Simple answer: You can't. Live with it and wait for it to blow over. They've only got so much steam before it wears off.

That's a bit of a problem, cause every month there are new guys who turn postal on the game cause, due to its nature where people work to build a base, and then lose it, some people are just not able to take the heat.

If you look over at TMC, you'll see numerous flames for the MUD, every time a new kid finds it and thinks he can control it, then starts a flame war when he finds out the world doesn't work that way.

See, that's the point at which you should have given them the boot. Zero tolerance works wonders.

In Amnon's defense, his MUD is quite good and refreshingly new.  One of those MUDs which pushes the envelope and defines the "new" in MUDding.  There is a certain cartoony/unprofessional aspect to it, which I don't care for, but that is more than made up for, tenfold.  And yes, it is a very cutthroat pk MUD not meant for those with weak stomachs.

Amnon, my advice to you is, you need a figurehead.  Play yourself as (highest level minus one) and have a mysterious (highest level) imm who noone actually sees.  Because he doesn't actually exist.  This will afford you a TON of flexibility.  When you have to do dirty work (like deleting someone), you can say "Man, I really didn't want it to come to this, but the boss was adamant."  It will also lend a lot to the mysterious/professional aspect of the MUD.  People are more likely to ascribe respect to their head imm when it's someone they never meet.  A head imm interacting as much as you do, while openly letting people know he's head imm, will do much to rub the MUD's professional coating away.

We've had to deal with that very same guy over here at the Carrion Fields and we had the exact same problems. We have since banned him from our game and forums, and the best advice I can give about the flame wars is generally to do your best to ignore them. They want reactions to fuel the fires. If they don't get any attention, they tend to move on to something that will give them attention, positive or negative. So just let him talk to the wall, and he'll move on and bother someone else. Hopefully sooner or later he'll just grow up of course.

I found that our own playerbase generally picked up on when he was just talking crap and even turned the tables on him, so I doubt he'd really make a dent in changing any playerbase opinions.

-Arvam

In my mud we have a wonderful feature that we call 'Coventry'.
It allows a player to talk, gossip, chat, shout, yell or whatever, and everything looks perfectly normal to them.

Only the other players don't even notice them. Whatever they type never appears on the screen.
So naturally they get totally ignored.
And the beauty of it is, that in most cases they never even realise what's being done to them.

It's perfect for the situation you describe, so I suggest you implement it.
Let them yell and waste their steam for as long as the want.
They won't do any harm, and eventually they will tire of it and go hassle some other mud.

As for bad reviews - ignore them. It's pretty obvious to most readers, when a review was written out of sheer spite. Might even get you a few players.

On the other hand, few people beside the owners read reviews anyhow.

How come you can't use the command?

I mean - there's a saying "if it looks like a flamer, sounds like a flamer and acts like a flamer, it probably is a flamer."
Okay, so the saying actually has more to do with ducks than flamers or twinks, but it's still valid!

Anyways, what I'm saying is - if it sounds like a new player is running off the same kind of spiel these guys do, use that command. If it turns out that they aren't the pair you're trying to get rid of, you can (probably) apologise later.

Okay. To begin with, this is not CandidatusLupus, but her cousin. I don't have a name.

-----------------------------------------------

Anyway, It seems to me that you want to have these troublemakers go away, but don't want to do anything to make them do so. See, in my opinion, you either need to give the MUD to someone else and put someone else in charge (someone who can do the job without hesitance) or you need to buckle down and show them who is boss.

Your stituation seems to remind me of a mud that I was an Imm on. The problem with the immortals and the players and basically the MUD in general was that the imms refused to treat players equally and to enforce the punishments no matter what.

For example, Bob would go and  get in trouble. Bob's punishment should be banishment, but nooooo, the immortals didn't want to do the 'dirty work' as I believe it was previously called. They just poked Bob, scolded him, and told him to be a good little player. This happened several times until my cousin and I left the MUD.

You need to create a punishment for most rules that you can think of that can be broken, and stick to it, no matter what. The punishments should never be lowered a little bit. Actually, they may need raising for some. That is at your discretion.

I understand that it may seem like I am all "DESTROY PLAYERS! PUNISHMENT = GOOD!!!!!", but I'm not really. That's basically what it takes to keep your players in line. Ah. I know how horrible I sound.

Amnon, you are just going to have to pwipe the chars that caused the trouble, set up a newbie ban on AOL for a month or two, and make sure that you don't see those IPs when you come back. And treat all following players accordingly.

Another thing is, that it seemed to me like you were a little -too- worried about what damage the players could do. As people stated before, if it looks like a flamer, sounds like a flamer, and acts like a flamer, it prolly is a flamer.  Unless you have done something worth being scared about, don't worry about it.

Well, that's my 200 cents.

No more comments from the peanut gallery.

-Zinnia

Like I said, it's not that I don't -WANT- to use it, I'll gladly use it on these guys, it's just that I can't ban people with Dynamic IPs, and they keep creating new chars, so I can't set any flag on them.

I do ban people when I feel they show disrespect for the rules, it's not that I'm some wuss-imm or something, I just can't predict what IP and char name these guys will try next. Nobody can.

So nuke them and get it over with. If they create new characters from dynamic IPs and you can prove that it is the same people, do them too. Make it clear that rule-breaking will not be tolerated, no matter how much damage these people can attempt to do.

If you create rules for your mud, you ought to enforce them. If not, the good players, of which there are a great many more than the bad, will have something to flame you about.

That's not the problem...

The problem is that I can't be on to nuke them 24/7, and they just keep coming and spamming the boards and doing ****.

Unless I find a way to exist without sleep, same as my staff, it gets hard to prevent.

As someone mentioned earlier (and I think you may have misinterpreted it) you need to essentially setup an account system with your Dynamic IPers (such as AOL people). When someone logs on from an AOL address, have it check a list of vaiable account names (or just have it check and see if it's a preexisting account). If it is, let them through. If not, send them a message that says all AOL (or whatever ISP the IP refers to) members have to register in writing (by email, and using their REAL AOL address) to gain an account. Of course, don't forget to rm the offenders accounts after you put in the implementation. This *wont* effect any of your current AOL players, unless they want to make a new character. If you have lots of characer being created all the time by these players, set up the account with a special "password" that needs to be inputed for AOL uses every time they make a new character, and issue the passwords to your players that you want to keep, and others that request them via email.
No, this won't completely and utterly stop the problem. But it will definatly help. You'll be able to nip the offenders in the bud quickly when you realize who they are, and will "ban" them for longer then banning a specific AOL address. Additionally, you have the extra screening process by email, which will provide another limited form of protection; they have to use their AOL address to do it. Sure.. they can just get a new AOL address, but chances are, you'll figure out who it is via the language they use in their message at least 50% of the time.
Lastly, after having to wait 1-7 days each time, and register a *new* aol account every time they get banned is enough to push anyone off the side and make them go away. Once they are gone, you can then decide to disable the "feature."
I've done this on other non-mud server appplications before where "characters" are a *lot* less static then mud characters, and it works well. You mud, in which it sounds a bit like people burn through characters at a good rate, I think would help solve your problem.

-Tezcatlipoca

On most MUDs I play there's a newban on AOL. Which basically means that anyone on an AOL host can't create new characters but can log in to existing ones. If someone on AOL wants a character they have to contact an imm to get one. It prevents a lot of l33t dudes of annoying the #### out of everyone. In your case it would prevent the guy from coming back while current players on AOL can still play their characters

I'm the guy that Amnon is talking about. First paragraph is my take on bad muds and player responsibilities, the second paragraph is my side of the Amnon story.


The imm owns the mud, and the server.. and actually invests money into the mud. He also invests time. He / She can do whatever they want, it's their mud. Keep in mind, though, that a mud is also a game. The owner or host of a game of monopoly can do whatever he or she pleases (it's their game). If the owner cheats or is unfair, they will no longer have any players. This is why it's important for players to leave mud where the staff is unfair / mean or blatantly cheating. This is the only weapon players have against cheaters. The internet is a democracy, you choose where you want to play.. And it is PLAYERS not IMMORTALS which make a game a success.


As to Amnon's story... it's bupkus. I was the one who pulled my own plug on his mud, because I caught him blatantly cheating. The players who have remained have made a choice to play despite his cheating... The evidence (and his lack of any mature response) made for a compelling arguement against him. Fact is, he decided to play sides. He rigged a special character (or) possibly even played a special character whose only purpose was to take out my alliance. Even on these boards, he claims this character had prepared for weeks to pull off a coup de grace.. but in less then an hour of playing time this character was on par and better then our 100+ hour characters. (We used a figner command to figure out how old this character was). At 5am eastern standard time (when no one was on).. Amnon coded a brand new feature, and this "special" rigged character charged our base with this feature minutes later. We watched this character get created, and in the same hour we watched him build up a base which would require at the very least 24 hours of work.

When an imm takes sides.. that's fine. WHen an imm rigs characters.. it's time to leave. I brought 5 of my friends to Amnon's mud.. And yes, we're all leaving.

Hmmm.
In cases like this it is very hard to sort things out, but, being a thread by Admins about dealing with disgruntled players, I'd like to make some observations, based off of Soljax's post.

Unfortunately, the actual situation within his mud which caused Amnon to start this thread has no bearing on the thread itself. Exploring ways of preventing the situation from occurring again does.  The only solutions seem like bailing a boat with a fork. It is easy to ban someone, even with dynamic IP's. But, it is impossible to stop them from being heard if they wish to complain. I think the best damage control is handling the aftermath in a mature, non-judgmental fashion, and especially to avoid being dragged into a flame war. That will only encourage them more, and raise your stress levels.
Soljax- Muddying the issue by continuing your argument here only serves to erode any position you might have.  You are better served to create a new thread and discuss it there. I'm not trying to minimise any feelings you have on the subject. I'm just suggesting you might get a better discussion of it if it's in the proper place for it. This thread has actually stayed on topic for 2 pages so far, which is remarkable in and of itself.
On an aside, I think this thread should probably have started in the Administrators Forum, as it does address problems encountered in the day to day running of a mud.  Damage control is a very little discussed topic.  In some cases it can actually cause more problems to try fixing/stopping people bad mouthing you than it can to simply let them jabber on and possibly impeach their own statements.

--QS
(who has many things she'd love to take issue with, but would rather see more exploration of the original subject, dealing with Dynamic IP's & Damage control.)

>>Edited to restore paragraphs on dealing with damage control. Bad ctrl-x. Naughty ctrl-x.)

Soljax, there are numerous MUD admins, on MUDs a lot more respected than mine, who you claimed to have done the exact same thing.

So I'm SURE that we're ALL cheating! Everyone on Soljax's list (from his TMC post) CHEATED to get him out of the way! Why not, I mean? It's only Soljax, he was cursed so every MUD owner will cheat!

Besides, if I wanted you out of the way, I had MORE than enough reason (Caught you cheating numerous times) to kick yo ass myself instead of making a new char.

I think mud damage control is a joke. If you've done some mudders wrong, then they deserve to be heard. Mud reviews are a wonderful way to gauge a mud. I can't say I've ever found a negative review that was unfounded.

Admin need to realize that their absolute power ends when I log off of their mud. I have a theory that spending years as a god goes to some people's head... but that's another thread.

Pure antagonists are rare if not non-existant. (Not many players log onto a mud not intending to play). If a negative review ends up getting written, then there is obviously enough wrong with the mud to warrant the effort. I can't bad mouth a mud I know nothing about.. I have no compulsion to, and so far, no one else does either.

The real scumballs of the mudding community are self-centered. They don't have any community spirit, and won't waste their time writing a review. If an immature player decides to write a review, then their grammar and tone is telling.

In short, bad reviews don't come out of the blue. Before I ever set foot on a mud I read the bad reviews.. because they are ALWAYS telling. Good reviews lie (they have motivation). Bad reviews are earned, so if you don't want them, don't be an ass.

PS: Quicksilver: while you might want to run some respectable threads, it's a bit callous of you to accuse me of issuing a flame when Amnon is obviously the one who initiated it.

PPS: Bad immstaff are a dime a dozen, but then so are players. The difference is that the code stops players while facilitates immstaff cheating.

last word: 90% of the bad reviews I write are just about imms with an attitude problem (most immstaff don't cheat, even the bad ones).

You know, I don't care if I have a dozen bad reviews from you, as long as you're not there scaring off people with OOC harassment anymore.

Even with your reviews, the game had the most players its ever had at the same time yesterday, so I think people finally realized that if an ass writes a bad review about something, than that something's gotta be good.

Disgruntled Players who start flame wars....?

Disgruntled Admin who start flame wars.

Ok, here's the problem with "bad reviews" from disgruntled players...

You have players who do something, and get denied, banned, or whatnot.  Usually you can set your watch to the timing of the post on here, or TMC, or Kyndig, or a review, or a combination of all of them, berating the staff, berating the mud, slinging as much mud as they can in a petty attempt to get back at the person(s) who had the audacity to halt their behavior.

Honestly, after dealing with this for years, there's not much you can do about it other than weather the ****storm that flows from it and just go along with your business as normal.

People can see through the bad reviews and idiot posts, and as long as your remaining players are still happily playing, to #### with the moron that caused the problem in the first place.

As for dealing with dynamic IP addresses, my only advice is to just keep denying the characters as they reveal themselves, either the person will stop being an idiot, or they will move along to harass someone else.

You can contact AOL with a socket, login time, and if you can get it through some means, a user name, and they will take action.  What's an even more fun step is to get the contact information and talk to a parent, I've done that on more than one occasion, and even sent logs to the parent of some of the lovely things that their minor has said, and of course they think their child is a perfect little angle until you send them server logs with datestamps with them telling the entire world things that just would make most people blush...

- Terloch

From your attitude, Terloch, I can tell that you're a bad immortal. Immortals cannot take things personally. This is a game, and if someone cheats then the response is simple. If someone insults you, or even disagrees with you.. You are the type of person who will take it personally and make a big stink about it.

A good immortal knows the difference between someone insulting them, constructive criticism, and a different opinion. A good immortal doesn't start handing out punishments for any of the above.

It's the bad immortals who start saying, "this is my game, and I will make life more difficult if you have an opinion that I don't like". There are a lot of people who fit into this group.. because if I say, "I believe RP should not be rewarded with PK benefits', half the time I cheese off the immstaff enough that they get a vendetta against me. If that happens, I'm gonna write an honest review and mention that they've got an attitude problem.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe YOU'RE the one with the attitude problem?

Did you ever think that this IS the admin's game, and if certain people don't like the way it's run, there are a hundred others who do?

Did you ever think that working on a game gives the admin the right to decide how it should be played, and that's not at all an attitude problem?

If so many people kicked you off their MUDs (You yourself listed them on TMC), did you ever, once, stop to think that maybe the problem is with YOU and not with the rest of the world?

We all have problem players at one time or another, and I guess we all have our different methods of handling them. I usually try to reason with them myself, rather than  banning. It is amazing how effective that simple method can be.

But then again, we may have been lucky not to get struck by the worst  kind of problem players.

The worst cases we've got were a couple of 'script-kiddies' from one of the new east-European countries, who decided to ddos the Mud, when they got mad at some of the other players. Y'all know what ddos does, right? They bombard the server with thousands of messages, from a number of computers that they hacked into, until it breaks down.

It happened about a year ago, on four different occasions; the worst time the mud was down for three days, and we had to get ourselves a new server. Obviously nobody was very happy about it. In fact we darned near decided to close down for good.

We didn' ban them - with the 'hacker' type of player who has access to a more or less unlimited number of computers, that obviously doesn't make much sense. Two of the three players that did it are still with us. I tried my best to explain to them why ddosing a Mud that you actually want to play isn't a very good idea, and hopefully some of it sank in. In any case they are among our most hardcore players by now, and have eventually adjusted enough to be among the top ones.

I doubt they'll do it again, but of course you can never be quite sure. Since most of the players know what they did, they obviously made themselves a number of enemies, so there have been some minor conflicts since the actual incidents.

It would be interesting to hear if something similar happened to other Muds too, and if so, how you handled it.

It's not often that you'll get someone trying to break down your game. That's actually pretty extraordinary. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a "firewall" is the solution. If you've got people pinging ports.. just block um!

And... I recall that there's a siteban that works through the unix box that works immediately and won't even allow any sort of connection. If you siteban the range of IP's that are spamming you.. it'll stop, because you can't create much spam through a shell account.

soljax blithered:
Yeah, I made one comment, and you can tell everything about me. That's brilliant. I can care less if people insult me, and I actually enjoy people who can constructively disagree, I know I'm not perfect and all of my ideas sure as #### aren't perfect. My biggest issue with idiots who break rules and get banned is their un-needed vendetta to assault the site which has taken away their toys.

Don't make assumptions if I'm a bad immortal or not, you know jack crap about me.

- Terloch

Don't let it get to you Terloch. I would guess that all of the muds he's listed he's been kicked off of, including the one Amnon runs, he's done the same thing he did on the mud I play on.

He thinks very highly of himself, he thinks he understands the ins and outs of every game he logs into, then ****es and moans about the unfair and overpowered race/class combos until he plays said combo then begins bitching about it. Continually cheats, and is finally banned where upon he starts slinging mud in any way possible. His reviews are ****, as is his attitude. ####, he's not even a player of notable skill.

Just pretend he's not there Amnon, and he'll eventually move on to annoy some other admin staff.

Soljax played (and trolled our website) for a while, as Arvam mentioned above.  He seems to believe that it's his right as a player to insult the staff, cheat when the opportunity arises, etc., but that the staff should be all-forgiving and pardon his indiscretions because he's a customer.  He will write you weepy emails, complain about his persecution as vocally as allowed, invent conspiracy theories to explain his ineptitude at your game, and then go right back to the same behavior once you lift sanctions.

Hence his permanent ban, something we rarely use.

Afterwards, he tried the bad review game with us.  We put a brief disclaimer on it, and were going to ignore it, but 12 of our players responded .  It's always heartening when karma shows itself.

Note to others in this thread: He craves attention.  It's why he posts his "I'm a celebrity!  Really!  Why is everyone laughing?" threads.   No matter how often you demonstrate he's a dime-a-dozen childish pest, he will claim his behavior was all a clever series of tests to see how you'd react.  In other words, he's just testing how your MUD deals with immaturity so he can decide if it's good enough to play.  If he breaks the rules of your game, as Amnon has described, just remove him quietly and without a big scene.  Don't give him the acknowledgement he so desires.  

This is my first and last post on this thread for that reason.

"he thinks he understands the ins and outs of every game he logs into"

Because I do. If I don't know something, I'll learn it faster then ####. I log onto a mud, pick a player that's been there for years and set my goal to beat his ass.

"then ****es and moans about the unfair and overpowered race/class combos until he plays said combo then begins bitching about it"

I can spot something that's not balanced or wrong a mile away. This is why I don't get along with most immstaff. I'll tell them straight up something is wrong, and they'll get ****ed because I've only played their mud a few weeks / days and I'm already finding **** wrong with it. Another failing is that most immstaff don't know jack or **** about game balance.


"Continually cheats, and is finally banned where upon he starts slinging mud in any way possible."

Why would I write a review while playing the mud? It's obvious that immstaff take criticism to heart. Writing an honest and critical review hwile playing a mud is like shooting yourself in the head. Read my review of Carrionfields. Read the responses. I write positive and honest things. The replies only flame me, and add nothing constructive. Read other reviews... they agree with me. CF is a cluster**** cacophony society. Interesting mud, wanted to try some siht.. but alas, the head-imm doesn't like it when you tell him his immstaff are idiots.

Plus, I don't cheat all that much. If I do cheat, I don't get caught. Carrionfields calls me a hardcore cheater, yet they've caught me legitimately cheating once (I dropped starting copper with a char, deleted, came back, and picked it up again). No, on CF cheating also involves disagreeing with imm's on their forums, cracking jokes on their newbie channel, and roleplaying a pimp. All of which I am guilty of.

"His reviews are ****, as is his attitude. "

My reviews are honest, if you'd like to dispute that then post an example.

"####, he's not even a player of notable skill."

If I were the person you've stereotyped me to be, then this would probably be the worst insult of the bunch. The fact is that I pride myself on different criteria: Namely learning muds quickly, finding bugs and having a strong desire to improve the game for the players. I don't randomly pk, I don't full loot, I'm not a grudge player. Based on these things, I think I am pretty skillful. Based on PK, I still think I'm pretty skillful... mostly because I'm creative and successful in my approaches.

I log onto a mud, pick a player that's been there for years and set my goal to beat his ass.

It's nice to have goals.  Let us know when you start reaching them.

I'm sorry, but your self-fellating post demonstrates to everyone precisely the kind of person and player you are.  It does so more decisively and succinctly than could a thousand rebuttals.

Lest I be accused of being unclear, it doesn't make you look good, unless in some alternate world undeservedly arrogant is good.

I caught you cheating 3 times the day you left my MUD, and again a couple days before. You were complaining, of course, that you didn't know, so I pointed you to the help rules file (A file which every newbie should check whenever he enters a MUD).

No, you spot things YOU see as wrong a mile away. This doesn't mean they ARE wrong, it just means YOU think of them as wrong, and since YOU don't run the game, YOUR opinion sometimes just doesn't count for ****.

... Are you a 6 year-old? "I'm the best! I can learn faster than you!", you probably got beat up a lot at school, weren't you?

If the review is -truely- honest, I try to improve. If the review comes from someone like you, or people who have no grounds to write what they're saying (Like the one who said I was ignoring people... That's as far away from reality as it gets), I get angry. I have a right to when someone starts spreading lies.

So you admit to cheating more, just didn't get caught?

Every player you encountered wanted to or left the game... That's not what I call improving.


All in all, you're just one of these people who think they're above everyone... mega arrogant, and it gets you into trouble. I know because I used to be one myself, a long time ago, so I'm gonna tell you one thing that MIGHT help you: People don't like being looked down upon. Try thinking about it some day, and maybe you'll make more friends around here.

Even if you do find something that's wrong, it's not always wrong in the eyes of the staff. Calling staff members idiots won't get you on anyone's good side, even if they are. Sometimes, you just have to accept the system, because nothing is perfect. Neither are you.

Quite amusing.

On a more.. pragmatic note..

None of those suggestions will do anything against a script kiddie with a decent number of zombied boxes. By the time the storm of packets generated by a D[R]DoS hits your box, all of your bandwidth is gone. Unless you have a direct T-3 (possibly even an OC-3 for large stables of cable zombies that do a combo DDoS/DRDoS) drop from your provider or one of the backbones, you'll be choked off at the bottleneck between your upstream provider and your server. The only possible way to stop a D[R]DoS while it is in progress is to work with your upstream provider to have the packets filtered at their end (this is assuming that they have an OC-3+ drop, which is unlikely for MUD hosting sites).

In short, a firewall on your end isnt' gonna do jack sh*t. If a script kiddie starts a serious D[R]DoS against your MUD, kick back, read a book, and pity the sysadmin who handles the network upon which your MUD resides.

Disgruntled players don't start flame wars...

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>I DO!</span>

Well, I do and disgruntled admins who start flaming eachother on random internet forums. Kinda sad, isn't it?

Amnon says he didn't cheat,
Amnon said I cheated.

I say I didn't cheat,
I say Amnon cheated.

What a tangled web we weave. I can see this arguement is going places. With a lack of evidence on either side, I say we settle this like me...

Oh wait, I don't give two ****s either way.

I retract my accusatoins. Amnon doesn't cheat. Try his mud, you'll love it. =P If you don't, join the club.

What are you TALKING about?! I had TONS of evidence you cheated! Almost everything you do in the game that can be tagged as cheating is logged...

Before you go saying you don't get caught, think twice before cheating, cause you got busted.

Indeed.

Soljax, you are a riot.

I'm almost totally motivated into speeding up the coding of my own MUD so that I can open it exclusively to your enlightened playtesting.

In fact, would you like to beta-test it? If you do, I'd love you to bring along another player who can try it out a couple of months before you so that you have a goal to aspire to.

Please contact me asap. The MUD will be called HONEYPOT MUD, and if you're game, I'll make best efforts to open it sometimes in 2004.

Main IMP, head coder and administrator of HONEYPOT MUD
The 2nd BESTEST MUD in the whole global worldwide world - once it's finished!

Well done at having an intelligent conversation there soljax. Now I know why logos no longer posts here.

I beg to differ on your interpretation of Matt's motivations.

Keep begging, Alistair. It makes me feel all smushy inside.

Jazuela loves it when men beg.