"Good Grief"

[Nazsteph]

On more occasions than I can count I have been in a very sweet position guarding a choak point in a base. I level my gun at the only direction the enemy can come from, flip my audio amp on to give me that extra 2 second drop on the unsuspecting invader. And when they do show their face; Sir_Charge_Alot (sorry for anyone who uses this name becuase its a type of person not an actual person) runs right through my line of fire, or my favorite brother in arms Sir_Bob&Weave. Both of these type of people do one of two things to me (1) give me Grief points or (2) cause me not to fire both haveing the same effect of not letting me damage the enemy. Now I understand that this is all part of the dreaded zerg and probably wont change anytime soon and I can deal with that, but what I want to know (and the point of this post) is how much grief is "Good Grief"? Or stated another way, how much grief do you usually run with? Personally I have never gone beyond 20pts total, but then again I fear the grief monster :( Please help me to pull that trigger, I really want to slaughter hundreds of faceless idealogical heathens, I really do...do you have a 12 step program I can join?

Nazsteph - Baby steps toward a merciless killing machine

[ChewyLSB]

The max grief I've had was around 200, but that was only once. I usually hover around 30.

[ViperGTS]

I had about um.....350 once...
1-get out wepon
2-aim
3-get readdy to pull trigger
4-think about grief for a whole 1 second
5-fire and forget
6-read grief thing on screen
7-yell at person for getting in the way
8-cry your self to sleep
9-wake up
10-kill more
11-grief some more (not on purpus)
12-DONT CARE ABOUT IT SO MUCH!!!!!!
There ya go...

[dscytherulez]

My max without weapons lock was 987, but it all depends what server im using. On my TR server i usually get up to around 300-500, on my NC i stay around 200-300, and on VS i usually stay below 150. If ur only at about 20 grief just pull the damn trigger, its their fault if they are in the way, not urz. Dont go overboard, but dont be afraid to show ppl that ur not going to let them take advantage of u.

[Liquidtide]

I have never played considering grief, and even after tonight when I just racked up 1045 in 5 hours play I still don't care.

When I'm charging up the stairs and I see guys with decimators and thumpers I wait . I come up behind them... but now I'm one of those guys with the thumper and noone waits. I'll be pumping preemptive rounds down to the tower spawn on 2 sec delay... still people insist on gunning down there... so wep lock on now... 30 min, and level 3 warning for the first time... will it make me consider how i play, no way... please all you N00Bs ... and I use this term for anyone who guns in front of someoen with a loaded weapon, we don't give a flying you know what about your personal exp mission if you run in front of me and my thumper you will pay and I don't care.

~Tide

[dscytherulez]

I have never played considering grief, and even after tonight when I just racked up 1045 in 5 hours play I still don't care.

When I'm charging up the stairs and I see guys with decimators and thumpers I wait . I come up behind them... but now I'm one of those guys with the thumper and noone waits. I'll be pumping preemptive rounds down to the tower spawn on 2 sec delay... still people insist on gunning down there... so wep lock on now... 30 min, and level 3 warning for the first time... will it make me consider how i play, no way... please all you N00Bs ... and I use this term for anyone who guns in front of someoen with a loaded weapon, we don't give a flying you know what about your personal exp mission if you run in front of me and my thumper you will pay and I don't care.

~Tide

Finally, someone who knows howda handle his business, lol. I totally agree, i dont hold my fire for any asshole who bolts in front of me, and i always stay behind people firing in a tower battle, its just common courtesy. I wish everyone would follow these guidelines lol.

[Liquidtide]

Thanks :)

[Biohazzard56]

I usually stay around less than 200 at the worst, the highest i had was 1000 and i have no clue how i got it

[TeraHertz]

Sometimes you have to weigh up the options.

Your generator is down, the enemy have overrun your corridors and are assaulting the spawn room, and eveyone around you has toy guns. Despite you're valiant attempt to fix the spawn tubes, you start to wish you hadn't bothered.
You have a lancer, so do a couple of your surviving squad and you're pushing forward up the corridor to attempt to reach the generator, when 3 guys with basic rifles dart in front of your squad to attack the advancing forces.

do you
A) Uncrouch and run in the other direction, leaving the spawn tubes to fall again.
B) Hold fire and wait for your empire mates to die, or get out of the way - which usualy reuslts in a volley of fire passing straight through the rushers, and wiping out your squad.

or C) Rain down hell on all those in you're way, clearing the corridor, and allowing the survior/s of your squad to try and make it to the generator, and buying a few seconds of time for those still spawning in the spawn room

[Mango]

im usually got around 50, but i remember 1 day where i people just kept on getting in my line of fire or jumping in front of my lightening and i ended up with around 700!

[Sentrosi]

I've never gone over 200 grief. That was when I tried out the Pounder one night. Even with two tower assaults, I only got about 200 grief. It's all about how you use the weapon that determines the grief involved. All these people who just keep getting more grief really need to check themselves. Knowing it's a team game, but not having the ability to communicate with everyone in the SOI makes this a double edged sword. So many times I've wanted to scream to people, "Get Thumpers and shoot them down the stairs!" but it would fall on deaf ears.

[Rayder]

My max was 1026. Full Galaxy on low health + my Deci + the pilot running into = not good.

[TheRagingGerbil]

In all honesty, don't you all fell that they could actually do away with the grief system?

Seems that in-game currently, people already police the griefers to a great extent. There is communication between outfit leaders when one of their guys gets out of line. There are brodcast and locals when someone is being an ass and just tk'ing the hell out of everyone.

I think the devs need to let the community try to police itself for a little bit, just to test it out. People who are here just to tk and cause grief won't stick around long because everyone will be killing them as soon as they spawn.

I can actually see a group of friendlies forming a anti-griefer squad and hunting these poor bastards down.

Hmm...what would be really cool, is if you had an additional status icon above your head. This icon would be green, yellow, or red depending on the number of friendlies you have killed in a given time period. 5 friendlies in 20-minutes would get you yellow status. 10 friendlies in 30-minutes time would get you a red status. 20 friendlies in 1-hour would get you a 1-hour weapons lock. Status would go down at a rate of 3-friendlies per hour.

Just a thought.

[ZjinPS]

It appears that the common view for those posting on this thread is that the Grief System doesn't affect their gameplay. So why take it out and invite idiots who would be more inclinded to ruin game play for everyone. I have seen idiots start blowing gens or ams's just because nobody would let them in a squad. Hell, I've been tk'd for refusing to join a squad and once for declining a outfit invitation.

I really would love a 'No I am not excepting invites into squads and/or Outfits at the moment' option. If I get a few moments to get in PS and play I usually don't have time to commit to joining a squad. I don't want to be told to move elsewhere if all I want to do is spend my few minutes online defending a base or tower. But I always get spammed with squad invites and outfit invites. I don't know if I want to belong to an Outfit that would take me as a member. ;)

[Madcow]

The problem with Thumpers and the like is that a lot of people are over using them. Ideally, they seem suited for suppression fire which would then allow other grunts to rush past and secure the area. Stand at the top of the stairs, spam some grenades down, infantry rushes down afterwards and cleans up the mess. Some people would rather just spam forever with the Thumpers and don't want anybody rushing past them to secure the area, which ends up with lots of grenades in people's backs.

[Squick]

In all honesty, don't you all fell that they could actually do away with the grief system?

No... Go read Liquidtide's post again. He has weapon lock right now for being careless... That means he can not shoot me in the back while mindlessly spamming grenades. Did he learn his lesson? No... But the system will keep him in line even though he didn't learn it.

[Liquidtide]

Maybe grief should be tunred off in battles. The only time grief needs to be an issue is waiting for that 15 minute hack to go through. During a battle friendly fire is a given, this is a war game afterall. I wouldn't want to write the code but if a friendly dies from friendly fire within say 50m of a enemy death, no grief becasue it was probably coincidental, where as if there are no enemy deaths in the area, grief is awarded.

Just a thought,

~Tide

[Madcow]

I used to play the Pounder quite a lot. I've never had grief over 100, and can count on one hand the number of times I probably should have just TK'd somebody because they were stupid and putting me in danger. I used to stand on the tops of the stairs in towers spamming the bouncing nades with audio amp on, and was able to not come anywhere near weapon's lock. Grief points even in battle don't accumulate fast enough to matter unless you're so careless you should have weapons lock.

[Liquidtide]

Ok Ok, call me careless, but also call the idiot who runs in front of me careless too. :twisted:

[TheRagingGerbil]

Good points, I like the Marx brothers reference ZjinPS...

Ok, how about this. The devs have already developed an enemy density system, which we see currently when there are enemies in a friendly SOI. What if the grief system was based on the number of enemies in a given area.

With that, grief would be higher in a large enemy force and low in a massive enemy force.

[Squick]

TheRagingGerbil, you are assuming that the grief system is put in place to only stop grief killing. Spork mentioned plenty of times both in beta and out that it is not only for stopping grief killing, but also for making people watch their fire and not be careless.

[InfiniteStorm]

As a VS grief is almost as bad as a pounder when lasher orbs are flying everywhere. In a big tower fight when everyone is shooting orbs, you are most likely gonna get lashed or hit. There are times that I have fired on someone, but the orbs moved so slow that somebody has had enough time to dart in front of them. I don't care about grief, I don't care if in a big battle I get killed by a teamate. He was probably doing the same thing I was, trying to kill the surging NC jackhammer guy who was bolting up the stairs. I am also the kind of guy who rushes into a battle and past the enemies. Yea I get hit by friendly fire sometimes, but I can make 7 people on a stairwell all turn to shoot at me for about 3 seconds while my comrades in arms open fire on all of them. So you get +3 grief. If you have 1000 grief just from people running in front of you, you are doing something wrong or have been playing for 24 hours straight. Either way, it is just an annoyance you got that 6 grief. Life goes on. You can continue to kill people and the game moves on. You can't just tell people to stay back while I lob my plasma nades down there. You will never kill enough people that way. You need to penetrate or they will just keep coming.

[Phaden]

i think it would be interesting with no grief, but aside from all the previously mentioned ideas, my outfit practices against each other sometimes. We set up in a platoon and go to a friendly unused base, and practice / screw around on base techniques. We do hotdrops and basic cc subdual as well as courtyard practices. If the overhead notice goes into PS we would all look like HUGE TKers. I dont know if anyone else outfit has ever done this type of thing before but i know it can be fun when noone is around to fight. I can see this happening at Outfit basses even more. Another thing about the "police" squads. I usually agree and let people know when they overly grief me continuously, and put an end to it. But in one of the said practices, 2 guys cam in and just started killing my team off as we where firing on friendlies. They wouldnt take the hint to leave but we finally disuaded them by TKing them many a time (after mnay a tells from both sides)

[Happy lil Elf]

Grief works fine the way it is. People who don't know when to check their fire or who TK intentionally are punished. Nothing else to add other than puns are the spawn of Satan and you're going to the firey bowels of Hell for using one.

[BadAsh]

It seems to me that the grief system is doing it�s job well. I rarely see bored players just TKing everyone in site like I do in other games. As far as the war of knuckleheads� the ones that don�t check their fire and the ones that dash into friendly fire� I don�t think there is much you can do about that.

One thing that can be done is to revaluate the way experience point reward system is handled. Both of the above actions are mainly caused by players that are vying for a position to get the killing shot. Because, it�s the killing shot that reaps the experience reward.

Let�s briefly analyze:

Why think before you shoot? If you nail a few friendly troops you get a few temporary grief points, so what? If you manage a few enemy kills in the process you gain a few hundred experience points while the �fodder� is taking the majority of enemy fire AND your fire. The benefits for this behavior outweigh the consequences.

Why think before you run into a line of fire of friendly troops? If they kill you, they get grief points and you get no experience points. If they manage to damage the enemy and maybe even you, but you still land the kill shot you get the experience reward. So really you can�t lose here. You either break even or benefit, so people go for the benefit.

Currently the experience benefit system promotes moronic game play and does not encourage team play.

Things that could be done to foster a better team play environment:

Reward experience for kills to every friendly player in the area of the kill (i.e. those in the battle area) not just squad mates.

Reward experience points for players who provide support such as a medic who patches up a wounded player and an engineer that fixes up that armor or vehicle. I�d only reward this to players healing/repairing others, not themselves, while enemy troops are in the local area. This would help curb abuse by helping to ensure only people that help each other while in battle or under enemy pressure get rewarded. Also the person getting patched up should get an experience reward too. Why you ask? To give the player incentive try teamwork. Why let someone patch you up, especially if you are low on ammo? Just rush the enemy, die, respawn, and get shiny new gear and a full ammo load. Again, the moronic and �unrealistic� action is encouraged.

On that note, I�d give the Engineers tools a 3rd function� slowly loading ammo� I mean if you are nano-fabricating, why stop at armor patches?

BadAsh