Gameplay: Grief Forgiveness

[Lartnev]

Originally Posted by Malorn

tl;dr - fix the heuristics, don't add unncessary complexity to the game.

Agreed. Grief is a cruel mistress when it should be a fair mistress.

At first I thought that the forgiveness system should work in reverse, you're forgiven unless proven guilty. The reason was simple: players will first need to know they've been teamkilled (I sometimes don't notice in heavy firefights), second they have to know it was accidental, and finally they need to know/remember there's a forgive system on a menu screen. But then there's the opposite scenario where players flag a teamkill as deliberate when it wasn't for vengeance or just general trolling.

When I've seen forgive systems implemented they're undermined by the amount of angst generated by people not using it correctly. In short: I'd much rather see players angry at the system than at each other.

The grief system is designed to hold you to account for your actions. Should you be driving so fast in a crowded courtyard? Should you have thrown that grenade, was the 5 enemy kills worth the grief? etc.

I believe the frustration (and desire for a forgiveness system) comes from bugs or inconsistencies that lead to injustices in the system, just as Malorn pointed out earlier. A couple of cases of my own would be when the Striker used to lock on to friendly aircraft by mistake and when a full Galaxy was shot down but the pilot got grief for "crashing" on the people bailing out.

[WarChimp130]

I don't think it's that complex of a concept. If a player wants to forgive grief they can, if they don't then the system works pretty much exactly the same. Under my system the griefed player never even has to look at it if they don't want and play as always. It simply gives an option to forgive an accidental griefing that incurs a high level of grief.

I don't see how giving an extra option that empowers the player is a bad thing. It doesn't interfere with actual intentional griefing at all and simply exists to forgive accidents.

[Malorn]

It's not all that complex but it undermines the system, and its unnecessary. If the heuristics are correct then the average joe player that demonstrates decent fire control skills and doesn't go on TK sprees should never be even remotely in danger of a weaponslock and he should have a low, stable grief score that might fluxuate about 100 points.

There is no need for any grief forgiveness at that point because the system works as expected. Then you don't have "please forgive me bro!" or other such stuff. In the middle of a battle people don't have time to be doing that, and the incidents outside of a battle should never be significant enough to cause problems with someone's typical grief score.

It should "just work".

One big advantage and if there's anything I would like to see implemented around this, is SOE statistics (hopefully ones we have access to as well) regarding the grief levels of players, and the grief generated by specific actions/weapons.

I'd love to be able to look at my character's grief score and see a breakdown like a pie chart about where that score originated. Is 90% of my grief from throwing plasma grenades? Running over friendlies? Etc. If you know where your grief comes from you can better correct whatever actions caused it.

Then on the other end SOE and hopefully players as well can look at the overall grief distribution of where it is coming from. Throwing out the outliers (very high grief players) allows them to look at the distribution of grief among the average player, look for anomalies, and then tweak them.

Going along with this would be the ability to fine tune the grief generated from any action in the game. They can use the data + the fine tuning to normalize the grief generation across all actions in the game.

If you put in grief forgiveness or other things it skews results and as stated before...its just unnecessary. If they get the heurstics right you simply don't need it and it will just add additional actions for players to do and social issues ("zomg, so-and-so didn't forgive me after I accidentally hit him!! what an ass!"). There is no problem forgiveness solves that can't better be addressed by fixing the hueristics.

[WarChimp130]

I'd say another issue of concern will be the fact their is no 3rd person vehicle movement in the game. So when you are backing up or turning to the side, it's going to be much more difficult to tell if somebody is around you. Lots of people gonna be getting whacked, lots more grief.

[Malorn]

If accidental grief due to that sort of stuff is more prevalent then they'd have to tone down the amount you get since it is a more common occurrence.

Or give vehicles 3rd person. I thought they had mentioned vehicle 3rd person, but no infantry in one of the videos.

Then again, Battlefield games don't have vehicle 3rd person and I don't really have issues accidentally running over friendlies.

I think PS warping had a lot more impact on that sort of thing than we might think.

[NewSith]

Or, you can make it so that firing upon enemy causes grief to go down. Slower than you got them, but faster then you lose them in idle. Like some sort of buff to griefpoints loss.

[BorisBlade]

Originally Posted by WarChimp130

I'd say another issue of concern will be the fact their is no 3rd person vehicle movement in the game. So when you are backing up or turning to the side, it's going to be much more difficult to tell if somebody is around you. Lots of people gonna be getting whacked, lots more grief.

Well they are only removin 3rd person from infantry. No one in their right mind would take it away from ground vehicle pilots. It would be a nightmare to drive in first person. Hop in a deli or marauder and see how well first person goes. Cant see squat, its very hard to maneuver well. Heck basic driving is a pain in the ass in first person, let alone tryin to move in and around things at high speed in combat.

[Firefly]

I do not forgive.

My hate keeps me warm.

[Bruttal]

I dont even want a greif system in place. rather a reverse vampuric effect. you shot a friendly the damage you done to him is done to you and you just healed him with your HP

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Bruttal

I dont even want a greif system in place. rather a reverse vampuric effect. you shot a friendly the damage you done to him is done to you and you just healed him with your HP

I can't wait to run in front of friendlies so they kill themselves.

[Brusi]

Originally Posted by NewSith

Or, you can make it so that firing upon enemy causes grief to go down. Slower than you got them, but faster then you lose them in idle. Like some sort of buff to griefpoints loss.

This is almost exactly what i was thinking of... If you have been doing say at least 300% more healing to friendlys or damage to enemys than to friendlys in the previous 100s or so, then grief gained from friendly damage should be minimal.

This may not cause tank drivers to hit the brakes to avoid friendly softies who insist on crossing the road while listening to their ipod during the heat of a battle, but it will def punish drivers who don't avoid softies in safe areas with no enemies around.

Think this would also work well for tower plasma spamming as well. As long as more of your nades are getting past the friendlys and into the enemies, then you shouldn't be accruing grief so fast.

Rezzing or healing the same person you grief might lower it quicker too?

[Brusi]

Originally Posted by Bruttal

I dont even want a greif system in place. rather a reverse vampuric effect. you shot a friendly the damage you done to him is done to you and you just healed him with your HP

so then... flail = 1 shot AoE complete heal + self destruct

[Krowe]

Friendly fire happens. It is inevitable.

Its only natural to assume that punishment gets handed out. However, it seemd kinda ridiculous how every bullet into a friendly magically traces back to you.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Krowe

Friendly fire happens. It is inevitable.

Its only natural to assume that punishment gets handed out. However, it seemd kinda ridiculous how every bullet into a friendly magically traces back to you.

It must or there is no accountability. Accountability is the whole point of the grief system and without it you have griefers gone wild.

[Brusi]

People need to be taught to avoid friendly damage almost as much as people need to learn not to shoot through their mates.

I mean, gawd sake... i want it to punish players that zig-zag in front of you, or into friendly crossfires or run down the centre of a hallway in a base or into an nme CY and get hit by the friendly Flail that has been bombarding the same spot for 20mins!

Oh, well.