I agree with jasbo's definition and I'll just post an example of a behavior (happened to/against me): Was poisoning a tree in Ix several tests ago to chop it toward chopping badge and, of course, then replant it. Someone asked me what I was doing and I told them, including saying, yes I will replant but I need to chop the tree. They hung around right on my shoulder. Okay, whatever, no biggie. The tree died; I went to chop it...the person chopped it first (must have hit button a millisecond ahead of me) and said, and I quote, "Denied!" That. That right there.
I'm not sure I understand the word...does it mean harassing?
ETA-duh you clearly state its a form of harassment...so I guess I what I'm asking is for a different explanation?
How one defines griefing can be shaky and the only reason I hesitate.
For me, the definition would have to be something along the lines of "hampering others play with the intent and/or knowledge of doing so." Jasbo's "Anyone whose pleasure is predicated on another's irritation, inconvenience, or outright pain" is decent too.
Sometimes certain aren't intended has griefing but have that effect. For example - stealing a machine from a group project and holding in ransom. Now, the intent maybe playful and fun and trying to create "story"/"conflict." It is not intend to cause grief. Yet it does. (And so I don't approve.)
And other things may be viewed has griefing but doesn't actually affect others play. For example - collecting as many water cups as possible and spreading and dropping them littering with them. This doesn't bother me at all... and I actually think that's kind of funny.
Killing a bunch of bean trees and replanting them with fruit trees? If it is because you think there should be more fruit trees then it isn't griefing. If you want to get angry reactions from people, then it is griefing. Same action though. Affects others in the same way, no matter what the intent was.
If someone is trying to corner the market in cheese on the auctions and someone else purposely floods the auctions with cheeses that cost exactly 1 currant less? I consider that fair market practices.
It is hard to REALLY grief in Glitch. It is hard to affect someone if they don't let you. For example, inviting someone into your home. Not sure why folks let people they don't know well inside. It's nice and trusting. And I am empathetic if they are robbed. But I'm not very sympathetic.
it's a clear from of harassment and should not be tolerated.
And you think there are people in this forum who would disagree? I guess I don't get the point of this thread. Unless it is to call out other players who have behaved in a way you think is griefing. Or to give examples of griefing. Or something.
I don't know what to do about it though. Calling them out publicly doesn't help and is probably just what they're looking for anyway. They can't really be banned because they're not doing anything that's against the rules in the game. "Community spirit" isn't really a law that can be enforced.
The best thing to do is probably just to keep the higher ground and don't let it get to you. There are douchenozzles in RL and douchenozzles in the game. If most people continue to be generous and good, it'll more than make up for anyone who acts like a turd.
Realistically, if griefing is possible in the game, then there should be mechanics of game play that neutralize the effect- Letting th community name animals means that entire streets will have chickens named "Cock" etc. but only until another glitch comes through and renames it. I don't think that people really understand something like chopping down the trees until they are given the quest, and that's just as much a part of the game mechanics as anything else. The same person who went "Denied" will later end up with the quest and say to himself "Doh, I was an ass".
That being said, there will be a point where a player will get totally maxed out on game quests/funding etc. and assuming the person still somehow plays the game they may want to do something that's hard to predict ahead of time, or teaming up with others with the specific intention of making it hard on another player and I see that happening mostly in chat. The best way of dealing with those situations (other than Ignore) is to be able to report abuse easily so someone from Tiny Speck can check into it. :)
There's a game I've played for a while.. And.. the problem with being able to grief is..
There are people who will use Griefing itself as a form of harrassment.
I'm sure in very extreme cases, the staffers would listen to complaints. But making it open to grief.. people will abuse it. If it gets abused, Staff will be less empathetic. Plus, people can start claiming things against others that never happened.
So.. I'm a bit cautious about this.
Sorry though about that person that was giving you trouble! Message me in game and I'll feed you fortune cookies.
Dawgg is a griefer and loving all the attention he is getting I just wish they would close done his self censor, family game bull shit. It was funny for a while but now it's just stupid. I worry if we give griefers too much attention it will snowball. The good thing is the game will open on monday and everyone will glance at the forum's instead of making it a game. See you all on monday. Down with griefers and any one that imposes being a bully.
Hmm. I think the problem exists, but could definitely be a lot worse. As it is, the community is small enough that TS people could warn anyone reported as doing something really concerted, awful, illegal etc.
If the game grew to the size of Runescape, WoW, or other MMOGs I think we'd have a much harder to combat problem. Just my thoughts on the matter.
I see griefing as a form of free expression that should be tolerated (within limits). Griefing tends to be either clever or crude. The clever is amusing and the crude is easy enough to ignore. Someone 's values or sense of fun can be different than yours. Its ok. You can block people or simply teleport away if you wish. This game did a great job of making it difficult to truly grief like you would be able to in many MMO's. I may find many actions to be offensive that others consider to be ordinary play but I still play the game because I enjoy it overall.
Griefing, at its best, can be dadaesque and novel: griefers often are playing an entirely different game than the rest of the people using the same program. I like seeing a change of play and attitude sometimes.
Yes, I have been griefed on here. I still like the game and I wouldn't narc out the griefer because they don't have enough power over me to ruin my enjoyment of the game.
Cheaters, however, are an entirely different story.
Interfering with another player's ability to reasonably play the game, level up, own property / items fairly bought or earned is what I consider griefing, and it should not be tolerated. I can't find the term in the ToS, but I could have sworn I'd read a policy specifically outlining that griefing would not be permitted in-game.
Griefing is akin to bullying in a lot of ways. I think the "fun" or "clever" form of griefing isn't really griefing at all, but more akin to antics along the lines of dropping cups outside of the bureaucrat's office in Groddle Meadow. It's something weird and out-there that doesn't harm other players in any way (though it may be annoying to some), and does not prevent anyone from being in or using the area.
It can definitely be a gray area subject, though, and it's one that we need to leave open for conversation. Not everyone will be cool with players joking around and pulling in-game pranks, but others will.
@Rascalmom: Earlier in the game I made a mistake similar to that, but it was that someone was going through Ix and killing all the spice and replanting them with gas. I was so annoyed since I don't mind equally sharing Ix between gas and spice, but everywhere I went were baby gas trees. So I got onto a street and saw someone in the process of poisoning a tree and thought I would replant a spice before they could plant the gas. So I stood next to them and waited and before they could replant, I planted a spice.
The person was really angry said they were planning on replanting a spice tree there and needed it for a quest. Of course I felt terrible, and made an assumption. I know now I should just ask the person, but I ended up repoisoning and letting her replant.
Different than the situation you experienced, but it shows how easily very similar situations can be "griefing" and not griefing (I wasn't griefing because I was just trying to replant some spice, not intending to ruin anyones game play, although I went about it all wrong). It's hard to figure out a person's intentions. Stoot mentioned in the past a red card/yellow card system that would I guess keep track of players who are reported multiple times. This system would be nice but I fear it would lead to people reporting people they don't like, or reporting without knowing if the person was doing something intentionally, etc.
Griefing is in no way harassment, as long as a player is following rules within the game, and playing the game in any style that's ok. I can't think of a single way to cause Griefing. We are free to play the game however we like, which is an amazing freedom to have. The only harassment I could ever imagine happening is verbal harassment and hate. Other than that, I can't imagine anything as being griefing in any way.
@Don Draper: I think it really comes down to your definition of griefing. It sounds like you aren't defining it at all in the same way many of us are. In most games, griefing deliberately makes the game unfun for another player or group of players. That to me is pretty cut and dry.
@Laurali: There will always be situations like that, and I think that's just a part of any community where miscommunication can occur. I would not consider that griefing, nor could I imagine anyone being penalized for that.
Don, I can think of a few. They would take a massive effort, probably need a mob of people and the effects would be more time consuming than anything else. (Filling someone's inventory continuously with totally useless items, for example.)
I think there are plenty of activities that can cause grief and can be intended to cause grief that are not "against the rules" or anything that I would could consider ban-able offensives. Basically being world class jerks.
I am sure there will be folks on Glitch that I care not to play near. I am sure there will be times I change my gameplay around (moving to entirely different regions to get away from them).
But then again I move subway cars when someone smells of poop.
@ Don I'm sure we could spitball for a few hours and find some really cruel things Glitches could do to one another that I'm sure no one would call a joke. :(
That seems really depressing though, so let's just not call it griefing, which we've agreed can have different meanings for different people, and just try to avoid doing mean/cruel things? Mmkay? :)
@Don, one time me and a group were trying to finish the Peat Bog quest. I already finished the quest but wanted to take some time to help lower levels finish it. We had a player follow us around from street to street to street digging in every single Peat before we could. The peat bog needs to be full for the quest to work, and since it annoounces what street you are travelling to it was easy enough for someone to follow us around and keep ruining our chances of finishing the quest.
At this point, its not a HUGE deal. Just an annoyance. But imagine when the game goes live, if this behavior were done by multiple people, it could be impossible for people to do this quest. There are other examples I'm sure.
I don't think stealing from the ground, or from someones house, or killing all the trees, etc is griefing because the ground is always fair game, and you have the option to not let people into your house. But when you interrupt quests, leveling, like what I said above I think then it is considered griefing.
I've been invited to join groups that vow to remove piggies every day and find other ways of making mischief. The intent may be mischievous "fun", but at this stage, when piggies are scarce, I was fairly disturbed by it.
They plan to hogtie them and sell them to vendors solely to remove them from the game. I was of the opinion that we should find less self-destructive ways to cause mischief. :l Like the amusing spam letters I've been seeing in my inbox.
@DaveJohn: Peopel don't send those letters, pickles do, randomly! I assume once most people get the GNG musicblock and the novelty of "playing with your pickle" wears off, we will see less and less spam
@Laurali Really? xD I'd been interpreting those wrong all last test. The pickles were new so it makes sense that when they appeared the spam appeared as well.
I am really split on this discussion!
What my guide told me my first day is that this game was to be played in any format that you choose (mining, cooking, animal loving, treehugging, auction hustling,shine donating etc.) and I almost think that "greifing" aspect of the game does make it a little interesting.
I also believe that it can be regulated at some point
Whether it be by
1)Dev chosen glitches who could work as police who can have the right to deal out one RW hour , or one game day, or even like one game week account lockouts
2)A scarlet letter effect -where the offender would have a "scarlet letter effect" where either
a)they couldnt mine,harvest,produce,or tinker for a certain amount of time
b)they would have a visual difference from other players (a big red 'A' on their chest a aura of flames around them)
3) a requirement of 100 squished grapes in hell !
But anyway...I'm at a party right now being super anti social so I cant really write what I think.at all.wooo
I don't think people should be publicly chastised, and I really can only think of a few instances that I would consider griefing. I think "halting game advancement" is how I would define it, cause anything else could be annoying but it's that persons right! Elbows idea could be considered halting game play by filling up someones bags so they can't hold onto items they may need
Several times I have had people following me. I actually thought they may have hit the "follow" button. It bothered me very much as I felt some fear; actually. I found myself trying to get away jumping over tree's, on leaf's etc.. I felt upset because I was trying to save as much energy to have enough to cook since I didn't have much food or drink at the time. Is this harassing or griefing?
I wouldn't consider it to be harassing or griefing Joy. If someone wants to follow you a little box pops up asking you to accept it, or decline it. You don't have to accept if you don't llike people to follow you!
@Joy - Assuming you didn't consent to being followed, then... Because it was ruining your fun, I'd say yes, that is a form of griefing. In that situation, I'd probably ask the player to stop following me, and if they didn't, either idle, log out, or report them for harassment (or whatever tools might be made available for us to deal with problem people). In other games, players have followed me around to try and beat me to everything I tried to interact with. There's no telling what that person might have had in mind... but because it was ruining your fun, you should be able to do something about it.
@Fokian - Mean-spirited is a gray area, because the person playing the prank has a very different perspective than the person the prank is being played upon. It's one of the reasons I dislike April Fools Day -- people hurt each other (usually unintentionally) by playing "harmless" pranks. The pranker thinks it's funny, and the prankee has their feelings hurt. A lot of these situations don't involve anything mean-spirited, but someone gets hurt anyway. The same applies to griefing. Often the griefer is having fun at someone else's expense. To me, that is unacceptable.
I'm pretty low tolerance when it comes to griefing. If someone is harassing me or my friends, I don't take it lightly. I would hate to see this game ruined because it doesn't have a good way of dealing with problem players!
@Laurali, no one asked me to follow and I gave no permission. That is why I said it was like the follow button was hit. I haven't had the experience of "follow" so not sure if that was it.
If I walk to a tree to harvest, they walked to same tree, happening several times, If I fed a piggie waiting for the poop for seeds, they stood in my way so I couldn't pick it up and of course they picked it up.
At first I think someone is having fun with me, but when I feel sick inside like it is creepy, its not cute or fun or anything. Finally they must not be getting the reaction from me they expect so they quit.
@Grant, thank you for your concern, I am going to keep names and dates should this happen again, if its the same player's, I will report harassment! : )
Well, good points from all angles. Let's just remember to distinguish being annoying from true harassment. Being annoying is alright, but harassment is less welcome.
Joy, if you can't see something to pick it up, try hitting the enter key*, that should give you a popup of all the things in reach, you can select the thing you want, using your mouse or the arrow keys & enter.
* I think this works when nothing is highlighted (with the blue glow round it) - if something else is highlighted, move your cursor away, then hit enter
I make a distinction between griefing and inconsiderate behavior. People who are inconsiderate may be a PITA, but they have some goal they are pursuing other than interfering with others simply for the enjoyment of those others' inconvenience or pain. Inconsiderate behavior is a problem, but it's a different kind of problem than griefing.
Inconsiderate behavior typically can be corrected by kindness and generosity or by chastisement. These techniques are less effective with griefers because the root cause of griefing is typically a submerged sense of inadequacy which does not respond to civility, affection or social pressure, but rather seeks to debase these in order to achieve a fleeting feeling of superiority.
If you look it up, you will find "griefing" has a pretty specific definition. It's about intentions, and those can be hard to determine. If someone is competing with me for resources or otherwise getting in my way, I wouldn't call it griefing. If someone is using humor in self-defense, I wouldn't call it griefing. But if someone says they're just messing with me because it's fun and won't stop when I ask, then I'd say that's griefing.
As for pranks, I think they're fine when all involved enjoy them, and hilarious when they poke gentle fun at oneself. Otherwise, not so much.
I think a small amount of griefing is necessary in order to bring the rest of the community together.
Just look at the forums for examples of this. You see someone make a thread with the intent of winding everyone up (if someone can't find one of these for an example to use, then you're not looking hard enough), and then look at all the responses to their thread. So many people joining together uniting against the griefer. It warms my heart to see how people do that. Even if part of me knows that feeding the trolls is wrong, I guess mass feeding of a troll just seems quite special due to the ways that it's done here.
In game it's similar. In the group chats, you read about other peoples experiences with players who steal their stuff or are just generally unpleasant towards them, and it's other peoples responses to this unpleasantness that make the place so special. You see the rest of the community coming together and it's lovely :)
So... Every griefer has a silver lining... or something like that :)
Sure it sucks when it happens to you personally, but have a moan about it to friends, get some hugs and carry on :)
Splendora explains the differences between inconsiderate/annoying behavior and griefing quite splendidly. :)
Griefing is, as she said, very defined. Most definitions for the term specify how griefers do it for the enjoyment of frustrating others, whether it be by hindrance or spamming or what-have-you. It has nothing to do with intended good-natured joking/pranking gone wrong. Griefers cause people grief for their own twisted enjoyment, much like a troll enjoys inciting the masses. Whatever gets under someone's skin and keeps them from progressing peacefully. Nothing more, nothing less. It's definitely all about the negative intent behind the actions.
Being "griefed" in Glitch is no different from having someone take your parking space when you were all lined up for it. It is how you deal with it. I am really learning to just try to laugh it off and practice anger management. Someone stole my mined rocks and I was so mad I reported this person. Araldia reminded me that what is on the ground in public areas is free for the taking. Just because we ourselves are polite there is no reason to expect others are, specially when the game goes public. It will be dog eat dog so get a tough skin and play more stealthfully. Walk softly and carry a big stick.
I think I would rather put up with a bit of grieving, pranking or 'theft' than have to play in a world where there are glitch police! That does not sound fun at all. Sometimes griefers have downright entertained me, creating memorable events. I thought it had been decided that things left on public ground were 'fair game'. Really there is very little you can lose that can't be earnt back very quickly. Anything truly precious should be carefully looked after.
Well even though anything on public ground is fair game, in my book swooping in to grab something from right under another player's feet just after they put it down is still griefing and should earn the approbation of the community. I certainly agree that we don't want Glitch police keeping track of us, but I would be happy to see (although I'm sure I won't) a separate method for reporting any griefing that fell short of actual harassment. If I reported a griefing I would not expect any response other than an acknowledgment that my report had been logged. I would not expect that any action would be taken by TS unless reports against an individual were lodged in sufficient number from enough different players that TS felt the miscreant was having a genuinely negative effect on the game as a whole. Since most people would not bother to report a griefing, the chance that this system would lead to any action against a griefer would be virually nil, but I would feel I had taken some action against the griefer and that said action had given no satisfaction to the griefer. This would alleviate the feeling of impotence that anything we do in response to griefing just feeds the griefer.
Hawkwell, the devs have ruled that taking stuff from the ground is allowed therefore in itself it isn't griefing. Of course if you persistently followed someone around making nasty comments and nicking all their stuff this might be different. Bag management is a big part of the strategy of the game (maybe they wouldn't have got so many players in if they had called it 'Tidy up your bags' but still!) and also a big part of the challenge.
There are people who see life as boring, and griefing as trying to make it less boring.
However, by the time many of us are somewhere in the midlife range, we have likely felt overwhelmed by life at times, traumatized in various ways at times, and are coming to computer games in need of something a bit less stressful than real life. And hence our heightened distaste for griefing.
Just to note, newbies will not know that what is on the ground fell out of someone's inventory. So maybe worth being patient with someone taking that sort of stuff if you don't recognize them.
Violet, from my point of view something does not have to be ruled illegal by TS in order to be griefing. I'm going with jasbo in the first reply to this thread: " Anyone whose pleasure is predicated on another's irritation, inconvenience, or outright pain is not someone I want to deal with." That's griefing. Someone who watches for someone else to innocently put something down for a moment so that they can swoop in and grab it is griefing. It doesn't matter that TS says it's allowed. I'm fine that it's allowed, but to me it's still griefing. I agree a newb might innocently pick something up without realizing it was not polite to do so. But they wouldn't rush in, grab it and then disappear as fast as they could. That's a griefer.
@gimmegames: I doubt TS did anything about the tree war (why would they?). More likely, the griefers in that one got bored and stopped on their own.
I would define "griefer" as anyone that does something with the explicit purpose of irritating another player. The action doesn't have to be against TS rules to be annoying.
EDIT: By the way, griefing is not necessarily harassment. Harassment is more extreme than normal griefing, and should be a bannable offense.
"I don't think stealing from the ground, or from someones house, or killing all the trees, etc is griefing because the ground is always fair game, and you have the option to not let people into your house. But when you interrupt quests, leveling, like what I said above I think then it is considered griefing. Laurali " ------------------ --- Entering my house and stealing my stuff is IMO griefing, Sure I have the option to not let them in my house, but that for me has nothing to do with anything. I'll give ya ground pickups and tree killing (although intention is a determing factor) aren't so grief-full.