I read your whole post, I simply disagree with your conclusion. People toss around "harassment" very quickly in DR. This whole thread boils down to "i dont like being smashed please change it, it makes me has a sad". Nobody has contributed anything new to it in the last few days, its now simply a circular conversation where people are whining in a continuous loop. You were killed a lot by aftermath and gwethsmashed a lot so you want them changed, I get it - it was frustrating and it sucked. It also doesnt mean the world is a great injustice and the system should be changed.

>>Isn't that the very definition of harassment? I am confused.

That depends on the person, doesnt it? If you feel harassed you tell the GM's so they can monitor. If you are fine with it, you dont. It's up to the individual to decide. I dont necessarily think it is or it isnt.

It sounds to me like your real issue should be with the policy, not with gwethsmashing. Your complaint is how difficult and cumbersome of a thing it is to get harassment addressed. Gwethsmashing is literally 1 hour of no gwething. The fact that this thread has gone on as long as it has is testament to the fragility of ego of so many people who cant handle another player taking away e-chat temporarily.

Plenty of suggestions were offered at the start of this thread which were reasonable such as no item destruction, aka a gweth thump, but no smashers required. This really defeats the only legitimate complaint about smashing, which is the loss of items. The rest of this really just reads as a whine to me.

That being said, you have aired your grievances on the subject, I'm not sure anymore value is added to the conversation by repeating it over and over. I'm pretty sure the GM's are reading it.

>>After I got gwethsmashed

So out of general curiosity (I apologize if you have to repeat yourself), what spurred the gwethsmashing?

Low level new players are 'commonly' smashed for being incredibly OOC or annoying. I've yet to see a low level player targeted for a gwethsmash by doing nothing and just happen to be low level. I could be mistaken, though.

If it was from being incredibly OOC or annoying, then I would chalk that up to a life lesson for the young player. Having a gweth (or two) broken from said actions does not seem out of scope for me. I feel like more and more people are expecting to do what they want and have little to no retribution.

>>I've yet to hear a good argument from the "let gwethsmashers stay" camp on the following:

1) Why smashing a 1 charge gweth and a 100 charge gweth takes the same amount of effort/skill/gwethsmasher-charges
- Having more charges to something doesn't make it stronger. Charges to skill required have neither a direct or inverse relationship. Breaking it affects the physical side, I do not think that

2) Why someone would want a 100 charge gweth compared to a 1 charge gweth due to the point above, and if that devalues the purpose of higher charge gweths
- If you find yourself annoying, being OOC, or being targeted someone by being completely innocent and doing absolutely nothing at all wrong ever, you should probably invest in lower charged gweths.

3) Why thump can function fine with a duration of X but smashing has a duration of X+Y
- Thumping relates to a local event, gwethsmash relates to a global event. Being annoying in one room is not as annoying as being annoying across the lands.

4) Why thump does not require something to enable it, when people being dumb on the gweths is even more obvious because it's global
- Same reason as above, local vs global.

5) How to address that smashing someone who is newer to DR is a lot more penalizing than someone who has been in DR for a longer time
- A lot of new people are getting smashed?

6) Why I can't explode someone's armor/weapon/fluff if they're annoying but I can explode their gweths.
- Are you using your armor to use the gwethdusan network? Chances are if you're trying to kill me with a weapon and I kill you, I'll take your weapon and not your gweths.

>> The process can be long, and if a player is being harassed they basically have to be patient and wait however long it takes for the wheels to turn. That is not unreasonable. It is extremely frustrating for the complaining player. Unfortunately, I can't think of a better way to do it that wouldn't obligate the staff to get involved whenever someone asks for it without establishing a pattern. And not only is that not feasible, I don't think it's really desirable in an RPG - sometimes bad things are going to happen and that's part of the game.

I disagree that the policy could not be better. There are quite a few ways it could be better. Right now policy actually does very little to protect players that are being genuinely targeted by abusive individuals. As you point out in your post, even, the process basically involves being invited to sit and spin while the abusive behavior continues. You call this fair; I do not.

Speaking personally, I've dealt with abusive individuals taking advantage of lax moderation policies for pretty much as long as I've been on the Internet. But it's really only in the past year or two that there has been a magnifying lens put on moderation policies on various social platforms and within multiplayer games and thought given to how those policies can be better. But how to make a better policy is a discussion for another folder probably.

>> Honestly, it was for quoting Shakespeare, or rather using the gist of his ideas as a springhoard for RP. The gwethsmasher misconstrued what I was saying and intrepreted it as something lewd(or in her words "dirty"). I'm not going to chalk this up to our failed public school education system since what I quoted is fairly obscure.

1. Why don't you just paste what you gwethed? 2. Shakespeare was lewd all the time, and if you quoted something that could be reasonably taken as OOC besides. 3. People would like you more if you didn't imply they're not as smart or educated as you are simply because they didn't like something you said.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>>Having more charges to something doesn't make it stronger.

I think it's important to acknowledge the skill used to create something. I think it's bad design to have someone right out the gate make a gweth as useful against a gwethsmasher as anyone with notably more skill.

It's also silly logic since we'd be saying a gwethsmasher has to work this way based on the random rules that we ourselves decided on.

>>If you find yourself annoying, being OOC, or being targeted someone by being completely innocent and doing absolutely nothing at all wrong ever, you should probably invest in lower charged gweths.

I don't think "deal with it" is a good response, nor is having to actively invest in "bad" gweths to circumvent the logic of "well a gwethsmasher smashes gweths fully 100% of the time because of the arbitrary rule that was decided on when the gwethsmasher as a device wasn't as prolific within the game nor did gweths have that wide a range of charges"

>>Thumping relates to a local event, gwethsmash relates to a global event. Being annoying in one room is not as annoying as being annoying across the lands.

So should the duration of thump increase by how many people are in a room? Should gwethsmash durations decrease during non-prime hours when less people are on the gweths?

>>Same reason as above, local vs global.

But you also just said that gweths are more annoying. Why should I need a moon mage created device to resolve a more annoying situation?

>> A lot of new people are getting smashed?

I think it's important to assess and acknowledge all situations when determining if something should or should not change. One scenario is "gweths cost money, money is easier to get by higher level players, does this in turn punish newer players more than older players".

>>Are you using your armor to use the gwethdusan network? Chances are if you're trying to kill me with a weapon and I kill you, I'll take your weapon and not your gweths.

I'm just saying being annoying in general. Say I think someone trying to attack mobs I'm fighting is annoying to me. Why can't I break their weapon? Why are gweths one of the extremely rare cases where we can destroy another player's property outright? Some gweths are worth notably more than some fluff/armor/etc.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>I still don't want to see a valuable tool removed from the players arsenal because some people cant handle a time out from the gweth network.<<

What's the difference between a system in which 6 people can each give someone a 10 minute gweth silence and a system in which 1 person can give someone a 60 minute gweth silence other than someone's personal annoyance with someone else carrying less weight in the first one?


Mazrian

>>What's the difference between a system in which 6 people can each give someone a 10 minute gweth silence and a system in which 1 person can give someone a 60 minute gweth silence other than someone's personal annoyance with someone else carrying less weight in the first one?

Whats the issue with a 60 minute one now? People just put their gweth back on after 60 minutes now and go hah! or make some other snide comment and the smasher cant do it again for like a day. Its not as if they can get chain smashed. The situation you are describing will make someone just complain even more. "Whaa people are picking on me and harassing me I was smashed 6 times these people are ganging up on me, will likely be a thread in the future of your idea"

>>What is considered "OOC","frustrating", and "annoying" ? Under what circumstances do these conditions apply and who are you to make said conditions? You're judge,jury, and executioner. No due process, no appeals, no anything; just "I feel like it" is reason enough. That's the problem. One person's art is another's slur. You alone can't be the sole arbiter of what form RP should or shouldn't take in DR.

Due process? appeals? lol. Please, just stop. OOC is pretty cut and dry. You quoting Shakespeare on the gweth (if it really did happen, I wa not there) would be blatently OOC and deserves a smash. Just because hes 'ye ole english' doesnt mean you could throw it on the gweths, let alone DR. If I started talking about King Henry VIII on the gweth that would be OOC too. Frustrating and annoying are more subjective, but again.. harassment rules apply if it got out of hand. If your items arent destroyed, How I am reading your argument is "I want to gweth whatever I want whenever I want without repercussions." I simply don't agree with it. If I'm smashed I walk it off and deal with it. I've been smashed before. Its not the end of the world.

>>My personal worry is that the 'gweththump' won't last long enough to be a valid response to some of the over-the-top nonsense that catches some of the more righteous smashes today.

FWIW I believe in mob rule in DragonRealms. Individually I doubt gweth thump will reach impressive times, but if someone is actually annoying to the group he should be able to be shut down by the group.

So for me I'm more interested in how to constitute a quarom of gweth...gwethers? Gwethees? Whatever.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I am still uncertain that gweth thump will be/require Open. I would like it to be so (along with regular THUMP), but I am not the sole decision maker.

My knee-jerk opinion is that someone who isn't willing to go Open to moderate the gweth doesn't actually want to moderate the discussion badly enough.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>My knee-jerk opinion is that someone who isn't willing to go Open to moderate the gweth doesn't actually want to moderate the discussion badly enough.

I suspect you and I are of awful similar opinions.

Samsaren

>>a vocal minority

These are the DR forums in their entirety.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Can we have threadsmashers?

<<So for me I'm more interested in how to constitute a quarom of gweth...gwethers? Gwethees? Whatever.

A qweth, obviously. Duh.

>>DR-Armifer: FWIW I believe in mob rule in DragonRealms. Individually I doubt gweth thump will reach impressive times, but if someone is actually annoying to the group he should be able to be shut down by the group. So for me I'm more interested in how to constitute a quarom of gweth...gwethers? Gwethees?

Presumably, it would be mechanics abuse to emulate "mob rule" by using multiple alts to thump someone's gweths. What kind of mechanism would be in place to protect against this? (Keep in mind that it won't necessarily be obvious to the person being thumped that the characters targeting him belong to the same player.)


>>DR-Armifer: I am still uncertain that gweth thump will be/require Open. I would like it to be so (along with regular THUMP), but I am not the sole decision maker. My knee-jerk opinion is that someone who isn't willing to go Open to moderate the gweth doesn't actually want to moderate the discussion badly enough.

Why should the choice be either to suck it up or to open yourself up to PvP with any character at any time and any place? If the goal is to improve the overall atmosphere of the gweth channel, does limiting "moderation" to only those players who enjoy a more hostile play-style adequately accomplish that?

In particular, should players be locked open to silence someone solely for being publicly OOC? (It is awkward to answer ICly for something that was done for OOC reasons.)

I don't know if it's just a manpower issue or if it's a deliberate policy decision, but many players feel like GMs have, via gwethsmashers, delegated the role of gweth moderation to players except in the most egregious cases. (I would be happy to have this OOC function go away -- and have the remaining IC functions require being PvP open -- in exchange for better moderation by GMs.)

If gweth thump is going to be softer than gwethsmash -- both in terms of the length of the timeout and the destruction of items -- I think that is enough of a tradeoff to warrant applying the standard consent policy instead of locking the person open to PvP with every player in the game. (GMs would, of course, be able to adjust the stance of any player on a case-by-case basis if it is found that the player's PvP stance does not reflect his play-style.)


>>Teveshszat: If the goal of Thump is to tell someone, ICly, that they're ICly annoying, then that's a different conversation. My understanding is that Thump is meant to function as both.

This. While there can be many IC reason's to smash someone's gweths, it is common for people to use smashers as a tool to deal with OOC content. I assume that gweth thumping would be used the same way.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

sortable list of all Trader-owned shops and inventory: http://www.elanthia.org/TraderShops/

armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

Still say this is the best idea...

Example below:
>
You hear the thoughts of Trollguy... "You know I really hate that Jon Snow wasn't resurrected by Melisandre... I mean that's terrible! what's HBO thinking!"

...<to everyone wearing a kyan/jade gweth>

Narisha has requested to mental thump Trollguy if you AGREE please type THINK AGREE otherwise type THINK DISAGREE in the next 60 seconds.

>

>think agree

...<about 60 seconds later>

You hear the anguished cry of Trollguy as his mind is set on fire!
>

>grin evil

You grin evilly.


If there were more think disagrees in the exchange above then the person who requested it would be thumped and would be unable to do any mental thumps or think thoughts for [10 minutes * (# of players voting with recipient - # of players voting with the requester)]. Otherwise, Trollguy would be unable to think again for [10 minutes * (# of players voting with requester - # of players voting with the recipient)]. In theory, if say 120 players agree more with the requester, poor Trollguy would be thumped for an astounding 1200 minutes. That is 20 online hours of no-gweth silence.

If the concern is the cost of gweths for low circle characters, why not make the first attempted smash on an under 25th or so mute the victim's outgoing thoughts for an hour with a big yellow monsterbold warning about how some big mean bully took issue with something they said, and the next time it happens their gweths will break. That way -maybe- if the smash was for something OOC or irritating or what have you, the person can figure out what they did without the actual loss of items. Maybe they can chalk it up to lesson learned and be on their way. Have it message the smasher, too, with something monsterbold about how the target was low level. I have no clue what circle people are and my character doesn't care, but I the player would be more inclined to have patience with someone I knew was "newer".

Dear god why am I still reading this thread. Someone save me.

>>>> How about a GWETH WARN? Smasher warns smashee that if the offending gweth chatter continues, he will be smashed.

Maybe sort of like a GWETH THUMP?

>>However, a caveat is added to the current system (GWETH WARN) which gives the smashee ONE chance to stop their OOC behavior on the gweth or they get smashed.

This assumes the person doing the "warning" cares.

I'm skeptical of that.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.