Behaviour of the FL players…

I hear you. Back when I played on the public servers of various mods, I’d say for the most part it was pleasant - the biggest issue I ever ran into was having to pay rediculous high clan-territory taxes, but usually I could work out a deal, and it kept things interesting as I explored the universe. I miss those days, especially considering I spend most of my time with Freelancer working on it rather than playing it.

However, currently, yeah, I’ve heard stories of bad things here and there from other communities, and I’ve definitely had a few tough times with 88 Flak’s community - most players are fine by themselves, but for some reason some of them just do not get along at all with certain people, leaving the admins to diffuse the situation.
PvP in particular is a nightmare… Someone gets shot and all hell breaks loose. I don’t know what it is, considering a vast majority of the time the people in question are fine and don’t cause any trouble at all… Some personalities just don’t match, I guess.

Joined just to post on this subject.

Ganking has been going on as long as i have been around a long time.

I left FL community a while back because of this same problem plus the flame"s.

It will never go away simple reason is the community is a lot smaller now than it was,Server owner"s dont want to lose player"s,Flame war"s have alway"s been a part of the FL community and in a sick way generate FL intrest and RP.

On the subject of MMORPGS many many ex FL player"s play these type of game"s now and with newer generation of these type of game"s they attract player"s from all the different community"s out in internet land.

@Forsaken:

Change with players starts with Clan leaders policing their members and telling them what is acceptable behavior. Unfortunately, alot of Clan leaders are lacking in leadership trait, instead get obsessed with ensuring their clan is the top dog on the server.

well said!

Sorry, but this is not just a Freelancer thing, any online game that has competitors is exactly alike. Especially, if they have a forum. This is one of the few games where I’ve seen people from ages 9 - 60+ playing a game. The younger players are at times hot heads (Alas, I’ve seen it the other way around too) and the older (wiser??) ones are more level headed (Seen this reversed too). Face it, with the different backgrounds, beliefs, temperaments, and etc of so many people there will be headbutting involved and a few derailments. What I see in the FL community is mods pitting mod makers and players from one server against mod makers and players from others (This also happens in any game that has mods). The petty bickering on “my mod is better than yours”, “my mod has done this”, “We have the biggest community”, “your mod sucks”, or “our mod has been around for……” The biggest tragedy is Freelancer is dying and when people see stuff like this, it turns them off and they shelve the game. I’m talking about our player base not new people (Our meaning the FL Community). Almost every time I see a mod posted there is always a idiot that says you don’t have this or that and even your a thief that is from so and so’s mod. As a mod maker I don’t get paid, I do this for fun and for the good of my community, but I have also helped other mod communities out as well with how I do things and give them models at times. Am I afraid that people will switch mods because the same features are in another mod?? Nope, thing is this would not be much of a Community if Mod Makers didn’t share how they do things. I think this actually should be titled Behavior of online gamers.

My point about the MMORPG thing is this many Freelancer"s play these type of game"s and return to Freelancer under Alias name"s to cause havoc and they return with player"s who do cause trouble on server"s,most Server police/admins who confront these player"s enforce the rule"s but the player"s just move back from were they came from.

And yes the general behaviour of player"s has changed over the year"s from been very active in clan"s to been a solo flyer doing misson"s or just trade.The increase in ganking and of course the forever subject of been dock killed has alway"s caused problem"s now with undocking protection though most have gone.

On a good note though most player"s i no are old school and do not do any of the thing"s mentioned above

Maybe it’s the way you deal with that.
We don’t have much rules in the WTS World,
but our main rule we try strictly 2 enforce is

Cheating, swearing and insulting other players is NOT tolerated. (crime #1)

And as soon as any of our admins notices,
that there might be a upcoming problem,
we take action and talk 2 the player in a 1st step

• as at least one person, who posted in this topic will be able 2 confirm.
  

Usually the players accept,
that there is a limit in ‘roleplay’,
beyond which teasing should not go.
Some might leave, if they don’t like the
prison system or admin bounty on their head,
if an additional motivation should be needed.

And 4 sure this might be a bigger problem
in bigger communities.

My take on it from the years of using that tactic is this…

Well motivated Bounty Hunters do a very interesting job of deterring undesirable behavior just as long as they are educated and self controlled enough not to do the same tactics as a punishment.

Everyone always laughs about having a bounty put on them at first, but after a while it really does get under everyone’s skin not being able to log into the server unmolested. If you let a bounty go too long, that same person that originally thought it a joke will actually leave a server.

Pretty much standard human behavior I’m sorry to say, idiots, a-holes & bullies are not just restricted to RL you know, they tend to be more prominant because of the anonymous nature of the internet.

This behavior has always been part of FL, in the early days there were so many players & servers that you might never run into these idiots, but as the player count has dropped it’s become harder to avoid them.

I have to agree 100% with you there.

Just add one other thing to it, frustration. Due to this formerly well behaved players are having more “Bad Days” when they grow tired of logging into a server and seeing low numbers of old friends. You will especially notice this when a new unknown group shows up in mass with Role Play in full force stating that they will soon own the universe. Some former “non idiots” may feel outnumbered and convert.

@Bejaymac:

……
This behavior has always been part of FL, in the early days there were so many players & servers that you might never run into these idiots, but as the player count has dropped it’s become harder to avoid them.

It’s also a case of point of view. One person which you might thing is a total idiot could be a very fine person elsewhere; therefore, it’s just about impossible to see a “purge” of the idiots to happen as time goes by. It might even go the opposite way: as the community gets thinner, there’s a higher chance to encounter very… opinionated people. They might not be right nor wrong, but they can sure stir some issues every once in a while.

Maybe I’ve just played on the wrong servers from day one (which I rather doubt - I wouldn’t have traded my regular servers for the world), but I can tell you with absolute and unwavering certainty that nothing has changed - people haven’t gotten any worse than they used to be.

Flames, both in game and on random community boards? Spam? Random, annoying, and asinine tactics? Nothing new - in fact, I’d actually say that things are getting better in the sense that you don’t have 500+ (and no, this is not an exaggeration - I counted once) posts on here, or on TLR complaining (that is to say, flaming) a specific group or faction, unlike the early days on FL when such posts were a dime-a-dozen.

Personally, flames never bothered me… maybe I just have an unusually thick skin, but I’ve never quite understood why some people allow themselves to get so riled up by some random moron that has a penchant for cursing and insulting people… especially considering that most modern servers have a mute function.

If anything has changed, it has been the servers. I rather enjoyed the early days of Freelancer, before the length of a server’s rules list began to rival the holy scripture in terms of mind shattering length. I guess some people like that sort of thing, but I suppose I prefer a more ‘wild west’ atmosphere as opposed to the increasingly (and often unnecessarily, in my opinion) stringent rules I see.

And finally, why bemoan the lack of “GF”? Seriously, there’s no bloody point, and seeing a channel log full of

GO
GF^^
GO
GF^^
GO
GF^^

…into infinity is just a tiny bit mind numbing. If you’re in the middle of a long set of duels with someone, fire off a cruise disrupter to mark the start, and let it end without needless words. If the first fifty fights were good fights, the next fifty probably will be, too.

Thanks for your input! I’ve always tried to cordial to my opponents. And most of them seem to return the effort. But insults will always lead to more.

I often see players that repeatedly duel or pvp another player or group of players just type: /auto gfs in the system chat and that’s usually accepted instead of the gf after every fight. Then a vgf is used for an exceptionally good fight.

1.5 cents worth contributed…