Multiplayers and Griefers

[TecSatan]

For some unknown reason Colony Survivor online servers are getting plagued with griefers. This means that most servers now have a whitelist to get on with only a couple of public servers where all can access.

The effect to the game is that people are just quitting playing. No one wants to see hours and hours of work go down the toilet because some punk kid wants to get his kicks by just destroying your base. An additional effect is that the amount of public servers which you can access now is so limited and getting smaller, not bigger.

All these things are harmful to a game that’s still at pre-version 1 stage.

There are some easy things that would help reduce their impact.

Firstly a reporting method to report griefers to the game designers for perm bans for all multiplayer servers. This would kill the rouge elements of the gaming community and make everyone feel safer.

Secondly remove the ability for others to move your flag. This stops them stealing your flag, running off with it and forcing you into siege mode which starves your colony out.

Thirdly remove the ability to destroy any block placed by another player until you have placed a flag yourself. This stops them just joining and server and running around wrecking thing. It gives them a place they have to work on defending.

Fourthly make it so you consume food daily, automatically as well, like any colonist. This would stop people just planting a flag on a block in the air, putting it in siege mode and going off to harass other players.

And finally make it so that if a zombie gets to your flag and there are no colonists left that you die and re-spawn back to your flag. Again, this ensures you don’t just run off and leave your flag to destroy other people’s stuff but are also forced to build a base to defend it.

At this stage, protecting and growing your online gaming community is more important than designing additional blocks. As while the latter helps add functionality to the game the former ensures that people stick around to play the game and try out that functionality.

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Firstly a reporting method to report griefers to the game designers for perm bans for all multiplayer servers. This would kill the rouge elements of the gaming community and make everyone feel safer.

This is not a job the official developers would have. This would be a job for the server owners themselves. Some public servers do have this system. Colony Empire is one of those servers that do have a system like this.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Secondly remove the ability for others to move your flag. This stops them stealing your flag, running off with it and forcing you into siege mode which starves your colony out.

I was never aware of this even being possible, actually. But this is an obvious given if it's true.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Thirdly remove the ability to destroy any block placed by another player until you have placed a flag yourself. This stops them just joining and server and running around wrecking thing. It gives them a place they have to work on defending.

Combating griefers myself in some public servers, this wouldn't do anything. Griefers who are smart tend to place banners in small hidden places because that sets their spawn point. So if they're never caught, they never will be caught. Making it required for them to place a banner only overcomplicates the situation and doesn't solve it. A griefer who plans on griefing would not care about their own banner or colonists, either.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Fourthly make it so you consume food daily, automatically as well, like any colonist. This would stop people just planting a flag on a block in the air, putting it in siege mode and going off to harass other players.
And finally make it so that if a zombie gets to your flag and there are no colonists left that you die and re-spawn back to your flag. Again, this ensures you don’t just run off and leave your flag to destroy other people’s stuff but are also forced to build a base to defend it.

This would put players in a softlock. Especially the last one with the zombies killing banners. doubley so if they consume food, and die from having a lack of food. Since there's no way for them to replace their banner and start the whole process over again, all this will do is put anyone, even people who legitimately fail their first time around, into an infinite loop of dying, unable to save themselves. These ideas only sound very vaguely good on paper.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

At this stage, protecting and growing your online gaming community is more important than designing additional blocks. As while the latter helps add functionality to the game the former ensures that people stick around to play the game and try out that functionality.

This statement is pure opinion. This statement assumes everyone plays Multiplayer, when the latter is actually true. The majority of players say the game needs more things to do, not something needs to be done about griefers.

The most obvious solution would be to have a guild system where once you place a banner, other players will not be able to manipulate/place/remove blocks within a 75 block radius of your banner, the same distance that is used for zombie spawning if I remember right, unless you invite a player to your guild, giving them permission to manipulate/place/remove blocks within that radius, as well as place their own banner within that radius if needed. That would be a thousand times more effective, and would allow existing cities that are close by to still live in harmony if wanted.

[JackPS9 TTV]

So.....
Colony++ adds anti-griefing as of our next update.

Minecraft only adds spawn protection, the rest is mods.
Let Zun add more to the game and let us modders do the stuff like anti-griefing.

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by JackPS9:

So.....
Colony++ adds anti-griefing as of our next update.

Minecraft only adds spawn protection, the rest is mods.
Let Zun add more to the game and let us modders do the stuff like anti-griefing.

Well said.

[Tom Kent]

As Jack said, we've added chunk protection to the next version of ColonyPlusPlus, so players can't break your stuff. You can claim chunks preventing people from griefing them.

The onus here is not on the devlopers to ban individual griefers - what constitutes a ban? Doe the devs have to see the griefing? Whats to stop me reporting you and getting you banned from every server? This is the kind of thing that server admins should be responsible for.

[TecSatan]

The fact that a degree of protection is coming in Colony++ is great. I also really liked the Guilds idea put forward by Jackerino.

To be clear however to many of Jackerino’s comments, they are only applicable as an overall strategy to stop griefer’s when looked at as a joined up approach. You could not implement single aspects in isolation, which nullifies most of your comments/concerns. If rolled out together they would mean griefers could do nothing at all without going away and making a small base if nothing else, exposing them and forcing them to play the game and not just wreck it for others. Surely a key objective here?

To be clear about the admin vs Dev comment. By Dev I am in fact referring to the game developers as an entity not the individual developers themselves. Many games now have a process of reporting users and banning them from all online services. This has been a practice used by game companies for the last 20 off years. It’s not shocking or new. What it does is protects the game producer from association with on-going, repeat malicious offenders. Proof is often required which is easy to gather via screen shots, video capture and server logs. So that nullifies everyone’s concerns about how such things would be handled or false banning.

I do agree in the first instance server admins for each server should deal with bans and blacklists at a local level, however there are a million way to get round these bans so something more rigorous may be required, including IP banning as well as steam accounts (yes I know you can VPN/Proxy round an IP ban or us a dynamic IP address).

Jackerino is right that my last comment is opinion. It is however my opinion as a Senior Solutions Architect by trade who designs, develops and deploys software applications and manages a team of over 100 developers (currently) working on over 10 different projects right now. These are the kind of issues we have to think about in the applications development industry every day and you ALWAYS have an issue with developers wanting to focus more on creating new functionality over fixing bugs and flaws in the existing product. This ALWAYS has a detrimental effect to the end user engagement of the product and I have seen products live and die based on this flawed thinking. In essence you need a strong PM to rain in your dev team and stop them doing this. Not just hot fix and new features.

[Tom Kent]

Bans are handed out by server admins and block that steam ID. There is no way around it, beyond buying another copy of the game on another acount. That monetary cost is likely enough to deter most griefers.

The devs can't really impose any kind of service like this, because the game doesn't run some Ubisoft/EA style persistent DRM. The devs don't host the servers people play on, so who are they to ban people?

What happens if griefers want to run their own servers just to mess around on? Surely that's better than preventing them from playing, and making them get another account just to rinse and repeat.

I'd definitely like to see chunk protection in the main game, not just in mods, but I don't think the devs should hand out blanket multiplayer bans. Slowing them down by making them play the game will have little to no impact, I can get a colony survival colony up making food + arrows in maybe 20 minutes? Then I can just go and grief anyone? The important thing is to give admins tools, not strangle them by enforcing your own rules as a developer.

Imagine if minecraft made you plant wheat before you could break blocks.

Imagine people who were banned from someone's multiplayer server because the admin threw the toys out of the pram finding they were suddenly banned from them all.

How would you verify that they had griefed? Screenshots? As an admin of a server I could say "Look TecSatan griefed my server" and send a bunch of screenshots over, and suddenly you can't play on any multiplayer servers? You can't log every block break to a server log, in only a few hours you can break of build structures containing thousands upon thousands of blocks. Are you going to log all of those out? And again, how can logs be trusted? I could just break a load of blocks, then find&replace my steam ID with yours, send it to Zun and demand you be banned?

Realistically the best protection is just going to be: placing down a banner creates a 151x151 square protected area.

[Pipliznl]

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Thirdly remove the ability to destroy any block placed by another player until you have placed a flag yourself. This stops them just joining and server and running around wrecking thing. It gives them a place they have to work on defending.

And finally make it so that if a zombie gets to your flag and there are no colonists left that you die and re-spawn back to your flag. Again, this ensures you don’t just run off and leave your flag to destroy other people’s stuff but are also forced to build a base to defend it.

That combination is a very good idea! Thanks for suggesting it. You might like to participate in discussing the development of the game on Discord! https://discord.gg/Y7TNjVG

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by TecSatan:

The fact that a degree of protection is coming in Colony++ is great. I also really liked the Guilds idea put forward by Jackerino.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

To be clear however to many of Jackerino’s comments, they are only applicable as an overall strategy to stop griefer’s when looked at as a joined up approach. You could not implement single aspects in isolation, which nullifies most of your comments/concerns. If rolled out together they would mean griefers could do nothing at all without going away and making a small base if nothing else, exposing them and forcing them to play the game and not just wreck it for others. Surely a key objective here?

Think of it this way. Putting in too many restrictions just to get started will simply not solve the problem but overcomplicate the situation, whilst a guild/chunk system would be simpler and accomplish grief protection in the quickest and easiest way without adding in multiple trivial functions that make it harder for legitimate players as well. If a griefer is forced to play, then he simply won't play. So if we can get griefing impossible without putting so many features that are intrusive to players who are either just starting out or already playing, that would be great.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

To be clear about the admin vs Dev comment. By Dev I am in fact referring to the game developers as an entity not the individual developers themselves. Many games now have a process of reporting users and banning them from all online services. This has been a practice used by game companies for the last 20 off years. It’s not shocking or new. What it does is protects the game producer from association with on-going, repeat malicious offenders. Proof is often required which is easy to gather via screen shots, video capture and server logs. So that nullifies everyone’s concerns about how such things would be handled or false banning.

I don't think you understand that the developers do not host servers, and it's all community based. The game developers would have no power over this, and also wouldn't really have the right to do this. What you're referencing would make sense if the developers hosted the servers.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

I do agree in the first instance server admins for each server should deal with bans and blacklists at a local level, however there are a million way to get round these bans so something more rigorous may be required, including IP banning as well as steam accounts (yes I know you can VPN/Proxy round an IP ban or us a dynamic IP address).

Again, the developer would have no right to do that in the first place when they aren't even the ones hosting servers. Plus a blacklist would use their Steam ID's anyway, not their in-game name in text.

Originally posted by TecSatan:

Jackerino is right that my last comment is opinion. It is however my opinion as a Senior Solutions Architect by trade who designs, develops and deploys software applications and manages a team of over 100 developers (currently) working on over 10 different projects right now. These are the kind of issues we have to think about in the applications development industry every day and you ALWAYS have an issue with developers wanting to focus more on creating new functionality over fixing bugs and flaws in the existing product. This ALWAYS has a detrimental effect to the end user engagement of the product and I have seen products live and die based on this flawed thinking. In essence you need a strong PM to rain in your dev team and stop them doing this. Not just hot fix and new features.

If that were true, then you'd have came up with some much more efficient, realistic, and reasonable solutions to this problem. Just because you have alleged experience in Software doesn't change the fact that what you proposed is not only unrealistic and not very well thought out, but also an inefficient way of solving the problem when the guild/chunk protection systems that were suggested and also proved to be very efficient time and time again in countless games like this is a much simpler and much more obvious solution. You're suggesting changing a significant portion of the game and making it harder for legitimate players to get started, when the majority of the fanbase wants more things to actually do in the first place. Your experience doesn't trump community feedback. This is coming from a game developer who's worked with many people myself. These suggestions come from my actual experience in the field, as well as the know-how when it comes to situations like this.

[GrundleLobster]

The Devs have more control over griefing then many people give them. Simple changes to the code to not allow others not specified on a list to remove objects placed down, take away the ability for users to block entrances of other people's houses, and maybe give achers the ability to block anyone that isnt yourself from doing anything in a 10-20 block diameter(under and over aswell). These griefing problems are trivial if you take a look at other games that are remotely similar to this one. I find it funny that if this game takes off, it will be a complete multiplayer experience, yet they leave it up to their user base to code tools that are required to run servers smoothly and non-chaotic. It takes maybe 3 hours of online play to see the issue, i wish i could take a peak at their drawing board on solving the griefing problem, but i doubt it exists.

[Tom Kent]

Originally posted by GrundleLobster:

The Devs have more control over griefing then many people give them. Simple changes to the code to not allow others not specified on a list to remove objects placed down, take away the ability for users to block entrances of other people's houses, and maybe give achers the ability to block anyone that isnt yourself from doing anything in a 10-20 block diameter(under and over aswell). These griefing problems are trivial if you take a look at other games that are remotely similar to this one. I find it funny that if this game takes off, it will be a complete multiplayer experience, yet they leave it up to their user base to code tools that are required to run servers smoothly and non-chaotic. It takes maybe 3 hours of online play to see the issue, i wish i could take a peak at their drawing board on solving the griefing problem, but i doubt it exists.

Should the devs be able to ban people from playing on servers? No.

Should the devs add griefing protection (like protecting banners)? Yes.

In the short term, mods can do this until the Devs code it in the base game.

[Jackerino]

Originally posted by GrundleLobster:

The Devs have more control over griefing then many people give them. Simple changes to the code to not allow others not specified on a list to remove objects placed down, take away the ability for users to block entrances of other people's houses, and maybe give achers the ability to block anyone that isnt yourself from doing anything in a 10-20 block diameter(under and over aswell). These griefing problems are trivial if you take a look at other games that are remotely similar to this one. I find it funny that if this game takes off, it will be a complete multiplayer experience, yet they leave it up to their user base to code tools that are required to run servers smoothly and non-chaotic. It takes maybe 3 hours of online play to see the issue, i wish i could take a peak at their drawing board on solving the griefing problem, but i doubt it exists.

Have you listened to anything that was even said in the discussion or are you just conjuring unnecessary controversy?

[sathurn]

I agree this need to be fix and fixed in the main game not a mod.

The best fixed idea I think, is to use to the banner. Protect an area 75 blocks away from monster and 100 blocks away from non-allied players. I also think this number should setable by server with out modding the game. And Finally no player should be able to place a banner within 200 blocks of another banner unless allied. Again I believe this number should be setable by server without using mods.

And finnaly at a much latter date I think you should be able to send out soilders to destroy a rivals banner as a game mechanic, but not as a player ability.

[Ravenshade32]

I honestly feel sorry for gamers these days with the amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kids playing the game. I started back in early 90s and we had the bare minimum of that and online gaming was actually fun and exciting. I still play with the wife but these days we rent our own servers and keep the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out, so to those playing on public servers i'm sorry =)