVE and level up in battlegrounds on WoW–they think the only real fun in the game is when facing other players, and will use any method within the rules to gain status/money/etc on their character at the expense of other players. I personally fall into this group. Now, I note that for a “Hardcore” PvPer, in-game status is ultimately the thing being striven for. I won’t kill you in EVE if it doesn’t profit me to do so. I won’t kill you in WoW if it’s not going to get me a Honorable Kill. However, if you’re (for an EVE example) a newbie in a very valuable ship you clearly don’t have the experience to fly, I’m going to do my damnedest to gank you and take the loot within the rules of the game. By the same token, I won’t kill you in WoW if I won’t get Honor for it, unless it’s in self-defense–and even then, I’m just as likely to hex you and wander off before I get ganked by your high-level buddy.
Trolls/Griefers–these are the people who might be mentally ill or bullies or whatever. The distinguishing factor between these guys and “hardcore PvPers” is that the benefit they gain from killing is metagame–that is, they are killing your character to enrich themselves at the expense of you personally, whereas the previous group is killing your character to enrich their character at the expense of your character. A distressingly large number of PvPers in any context fall into this group, and they’re the ones most frequently seen exploiting bugs, killing lowbies, etc. Interestingly, the typical “Hardcore PvP” guy hates these guys more than anyone else, because to the people in groups 1 and 2, it’s hard to distinguish between 3 & 4 in all contexts.
Even then, I don’t think that you could generalize the latter group as “mentally ill”–most bullies are not mentally ill, and the behaviors are the same; i.e., exploiting the system for their personal jollies at your expense.
I would fall into the hard core pvp gamer as well. having played a pile of fps games and many other types of pvp games as well.
in context of WoW one simple reason for ganking lowbies is that they are on the other team.
like in pretty much any war you dont base your choices on killing the other guys based on how much of a badass they are but on the fact that they wear the other uniform.
while killing lowbies isnt really my cup of tea I have done it many times under many circumstances. One of my favorite things to do when I played WoW was to sneak my 65 horde rogue into an ally town and kill whatever allies I could. the challenge in this case is not dying to the guards who were largely immune to my rogues escape capabilities. getting into an ally town killing 6 ally players and not dying causes a crap ton of chaos for the other team and quite frankly cracks me up when I get away with it.
one of my other favorite things to do in WoW was when I had a few RL friends, there were 4-5 rogues and one warlock who we affectionately called “Bait” we loved it when some high lvl ally would see the bait and move in to attack the closest rogue would stun and start the attack then the other rogues would move in and stun as they arrived. most players were dead before they ever became unstunned. we would kill some really high level toons this way and yeah some times they would kill a few of us in the process but that is why you play the game, to lay the ambush, to lead the charge, to overrun the enemy. beating the games ai is a joke.
regarding the anonymity part I played on an EQ server where you only had one toon, you werent known for who you were in real life but you had no alts to play if you were a big enough douche to piss the other teams off to they point that they hunted you. even on this server there were a few jackasses, most of them fell into the category of true griefers. using out of game software to cheat. they were the ones most likely to end up banned.
also instead of thinking of it as a pvp server try thinking of it as a Competitive server. in any competitive environment humans will lie, steal, cheat, and do whatever it takes to get ahead. its foolish to think otherwise in the face of pretty much all of human history. so in any team based environment its pretty much expected. people who dont expect this behavior (imho) are the ones who arent seeing things clearly. killing lowbies from the other side is a dick move but its also a dick move that again humans have done throughout history, killing your competitors for food/water/women/territory/whatever has been s.o.p. humans are the only species who really understands that those people living over there will one day want what we have over here and we should probably kill or drive them off now while they are weak and we are strong because in the future they could be the strong ones.
(no I am not saying this is the actual thought process, but somewhere buried in our primitive brains those ideas are rolling around)
so when players come from a pve mindset (or a Co-operative mindset) they are used to helping each other out, giving a hand up and in general being cool dudes.
in the real world I hate the competitive obsession Americans have over everything and anything. its destructive at a level that is strangling every aspect of life from the economy to education.
in the game world? gimme some fool who I can shoot in the face every single time.
(I do have a soft spot for Minecraft, but I cant wait for stable multiplayer servers)
This is where you’re wrong.
Depending on the game, they’ve paid to play a PvE AND PvP game. 99% of games with PvP have offered some sort of PvE ruleset where you can kill mobs on your own/with friends until the damn cows come home.
Even UO, what many would consider the game of absolute ruthlessness, adopted Trammel, which allowed players to PvE in peace.
Don’t subscribe to a game and join a server with a ruleset that doesn’t appeal to you. That just makes absolutely no sense. You must be masochistic to do something like that.
Anytime I’ve EVER registered for an online game, I’ve made sure to familiarize myself with the ruleset. If there is a shred of a chance of PvP that could interrupt my PvE, I am at the very least aware of it. I may not like it, but I agreed to it when I created the character.
:smack:
Now, if you’re playing said PvE game, and someone griefs you by exploiting geometry, harassing you via private messages, etc., then yes, that falls into the realm of unacceptable. Killed (even repeatedly) by a higher level on a game with a PvP/PvE ruleset is entirely fair game, so adapt or leave.
There are instances where, in a game/server that’s mostly PvP, the game designers have made areas that are explicitly NOT PvP (in WoW, these areas are called “sanctuaries” and are clearly delineated, or have guards that will one-shot even high level characters starting a fight). I’ve seen instances where bullies do, in fact, exploit geometry to either harass other players, deny them access to NPC’s/other things, or to trigger penalties on other players… and that is wrong, even if the kiddies like to snigger about how clever they are.
I don’t see people QQ’ing (as the gamers say) over PvP at high levels between players in a fair (that is, according to the rules of the game) fight. Having to watch for enemies while I’m out doing my thing just adds to the complexity and challenge as far as I’m concerned, and most days I’m OK with that (when I’m not, I play in an PvE environment). But when some tool is camping on an NPC for 30 minutes (so far, my record is someone who corpse-camped my toon for over two hours, that is, just sat there in a game staring at my dead character for two hours!, while I cruised on-line forums while waiting him out 'cause I was curious just how long he’d stay there) and taunting others to attack in an area with one-shot guards or in a protected area, or a pack of level 85’s in WoW are hunting lone level 25’s then corpse-camping them that goes from “playing the game” to “being a jerkwad”.
Odd how often those same little slimes show up a day or two later in the forums crying about how they’ve been warned or suspended for exploiting some little trick to make the game inaccessible to others or indulge in harassment. There are limits to PvP, though it varies by game. In quite a few games with PvP the rules do state those limits and it’s a good idea to, you know, actually read them before playing, both if you’re an ordinary person (so you know what you’re getting into) and if you’re a bully (so you know what you can get away with).