Monday 5 April 2010

THE DREADED NINJA


In case it's not immediately obvious, the fragment of an ingame log, above, posted on Codemasters forum yesterday and immediately copied onto a number of private forums, refers to something which took place on the Laurelin server. The player identified as Denwyn was leading a fellowship in the Sammath Gul instance, where the rare Symbol of Celebrimbor dropped after the group successfully took down Gorothul. All six players rolled for the item, with the leader scoring a lowly 7; immediately after the roll, the leader assigned the item to himself and left the fellowship. In game parlance, to acquire loot items by fraud of any kind is to ninja them.

The player concerned, a Hunter once known as Deniro, promptly changed his name once again to "Alitis", arguing a certain amount of premeditation (whether he knows it or not, by the way, his new name is the Greek word for "thug"). Now, Codemasters have rules about naming and shaming which forbid the outing of bad player behaviour on their forums, which means that by the time you look for it, the thread may have been deleted. CM Gamemasters are also under strict instructions not to take any action over player v. player complaints of things like ninja looting. I can see where they are coming from, of course - to do otherwise would almost certainly lead to a flood of trivial or even malicious complaints, quickly swamping the system. However, it strikes me that in a few serious, well-documented cases, or those where the same player has consistently been reported for abusing the rules and/or disruptive behaviour, there is every justification for GM intervention leading to a partial or total ban. The proof is easily available in the form of game logs like the one above, and I believe there are catch-all rules about harassing and inappropriate activity which could certainly be made to cover blatant ninja looting. And it's in nobody's interest to have thugs running around ingame - not even, or perhaps particularly not even the publisher's.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is why when you are with a PUG you never accept anything other than roll/pass, ML and Need/Greed are only for when you trust the folks...

unwize said...

Thanks for the heads up. Have posted a link to this on my Kinship's forum.

Blue Kae said...

This is why I only do fellowships for instances with kinmates. I only join random fellowships for instances where I just want to finish a quest or see the content but don't care about drops.

twittfounder said...

not so sure about roll / pass as the safest most *trustworthy* method -- i've seen more class specific (or class appropriate) itmes lost to inappropriate roll / passing than to master looter thievery.

bottom line: playing with folks you know trust is a better option. playing with clear loot rules up front is helpful.

if you DO end up w/ some sort of ninja looter, put 'em on your ignore list and let your kinnies/friends know NOT to play with that ninja...

Fingolfinfelagund said...

Kind of reminds me of a player on our server called dire who ninja looted a few times. The good thing is, he paid for his ways and always takes grief over it years later. There is not real need for GM's to step in, the players will self police and get plenty vicious enough.

Anonymous said...

Leader can always change the loot rule during the fight, even when the boss is down he can switch to Master Looter. So it's never save to raid with people you don't know.

Unknown said...

The sad part of the story is that this person transferred from another server about a week ago, and after he stole the Symbol he made unsubstantiated accusations against other players that they stole at least one symbol from him, so he felt justified to do the same to other players. Truly pathetic behavior, and equally lame response from one of his Officers who in a private conversation with me claimed that it's none of his concern!

This thug's current Kinship is called Spartiates Polemistes (Spartan Warriors), which is a disgrace for those that they named it after.