What can we do about griefers on Phinigel?

I, and a few other parties*, just got trained by the guild that likely everyone knows. It was specifically their wonderful guild leader - . -. My first ever run-in with them.

Lovely Necromancer stormed in, trained several parties over and over again until they were all dead, and then left, likely moving on to another instance/zone to grief more people.


What can we do about them? It seems like any petitions about these players and their guilds are going to be ignored without video, and not many people stream EverQuest or would happen to be recording when something like this is going down. I found out that with this guild in particular, and especially this player, that this is a common thing and that pretty much everyone on the server has been griefed by them.


So it is apparent that nobody in the community likes them. I am sure there have been many petitions about them. If DBG is just going to ignore this, what more can we do? One of the players in one of the groups that got wiped out said that they were logging on to their monk to hunt members of this guild down to train them back. I do not think that this is conducive to a healthy community.

If everyone is griefing everyone, then nobody is going to be having fun and everybody is going to be quitting. Yes, it isn't to this point, and it is a small population of the server, but I don't think that they should be allowed to run rampant like this.

The community feels completely powerless to do anything about these players and a lot of them just say to suck it up and get griefed by them. That being hunted down by members of this guild is just part of the experience of Phinigel. C'mon guys, really? That is definitely not the classic EQ experience I remember at all.


Yes, I am quite upset about being randomly targeted by someone and then being trained with a quarter of the zone by them, then getting rez'd by the group next to us only to see him coming to train them next. Had a really good party going and an xp pot running with 3 hours remaining, and now it is wasted and the group is disbanded, leaving me to lfg for endless hours. We also had the best camp on the server, a camp that I waited for days to get into. I hope my saltiness comes across loud and clear.


I am sure that this is not my first run-in with this guild. The first likely happened so quickly that I didn't see what happened. I was sitting in a safe spot and suddenly I saw a train coming on me and spotted someone FDing in the midst of it. I did not have time to react/pick to another instance and I instantly died. Yes, the train was led directly to me in an out of the way part of the zone that I specifically chose to avoid being trained by players running for zoneline. I only happened to be sitting there with the lfg tag on. This is essentially two days in a row of getting griefed, likely by this same guild. This was in the same zone.

When discussing it, other players mentioned that this guild does what it does because it can do it without any consequences. The guild was formed specifically to grief people and make everybody miserable.


Would DBG be willing to atleast investigate this guild, its guild leader, and its officers?

If more information is needed, I did fill out a petition with the name of the guild and the guild leader that griefed us.


Thanks

Have a screen capture utility. FRAPS evidence is gold. Report and petition.

There's not much else you can do about it - scumbags will be scumbags. At the very least you can shine light on their actions.

Lack of a response from dbg has led to some people taking matters into their own hands and committing suspendable offences in order to send a message that continued griefing will result in mass training and experience loss regardless of the consequences. That is all.

I decided to install the software from Plays.tv and keep it running so that the next time I get griefed by this guild, which will hopefully be within 13 hours of this post, I can immediately start recording and catch them in the act.

Yes mr. guild that we all know of, please train me soon so that I can submit evidence to DBG. I welcome it. The more trains, the better. Extra proof of illicit activities on Phinigel.


I hope that with a video, DBG will investigate the entire guild and not just the one player that will be caught.

*wants this guild off the server*


I encourage everyone to do the same. Set up manual recording, pick your hotkeys, and then use this to protect yourself from griefers : ).

Or use it to trap people by training them, then record them getting retaliation.

A certain guild, I guess it would have been late Saturday night EST, 7am CET, was PLing with a pbaoe group in Seb. The problem people had was that they ignored the camps that normal xp groups were using and were pulling everything from Chef/Disco/Bugs/Entrance. A couple of big pulls then they'd switch picks and do the same thing. This did result in some deaths when parts of the train would peel off to one of the normal groups because a cleric healed someone, etc. The unnamed guild absolutely didn't care, and taunted people who asked them to stop and go somewhere else to do their PLing.

It's the first instance I've seen on Phinny of people acting like this, but last night in velks there were several incidents of people running big trains from the castle through UD/frenzy and then to the zone. Hard to say if that was incompetence or malice though.

Just this weekend, a friend of mine returned to EQ for the first time after several years away. On the 2nd day I asked how the leveling was going and she responded that she was in Unrest and that someone had trained her group 5 times.

Phinny has a real problem with toxic players that DBG needs to address.

I think that when a player logs on to a necromancer/monk and specifically builds trains to lead them to groups for wipes, complete with the classic FD in the middle of the group, that it is on an entirely different level. Players try to run away? Trainers literally chase after them. Players try to camp out? Trainer will cancel FD to lead the train to the person trying to escape. Yes, watched all of this while invis. This level of grief goes beyond anything I have ever seen in all of my years of EQ. Everyone without FD was completely powerless and could do naught but be hunted.

I have seen the usual steal the entire zone across several picks to powerlevel some peeps. I've also seen careless groups end up leading trains through places like Karnor's Castle and Unrest. What I have not seen is a player entering a zone with the specific intention to wipe everyone out in said zone because that amuses them. Something like that goes well beyond what should be tolerated.


It wasn't the fact that I got trained that upset me. It was how absolutely malicious the player doing the training was and how merciless they were to everyone they came across.


If people are wondering how I was alive yet trained, I got resurrected immediately after getting trained by the group south of us : ). I immediately went invisible after being resurrected and then saw the train that had wiped us come bearing down on them, led by the necromancer that killed us. He had canceled FD to continue the train down to the next group. Also, this was again a *guild leader*, so no social repercussions except me refusing to have anything to do with anybody from that guild.



This player had absolutely nothing to gain.


Atleast I know to now expect this kind of behavior on Phinigel. I just hope that the next time it happens, when I record it, that DBG does something about this guild.


I am originally from Xegony or Druzzil or whatever, and never, in all my time since the server was Xev, have I come across this.

Too bad players in zone can't vote to turn a zone pvp for set amount of time.

Commonly happens during an xp bonus. I wouldn't say this is a common issue to phinny, at least I have seen very few trains. Far fewer than I saw on Ragefire back in it's hay day.

You know, not for nuthin'. but in World of Warcraft trains are relatively impossible simply because mobs are leashed to the camps they belong to- Mobs just won't ever chase a player all the way around a zone. The mobs prioritize guarding ther spots.

Mobs in WoW also <totally> dump aggro and cannot even be engaged by anyone until they path back to their own camp once they dump aggro after a failed chase and immediately go back to full HPs so the break off mechanic isn't exploitable as a splitting tool outside normal camp area.

There are <obviously> places in EQ where mobs drop aggro sooner than others, so there is already some of this control in place. Some zones mobs are relentless, others, they give up when you're X distance off. Just shorten the distances.

Mobs don't really need to chase people all the way across a zone.

Instead of, as we here in EQ have for years, questioniing and complaining about the players doing it, maybe we should ask....

Why CAN they do this instead of why DO they do this?







Which has a much more concrete answer.

Perhaps EQ might consider this?

The best remedy is to wait until after their pull, then bring them a new pull while they med. I mean you're just helping them out right?

I hope not

i was at unrest when it happened to me. Kinda pathetic to train a baby toon.

Am I allowed to grin at the irony of a player named "AgentofChange" arguing in favor of the status quo without offending you?

;-)

Can I ask you..

Why do you say as much? You didn't give any reasons.

Mobs don't really need to aggro 3rd party players on a FD dump.. They <could> just lockout and return to camp unless otherwise aggroed by a 3rd party. It wouldn't derail swarming or beaming, you could still round up all the mobs in Beza, or GE and swarm, but on a FD there should be a lockout in my opinion.. mob loses target, mob doesn't agggro climb non hostile players. Unless a hostile act is performed by 3rd party player. If they're just standing there, mobs should wander back to where they belong.

Mobs in say... South Karana, do NOT aggro all the way to zone if you exceed "X' distance from them. The mechanic for that much is already in game.

There are plenty of leashed mobs in EQ and even some VERY short aggro chase distances.

Nobody really <needs> to FD train within normal game play, so why support it in the mechanics needlessly?

Having a mob lockout would be terrible in EQ because all you would have to do to guarantee a kill would be to tag it first. You could then kite it around in a circle forever until your group/raid etc gets setup and ready to kill it. Therefore eliminating any chance of someone taking it from you and adding a whole new element of griefing. Been camping a named for hours? Too bad I tagged it first, nobody is here yet but I'm just going to run around until they get here.

Mobs leashing like WoW would also eliminate any chance of aoe pulling. WoW leashing is like 100 feet. Put that in EQ and you couldn't even pull basic camps, you'd have to move your entire group everytime. Would be completely unreasonable.

Being able to pull from a large distance is how EQ was designed so changing that would completely change the way the game has to be played and would be pretty unreasonable. Having mobs return to camp rather than aggro another closeby player when you FD would also break the way the game is played. You could skip entire sections of trash by just running it a short distance and leashing it while your entire raid just walks on by.

What you are asking them to do is redesign the game. I didn't think I needed to give a reason because it was such an unreasonable request but apparently you need the reasons so there you are.

spell casting range, or ranged attack range does NOT equal a whole zone.. and specifically FD trains shouldn't climb 3rd arty non hostiles imo.. a FD split and a main assist will pick up aggro where puller left off.

I didn't say necessarily the same short leashes, but there is zero reason as far as roleplay or intended mechanics of the game require a person to be able to pull every mob in a zone, then FD or Fade them onto a non aggro 3rd player. The <only> use for that mob behavior is griefing. I also didn't say aggo locks on combat.. a dps race still goes to highest dps.

You used WoW as your example so I used the WoW model as my example...

I guess you didn't read what I posted earlier but what you are suggesting completely trivializes clearing anything out of your way... The abuse would be unending and we'd be far worse off than we are now.

I don't see how mobs <not> climbing aggro to non hostiles on a FD would be so wrong or imbalanced.

To be clearer. I didn't say combat lockouts. I said distance away from player modifications and specifically FD dump locks.. Mob is angry you invaded it's space, you run, pull train, dump aggro on a FD, mobs say, interloper gone, we should head back to base instead of glomming others halfway or entirely across a zone. It would stop grief trains. As far as "I tagged it first"

DPS race was already that.

Training is what people do to steal camps when they can't outright win DPS races.