Griefing is always a problem.

can't you just put a password on your server? Seems to work for me and my friends that's for sure, and easily, you know?

 

passwords are great for private servers. but this is a game that has already begun to build a community and begs for there to be public servers where people can trade, explore, and build together. If everybody walled them selves off on their own servers the universe would be a lonely place. The solution, ultimately, is going to come in the form of moderator tools and server centered steam id bans for repeat offenders.

 

Exactly what he said! My server is by invite only until I can have the tools I need to protect myself and everyone on the server from people who come on not to play the game but just to disrupt others from playing the game!

 

Quite frequently, actually. Building things is part of playing the game. If you enjoy building, why would you hate to do more of it? And if you don't enjoy it, why are you doing it? I can easily recall the last time I said "Well, I'll just build a new house," but I can't recall the last time I said "Damn it all to hell. Now I have to play this video game even more."

In games like this, having it all go to shit is a great excuse to go build something even better. I had a house wiped out by a huge meteor - it took out half of my house, and even rebuilding the missing half would have been useless. So I packed up my stuff, went to a new planet, and built an even better house. Now, that house (and all my other houses) are going to be wiped out when the new update is released. And after the update, I'll build more houses. Some of them will be destroyed, some of them will just be abandoned and forgotten, and life will go on.

 

Loving to build does not mean I want someone to blow up half my house, forcing me to either abandon and start again or rebuild. Even getting hit by a meteor is all part of the game. But being griefed by some stupid kid is not fun. If I want to build another house I'll build another house, I don't want it to be because some idiot destroyed what I already spent my time building.

 

Let me try something here.

Let's say you're Leonardo Da Vinci. Let's pretend you just painted the Mona Lisa. It's a masterpiece. Everybody thinks so and so they go hang it in a museum right away.

The next day some Douchewad McCrapbag decides to take a whiz on your priceless masterpiece for kicks. And then he ignites the thing ablaze because he's not a half-assed jerk. You go to check on your painting only to find it completely ruined and destroyed.

You're telling me that, in this situation, Leo would be THRILLED at the prospect of having to re-paint the masterpiece he worked so hard on?

You don't think he'd rather be spending his creative energies working on OTHER creative projects?

Your entire post assumes that you have to be completely uncreative and lazy to not enjoy rebuilding a work of art you made that was destroyed. That's such an incredibly ridiculous point of view I can't even fathom how it makes sense to you.

By the way, repairing a house that's been busted isn't creative in the least (because you're literally rebuilding something to a blueprint the way you remember it, not making something new). Modifying it to something different is creative, but nobody wants to be FORCED to build something new. Creativity is free-will. Creativity is when YOU want it. Not when some asshole decides you need a new roof.

As for the meteors situation, that's a bummer, but that's something we call "an act of god". That's just something you have to put up with if it happens, but that doesn't mean you have to LIKE it.

 

you guys know that meteors will destroy your hard work too thoug?
h right

 

Meteors in Terraria? I've never had that happen to me, at least, but I suppose it could happen.

I was always under the impression that the game programmed it's meteors to avoid player constructed housing or something, because, again, it literally never happened to me.

As for StarBound, same idea.

 

If it's hanging in a museum, I already got paid for it. If you want me to paint it again, you can pay me again. And if I don't want to paint the exact same thing again, I won't. Unless, of course, I'm offered enough to make up for it. If rebuilding the same damn thing over and over again is so boring (and I can see why it would be), then don't do it. Nobody is "forcing" you to do anything. You simply have a choice - rebuild it as it was, rebuild it in a new way, or don't rebuild it at all.

But I doubt your Starbound house is anywhere near comparable to the Mona Lisa. This is a video game. Have a little perspective. You haven't made any museum-worthy masterpieces, and neither have I. And when they get blown up, nothing is really lost. It's all pixels on a screen, data on a hard drive. If you're trying to make art with it, use a creative mod and save your work.

I guess I just don't take video games as seriously as you do, and I'm thankful for that. You don't seem to enjoy the things that happen in them.

 

Okay, this means that you are okay with the "easy come, easy go" nature of blowing up buildings. That's cool.

But other people are not. Just as they should respect your opinion and playstyle, you should respect theirs. That means not blowing up their stuff. I think that's the easiest way to look at it. There should either be options for "Any player-made construct is fair game" or "player-made buildings can only be deconstructed by the owner." That would allow for different servers to cater to different crowds.

 

My son, people don't take games seriously because they are sociopathic or insane. People take games seriously because they love them, and no other reason.

If you don't love a game enough to feel frustrated when bad things happen to you in them, you can't claim to enjoy them.

What is light without darkness to compare it to?

At least admit these are just opinions, and whether you take a game seriously or not is neither right nor wrong. You owe that much.

 

I only included this because i was in my bed in my house and while i read this thread a meteor storm showed up and demolished half of my waypoint bungalo! It was pretty rough, but i lived through it barely

 

You know what I love? I love a guy getting angry in bold, orange text.

One day this angry man will realize that if he wants to shield his masterpiece from all and sundry, all he need do is build it offline. I mean, we can make an elaborate system to "protect" construction blocks from harm from other players, but even that can be used offensively by an enterprising player: Your little hamlet is safe, but the steel ring some guy builds around it and protects with the same system you've protected your hamlet with, heyo! Welcome to the internet!

 

You don't quite understand the concept of effort, do you?

Meteors are capable of "destroying" a structure to a certain point. However, the structure must be outside of the middle 3rd of the map and not be part of a densely populated area (i.e. 30 NPCs living in the immediate vicinity) for a meteor to be capable of landing there. Most people set up their home where all their NPCs are and not far from their initial spawn so few experience this issue. But even when a house is struck by a meteor the damage is minimal because the present blocks are simply replaced with meteor blocks and the background blocks are unaffected (I think). And those in the know likely build a "barrier" of a 1 tile thick walkway above their structure, way up in the sky, to "catch" any meteors that might threaten their hard work.

 

I think we should have some sort of air-shield that requires a special code. That way they can't get their gigantic transforming maid robots to suck all the oxygen out of our atmosphere. But don't use the same combination on your luggage.

 

This just gave me an idea...

 

The solution to griefing is closed servers with friends.

As long as you're playing with human beings, no amount of 'griefing protection' will ever be enough to stop it. Protecting against griefing is an inherently reactive business. You're going to get griefed, then a solution has to be found, and in about four minutes time they'll have found a new way to grief. So close your server and play with friends.

 

There's no way to prevent griefing, it's just like hacking. But, we would like it to not be easy. Right now, it's very easy to drill a "hallway" through someone's favorite village, and it's easy to just go around throwing bombs and grenades and kill people that probably can't retaliate (who carries bombs and grenades, anyway?).

I don't think anyone is saying "Fix it NAO" because it's early beta. Lots of features haven't even been implemented into the game yet, so it doesn't make sense to fully develop and secure the existing ones. Personally, I'm hoping that the devs see the griefing going on, and then think about ways to prevent it when they focus on security instead of new features.

 

I can't agree with this enough. I say the same thing in the RoR forums because there's so much complaining going on there about how awful it is to play in teams.

And yet I always play with a group of my close friends and we never have these issues. I can't imagine why this isn't just immediately obvious to everyone.

 

Playing video games doesn't take a lot of effort. They're pretty much what I would call effortless. Seriously, Starbound isn't hard for me. Is it hard for you?