Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:31 pm Posts: 126 Location: Germany
|
Recent events in the Cavern (which I’d really like only to be discussed in the most general and schematic terms here if necessary, ok? so that the thread doesn’t get locked down before the conversation has a chance to get started) have gotten me thinking about good responses to inappropriate behaviour again. We’ve had a number of discussions on the forums about this in the past (which are easy enough to find if one goes hunting), and some of them made suggestions for an alteration to the game client to allow for, shall we say, a more robust answer to harrassment or other forms of griefing (the /kick function). These discussions were always a bit hypothetical, since there was really no indication at the time that fan modifications to the code would ever make it onto Cyan’s version of the game; recent moves forward in open source, however, along with our currently somewhat improved funding situation, have made it seem to me, at least, that this conversation could now profitably be re-opened. And: I have a specific proposal.
I agree with the objections that people made to the /kick-function idea. In a nutshell, it had too much potential for abuse. But there is more than one way of removing someone from your gaming experience. I would like to suggest that we reconsider a less intrusive suggestion also made in earlier discussions: the possibility of modifying the /ignore-function of the KI (or of adding an additional function we might call /shun) to make the ignored avatar not merely inaudible, as is currently the case, but invisible as well.
Most griefing operates on the assumption that a certain kind of behaviour on the part of the griefer will elicit a certain desirable response from the victim (fear, anger, confusion, whatever), and it is this response that provides the griefer with his or her motivation to continue. In the Cavern, options for influencing another person’s playing experience are largely limited to KI-messages, chat, and what goes on on the screen. This last is what concerns me at the moment: it’s an immensely disturbing experience to have to watch in third person as your personal space is repeatedly violated by another avatar, or to turn around in first person to find him leering over your shoulder. The ability to ‘disappear’ someone else would render this kind of griefing immediately ineffective without compromising the griefer’s rights to be in a certain place at a certain time or to continue to interact with those players who are still willing to tolerate his or her behaviour.
So I wonder if we could talk about this. What might speak for this idea, what reservations do we have about it, what haven’t I thought of that might make me abandon it altogether in favour of something even cleverer?
One final point: Lontahv at the Guild of Writers tells me that this is an entirely possible, even minor modification to the xKI Python code. So it could be done. The question is therefore: do we want it?
(Edited for accuracy.)
_________________ 
Last edited by Gahlen on Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
|
|