Griefing, the Hellhole of AoS - How to Stop?

[Monsteri]

I'm sure everyone has experienced a moment where some ex.deuce comes and starts to wreck your shit. And it's not so rare that there is a group of them.
This game's community can't be called mature, most of the votekicks are useless ''g0DD4MN H4X0rz 41MB0TZ!!!'' type of things. And when there is a real votekick going on - mostly about griefers, pyspades stops hacking alright - the bitches rarely get their ass banned. And even if they do, by the time they've probably done their job already. They can also join back after 10 minutes to do it all again..

So what is the solution to this community problem?

= Better moderation.

However many servers don't have active admins - Minit is the only one I know that has - or if they have, not enough of them to cover it night and day. So I came to this idea (or a ripoff of KAG) about having global moderators. Officers, kinda.

First we need an account system. This should have happened ages ago, but sure I know it takes some effort to put one up too. Then the trustworthy people of AoS community can be chosen to global moderators - officers. They would have admin rights in every server (server option to disable them would be good), so the world would be a safer place..
To create an account you should only need to register in the main page to play, not check emails or anything.
But for a second account, you would need a second email, so it takes some effort to begin griefing again. Although multiple accounts for the same person should be disallowed.

Officers would hang out in IRC - and play the game normally ofc - so when someone sees a griefer and his retarded team refuses to kick the bitch, he could go into IRC and request an officer into that server. Surely the officers would be playing normally too, they're humans and players as everyone else - so a server that has an officer in it, would be safe.

Secondly, we need better admin tools. Pyspades has implemented some candies, but they are still not enough.

- Spectator mode for officers - to enter anytime. This way they could see better if someone is griefing, when someone starts to whine about a griefer. This could bring some issues with stealth elements being exposed, but the officers should not use it for their own advantage - they'd be the most trustworthy people of the community.

- Collapse log. When the griefing has already happened, it is hard to tell who did it. Simply pressing some button like home or page up would bring up a text field, which lists all the collapses happened in the server, the creator of them, and the amount of blocks destroyed. If the amount of blocks destroyed is large and just happened, you probably found the criminal.

- Freeze - to prevent griefing without exposing self to enemies. Freezing happens when you press a certain key and point at the griefer, so yeah, he gets frozen. The officer who froze him should also become intact, so he can talk to the griefer and ask what he's doing. The griefer - or a player, if the officer has mistaken - could explain himself during this time. If no proper explanation is given or if it is not valid, a ban should follow. To identify better who's frozen a red circle should appear around the one. Also there should be a button to unfreeze the player - because misunderstandings can happen.

- Teleport to a player. Yeah pyspades has already implemented this, but I'll say now before all the pyspades whiners: This should all be vanilla. Not all servers have pyspades, and shouldn't be reliable to have. So basically, you type in (I wish a proper menu for all these commands will be added in the future) /teleport, and the player's name or ID. This way you could find the griefer easier if his name is given. Again, this should not be used for the officers own advantage. They'd be the most trustworthy people of the community.

- Mute. Sometimes a player is just misbehaving and covering the whole chat, which is especially an issue because of the lack of chat logs. This should not lead into a ban or kick in my opinion. Before muting a player the officer should warn him about not repeating the offense. If the player still continues, /mute has its place.

- Own section here in forums.

A little about the banning system: If the officer decides to /ban a player, it would be global - since the same person could join other servers and begin it again - but it should last only for one hour. There should also be a /kick, which kicks the player out for 5 minutes, from the certain server.
This could be used for some minor offense, such as teamkilling or placing blocks on heads.
If the officer has banned a player that has been banned before - or was hacking - he should report them to higher moderators, such as Stackoverflow and TheGrandmaster. They would then ban the player permanently. Officers should not be able to permaban.

With all these features, the officers would be feared in the groups of griefers - and maybe we will have a better community over time. But as the officers would be humans themselves too, mistakes, misunderstandings - and abuses could happen.
So if a player sees an abuse of the high position, he can report the officer in question in these forums - and the officer's actions will be looked into. If the information is right and the reporter showed enough evidence, the officer shall be banned.

A tl;dr like thingy:
1. Account system
2. Global moderators
3. Better admin tools
4. Profit

Thirdly, the current votekick system is way too much abused. Every time I play I see tens of votekicks claiming the target is an aimbot hacker. What could be used instead, are little boxes next to player names in the TAB menu. When these boxes are marked, a message saying: ''X has been marked, X marks required to kick'' would appear in the chat. The ''kick'' would be a hour-lasting ban from the certain server.
This system would be way less abuse-prone, although maybe a little hard to learn - a quide about it should be posted in the main page if it will be implemented.

There should also be quite strict rules for the global moderators, but you that can be one detail of the discussion.
As the thumb rule I'd suggest always a freeze before ban.

Whaddya think? I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of griefers & hackers.

EDIT: [16:28] <@bcoolface> good post monsteri - i think better mod/admin controls is the way to go. griefing is a part of the game when youre taking out enemy structures but that's harder to detect. (:D)

[Funk]

this is the same old good ideas that will have a big impact on griefers.
in my book the best way to stop griefer is to have players that care and a good mod.

[USABxBOOYO]

All of this has been suggested and discussed before. They're all wonderful ideas (although there were some doubts about Global Moderators) and it would be nice to see these implemented.

Unfortunately, Ben has his priorities set on gameplay, not so much on things such as accounts and GUIs. This is a shame, really, as Ace of Spades would probably benefit more from these things than from the things he's been adding.

That's not to say that he won't add them, it will probably just take way longer than it should.

[Monsteri]

All of this has been suggested and discussed before. They're all wonderful ideas (although there were some doubts about Global Moderators) and it would be nice to see these implemented.

Unfortunately, Ben has his priorities set on gameplay, not so much on things such as accounts and GUIs. This is a shame, really, as Ace of Spades would probably benefit more from these things than from the things he's been adding.

That's not to say that he won't add them, it will probably just take way longer than it should.

Yeah I know it's been discussed before, but at least in the current forums I haven't come across a decent thread about this.

Global Moderators would have one con: Abuse. But therefore only members who are very loyal to AoS, and are trustworthy, should be chosen as officers. And if there was a power abuse, I'm pretty sure the officer abusing his powers would get banned the same day it comes to light.

Yeah and you're right, these things should be priority, but they are not. Our history, so to say, would've been a lot better if these things were there from the start D:.

[Frostified]

How to stop it:
Join in.

[Tydosius]

i dunno, but i personally disagree. i see destroying blocks (for military purposes of course) as in the spirit of AOS. however, if people are coming up to your base and just destroying blocks for the fun of it, that is griefing, so how about you can't destroy on-your-team player's structures. however, if the other team is destroying the base of your tower to make it fall, well that isn't griefing - that's just war!

i know i've never done that but...it sounds nice.

[Monsteri]

Frostified wrote:
How to stop it:
Join in.

Funny.

i dunno, but i personally disagree. i see destroying blocks (for military purposes of course) as in the spirit of AOS. however, if people are coming up to your base and just destroying blocks for the fun of it, that is griefing, so how about you can't destroy on-your-team player's structures. however, if the other team is destroying the base of your tower to make it fall, well that isn't griefing - that's just war!

i know i've never done that but...it sounds nice.

What, disagree? I know what griefing is, and it's not killing enemy structures. Who would ban people destroying ENEMY structures? ''how about you can't destroy on-your-team player's structures'' What? So you wouldn't be able to destroy blocks placed by friendlies? Now that's what adds griefing potential.

Elaborate yourself or get lost.

[USABxBOOYO]

Destroying enemy structures=/=Griefing
Destroying enemy structures=Sapping GOOD
Destroying friendly structures=Griefing BAD

Just a clarification.

[Vortex]

I think I may cry the day this game becomes mature. Every round I play, no matter which server or map, there is griefers.
Griefing = Moan = Fights = Revenge

/facepalm

[Gorman]

I disagree with a number of your suggestions.

Firstly, yes more active mods is the way to go, I have always preached that. The LDR server uses a very simple system of having admins monitor via IRC, they put highlight on to words like "hacker" "admin" and "votekick". From there they can monitor and act using commands to grief check and check KDR, in order to identify hackers or griefers.

I disagree with the concepts of accounts and global moderation staff. Firstly accounts will not be useful since a player can easily create 1, 10 or 1000 accounts, as with IPs and MACs they can easily be changed. Until AoS is monetized there is no point. Global moderation is a bad idea because servers are autonomous. Each server may have different rules - some servers allow griefing, some allow hacks, some have extra rules, some have less rules. There is no way that a global staff could keep up with all the different rule sets and be able to interpret and act upon them.

Servers need to autonomously organize their own systems, and players need to learn to not play on poorly organized servers.

I suggest servers hosts use the IRC abilities of Pyspades in conjunction with griefcheck, accuracy, ratio, etc in order to moderate their servers at all times.

It comes down to this; if you want to run a good server you should use Pyspades. There is no arguments for using vanilla server software. And if you don't want to use Pyspades because "oh it's so hard to download and run" or something else, then you can use a custom client (since vanilla doesn't verify movement) and you can use teleport/fly/invisibility etc there.

But honestly if you are using vanilla you are cutting off your own leg then complaining about how hard it is to run...

[Monsteri]

I disagree with a number of your suggestions.

Firstly, yes more active mods is the way to go, I have always preached that. The LDR server uses a very simple system of having admins monitor via IRC, they put highlight on to words like "hacker" "admin" and "votekick". From there they can monitor and act using commands to grief check and check KDR, in order to identify hackers or griefers.

I disagree with the concepts of accounts and global moderation staff. Firstly accounts will not be useful since a player can easily create 1, 10 or 1000 accounts, as with IPs and MACs they can easily be changed. Until AoS is monetized there is no point. Global moderation is a bad idea because servers are autonomous. Each server may have different rules - some servers allow griefing, some allow hacks, some have extra rules, some have less rules. There is no way that a global staff could keep up with all the different rule sets and be able to interpret and act upon them.

And firstly, accounts WILL be useful, since putting up a new email takes some effort and time, that's one discouragement to start griefing. Surely they can create multiple accounts, but who the heck wants to create 1000 accounts just to grief lol? Not many people.
Global moderation is a good idea, and if some derpy server allows griefing & hacking, it could just simply inform about it in the chat. AND not to mention they could turn officers off.
The best thing about global moderators would be this global ban, which exists as a feature yeah, but only for hackers. And regular server admins should not be able to ban anyone except those hackers globally. There are some very dedicated griefers, who just keep joining servers and wrecking shit till they get banned. Because they can do it.

Also giving community some use is a nice thing, besides not every servers can get enough admins in their servers.

And yeah I know that pyspades is the best tool to host a server, but the global moderators should be able to operate in every server, since that's their idea. (Expect in the ones that have disabled them)

[Gorman]

And firstly, accounts WILL be useful, since putting up a new email takes some effort and time, that's one discouragement to start griefing. Surely they can create multiple accounts, but who the heck wants to create 1000 accounts just to grief lol? Not many people.
Global moderation is a good idea, and if some derpy server allows griefing & hacking, it could just simply inform about it in the chat. AND not to mention they could turn officers off.
The best thing about global moderators would be this global ban, which exists as a feature yeah, but only for hackers. And regular server admins should not be able to ban anyone except those hackers globally. There are some very dedicated griefers, who just keep joining servers and wrecking shit till they get banned. Because they can do it.

Also giving community some use is a nice thing, besides not every servers can get enough admins in their servers.

And yeah I know that pyspades is the best tool to host a server, but the global moderators should be able to operate in every server, since that's their idea. (Expect in the ones that have disabled them)

I think you overestimate how hard it is to make new accounts. I have over 200 accounts on one forum, all I had to do was make a small script (completely trivial) then enjoy my accounts. Not everyone will do this, but this is just as weak a solution as IP or MAC based bans.

I think you failed to address that each server is run by their own team of staff, there is no need for outside influence by people who will not know nor probably understand the rules or culture of a particular server. This would be equivalent of having a global police force, which would have to be well versed in the different sets of laws in around 200 different countries, as well as cultural perceptions and idioms and context. It is an impossible task to say the least.

Global ban already exists, and I think we all know how futile it is. There is no such thing as a water-tight ban, and instead of trying to make one we should be accepting that people will find ways around a ban, no matter what kind of marker you place on them, be it account name, IP, MAC, or whatever else.

[Monsteri]

Add captcha, add security question, add a need to click the link in the e-mail and you can't easily script it.
Of course it is possible to make new accounts swiftly. But at least the griefers will be kept outside for a little longer, but it's not just that. The players will grow to know that they will get banned if they do wrong, and they have to create a new account to play, they will come to know that this is not right and he should just focus on hampering the enemies. And there is a high possibility that the community will grow to be mature, or at least the majority of it.

I think you failed to address that each server is run by their own team of staff, there is no need for outside influence by people who will not know nor probably understand the rules or culture of a particular server. This would be equivalent of having a global police force, which would have to be well versed in the different sets of laws in around 200 different countries, as well as cultural perceptions and idioms and context. It is an impossible task to say the least.

Again, if the server has some special rules and doesn't want any help in the moderating, then they could just go ahead and disable the whole officer shit. And it is the majority of servers that do not have any special rules in relation to hacking and griefing, and of course the officer's ruleset would be visible to everyone, so the server owners could decide if they want their players to be treated in that way or not.

Your argument about server's own staff's wishes is invalid, because again, they could disable the officers very well.

[Gorman]

1. Well the site I was talking about did have security question, capatcha, and email verification, but that stuff isn't really a big problem to overcome.
2. Don't count on the community maturing
3. What is the point of global police if they will be disabled on the majority of servers. It would be far more efficient just to have the staff of the server moderate the server themselves. IRC randoms in #AoS could direct people to the appropriate channel to find staff for a particular server. That would be far more efficient.

[Monsteri]

1. Then you'd have to be very, very dedicated griefer. I don't think it's very easy to script a bot to pass captcha, multiple security question and email verification. Besides you would have to do the emails by hand.
2. Bad part of the community got a lot more mature (or at least started to hide their immatureness) after KAG implemented global moderators. It's flexible, easy for the users and efficient.
3. They will not be disabled in the majority of servers.