Factorio Forums

I experienced my first instance of griefing today and it was pretty frustrating as the host was afk so we couldn't kick the griefer. After fuming for a bit, I started thinking of ways to mitigate problems like this, and one I came up with is voting to kick/ban a player.

Maybe it could be as simple as a command, and anyone that types it would vote to kick whatever player they typed. Maybe something like a 1/3 or 1/2 of players would have to vote to kick a player.

There is a problem with such methods.

If a group of griefers (or one with some remote controlled bot help) decides to join the server then they might outnumber the normal players... and then kick/ban everyone else on the server and there's nothing the normal players could do to prevent the overtake... and the griefers will cause even more damage then. The only one who could do something is the admins themselves, but if they are not present then it's a free for all. It's hard to recover from that in the aftermath because it will be hard for the server admin to comprehend what exactly happened and why... and mostly it will result in a server reset and loading a backup.

I've seen it happen in many other games who have such voting systems, so I'm not in favor of that.



Kick/Ban systems only work reliably when there's something like a hierachy system, pretty much like most historical IRC networks have... with Admins and Operators which can't be kicked/banned by the normal population. Because they are the only thing standing between order and anarchy.

So if at all then maybe there should be an additional layer of users with privileged rights... like the admin marking some players as known regular players if they trust them and they have the right to kick someone from the server even if the admin is not present.

Good point. I haven't played enough online games to even think that far ahead. Well thanks for the reply

Hi,

Public Servers are pretty much the main reason I play Factorio. So much fun. Here's a few ideas: (I'll update with new ones as I think about it)

- Allow non admins to vote-kick or vote-ban a certain player. Or at least have that as a setting in server options. Useful to get rid of griefers when the admin is not on..

- Remember server filter choices like sort by users and no password/no mods.

- Be able to add users to friends list? I suppose you can do that on Steam, but I don't use steam, so..

- Allow colors and more customization for server names.

I would like to suggest the implementation in vanilla of an anti-grief system.

Online play is the best of Factorio and so many great maps are ruined because people grief..

I know some servers are going to implement anti-griefing systems, but I don't know in what they consist.

Vote-Ban could be a good thing when the admin is not online. If a % of users votes to kick/ban you.

But in any case something to avoid this is very important. They kill the game..

Sure it's a good tool but it have loopholes.

What happens if the griefer have friends with them?

What happens when griefers kick/ban you instead?

I think it'll be better to have "super-user" aka moderator been promoted by admin who will have the power to kick/ban players.

vtx wrote:Sure it's a good tool but it have loopholes.

What happens if the griefer have friends with them?

What happens when griefers kick/ban you instead?

I think it'll be better to have "super-user" aka moderator been promoted by admin who will have the power to kick/ban players.

Well, things could be tried. Some servers have an anti-grief system so maybe we could see what works for them.

A team of griefers is harder to come by than a single griefer. SO maybe something like the surrender vote in the PVP silo server.. Where you need a certain % of the vote and a minimum of voters. Let's say 70 percent and 4 people voting ban minimum. Yes perhaps wont work for everyone but it will be an improvement.

Also make it easy and intuitive to vote. You could use F1 for YEs and F2 for NO.

redlabel wrote:Also make it easy and intuitive to vote. You could use F1 for YEs and F2 for NO.

Only moderator can make that voting.

And what if on the server is nobody, but griefer?

I suggest to collect all building statistic in vanilla.

• Who has built entity
• Who has destroyed entity
• Who was destroyer and considing him with entity creator
• The same, but with automatic building / deconstructing
• Who has killed your entities, probably own

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=32968 Collection of Of Ideas around Multiplayer: Lobby-Features, Joining, Mod&Game-Loading, ...

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=29700 Multiplayer: Banning, avoid Griefing, Blacklisting ....

Actually you can have more than one admin. So if you play with friends and your server is public, you should /promote all your friends and thrusted players.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... _commands/

Only /config /toggle-heavy-mode and /demote can be harmfull if you promote the wrong person.

Any voting system can become a tool of even greater griefing itself. Imagine bunch of people loggin into randomm server and votebanning random people who did nothing wrong.

Griefing is comparable to Terrorism.

You have no way to know somebody's intentions until they reveal themselves by performing an attack.

There is no practical or sane manner to detect and remove them in advance without inconveniencing legitimate players, giving up a lot of your freedoms as a legit player, or running the risk of false positives and the anti-griefer system itself being used as a means of griefing.

The game probably should include support for server-side mods that allow vanilla clients to connect. This would enable savvy coders to create equivalents to the minecraft mods WorldGuard and LogBlock, which can be used for griefer detection and damage control without being majorly inconvenient for people who want to enjoy the game.

OdinYggd wrote: The game probably should include support for server-side mods that allow vanilla clients to connect.

Scenario

There is a mod on a vanilla server that has detection /anti-grief builtin. It will prevent you from using the decon tool to mass decon the server till xx minutes playing.I believe he will be able to disable nade/flamethrower damage as well. In addition,any time you try to decon an object, it alerts everyone on the server you are trying to do something.

If interested let me know and I'll try to track the server down.

It seems promising

UPDATE: The server is TNT explosivgaming.nl. Have Fun!

I was going to suggest a ban:reason-based system. When you ban, and put in the reason, that is uploaded to a factorio database. For users who get "grief" as the reason, they get a point (like drivers' licenses in some US states, I've heard) on their account. They can wear off over time...a long time.

Admins can setup the maximum number of points allowed on their server, and when it authenticates users, it also checks their point value. If it is within the limit set, the player can join; if not, they're told "you have too many griefing points against you to join this server."

Of course, no system is anywhere close to perfect when it's a subjective system, that's why I say the points should wear off over time. Along with the griefers, I don't doubt that there are some admins who would feel the need to unnecessarily punish users (by trying to keep them out of OTHER servers, which is in no way their call to make) for varying, inappropriate reasons. So, that wearing off system would be in place mostly to be an anti-bad-admin countermeasure. Something is better than nothing. It's a small multiplayer community, so admins aren't always available, and one griefer can easily cause trouble for many people on many servers in a short period of time.

There are some incredibly intelligent people programming and playing this game, so I'm sure someone could come up with a simple algorithm to improve upon this idea, and assign points to those with admin privileges, which would impose more weight on a point depending on the person who applied the ban. If that person bans a player, and 9 other admins band that same player, those 10 admins are assigned their own value of trustworthiness. As multiple admins with that additional value ban a player, their "ban points" now become worth 1.1points. I'm not saying that these are the exact numbers to use, I'm just giving an example of how it could scale. This would allow true trouble-makers to receive heftier penalties when assigned genuine bans, and this would be showcased by the agreeable bans given by other admins to the same player. This would also setup a new trouble-maker to advance in their points more quickly if they happen to join two servers in a row with high-trustworthy admins and receive grief bans on both. Admins who assign bans to multiple players, many of whom have not received bans from any other admins, would obviously have their value reduced. That way, if it's just an admin with a Napoleon complex, their bans that they think are big and mighty, really don't do much at all.

Also, I've seen a genuine mistake ban made--someone asked who the griefer was, the response was quick, the ban happened, then they said "wait, no, it wasn't them, sorry". So, implementing this system would be good with some weighted bans and/or forcing a "minimum" of 1 point to account for accidental bans, possibly.

Just some ideas.

another idea:

when an account will be labeled by the system as griefer, he will see sessions only made by other griefers.

the griefers will stand alone with other griefers and legit only with legits.

Koltrast wrote:another idea:

when an account will be labeled by the system as griefer, he will see sessions only made by other griefers.

the griefers will stand alone with other griefers and legit only with legits.

And then you join a "griefer" server that kick/ban you and now you are tag as griefer and you can't play anymore with your friends unless they are flag as griefer too.

OdinYggd said it in my eyes correctly: Griefing is like terrorism. Nothing effectively can be done against it.

From theory it's not possible to implement a system, that protects a game from griefers, cause griefers are always part of the game. If you make something like that, you come to systems that limits the freedom of players. As you can see in reality, where the freedom of innocent people will be limited more and more.

And the theory says, that it is the wrong way to protect the game from the griefers by installing more and more administrative instances over them. It says that the right way to protect the game from griefers is to see griefers as part of the game and equip the game with mechanic to make griefing part of the game.

Which means in practice: Add game-mechanic to protect your property (what you built) from griefing. For example an electric fence around your factory that kills everybody that touches that fence and only you has the key to turn off the fence.

Such a fence is just a stupid example. There are 1000 things possible, we need just to look to the reality and implement similar mechanisms.