What is Griefing? Is it a Rule or not?

There have been a lot of comments lately about builds in the Frontier that have been griefed but are not being treated as such by the community or by a few of the staff members. This is not a discussion about any 1 specific event, rather a question as to how the change of treatment about griefing is affecting players and whether there has been a rule change or not.

website regarding griefing rule 2:
2. No Raiding, Griefing, or Stealing

• Raiding/Griefing is not allowed anywhere on EMC and includes, but is not limited to:
  • Stealing items from another player's chest
  • Breaking blocks belonging to another player
  • Causing damage to another player's build in any manner
• NOTE: Keep in mind that no one should touch what does not belong to them.
• EMC does have an Anti-Griefing System, Lock Signs, and Flags in place to protect your belongings and you should use them. Failure to do so can result in loss of items which may not be replaced.

https://empireminecraft.com/wiki/anti-grief/
Am I allowed to break unprotected blocks that were placed by another player?(top)


No. Griefing is still against EMC's rules. If it was obviously player-built, leave it alone. The system is here to prevent you from doing something you are not supposed to, and covers up to 95% of the issues. If you find a corner case that goes around the system, that does not mean it is okay, and you will be punished if you abuse it.

and the community feeling about builds in the Frontier:



There are no wiki entries that I can find for permitted building in the Frontier Wild and what the rules are there. Numerous places mention don't grief and leave other player's items alone. There are plenty of builds in the Frontier that are old and should still be there if the owner comes back tomorrow, but then players mess with them or 'rebuild' them to make them bigger.

What if you place blocks on someone's build to harass them? but remove the blocks, does that make it all okay?

If you rebuild a gutted shack in the woods to how you want it, is that okay?

Public farms mean I can place blocks any where I like, right?

This player is derelict by years, I can take the stuff from their chests. No harm no foul, right?

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there is so much more to this. Community discuss

Claimed! Will build statements at a later date.

If it's not yours, it's not yours. Don't mess with it, unless you have permission.
If you can't find/contact the person who owns it, to get permission leave it alone.
You find a shack that needs repair. You feel like making it bigger or better don't, move on. It's not yours!
Public farms you may use. The key word is use, not build, not destroy, leave it as you found it.
Claimed land is claimed, you should ask for permission of owner before you build or place items. There is no mining in the frontier except on your own claimed land.
It seems straight foreword to me, but it's like locks... They only keep honest people out!
I do agree wiki should have more detailed rules about the frontier. One reason I went so far out, hoping it's not worth the time for someone to come out just to cause havoc.

At what age is the block still greefing?

6months? 6 years?

That's definitely a good thought. Blocks going derelict. I definitely do believe that after a certain amount of time, it should go derelict. Perhaps 10 years or so.

if the player is derelict, maybe, but if I'm not derelict I don't want to have to rebuild my structures every x years

*sigh* There is only so much you can do about this stuff. It is impossible to make any kind of “perfect system” where the system recognizes a player’s actions as being constructive versus griefing.

Unfortunately, in cases such as these, trust and transparency is of paramount importance, just as it has always been. Regardless of rules, which are just a basis of guidelines to keep order projected in the best way, it comes down to us. The players.

We all follow the rules as we understand them or we don’t. I have been back and forth with staff on this specific topic many times, but they’re not to blame for what it’s come down to. Because there can be no blaming, as there can be no perfect way to handle every single situation.

For those of you who were around years ago, there were a many of people that wanted to restore the frontiers around the teleport centers, with the addition of the wastelands.

The soul benefit was to keep the frontier as pretty as we could, because it never gets fixed by a reset. I remember we used to spend hours at a time repairing the land, replanting trees, public food farms and so forth.

Now in order for me to stay inside the lines provided by the rules, I decided at the time, that the best compromise I could do was to repair the damaged landscape, repair ravaged buildings, and try to clear floating trees, and eyesores scattered about.

I took time add back in simple furniture and I kept the repairs on houses small and as to avoid overdoing it, but the thing is, even with the best of intentions it’s still a risk, because it’s not mine. You can say that I have overstepped that rule, to serve my community, but I have never stolen anything.

I’ve done it to help out, so that returning new players might be able to keep going if they found it had been fixed, rather than being disappointed with a ruined world and leave.

But you see, even from my own perspective with these rules, I too could be just as guilty for my past actions in the matter. I leave that for you to decide. There is no perfect way forward. Not even with the best of intentions. Some rules keep us from fixing things, but keep others protected.

Time went by us and players came in and undid our restorations. They left new builds, giant bulky built-up towers, broken farms, houses, bases, messy trees, and riddled the landscape with all sorts of things, but here we are.

Wanting to clean it up, and make things beautiful again for new players, and we can’t anymore. The system is great for protecting, but horrible for repairing. I’d have to ask for permission from so many people, nothing would ever get done.

We can’t ask to destroy buildings, otherwise we’re acting no differently, and we can’t tell them their wrong for putting it where they did. After all the frontier is made for building. So it’s all just a mess.

So now here in the aftermath of it all, I’ve slowly just hung my hat on the matter. It was fun years ago, to go out hoping to do some good, trying to leave the frontier better than it was when I found it.

There’s really only so much you can do. Moving forward I think it’s a wise decision leaving it up to trusted staff members in this case, but it also hurts the community, because we’re giving up a piece of our voluntary involvement.

I still do this on SMP7 - in both the waste and frontier. Fill in the creeper holes, take down floating trees, replant trees and public farms. It really is thankless work and very quickly undone by careless players.

Some years back I had incorrect advice that is was OK to repair griefed buildings and I did repair a few close to spawn - with permission from the owner, or if the original builder had been derelict for many years. But I only did a few and stopped as soon as I learned that it's not acceptable. There have been a couple of instances of derelict players returning and in those cases they were appreciative that someone had looked after their builds. Now I only do it in a couple of places where the owner has said it's fine to maintain as they don't want to anymore.

When original builders are derelict and those builds are griefed it means nothing happens. The owner isn't there to report the griefing or repair it or approve repairs so the frontier is full of griefing. If a new player comes along it makes it look like the server doesn't care about griefing, and for existing players means the frontier looks a real mess in places.

I really don't know what the solution is, I don't think there is an ideal one. I do quite like the layers of old builds, it's archaeological and there's a lot of EMC history out there. There are players who were banned for griefing and their blocks are still out there and protected which is annoying.

I do wonder whether new players should get a longer tutorial/introduction about EMC? So many of them seem to land in the frontier, wander out from spawn, get confused about why they can't TP, chuck all their starter blocks and torches around, raid public farms, or replant without turning on noprotectmode, then leave and never come back.

What if you place blocks on someone's build to harass them? but remove the blocks, does that make it all okay?
They wouldn't know if you placed then removed, isn't it a non-action in that case?

If you rebuild a gutted shack in the woods to how you want it, is that okay?
According to current rules, no.

Public farms mean I can place blocks any where I like, right?
No, the farm should be maintained as it is as best as that can be done.

This player is derelict by years, I can take the stuff from their chests. No harm no foul, right?
No, it's not OK to take from chests unless there is a sign saying so.

I think it sounds quite reasonable. I hope this is used as law and communicated to staff. I recently had a situation where a new player got on and placed a bunch of pumpkin blocks (probably from the community build I worked on too, Bamfurlong, how ironic) on top of my protected block build. It appears to build up to get to something above. When I asked staff to remove the pumpkins I was told they couldn't until the player was derelict for 90 days. You know the person that put those pumpkins there couldn't care less if they were removed too. If they got on once in a while it would have to stay there forever. Kinda sucks the life out of a guy that worked hard to make something nice.

I'm quite surprised by that, is that what the policy is?

Perhaps then, it would help to have a policy written so that everyone understands when they can ask for block removal.

This would help staff go about those requests in the same manner, each mod responding the same way, instead of getting different answers.

And then we could also understand about block removal in a Frontier Build - not Established vs a Frontier Build - Established Outpost. Because both are technically 'owned' and should have similar rights within the actual built up areas, like walks and walls and etc. But the Est Outpost just has full boundary lines to make it easier on staff.

Some builds are very much pre-Established Outpost but should have rights attached to them as well. IF the rules are enforced the same way for all builds. But the policy seems like it has some gray areas in practice.

It is also difficult to tell where an outpost boundary is. Either established or not. I hope there is a fix for this someday. I have suggested lines on the map (like for sub zones in town) but told that is unlikely because not everyone wants their bases to be locatable. But .... how do we know where not to build unless we can tell where someone else is?

I understand there is no perfect solution just wondering if there are any helpful helps that can help.
(that poor sentence)

I suggest that if a player that is on 1 day puts pumpkins on a long term player's build that maybe they don't even have to wait for 90 days to have them removed. This might just be the business person in me talking, but I think that a player that has been active on this server for years and helped support it should be given some consideration when it comes to these situations. It could even help when it comes to keeping these long term players and maximizing server donations. Just a thought.

If it's unprotected blocks - dirt etc - on/in an established build area or public farm with no way to identify who placed them then is it OK to just remove them? Or should a sign be left asking for their removal and give the person some time (a week?) to remove them before doing it ourselves?

I like the idea Katy mentioned about possibly have a boundry placed around an established outpost that would be visible on the map. If that could be done then would it be possible to go a bit further and assign admin rights to all blocks in that subzone? I have a claimed outpost that I work on occasionally but check on it more frequently using the map to see if anyone has gone through it. There are nice features in my outpost area that I know could easily be raided at any point.

Just my 2r

-1 from me. Last thing I want is my outposts shown on a map with boundaries. Also if you are worried about getting raided why would you want to show your boundaries? It's easy enough to use the map and figure out the boundaries yourself. For our outpost I have - many times drawn circles around where our boundaries are and shared the pic with only those in our outpost. That way they know if they build outside our area, it's not protected.

This scenario would be curing a grief event or should be.
But the argument that it is technically against the current rules as they are written, could be made.

We just want it spelled out somewhere. Because we aren't sure if the rules are different for just any build made in the Frontier.