The grief system: How can it be fixed?

[Hamma]

I think it's a great system that just needs a few tweaks is all. For example, you have a lazy asshat OS a friendly vehicle pad because the line is to long. That shit should result in insta-lock.

But sadly - it's hard to make such a system "smart"

[morf]

Originally Posted by Peacemaker

I've never gotten weapons lock. I just find the current grief system could use some improvement,



Adding something like this would make it so you could base the grief system on a much smaller scale. Getting as much as 50 grief points at a time is gone, and consequences could be enabled sooner. I did not make it clear but I felt that TKers need to be punished, and the current system doesn't do it right. Putting grief against a ratio of damage you do to hostiles makes a lot more sense.

Right. Because different players have different playtimes, a grief system that decays on real world time doesn't get it right. A griefer who plays 1 hour every 3 days is allowed to cause far too much mayhem, while a benevolent player who plays 10 hours a day needs to walk on eggshells to avoid stacking up enough grief to get locked after a few days. And you can't use online time because people can sit online and idle 24/7. So the only logical way to solve the problem is to look at your friendly fire compared to your positive contribution. By allowing your good deeds to offset your mistakes you have a better indicator or recklessness or maliciousness then you do by simply saying "count the amount of friendly fire over xxx hours."

[TheRagingGerbil]

Only tweak I could think is to allow faster decay of grief for doing support activities, other than that, system works great.

[Timantium]

I like the grief system as is, it doesn't penalize you until you get like tons of grief and if you are squadded with someone you don't get any grief for hurting them.

The reason to have one is obvious, and taking friendly fire out of the game is silly.

Originally Posted by Hamma

I think it's a great system that just needs a few tweaks is all. For example, you have a lazy asshat OS a friendly vehicle pad because the line is to long. That shit should result in insta-lock.

But sadly - it's hard to make such a system "smart"

I think they should put in an achievement for "friendlies OSed." Then make them wear that badge of shame on their armband and the empire would always know who to stay away from.

[wildcat140679]

I believe like many already pointed out that Planetside had a very solid anti-grief system and doesn't need much tweaking if any at all.


My view on the whole grief system is that it force players to use there weapons/vehicles more responsibly, to anticipate your surrounding allies there move's and trying to reduce friendly fire miss haps (or road kills) when ever possible.




Most friendly fire incidents occur when your under enemy fire and most people there first reaction is "Evade!"

Take a back door corridor fight for example. It still amazes me how often people start strafing left and right trying to dodge enemy fire, while there is more than a full squad of allied guns trained at the back door all shooting at the enemy. If the enemy fire doesn't kill the poor fool, the wave of friendly fire send to the enemy surely will.


There are countless of situation, where I've seen friendly units dying, because they ran back and forth through friendly fire aimed at the enemy. Those who dealt damage, are penalized with grief points and this isn't always right.
And I believe this is the part people like to see changed in the grief system.



So instead of tweaking the grief system, what about adding an other system, that tracking friendly fire received, tracking how frequent you take damage from different friendly sources (not the amount of damage) with in a short time period.

Instead of grief points call them recklessness points.
Not sure if they should be penalized, but it should not be a weapon lock.
Limiting access to certain equipment maybe, I don't know.

Having those recklessness points actively being tracked like grief point and have an (annoying ) game hint window appear, talking about situational awareness and the friendly fire very likely being caused because of walking through friendly fire and hints a like.

Also, for some players stats being tracked in the player profile for everyone to see, some considered this very important.
Having an impressive 10 to 1 Kill/Death ratio looks great on your character profile, but if that goes hand in had with a sky high recklessness score giving your the title of friendly fire magnet, the picture of a very skilled player changes some what.

Maybe even going as far as changing character armor looks, to name something extreme as having a bullseye painted on you front and back chest armor, screaming I'm reckless be aware or some thing silly.


I don't believe the problem lies with the grief system, but more with those who where reckless and responsible for giving you those grief points due to an accidental friendly fire miss hap

[Azellon]

I can't believe anyone has trouble with the Grief system, to be entirely honest. I've been logged on from morning to night at a stretch and never had any trouble with Grief. As Vanu HA, it can be very difficult to avoid Grief sometimes. Climb into a Magrider and you become a hovering Grief machine (as good as it is at mowing enemies down, it's better at mowing down friendlies). But as long as you're even slightly careful you can avoid punishment. As long as there is no consequence except the little beep every so often, what's the problem?

[p0intman]

tl;dr at the bottom..

the problem the developers struggle with is not 'protecting' people from tking grief play. instead, the balance problem is that a: asshats exist, and b: some people have really shit aim (myself included).

the result is that you must continually prove yourself to be worthy of a weapons lock in order to recieve it by continually shooting people and killing them.

there are also some other people that take it unto themselves to legitimately dislike people for being 'noobs' or generally crap players. in that they use friendly fire and grief as an excuse to spawncamp members of their own empire.

obviously, the easy route would be that damage to your own empire is flat out impossible. that wouldn't really be that interesting, though, and it would force fights to boil down to who has more numbers and better weapons combined into one hallway.

it would remove a learning curve of aiming and learning how to use weapons properly.

but again, you need something in place to prevent true asshats from showing how much of a dick they can be. it should also be noted that anything that gets put in can be used by said asshats to grief people with reverse mechanics.

example: running into the line of fire deliberately to cause others to be weapons locked from grief.

thus the system we have is a decent balance but needs a tweak or two with the above points in mind.

tl;dr: you can't fix it, it'll never be perfect because people are smarter than machines, you can only make it as close to ideal as possible. even then, it'll be a far cry from perfect.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Only change I would recommend is adding a forgive option, and friendly vehicles do not damage friendly CE, infantry, or vehicles if under 50% speed.

It might also be nice if outfits can set each other as grief free.

I like the first part.

However, the second would be abused, because people could just mindlessly and endlessly spam thumpers with no skill or aim. These are weapons, we have to use them with care. They aren't New Year's Eve party favors by flipping some switch.

I'm guessing that framerates will be up and netcode dunceness will be down, enabling more grief-free accurate fire in the next one.

[Tribulator]

Originally Posted by p0intman

tl;dr at the bottom..

there are also some other people that take it unto themselves to legitimately dislike people for being 'noobs' or generally crap players. in that they use friendly fire and grief as an excuse to spawncamp members of their own empire.

This is why grief must be in PS2… just the other day me and 4 other guys where TKed by a one of those guys because we were all in infiltrator and his reply to us when we asked him why was “I don’t like clocker and why do you play clocker any way it stupid” who the hell made this guy GOD; I play the game the way I want to play it if you don’t like it move along. Lately there is been more and more TK’ing at people just because they belong to certain outfit.

I think the grief system should be in game and should be tweaked so that if you kill a friendly away from the battle you should get lot more grief (like in a tower away from the fight or when you stay behind after the fight is over to lay down CE in the base and no enemies are nearby) it shouldn’t be too hard to make it work.

[Goku]

That is FPS gaming for you. Always one dick somewhere to cause trouble. I think the current grief system is fine. I do not see any major need for a system to what you are looking for at all. If someone is being like that towards my group I go right back and TK there ass. I have no issues with getting my hands dirty if it comes to that.

[TheRagingGerbil]

Grief system was fine. I would like to see the ability to reduce your grief by doing support work. IE: healing, repairing, etc.

[Traak]

New grief system:
A) it is impossible to get grief, as any kind of infantry whatsoever, for running into anything, anywhere, at any time.
B) It is impossible to damage, and thus get grief, if you are small-class vehicle, like an ATV, ramming into a tank, Sunderer, whatever.
C) Running a friendly over or ramming him with a vehicle that is of a class where you can cause damage of any sort to his person or vehicle, your vehicle immediately gets slammed down to 1/5th speed for 30 seconds.
D) Rate of Grief parameters: If you kill three (or some appropriate number) or more friendlies in a few seconds, instant weapons/vehicle lock. Not long-lasting, but long enough to make you think about using better aim and/or steering.
E) Two same-class vehicles cannot grief or damage each other. We should be able to have smash-up derbies with friendlies with no grief, if we are all running Harassers or whatever. No damage, no grief, no foul. Sometimes we gotta ram someone outta the muck.
F) While I'm at it, if you run into a heavier-class infantry, you get shoved back, not the cloaker throwing the MAX flying across the stair landing because he ran into him, or whatever.
G) Impending Grief Lock warning tone and screen (not center) message if your Rate of Grief or overall Grief points are approaching lock zone.
H) Running over your own CE garners you no grief.
I) Blowing up your own vehicle: no grief
J) Terraced Rate of Grief locks for worse Rate of Grief offenses. 20 friendly kills in a minute, for example, should get you no-stamina walking pace, no access to vehicles, and no trigger capabilities for five minutes. Higher penalties for higher rates.
K) There are many adjustments that can be made. Killing the same soldier twice in a short period of time, grief lock.

Don't make it so traitors can damage tons of equipment, CE, other players, terms, before logging off for a week with 999 grief. Make it so their rate of grief is also taken into account, not just overall grief level.

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I think it's a great system that just needs a few tweaks is all. For example, you have a lazy asshat OS a friendly vehicle pad because the line is to long. That shit should result in insta-lock.

But sadly - it's hard to make such a system "smart"

Although I find that level of asshattery frustrating to say the least, I don't want to be instalocked for OSing 3 friendly flails that are ignoring the comalls to stop flailing the CY so we can finally move in, or OS the friendly AMS that is so badly placed it is preventing the deployment of 2 others, again after ignoring several comalls to move the friggen thing.

OT, PS's current grief system is fine as is. Not perfect but I don't see the ability to improve much without introducing exploitable issues.

[Mirror]

Originally Posted by morf

The problem with the current grief system imo is that is disproportionately punishes players with higher play time due to it's universal decay rate. I would like to see it measure the amount of damage you do to friendlies vs. The amount you do to enemies. A certain amount of friendly fire is to be expected. So for example if we determine that 90 percent of the damage you inflict should be against hostiles, then for every 10 damage you do to an enemy, 1 grief point could be eliminated. The idea here being it could measure a players carelessness better than just looking at the amount of friendly fire over time.

I think we have a winner.

[mefy]

They should definitely allow a much faster rate of grief reduction if you have high grief and go play a support role for awhile, forces you to do some good for your empire and are rewarded with much quicker grief reduction so you can get back in the battle to TK more friendlies with your thumper!