Harrassment during RP
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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For anyone interested, the harassing player mentioned in the OP was back last night, doing the same thing, which resulted in further petitions from a number of different people under "Harassment/Conduct".
Said player continued to state that he was "roleplaying" (and I use the term VERY loosely) a character who was testing teleporting in Pocket D, using this as an "excuse" to a) not talk to anyone in-character and b) use teleport to "nudge" people - into furniture, out of the chalet, and so forth. Within an hour there were not less than two GMs in-zone, and the player vanished. I cannot say for certain whether the GMs banned the player, though it seems likely, under the circumstances. So, in answer to the OP - yes, there is a hard line taken against harassment in-game, whether RP is involved or not. The true difficulty here is what actually constitutes harassment, and for this I borrow the Oxford English Dictionary... harass • verb 1 torment (someone) by subjecting them to constant interference or intimidation. 2 make repeated small-scale attacks on (an enemy) in order to wear down resistance. — DERIVATIVES harasser noun harassment noun. Considering that the player in question continued with his behaviour despite repeated polite requests that he stop, his behaviour actually fits both meanings quite adequately. The simple fact of the matter is that we all sign up to the EULA whenever we enter the game, and harassment is not allowed. The GMs have a right and a responsibility to attempt to ensure that harassment of any sort does not occur, and the act of petitioning ensures that they are made aware that someone believes action needs taking. Still, I am aware that the GMs cannot constantly be on the lookout for something like this, and as Castle said, they won't always take prompt or, indeed, any action. I do not believe that this should be seen as a sign that they do not care about this sort of behaviour, but simply that there are limitations to the processes in place, as well as a certain amount of discretion on the part of the individual GMs involved. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I was annoyed by the player's behaviour - more that he chose to continue with his "constant interference" and "repeated small-scale attacks" after being politely asked to stop than anything else, really - so I am glad of the outcome, assuming that he has, indeed, been banned. The rest of the evening passed without incident - there was the usual crowd of RPers (not cybering, I'll point out), as well as people looking for BNY teams, crafting stuff at the elf, and calling out for buffs to do the ski runs. It was rather nice. |
So if i'm rp'ing in anothe pvp zone by ''badging''.... i should petition everyone out there to get me.
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Let me explain. Firstly, I do not subscribe to the view that any activity taken in-game is roleplaying. Roleplaying is a specific set of activities that include (but are not strictly limited to) acting and speaking in-character. That's it. When I'm RPing, my Local and emote chat will be things that my character says and does. If I'm not RPing, or I'm saying something on almost any other channel, then it's me talking.
Castle mentioned that there are "unwritten rules" that govern our conduct and behaviour, and one of those unwritten rules is that if you are in a PvP zone you are fair game for PvP. If I am in a PvP zone, and I am RPing, I accept that other characters may attack mine, and that such attacks may have nothing to do with the RP I'm involved in. Hell, that's happened to me. I did not petition the player involved, because my choosing to take my RP into a PvP zone I made the explicit choice to accept that I may be attacked.
However, when I am in a non-PvP zone, engaged in social discourse, I have made an implicit choice to avoid such a circumstance. Now, people who encounter my character may choose to do a number of things.
1) Join in the RP. This would be my favourite choice, as I welcome anyone who wishes to RP with an open mind.
2) Ignore the RP and enter out-of-character discussion with me. I don't mind this. I will usually take it to /tells, to keep my Local chat clear for the ongoing RP conversation.
3) Ignore the RP and not engage me in conversation. This is fine by me. When RPing, I tend to pay no attention to people who are not RPing - their characters are not there, as far as mine are concerned, and I will only acknowledge them in-character if they choose to act in-character. (Please note, this is not me attempting to force any behaviour on anyone - it is simply the yardstick that I use when determining the sort of interaction I will undertake with others.)
4) They may attempt to interupt the roleplaying through out-of-character means. If this is done, I will politely request that they cease their disruptive behaviour, and if they persist, I will petition them for harassment. It takes an active choice on their part, not mine, to behave in such a fashion, and I have no fear of raising it with the appropriate authorities.
Therefore, if I am in a PvP zone, I have made the active choice to be there, and the consequences of that choice are on my head. I cannot and do not blame others for choosing to enter PvP conflict with me, since it was my choice to be in a place where that was possible.
Thus, the choices of someone encountering me in a PvP zone are different (assuming that I am a valid target for PvP).
1) Join in the RP. See above for my feelings on this.
2) Join in the RP, but also add PvP combat to the mix. This spices things up nicely, and is fine by me as a roleplayer, provided that the conflict follows as a natural part of the RP.
3) Not join in the RP and engage me in conversation. See above.
4) Not join in the RP and ignore my presence. See above.
5) Not join in the RP and engage me in PvP combat. This is the price of doing business in the PvP zones, and I will retaliate to the best of my ability. I will cease RPing for the duration of the fight, and the outcome of the fight will have no bearing on the RP in which I was engaged. I will simply pick back up where I left off, after I've returned from the hospital. Attacking someone in a PvP zone is not harassment in and of itself. It may, under certain circumstances, become harassment, for example should the attacker persist in attacking me at the expense of other potential targets, but in that circumstance I still have the choice to remove myself from the PvP zone, which is my preferred course of action under those circumstances.
Ultimately, in a PvE zone, I should be able to undertake any activity that suits me, provided that the activity I choose does not impinge on the enjoyment of others. In a PvP zone I am explicitly opening myself to combat with other players, and it is I who must amend my behaviour to conform to the game-mechanics reality of the zone.
In further rebuttal of the above-quoted post, I do not consider "badging" to be a roleplaying activity, since it does not fit, in and of itself, within the category of activities that I believe constitutes RPing. Now, that is a matter of personal opinion, and if anyone wishes to /petition for harassment against someone in a PvP zone, then feel free. I strongly suspect that the GMs will agree with me and pretty much just laugh at such.
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But my point is that if they're standing in a zone where that sort of thing is commonplace, stopping every person who happens to run by and hits them with a snowball, that's stupid and unreasonable.
I could understand if you were somewhere like Cap au Diable trying to RP with a friend, and a single person runs by and lobs a snowball. But to honestly stand in the very-busy snow zone and tell people not to throw snowballs at you? You're essentially standing in the middle of a crossfire with a sign that says "Don't shoot me." Maybe the people doing it ARE jerks, but you're asking for it. I don't condone lobbing snowballs at people when they ask you not to. But I also don't think that someone should stand on the globe in Warburg and broadcast "Excuse me, but I'm going to be RPing here in Warburg. Nobody PvP with me or I'll petition you, because I politely asked you not to." If anything, it seems more like the person is looking for a fight. If you want to RP and not get hit with snowballs, the last place you should be is next to the NPC that gives out snowballs. |
Yes, you're in a zone where people are going to be doing "winter things." However, most RP tends to be... fairly obvious, even if they're not doing it in local or broadcast. Or at least it's obvious there's "a group doing something." There's also a whole zone full of people doing other things.
Barring seeing someone you know ("Hey, there's Dispari!" - *toss snowball* "Heya!") why not find someone *else* who's lobbing snowballs or otherwise not seemingly preoccupied and engage *them* in this?
Location does not remove your right to ask someone not to interrupt what you're doing. (Barring, as mentioned earlier, "Hey, you're blocking the ski slope/Father Time/NPC/door, could you please move?") Especially when, frankly, those NPCs are in a reasonably nice setting for RP. (I also don't particularly thing the PVP zone example isn't valid in this discussion. There's no reward for throwing a snowball when asked not to, other than irritating the target. Warburg, you could reasonably get a code, you *will* get rep if you win, and you get a chance of a PVP IO drop.)
You know, I realize that English is likely not your first language, since by appearances you have no idea what some common terms mean, so I would suggest you step away from this thread before people mistake you for a pvp'er.
Also, you may be interested in learning about a new and evidently alien concept for you, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic It's good reading. You learn neat things like just because you say something, it doesn't make it true. Especially when things that are said as idiotic as the things you've been saying. |
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In the end, anyone who dislikes what others are doing can do whatever that want ingame according to the ToS to try and stop/mimick/harass RP'ers or anyone they want. Similar to real life, you can't really do anything to someone who is making fun of you... except make fun of them back (they always have something embarrassing to knock on) or beat some a**.
For this reason alone I wish there were duel in this game. Oh well.
I kind of tend to agree with what a lot of responders have already said: Ignoring the griefer is still your best chance at victory. It is the rare jackass that will continue to bug you after doing so for five minutes or so with no reaction. Petition (once) if you must but the minute you acknowledge their shenanigans to them, you've already lost.
That being said, I am a RPer almost exclusively these days and a lot of folks in my community are just a little too sensitive to live. Just a few days before the chalet opened, I was up at the D's tailor on Maniac Mime to tweak something and decided to peek in on the blue bar. Now, MM doesn't talk IC and is essentially a homicidal maniac so her interactions are usually limited to emotes with the occasional "..." thrown in for good measure. I take MM over to a group of players and start doing the monkey with her but having no physical or verbal interaction with any of them. After about 30 seconds, one of them emotes "RPer X decides that the Mime is a griefer and promptly ignores." Griefing? Really? For just dancing in your character's general vicinity? I moved on because I'm not out to spoil anyone's good time but I had to shake my head at the delicate flower.
To me, RPing is about rolling with the punches (verbal and otherwise) and reacting in-character to the stimuli that others provide. If you can do this and have a sense of humor about it, you'll have a far better time than you will if you get upset every time someone forces you to deviate from your predetermined script. I've been irked by griefers myself and I have confronted them about their behavior but the ones I've either ignored or addressed in-character have moved on quicker as a general rule.
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And all that because you don't like RP and enjoy deriding it. Wow.
The reason I responded to your post is because it annoyed me. If you don't like RP, that's fine but that wasn't the point of the discussion. Attempting to turn my replies into some kind of 'you have become the person who was haranguing you' are puerile. Oh and very passive aggressive. This is a discussion board, not a 1-1 conversation board. Therefore anything you, me, or anyone else puts up, is up for discussion. |
I never said I dislike roleplaying. I'd be quite the hypocrite or had a very souring experience in my past to go from spending 5-6 years roleplaying on AOL and IRC where I met my ex-fiancee, to suddenly hating roleplaying as completely as you seem to think I do.
If anything, I was half tempted to ask if people's powers or emotes were bothering you or disrupting your roleplaying because you need to do it in local and use the emotes for the visual cues. Had you said yes, then I would've been half tempted again to say you're quite honestly not doing a good enough job putting forth the literary imagery through your roleplaying. Or as they say on the intrawebs, "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG."
In the end, anyone who dislikes what others are doing can do whatever that want ingame according to the ToS to try and stop/mimick/harass RP'ers or anyone they want. Similar to real life, you can't really do anything to someone who is making fun of you... except make fun of them back (they always have something embarrassing to knock on) or beat some a**.
For this reason alone I wish there were duel in this game. Oh well. |
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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My first thought is...couldn't he just say he was RPing his character as being annoying?
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RP Griefing is definitely harassment, and should be reported. Once reported, the griefer should be ignored. They feed on attention and the only way to truly get rid of them is to starve them out. Give them nothing to feed on and they'll get bored and go away.
Refuse to acknowledge their existence and you'll find they will quickly go looking for prey elsewhere who give them the attention that they crave.
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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This is almost impossible though. Someone will ALWAYS feel that they need to laugh at or talk down to the person and tell them how pathetic they are. Unfortunately, that's exactly what they want you to do, and ensures they won't leave you alone. As soon as someone feels they need to "put them in their place" by telling them how sad they are, the griefer gets the okay to proceed.
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If someone you're playing with does this, send them a tell informing them they should just ignore this person or you'll never be rid of them. If they insist on engaging the griefer, then you should probably find something else to do, because that person just encouraged the griefer to make some popcorn and settle in.
It's unfortunately true that someone will always feed the troll. Just don't be an attractive target, it's the best you can do. I always keep my /ignore stick warmed up and use it with abandon.
ya know, i agree with you, but westly really isn't the guy who you should take so seriously, he jokes around for reactions, so reacting only feeds him.
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Great, I get to try out the ignore feature for this forum.
Thanks for the heads-up!
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Some player got harassed by a troll in the game and wanted to talk about it here, only to get further grief from other, victim blaming trolls, and to top it off, someone else invokes Ayn Rand?
Seriously?
You people love starting flame wars over such simple things.
Some player got harassed by a troll in the game and wanted to talk about it here, only to get further grief from other, victim blaming trolls, and to top it off, someone else invokes Ayn Rand?
Seriously? You people love starting flame wars over such simple things. ![]() |
And this is why there will ALWAYS be trolls and griefers, because people cannot just simply ignore them.
It works on the forums as well as in the game: Don't Feed the Troll.
Oh, ignoring a troll never worked in the entire history of humankind. People are simply not built that way.
And sometimes that's not even the right answer. Just ask Buzz Aldrin.
This is a point that seems to be missed somewhere between the EU and the US. I hear "horror stories" about public RP on the US servers quite a bit, really, but I have never witnessed anything like it on Union. If you go into Union Pocket D, odds are you'll find some people around the blue-side bar drinking and chatting. If you go to Galaxy Girl statue after 9.00 UK time, you'll find a some people hanging around, chatting. That's pretty much it, ignoring things like people being Tools and trying to screw things up for everyone else.
Yes, "Adult" RP does happen, but every roleplayer I've encountered on Union has been mature enough to understand that people really don't do that stuff in public, so they take it to SG bases, mission maps and the like. Places where they won't be inflicting the (potentially) graphic nature of the RP on the general public. Thus, when in public, the general consensus amongst the RPers that I have personally had dealings with (and bearing in mind that I am one myself) is "live and let live". As long as people don't try to spoil our fun, we are happy to let them have theirs. We (yeah, okay, pretty sweeping statement, here) don't intentionally interfere, and we don't break beyond PG13. On at least one public chat channel for RPers I even know there is a moderated "Watershed" before which swearing is not tolerated. Anyone who has experienced differently is either in locations that are not commonly used for public RP or are on a server that is not Union, and I refuse to be tarred by the same brush as others who have no regard for their fellow players. |
However, an explicit scene that continues in local? I have not seen it yet. I have been on Virtue for about three years now straight, prior to that I was on various breaks and I originally started on Guardian. Now, there are two things that I have seen happen, a) Mistell into public (either broadcast or local) followed by the group heading to a different zone, or logging all together but the scene did not continue and b) Griefers assuming that a group is undertaking ERP, start saying so in broadcast, or even global channels without any proof of it actually happening.
Situation B has actually happened to me once, I laughed about it as the person who was griefing us was talking about in one of the globals I'm in, and I defended myself without the person even knowing I was part of that group. None of us reacted to him, and eventually he got bored. I sometimes wonder if the horror stories about explicit scenes being RP'd publicly are instead fabricated stories that arrive from situations like this. I've even gone to 'investigate' such situations, to see if there are people that really do explicit scenes in public channels, and every single time I find that it's a griefer (or two) making it all up solely because the group in question is RP'ing in team, and say "MRP" or "All RP" tags in their bio which could mean anything. Such as taking characters who would swear excessively out of public channels, since public channels are supposed to be PG13 after all.
At this point, I think I've started to ramble, but I'll shuddup now
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You know, the horror stories are just that to be honest. I play on Virtue, and, I have not once ran into a situation where the public based RP has gone into the "adult" realm. Perhaps more than PG13, as there are a number of people that will swear and such.
However, an explicit scene that continues in local? I have not seen it yet. I have been on Virtue for about three years now straight, prior to that I was on various breaks and I originally started on Guardian. Now, there are two things that I have seen happen, a) Mistell into public (either broadcast or local) followed by the group heading to a different zone, or logging all together but the scene did not continue |
They can fuel the rumor mill for months after.
I'll never forget the one where an MM was describing how she used her robots' "attachments" on her partner... I'm sorry, but there's just some places high speed rotory action should NOT be applied.
And that one was dropped in broadcast, too.
No matter what you are doing if you are being a jerk about it you should be slapped on the back of the head.