woah!

andreas, shape, in ALL the posts i have read (and i just scanned them again) about people leaving/being frustrated with arolte, he is blamed for killing/griefing/being a coward, nowhere did anyone mention specifics such as him using the NFZ bug or the L-mine bug. maybe mentioning these earlier would have been helpful?!?!

and i'll agree to that list of andreas's particularly the first 3, two of which are under active discussion in that running thread over in suggestions.

I'd also add death penalties of some sort to that list.

Hi Spell. Maybe you should scan them again, then.

"I didnt really want to post this, but after multiple discussions with him he insisted I did, so here it is. This Arolte fellow will follow me around, take a shot at me, then run to a station and hide in it till I leave, then immediately come back and do it again. He claims its perfectly ok to harass someone like this, while in my opinion his ONLY goal is to make it unable for me to play the game. Now, I know im no saint, but if someone asks me not to pirate them or gets upset I did, I stop pirating them and offer reimbursement, Im trying to increase enjoyment in the game, not annoy people to the point where they quit. Arolte claims that his "tactics" require adaptation, whereas I dont see any possible counter to them except to log off or stay in a station. For this reason, I would like a guide to clear this up for us, since its obviously not going to resolve itself. I find it generally more constructive to just log off when he is on though because I cant ever get anything done since hes always trying to annoy me."

Note: This was not my post. I will not name any names, but the person is more then welcome to stop forward.

Well, now the topics being discussed are all in-context gameplay things. Which is, hilariously, exactly what I said yesterday needed to be done in order to fix this situation, and my statement seemingly resulted in a mass exodus.

What I would really appreciate is for someone (like maybe Andreas? who seems to have a head start on this) to list and quantify all the most annoying gameplay-related things that Arolte is doing, list the best suggestions for fixing those problems, and post that to the Suggestions forum where we can debate the pros and cons thereof. If this is *really* what the problem is, and not him just killing people, then we can probably solve this in a week.

I know you all are heavy PK'ers, but there's a big difference between a fun PK between gentlemanly pilots and having some nasty person follow you everywhere. But.. they both amount to "killing people", so yes, I thought the main issue was just being killed (the overwhelming issue I had seen reported, at least). If it's the exploits that are being used during combat, then that's all stuff we can fix.

andreas, that is him being a coward. it does not mention him using the NFZ bug or the L-mines.

Friendly fire is something I have suggested to dispose of several times in the last 2 years, not just so players can fight their own nations criminals but also to increase the need for strategy ingame to avoid friendly fire in co-ordinated battles instead of everyone just launching their rockets all over the place without care

the warp timer is also a good idea, kinda like they need to power up. I run sometimes, it isn't nice but my ships cost money, I'll still run if this is made true you'll just have a last second chance to catch me.

I also dislike freaking out to solve problems. talking gets better results

no, Spell, that's not him being a coward. a cowards doesn't come back for the nth time to nick you and run. a cowards doesn't dare do that. but the intent isn't to fight. the intent is to annoy and maybe get a free PK if someone fscks up.

"This Arolte fellow will follow me around, take a shot at me, then run to a station and hide in it till I leave, then immediately come back and do it again."

he doesn't even wait for you to turn around and fire before he runs, if he thinks he can get caught. he uses the 3K limit as hard as he can, flies fast ships and generally does whatever he can to get away. then he starts over again. I have been trying to get this message across over and over and over again, but I have obviously failed.

for the record, I can't recall ever seeing him use the NFZ bug (but hey, I know a gazillion people who have, and it doesn't bother me much, it falls both ways) nor the L-mines. if this is what you're looking for, I can't help you. it doesn't stop him from making sure I've had streches where I can't play though.

I hate agreeing with ?, cos he is blue, but thats my reasons too, hell, if someone like arolte could drive me away, im sure it would have happened in alpha (where it was 100x worse)

If i had a suggestion, id post one, other than giving me a UFO, im stumped :P

Arolte, Blackhole Goldclaw and others are using exploits that have been known for along time. Like the NFZ problem. As discussed before if you kill someone in the zone you lose no faction, but if you kill someone outside the zone you do lose faction. This is a problem that has been reported for months now. It should have been fixed by now because it would have stopped some of their exploiting. At least it would have made players think about their actions more before laying lmines at exit ports or spamming someone as they leave the station. Yes they are wrong for exploiting the system but Guild is wrong to for not taking it seriously.

The problem with Arolte has been repeatedly reported for over a month now. The Developers are finally taking the complaints seriously and at least are considering some action. People aren’t leaving because of Arolte, they are leaving because they felt they had no recourse for clear harassment. Yes harassment is hard to quantify but if most of your player base think they are being harassed doesn’t that warrant you at least looking into it and making some decision about his conduct with in a couple of days and not waiting more then a month to do so?

It is good that you are finally taking their complaints seriously and have vowed to take appropriate action, but maybe promising to take some kind of action earlier might have convinced players you were listening to their concerns. And that might have encouraged them to stay in the game.

I know I reported the new NFZ exploit about 34 minutes after they fixed the old one, and trust me spellcast, a rollback isnt an option, it was also a really bad exploit, if you did it right (at least I reported it eh?)

Ok, here is a thread under suggestions with the worst exploits that people such as Arolte use to harass people. This is not intended to be an inquisition. I don't care what Arolte did or didn't do, but there are bugs that griefers do abuse, and they need fixing.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11201#131626

Jestatis, I have previously made long, involved replies about the issue (or at least, the issue that I thought was presented, and is seemingly now more complex). I have previously talked to Arolte two weeks ago, as I promised I would. I have been involved in this topic since it was brought up. The fact that no globally-agreeable solution has been reached has, I think, more to do with the fact that the actual nature of the problem (arolte's exploits) were obscured by the massive reports of arolte Killing People. Neither myself, nor the guides (as far as I've seen on our admin board), nor several other involved players posting on this thread were aware of what is seemingly the Actual Problem.

Yes, there are longstanding bugs in the game, yes, we did not prioritize them as high as, in 20/20 hindsight, we should have, I do apologize for that. We have in the past, and will most likely continue to make some mistakes in priorization. But it is difficult to blame us for a misunderstanding that seemingly.. hardly anyone had clearly stated until now. In general, we priorize bugs based on how widespread and "bad" their effects are. For instance, we just fixed a bug with the effects system that had caused parented effects to not function properly, and had been like that for probably 6 years.. no one noticed, we didn't even realize it was there, and it was not a priority. Gameplay exploits are a higher priority, but moreso based on their abuse. Had we been made aware of the abuse, specifically, we would have allocated more resources to it. Instead, I was faced with the debacle of people screaming for PURELY administrative action against someone accused of "killing people" when half the point of the game is, in fact, to kill people. That puts me in a rather awkward situation which I tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to articulate last night.. that I would not abandon our core PVP values, but that I hoped some gameplay modification might bring about an amenable solution. This resulted in some intense drama and people leaving, a response that I personally find childishly dramatic, but I do sympathize with their frustration. I haven't been absent from this discussion at all. I am not "suddenly now taking it seriously". I decided to talk to Arolte about targeting specific players when I read my email this morning (about BUNNY apparently getting run out of the game), before I ever checked the forums. The only thing that is "suddenly" happening, is that the actual PROBLEM is now coming to light, and that I am "suddenly" getting more gray hairs and wishing I worked pouring concrete outdoors somewhere.

There is an onus upon the development team to solve serious problems as they arise, and be involved and communicative with the userbase. Frankly, I do not feel that I have been remiss in this responsibility. There is also another onus upon the userbase to articulate and report problems. Larger games have professional paid gamers to test things and report issues, we have only you guys. If you don't tell us what's actually wrong, we can't fix it. I have spent the last two weeks barking up the wrong tree as far as problems are concerns, as this is not seemingly about PVP at all, but about a bunch of other ancillary issues. If someone had just said "no, it really isn't about him killing people, it's because he's exploiting NFZs or wormhole jumping" I would have completely changed tacks. I am apparently not alone in being previously unaware of this.

Anyone is welcome to go back and check the older Arolte threads and read my various 293489238942 page commentaries on why I'm going to have trouble banning him for simply killing people.

At the end of the day, the moral of the story is: Communication Is Good. Where it's from the developers, the userbase, or anyone else. You all have my email address. I would consider even posting my cellphone number so you can personally call me and scream at me. I genuinely want to hear your feedback and try and fix the problems that cause them, and I have repeatedly proven this since May of 2002. If people just give us a heads up about what's actually going on, and suggest alternatives instead of becoming exessively emotional and maudlin, we can all make a better game together. And I do mean together, because without your input we would be up a creek, so to speak.

"Tell us what's wrong, and for chrissake, lighten up!#@"

[edit] I'm now locking this thread because I think we've kinda wrapped it up anyhow, and I never ever want to read it again.