Sick and tired of the Curse System

[Rasman]

I've had it with this game. Some random dude in-game and I got into an argument over a griefer issue and the jerk went around telling everyone to curse me. I finally got knifed by one of his pals and now I have hours in Donkey Town to kill. What other game do you know of allows other players to determine how you can play? Complete b.s. Imagine if Rust, or some battleground game allowed other players to kick you off the server for any reason? I'm not saying don't deal with griefing - kill people that cause problems (and with the limited lives now it will affect them plenty) but to allow a "curse system" to be so easily misused is a really lame game mechanic.

[Jeck]

Originally posted by jasonrohrer:

It's up to the players in terms of WHY they would curse you. It might not be for killing.

And that's a problem, you're leaving decisions that can alter someone's game-play significantly up to mob rule. This is why in Warcraft, people were abusing the report feature in rated battlegrounds, reporting the enemy team in bulk so that they'd get kicked from the game, allowing their team to win. If someone named me Jesus, and I went around the town calling people out for being "devils" that needed to be cursed, do you think the town won't start cursing that person for the fun of it? It's happened before.

People who get cursed need to be reviewed before being auto-banished to donkey town, otherwise there will always be problems.

And even if killing was removed, there are plenty of other ways to bother people in-game. Those would get you cursed to (like hiding people's tools, planting the wrong thing, stealing horses, etc.)

And this is a major problem that should be addressed. For example, making it so a horse won't accept a new owner until idle for 60 seconds, or making it so that if someone eats food that overflows their bar, they temporarily look fat so the town knows they're wasting food, or if someone brings a town related tool more than 30 tiles away from the town center, they have a look of shame on their face for the rest of the game.

Of course these are just off the top of my head solutions, but the point is that there are better ways to mitigate these problems without just having a blanket curse system.

Essentially, players need a way of saying, "ENOUGH, don't do that anymore." The curse system works because no one can use it unilaterally. You have to bother enough people, at the same time, for it to have any effect on you.

No, it can be abused. Maybe someone wants to be the town blacksmith and the other guy doesn't wanna give the job up, so he curses him just because he can. Then he tells the town that the current smith is wasting materials, and they should all curse and kill him. We've all seen these scenarios play out already, especially if murder takes place. One murder leads to two murders, to three, etc...and before you know it, the town is cursing everybody.

It's one thing if all curse did was banish the person from the current town, because then majority rule makes sense. But giving players the ability to impact future lives is where a line is crossed, and the system becomes dumb and exploitable.

So if you're doing something that annoys 8-10 people at the same time, you are in the minority, and people collectively agree that they don't like what you are doing.

That makes sense, right?

It's like voting someone off the island.

Except you're not voting them off the island, you're voting them off the entire server. Make it banish the person from 50 tiles from the town center or something, but banishment to donkey town based on majority vote is open to abuse.

[Toffel]

Originally posted by Rasman:

The fact you have to use the term "social norms" of the game pretty much proves my point. Thank you.

Since you apparently keep missing my question here it is again:

What’s so fun about pvp in Ohol when it’s literally just an auto target system?

[Toffel]

Also to an earlier comment of yours.

How is use of war swords punished within the curse system? War swords can only kill non-family members, and you can’t get cursed outside of your family. So war swords aren’t even relevant when discussing the curse system.

[Toffel]

Originally posted by Jeck:

Originally posted by jasonrohrer:

It's up to the players in terms of WHY they would curse you. It might not be for killing.

And that's a problem, you're leaving decisions that can alter someone's game-play significantly up to mob rule. This is why in Warcraft, people were abusing the report feature in rated battlegrounds, reporting the enemy team in bulk so that they'd get kicked from the game, allowing their team to win. If someone named me Jesus, and I went around the town calling people out for being "devils" that needed to be cursed, do you think the town won't start cursing that person for the fun of it? It's happened before.

People who get cursed need to be reviewed before being auto-banished to donkey town, otherwise there will always be problems.

And even if killing was removed, there are plenty of other ways to bother people in-game. Those would get you cursed to (like hiding people's tools, planting the wrong thing, stealing horses, etc.)

And this is a major problem that should be addressed. For example, making it so a horse won't accept a new owner until idle for 60 seconds, or making it so that if someone eats food that overflows their bar, they temporarily look fat so the town knows they're wasting food, or if someone brings a town related tool more than 30 tiles away from the town center, they have a look of shame on their face for the rest of the game.

Of course these are just off the top of my head solutions, but the point is that there are better ways to mitigate these problems without just having a blanket curse system.

Essentially, players need a way of saying, "ENOUGH, don't do that anymore." The curse system works because no one can use it unilaterally. You have to bother enough people, at the same time, for it to have any effect on you.

No, it can be abused. Maybe someone wants to be the town blacksmith and the other guy doesn't wanna give the job up, so he curses him just because he can. Then he tells the town that the current smith is wasting materials, and they should all curse and kill him. We've all seen these scenarios play out already, especially if murder takes place. One murder leads to two murders, to three, etc...and before you know it, the town is cursing everybody.

It's one thing if all curse did was banish the person from the current town, because then majority rule makes sense. But giving players the ability to impact future lives is where a line is crossed, and the system becomes dumb and exploitable.

So if you're doing something that annoys 8-10 people at the same time, you are in the minority, and people collectively agree that they don't like what you are doing.

That makes sense, right?

It's like voting someone off the island.

Except you're not voting them off the island, you're voting them off the entire server. Make it banish the person from 50 tiles from the town center or something, but banishment to donkey town based on majority vote is open to abuse.

I see where you are coming from, the curse system can be abused. This thread is a great example of that:

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6075

That being said, just removing the curse system wouldn’t be the solution. You’d have to come up with a less abusable counter solution. Because unless you make the limited lives system really strict it ultimately won’t be a suitable replacement for the curse system. And making it stricter will also punish regular players too harshly for dying.

Removal of the curse system with no suitable replacement would result in a griefer paradise.

[Jeck]

Originally posted by Swaziland:

I see where you are coming from, the curse system can be abused. This thread is a great example of that:

https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6075

That being said, just removing the curse system wouldn’t be the solution. You’d have to come up with a less abusable counter solution. Because unless you make the limited lives system really strict it ultimately won’t be a suitable replacement for the curse system. And making it stricter will also punish regular players too harshly for dying.

Removal of the curse system with no suitable replacement would result in a griefer paradise.

Well there are plenty of solutions already, such as the ones I've given (banishment from the town area rather than permanent donkey town residence, or directly targeting the problems such as making a person's character appear fat if they waste food, causing them to be sluggish and identifiable).

You can remove griefing from the game entirely if you directly target the actions that griefers take.

[Toffel]

If they get banished from a town what will stop them from just killing themselves and thus grief another town? Do you have anything in mind that can stop this? Problem with just banishing people from one town is that they can just griefer the next.

And when it comes to the other solution, it will probably get quite a few innocent people killed. Newbies don’t know the pip values of food, so they might get mistaken for griefers overeating on purpose.

I agree that donkey town isn’t the ideal solution, but the thing is that many people didn’t buy this game to deal with the inevitable griefer. Just giving more tells to griefer actions won’t ultimately fix much because griefers will still be around ruining the game without much consequence for their actions.

TLDR; If they just get killed for griefing they will just move on and grief the next town.

[Jeck]

Originally posted by Swaziland:

If they get banished from a town what will stop them from just killing themselves and thus grief another town? Do you have anything in mind that can stop this? Problem with just banishing people from one town is that they can just griefer the next.

This is one of the issues with spawning into random towns with random people. If you want to have towns without any potential griefers outside of say a first offense, then there needs to be a ranking system implemented. This system will spawn players that do well (produce lots of food and useful materials, never waste food, maintain good temperature control, etc) with other similar players, and the players that waste food and waste time will be spawned together.

I personally think that system is a bad idea, and instead simply letting towns deal with griefers on a case by case basis is the best deal. Murder shouldn't be a thing (at least not with the current state of the game), and griefing in any other way should be easy to spot and deal with quickly. Like I said earlier, if you eat a berry worth 5 pips and are only missing 4 pips, your character should look fat to let the town have a chance to judge and potentially banish them. The same rule can apply to every other form of griefing (or even bad play).

And when it comes to the other solution, it will probably get quite a few innocent people killed. Newbies don’t know the pip values of food, so they might get mistaken for griefers overeating on purpose.

To a town trying to progress, it's the same difference (griefers and bad players). Those players will have to learn the hard way, or a better tutorial will need to be put in place. I'd prefer the latter.

I agree that donkey town isn’t the ideal solution, but the thing is that many people didn’t buy this game to deal with the inevitable griefer. Just giving more tells to griefer actions won’t ultimately fix much because griefers will still be around ruining the game without much consequence for their actions.

That's only true if griefers aren't handled properly. If a new player gets banished from a few towns, no biggie. If a player with 5+ hours gets banished from 3 towns in a row, that's something the dev should act on, just like if there were cheaters in someone's game.

If there's a player with repeat behavior of doing nothing but trying to cause problems, you could put in systems to let the people deal with them, but to permanently deal with the problem a dev needs to take action. Either that or just make griefing impossible (making food impossible to eat if it will overflow, can't carry tools beyond the town borders, etc). But those types of restrictions can make a game feel too linear when overdone, so I prefer the mitigation methods with the dev being the permanent solution to excessive problems.

TLDR; If they just get killed for griefing they will just move on and grief the next town.

And that town will have the fun of dealing with a traitor among them. And eventually if the developer feels that this person is causing too much trouble, they can remove them permanently, or then banish them to donkey town. Nobody should go to donkey town via an automated system, but I'm in favor of it on a case by case basis.

[Rasman]

Jeck I like some of your ideas. I'd be more in favor of town or family/clan banishment than a player controlled curse system. The way I see it is everyone at some point in the game screws around and causes problems for others (whether they admit it or not). How do you mitigate that behavior?

Well war swords was an interesting start - make trouble or pvping outside the family allows those who enjoy it to have some fun without being punished for a different play style. It would also add some interesting challenges to protecting your town - those who like that kind of thing could become better equipped as town defenders and given tools/equipment to that end.

It would also be nice to have a way to add preference to a family or clan - that way you can actually see the positive repercussions of your hard work a generation or two down the road. The server could try and put you with your desired clan first and if no moms were available it would then just spawn you to the next available clan or you start as an Eve. That way, more often than not you would be connected to a clan you like and I think less likely to grief it to death (just a thought).

[Jeck]

Rasman, yeah I think the inability to respawn into a town of your choosing is really what's killing this game. There's no sense of progression, and over time as people get bored of the same thing (make berry farm, make bakery, make sheep pen, etc....now what? Since we never progress past this). Also after 2 generations, nobody knows the previous settlers. Gravestones are meaningless since outside of it saying "your great great grandmother" there's no connection.

If we had the ability to spend days building up a town with like-minded people, all kinds of fun things will emerge. I spent an entire life once just running around convincing the rest of the village that the Pie Gods were watching over us, and demanded tribute, and got them to build a shrine made of pies. With respawning into the same village, we'll see buildings, homes, etc like we saw on custom servers. It would add so much depth to the game that's currently being squandered.

It feels like we're playing a game of chess and are only allowed to use pawns. That'll get boring real fast.

[Ayaka]

Originally posted by Jeck:

World of Warcraft has this same issue. If multiple people "report" you (basically curse), you can get insta kicked from the server.

For a game like this, it's a dumb mechanic. There really shouldn't be murder in this game, as it's solely used for griefing right now. If we ever got to a point where a town can last for a week, and another neighboring town lasts a week, then maybe the two going to war might be interesting...But as it stands now, the ability to murder is only really used to griefers.

Cursing someone shouldn't be an automatic donkey town trip. It should flag them for the dev to review, and act accordingly. There can't be more than a dozen or so griefers per day, so it wouldn't be difficult to identify and then banish them.

I mean it's only one guy, even with our small player base it'd be hard for him to develop and be moderator for a$$holes.

[Jeck]

Originally posted by Sadron:

Originally posted by Jeck:

World of Warcraft has this same issue. If multiple people "report" you (basically curse), you can get insta kicked from the server.

For a game like this, it's a dumb mechanic. There really shouldn't be murder in this game, as it's solely used for griefing right now. If we ever got to a point where a town can last for a week, and another neighboring town lasts a week, then maybe the two going to war might be interesting...But as it stands now, the ability to murder is only really used to griefers.

Cursing someone shouldn't be an automatic donkey town trip. It should flag them for the dev to review, and act accordingly. There can't be more than a dozen or so griefers per day, so it wouldn't be difficult to identify and then banish them.

I mean it's only one guy, even with our small player base it'd be hard for him to develop and be moderator for a$$holes.

Only if the game gets more active players. Right now we aren't even reaching 100 players during peak time, and only a fraction of that would be considered potential griefers that need to be looked at. If a player gets banished more than twice in a day, they should be flagged for review. The dev can then quickly check the logs to see "Yep, this guy is intentionally causing problems", and put out a harder banish, sending the player to donkey town for a set amount of time, or even permanently.

Not to mention, the dev could empower moderators to do this for him (players that have proven their loyalty to the game). I'm sure you could find at least a few people willing to volunteer a few minutes to go through report logs and handle the extremely toxic players.I'd do it myself and I don't even care much for the game.

[Rasman]

I'd be in favor of players being able to see how many current curses they have at any given time. That way someone who's screwing around can tone it down or just stop if they see they're nearing Donkey Town status.

[Toffel]

Originally posted by Rasman:

I'd be in favor of players being able to see how many current curses they have at any given time. That way someone who's screwing around can tone it down or just stop if they see they're nearing Donkey Town status.

Lol something I actually agree with you on. I think that’s especially needed for vets who don’t go to donkey town for a long time, but will then get 5 hours donkey town stay their first time because their all time curses have racked up.

But yeah it would be nice to get a warning or something before being sent to donkey town. Agree with you there.