Just a heads up, the formal complaint thread has resurfaced in the general forum. And with it comes a final verdict posted by the forum moderator. I thought it would be relevant to post this news here since it also covers the current and future state of role playing for Vendetta Online. I ask that everyone please read it.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/11177

How many of the posts in this topic have you read Arolte? Pay attention this topic is about the last post in the thread you linked to.

As was said by Softy before in this topic:

"Now, I, as CCB/Henry Jekyll, posted a complaint about Arolte for his behaviour. That was an opening for the devs to come in and say "Arolte, please stop, you are pissing people off.".

Instead, as the last post in this thread noted :

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/11177

So, we are asked to "tolerate" others' "roleplaying". I respect that decision, it is their game after all. This is why I am quitting.

Today there's a prat named Arolte. Tomorrow, who? If this is acceptable roleplaying, then this game is not for me."

Wow arolte, you're a piece of work. You just got away with murder, and now you want to throw it in everyones face.[FLAME DELETED - FM] You don't live on a pedastal, you just want everyone to think you do. You aren't enlightened, you aren't above it all. You're nothing, and you need all these people hating you to feel like something. If they leave the game, you can say to yourself "I did that". Be proud.

I actually agree with tunble on this one but to a much lesser extent. I also feel that while annoying Arolte's method of gameplay is his choice and he has a right to play like that.

Now correct me if I'm wrong (no really, I'm seriousley not 100% sure on this) but if Arolte is actually just attacking people who are red on his radar dosent that mean that he is also in his targets radar range too? If this is the case, then theres not much of an excuse for being caught completeley off gaurd. Yea you may be chatting at the moment but a WH area in grey space is not the place to be tryign to carry on a conversation, it's INTENDED to be a dangerious area.

I've said before that the way to defeat him isn't too hard. Just keep checking the list of players in the sector and when you see him on the list messege the whole sector that he's here (maybe sombody could come up with a bind for that). When he's in the area just have everybody gang up on him and he will either run or be destroyed. You could also jump throught the WH and wait for him to follow and ambush him for a change.

I guess what suprises me most is the number of people quitting the game over one person who's ambushing _pirates_, players who themselfs ambush people who are even less ecquipped to defend agenst their attackers.

McDuff, I'm afraid you really don't get it. As has been said in many threads by many people, ambushing people is just fine. What arolte does goes far far beyond a simple style of play. He intentionally tries to ruin peoples gameplay, and worse, tries to justify it with arrogance and condescention. He'll grief you until you log and then ask you to kindly observe the rules of fair play and watch your language. It's obnoxious.

I have cancelled my subscription. I'm sure Arolte is proud.

Wow arolte, you're a piece of work. You just got away with murder, and now you want to throw it in everyones face.[FLAME DELETED - FM] You don't live on a pedastal, you just want everyone to think you do. You aren't enlightened, you aren't above it all.

Seconded, though I guess that edited bit does count as a flame, even if it's accurate.

Actually Tumble I agree that he takes things too far, way too far. I used to believe that he wasen't really trying to eliminate people from the game permanantley, but based on what I have heard thats exactley what he's doing. Using sneaky methods is one, thing but trying to get people to stop playing is entirley different and quite unacceptable.

The problem is that he seems to be extremeley stubborn and dosent appear to let off somebody ever, and I'm afraid he's not going to stop untill he runs out of targets. Unfortunatley the devs are really in a tight spot, Arolte isn't really breaking any of the rules (I don't even find his methods unfair), but he's _really_ hurting the game overall. So the devs have a tough choice to make; they can ban a player who's being galactic pain in the neck but not breaking any rules, or they can leave him be and lose many players.

It really is a tough moral delemma because if they ban him then they have set a precedent that you can be banned even if you arent breaking any of the rules, wich is not something I think they want to do. The reason for this is that it could be easily construed as an abuse of power and facisim.

Sorry if some of what I'm saying is poorley written, I'm just not a very good writer.

This is just massive paranoia. I'm not putting any time or effort into getting people to stop playing. It's nothing personal. It never was. I occasionally taunt my enemies in a friendly manner, but never... NOT once have I verbally abused anyone. This is clearly visible in the game's logs. I'm not here to make anyone's life miserable.

So I'm a little confused as to why people get the impression that I'm out there to malicously get people to quit. I've been trying to support the development of this game since the first day I signed up. And I'm pinching pennies here trying to get whatever subscription plan I can. The last thing I want to see now is the game go under.

Right now there's just a lot of anger going around that's clouding everyone's judgement. No offense but it's the truth. The various private messages I've received in the game pretty much point to that. Take a deep breath and RELAX once in a while. I repeat once again that I'm not singling anyone out in my role playing. You just need to stop taking it personally.

There's no conspiracy or complicated plot to get people to quit. I don't constantly check the active player list and hop on when I see someone in particular. I just hop on and attack any pirates I may come across. And most often they're in the same exact spot every single day—Sedina B8. And it just makes my life very easy.

I've tried my best to offer advice too. If you feel like you're being constantly targeted and you want to get out of that situation, you can always choose to avoid the situation altogether. It's your decision to make. Nobody's holding you down and forcing anything on you. You're certainly not stuck anywhere in the game when there are thousands of sectors to explore and hide in. Your personal safety is entirely up to you.

Well, whatever, I roleplay a pirate ingame, which means i should expect to be hunted/shot/griefed, whatever, I have had the VPR's chasing me from Verasi to Jallik, I have had people *reporting* my movements to each other, hell, i've even ammased a total of 11 million in *player based* bounties. Was all great fun, but well, (and I know I cannot push my standards onto others, I tried that with VPR :P), I hail my targets, and they usually get a chance to start running, or pay me (weather it be with money or cargo, depends what im rping at the time) - and well, no doubt there have been complaints about me over time too, but none as long and as loud as this one.

Arolte, you did a fine job protecting the UiT, cos well, I quit.

Cya around folks, no doubt i'll be back, but for now, i've had enough.

With so many pirates gone I don't think I will enjoy trading as much, no excitement. I guess it won't matter though cause I'm not playing for now anyway as my main system went down and I'm posting from an old slow one)

Were the Devs to do the right thing and ban Arolte from the game (and this from a player who can't be attacked by Arolte, but has been witness to his unacceptable behavior), that still wouldn't set precedent for out-of-hand banning of people, since it's not a few people complaining of Arolte, it's virtually EVERYBODY who plays in the same timeslot as he does, some of them even going to the point of leaving the game. General disatisfaction towards a single player clearly indicates the problem resides with said player, not the game as it stands, or the mechanics, or the community. He's forcing players to radically alter the way they play and therefore reduce their enjoyment of the game; that can't be good.

I can only wait and see if the Devs and Guides will step to their responsabilities towards the player base, or if they will allow people to continue running rampant unchecked. I might even create and alt and join Martin in his scheme.

Arolte:

# So I'm a little confused as to why people get the impression that
# I'm out there to malicously get people to quit. I've been trying
# to support the development of this game since the first day I
# signed up. And I'm pinching pennies here trying to get whatever
# subscription plan I can. The last thing I want to see now is the
# game go under.

then maybe the fact that you've driven off some of the most active players in the game, after they've tried for a long time to convey they frustration at your "gameplay", should have been a hint to you.

if you're really this dense, well, I'm sorry. your actions lead to 10% of the top 102 active players in the last week cancelling their accounts. if you really cared about the game you would have listened to the complaints and even if you felt it was unneeded, changed your ways to keep the players in the game. you would have put the game above yourself.

these players are also behind arranging 3 of the 4 community events held this weeked. these events are now gone. so, let me ask you very bluntly, do you think you're doing something good for the game?

Shape asked you to defend your actions with reagards to how it affected the game, not your ability to do so within the game. you never replied to that. you'll pick your high horse and pick what you reply to so you don't ever have to tackle the stuff you have no good reply to. you probably giggle all the way as well.

and the devs and guides look upon it and accept it. well, you drove people off, and the devs and guides weren't interested in keeping them. too bad, I had hope.

Correct me if I am wrong, but is this not a game? are we not he to play?

Roleplaying a pirate character involves attacking people and nicking their cargo, or extorting money for them. in return for safe passage. if the pirate honours that agreement then you can say he is an honourable pirate, who keeps his word. if he takes your money and still kills you he is a dishonourable pirate. Word gets round, no one falls for the "give me money and i'll let you go" line anymore. Pirates with no honour cannot be trusted, and should live a lonely existence hanging around with other pirates who have no honour.

Players who attack their nations enemies can be seen as roleplaying a fanatic character, those sworn to attack their nations enemies relentlessly in pursuit of the goal of driving them away form their nations borders, or whatever fanatical aim they might be roleplaying.

traders and miners are in pursuit of riches...pure and simple, not particularly honourable but fairly harmless.

the problem as i see it is players want to have it both ways, they want to play in a rich roleplaying environment where characters form into nations factions and guilds with their own particular aims, and fight each other in pursuit of those aims, But at the same time they want a happy smiley place to hang out and chat play at duelling, and games like ctc, racing, and kill the hive queens.

To my mind the two types of play are in conflict, we get scenarios where one minute it's everyman for himself, in a station war with lightning mines laid in the docking ports, etc etc, and the next minute it's complaints about griefing, because someone interrupted a duel.

In my opinon Devs need not discipline players who roleplay, a fanatic or pirate character. They should however warn those who verbally (by chat) abuse, and make personal insults - aimed at the player behind the character. Most of these people seem to be the "victims" of so called harrassment, who cant quite grasp the concept of roleplaying, and take everything personally.

Anyone who leaves for those reasons will not really be missed, for they add little to the game. other than to clog up the mesage boards with their whining.

yup, noone will miss people who hold public events. noone will miss people trying to help at least one newbie every time they're on. noone will miss people who try to step in and calm people down when things go haywire.

and I play this game to have fun. I don't mind being shot at, I don't mind being KOS, I don't mind people taking potshots at me.

I do mind a few things though, and people without a clue is one of them. thankfully, I won't miss them.

This isn't even worth arguing anymore. It's completely obvious at this point that you have no intention of trying to understand what I'm trying to do in terms of role playing. I've tried my best to explain it but some of you are really letting your anger get to you and make false assumptions regarding my intentions.

We both see the game in a different light. And yet neither side is playing the game in a wrong way. So rather than provoke you further by continuing this discussion, I'll just be on my way in the game and role play as I please. I don't feel the need to explain every single action to you or anyone else in these forums.

Arolte, you claim time and time again that you're doing this to "Make it more fun" or "Break the monotany" or whatever but you ignore the fact that you're the ONLY PERSON who this is fun for. A person in my guild, BUNNY, was griefed by you yesterday to the point where she had to log. There are countless other examples but I know you'll just ignore them. Maybe you should take what the community thinks into account not just your own selfish agenda.

you're right Arolte, there isn't any point in arguing, it has always been pointless in trying to understand anything not part of *your* high horse or *your* fun. you'll do this because you can. no matter what people think.

and since that's just dandy in VO, BLAK left.

"" I've tried my best to explain it but some of you are really letting your anger get to you and make false assumptions regarding my intentions.""

Arolte the faction/radar systems are confused at best, and utterly broken if we look at it realistically. yet you still choose to base your actions not on what other people DO, but what systems you know are malfunctioning report to you.

in other threads you have admitted that you KNOW the radar and faction are not perfect, yet you still make your decisions based on them.

I'm not bashing your play style here, just the logic and reasoning you are using to determine it.

Yoda, no offense man but you absolutely, positively ARE a pirate. If arolte wants to play a pirate hunter who attacks pirates every chance he gets, thats his perogative, and in the case of him attacking YOU personally all the time, I dont see why it would upset you any more than when viper was after you 24/7/365. The only difference is that arolte is using slightly more underhanded tactics.

"This is just massive paranoia. I'm not putting any time or effort into getting people to stop playing. It's nothing personal. It never was. I occasionally taunt my enemies in a friendly manner, but never... NOT once have I verbally abused anyone."

"Terjekv, it's really not as easy as it sounds, to just ignore someone who doesn't give any warning when attacking. It invokes fear and paranoia."

"To overcome that obstacle you actually need to add a psychological element to your battles. Screw with their minds. Make your enemies go nuts about you, to the point where they act irrationally and get their minds off their intended targets. That's how you can really turn the tides against them."

Such a contradiction in yourself.

I'm going to tell ya all a story quite similar to this where a single person drove over 3000 players from a game. Sorry if its a little lengthy. But I feel it's revelant to the situation at hand

The game was called mobfather.com. It's an online text based mob game that I played for 2 years and finally left because of how many others left the game. The game restarts every month and it's free to play but, you can also buy a membership that gives you ingam advantages for 5 bucks. The way the game works is every couple minuts you would get somany "turns" for free. There were 3 ways you could use the turns: (1) scouting for puishers (drug makers), prostitutes, and hitmen. (2) making crank wich also has your girls work the streets and (3) hitting wich is what they called fighting. You can only attack people double to half your networth, and they had to be in the same city in the game but, they didn't have to be online.

The flaw that eventually doomed the game is that you could also buy turns up to $250 worth a month. This could elevate sombody's networth several hundred fold. The problem with this is you can also buy hitmen, guns, and vehicles to transport them in.

How this killed the game is rather simple. There was a player who went by the name of sluggo, he was filthy rich, so much so that he would spend 5 or 6 thousand dollars a month on this game. He got around the $250 a month spending limit by buying turns for his freinds about 200 of them. He also had about 12 PAID bodygaurds in game. They were people he payed real money to play the game all day and attack anybody who's close to his networth that might attack him. Whats more is that his tatics were unconventional. The normal way to play this game was to build up for the first dozen days or so. This was not an actual rule but more of a gentelmans agreement but rather than wait till about day 13 or so to start hitting people sluggo's group could attack by day 3 because of his deep pockets. This is what really pissed people off because they would be stomped on WAY early in the game and they didnt stand a chance.

Now this all started around game 24 or so when the game had about 5 or 6 thousand players. By game 30 there was half that many. The reason for this is that sluggo and his group dominated the game to the point of making people leave permanantley.

He wasen't actually violating the rules, but he was hurting the game. He did eventually stop doing this. Unfortunatley by the time he did stop there were only about 1700 players left. As it stands now there are about 1200 because once the game goes under about 3000 players it really isn't as much fun.

What Arolte is doing is much the same he's greifing people to the point that they quit playing the game. This is _really_ hurting the game both from a buisness standpoint of now being down about $100 a month in terms of accounts and, from a gameplay standpoint of eleminating the most active players who ARE game content.

All we can do is try to make Arolte quit the game. The devs probably won't ban him from the game so its up to us. We can either give in to him and quit the game or we can greif him till he logs every time we see him. Hopefully the devs will also turn a blind eye twords that behaviour when the shoe is on the other foot.