Hopefully that's how it works. Cryptic's report system does not have any review system at all. Everything is automated. If about 20 people report you for spamming (or even enough people /ignore you), you get banned from all forms of chat (including party and guild chat) for 24 hours from every Cryptic game. It's so frequently abused (especially in PvP) that guilds communicate almost exclusively through other means. Ideally, there should be no reason to report people. If people can form walls and block your path (as in Habbo), this is a flaw in the design. Friendly fire is a dangerous thing to allow, especially with free-to-play. What's the friendly fire policy? Can I report someone for shooting me over and over? Are there built in penalties for friendly fire? Is there some kind of autoban system? Better than establishing rules is making the rules actually unbreakable.
I work in the IT industry and I do a lot of work on our network servers. What people need to understand is that server technology has come a long way when compared to what we had 10 to 15 years ago. Which is why we are seeing game companies talk about having everyone play on the same server. Even the older games are starting to update their server infrastructure and do this with technologies such as Pikko. However, I do notice that some developers do try to justify server transfers despite having this technology. Depends on how much they want to upgrade their infrastructure. However, with new tech comes a higher price. That article about Eve that was mentioned is quite old, when it comes to server tech evolution so I don't know if CCP has updated their infrastructure since 2008. But if CCP is still running their infrastructure like that then they are either being cheap or they don't think their player base is not going to get any bigger than it currently is. My point? If you're a game developer who's serious about making multi-player games, you should expect to be able to play on the same server. That's just good business and common sense for the developers and the customers.
Ideally, if you commit X amounts of friendly fire in X amount of time, you should be automatically booted from your current session, and not allowed to spawn back into that area for X amount of minutes. Say, 5 friendly fire kills in 5 minutes or less, you're automatically booted by the system and locked out from spawning in that area for 5 minutes. If a griefer comes back after that 5 minute ban to the same area, and repeats the same offense, they're locked out again for 30 minutes, and an in game GM is automatically contacted by the system. The GM investigates previous offenses made by the player, and can observe the offending player in game. From there, the GM can offer a friendly warning, or they can ban the player from that faction for 24 hours if they are a repeat offender and if they're blatantly griefing. In games that have friendly fire, no matter how careful you try to be, there are always instances of accidental FF. A grenade you're trying to toss into a window, hits the window frame and bounces back into you and your squad. An errant artillery strike you call in can inadvertently catch a group of friendly players that were too close to the impact zone. There needs to be a sanity check in place so that truly accidental FF incidents don't boot players. A reporting system alone is not the answer, and can be abused to no ends. I recall several times in Warhammer Online, reporting players that were AFKing in scenarios to leech renown, or reporting players that were participating in obvious exploits. What would happen in return is that player would have his entire guild report me for some fabricated offense, and I'd end up having to deal with a GM. Totally unsat in my book. Then of course you have games that strictly rely on a reporting system, with NO GMs available in game to deal with exploiters, griefers, ect. All the reports fall on deaf ears, and aren't answered for 12 to 24 hours. A combination of the system automatically booting players, along with a reporting system seems more logical.
In some MMOs, Game Masters have the policy of going "If you don't like someone, we point an ignore button into the game for a reason! Put said people on ignore and move on." As for using collision to block pathing, that's a gameplay tatic, if developers put collisions on player characters into a game, they expect players to use that tatic, it's part of the game design, it is used all the time in LoL by tanks to protect their adc, in fac the addition of "ghost" which is an active or passive which allows you to go though collidable creeps and champions testifiers to it's gameplay mechanic use. Thing about pathing blocking is yes it can be abused and yes friendly players could block other friendlies, intentionally or unintentionally. In those situations it comes down to player maturity, organisation and teamwork. If someone continuously uses path blocking mechanics to grief on their own team, can't really use an automated system to determine if they are being abusive or if it is by mistake and a reporting system can be abused by upset annoyed people who misinterpret honest mistakes for intended insults. This is most agreeable. As for your situation when said immature exploiters and cheaters report you for some trumped up fabricated charge, the one thing you did wrong in that situation was inform said people you were going to report that you are reporting them, or even writing or saying anything to them, doesn't matter what it is, they know you know they are cheaters, but they will only feel threatened if you say something to them. Don't, never do; Say nothing; Report them and don't even talk to them, that way they will be the ones a GM will contact, not you. Also with that said, games often keep chat logs, if a GM contacts you over a false report, then they would do an investigation of the evidence if you claim you did nothing wrong, if that is the real case that you did nothing wrong, said people who reported you will get in trouble for abuse of the reporting system. And this policy stands in most games which have GMs as the judge rather than an automated system. If however you did do something wrong which did violate the Terms of Service or the Code of Conduct agreement you signed, such as even insulting or being offensive in any manner, including making threats to the people who are cheating, you will be punished according to the rules, in most cases you'd receive an official warning or a slap on the wrist. Keep in mind never to violate the rules set out for a game in the process of trying to be a white knight.
While I agree that collision blocking can be a viable tactic, LoL is a poor example in this case. There are at most five players on each team, so I don't think four of them could successfully block the fifth on a team if they tried. (Of course, griefing in LoL is much easier than collision blocking, but let's not get into that.) In a game like EC, there can be a lot more players on the field, and in close quarters, it would be extremely easy for a group to block a path, intentionally or otherwise. Should collision blocking even be possible? Without it, you could have dozens of players melee the same target or hide behind the same tiny piece of cover. It's not realistic, but the alternative could be frustrating. Personally, I'd go for a sort of hybrid. In Age of Reckoning, players would block each other only in PvP, but it was possible to wiggle your way past a player. Standing in the same position as them, however, wasn't really possible. Enemies could get through your blockades, but they were slowed so much that they'd die before they got too far. It's important to minimize the possibility of griefing without allowing players to cheese battles. As for friendly fire, this is a tricky one. Let's say there's a penalty for repeated team-killing. This would certainly deter troublemakers from shooting their allies rampantly, but the system is still exploitable. If you're close enough to the respawn location, a player could run into your line of fire to kill himself over and over. Eventually you are penalized for team-killing. On the other hand, trying to avoid shooting him puts you at a disadvantage. There isn't really a way to detect intentional team-killing versus intentional team-suiciding. And what about grenades? A bad throw could kill five of your allies at once. Are you immediately punished? If not, the troublemakers can throw grenades at allies every now and then so that they can grief but not take a penalty. Even with a GM it's difficult to determine whether that throw was intentional unless they keep tabs on this player across a wider span. They'd essentially have to issue you a warning just in case it wasn't accidental. It's better to ask why we need friendly fire. Are the potential troubles worth it? In the case of collision blocking, there are clear benefits, so a compromise is probably best. I don't see the benefits of friendly fire, but its problems are complicated and many.
Unintentional friendly fire happens, and it sucks. Homed in with my sniper rifle, just getting a bead on someone, and a friendly steps right in front of me as I squeeze the trigger. Headshot. Son of a! It should do something else, such as, slowing your rate of fire (giving you more time to control your fire instead of spraying full auto into melee.....) to the point that it locks your weapons for a time. While the slow should wear off fairly quickly (but enough for you to really 'feel' it), the cooldown on the flag that you did FF should be much longer. As an example: 1st hit: Warning message flashes (cooldown on FF flag of 30 seconds) 2nd hit: Warning message flashes bigger (cooldown of FF flag 1 minute from this hit) 3rd: Warning and weapon locked for 2 seconds (cooldown of FF flag 1 minute from this hit) 4th: Warning and weapon locked for 5 seconds (cooldown of FF flag 2 minutes from this hit) 5th: Warning and weapon locked for 30 seconds (cooldown of FF flag 5 minutes) 6th: Warning and weapon locked for 1 minute (cooldown 10 minutes) etc An optional method (though kind of silly) would be that FF hits hurt yourself, or hurt yourself equally.
I though this thread is about world-wide servers.... Not friendly fire! Discuss that please separately?
