Trolling is the internet term for someone who acts as a sadist, or someone who performs actions for the detriment of the other mice.
Definition
The key of spotting trolling behavior is the voluntariness of the interaction. Mice for those who is capable for trolling can't troll alone, as they need victims to perform their actions. The trolling must be involuntary forced into the victim to be considered as such. If the individual being trolled is voluntarily accepting the trolling, then it isn't trolling by definition. (The same way that being mugged is involuntary and giving money to someone is voluntary.)
Trolling in Transformice
Trolling can be done by both the shaman and the mice. Trolling as a regular mouse is much more common, and can normally be more disruptive to gameplay. Shaman trolling, however, is much more abusive, but is also short lived due to the player being Shaman only once in a while.
According to the “Help/Rules” section of the game interface, trolling is generally not against the rules. This means that troll-like gameplay cannot result in a moderator-ban. However, mice are free to vote-ban the trolling mouse if enough votes are accumulated.
Hackers are usually a type of troll who may anger other mice by cheating. (i.e flying without the use of "Angel" skill nor shaman) Hacking recives a 15-day ban (Approx 360 hours) then if a hacker does it again, they will recive a permanent ban from a moderator or a admin then the account a hacker used, will be deleted by the admins.
Preventing Trolling
The best way to prevent trolling is choosing carefully the rooms that you play in. Sharing your play time with non-trolling friends in private rooms is the wisest choice.
Avoiding Trolling
If the player doesn't have the luck to have formed a good bunch of friends to play troll-safe, here are some tactics to minimize troll exposure.
- Room change The most efficient way to escape from a troll is to type on the chat /room <name> or just /room to change to a random room.
- Ignoring For verbal trolls, the player can use the /ignore command to stop receiving troll messages on the chat.
- Vote-banning Typing /ban <trollname> will add a vote to void the troll player from the game by one hour. Though ten votes are needed to perform this, and it will rarely happen on most rooms.
- Indifference Sometimes, trolls don’t exhibit troll-like behavior if nobody responds. If the troll is not acknowledged, the troll will most often stop his/her behavior.
- Counter-Trolling For gameplay trolls, sometimes the shaman is able to knock the troll off the map in the beginning of the game. However, this is rare. Counter-trolling, also known as “trolling the troll”, may be effective to upstage the troll and discourage him/her from the trollish behavior.
Troll methods as a Shaman
A shaman, about to knock off a bunch of mice into the pit with a cannon ball
Shamans blocking the cheese with a box and making anvil gods respectively
A shaman blocking a hole with planks
A shaman trolling using invisible planks
Mice trapped by a shaman.
A shaman spamming balloons
In some maps as a shaman, they have to find ways to knock mice off the map, making it difficult for other mice to get the cheese, or tricking players into jumping on invisible planks so mice will fall off the map. Some shamans can create the Anvil God by summoning several anchored anvils. Occasionally, this can crash the game for few (some or even all) players. Some shamans can also spam-summon objects (formerly by using the double-spawn glitch, but they often quickly use hotkeys now) to trap mice, i.e. covering them with multiple boxes and/or planks so the mice cannot escape on their own.
In longer maps that may take time to complete, shamans can jump off the map once (Or twice if they are using "Ambulance" skill) to automatically reduce the time to 20 seconds. However, not all shamans that do this for trolling. They can simply be inexperienced players that are frightened by the map’s complexity, (Mostly on user-made maps) or if a map is breaking the rules.
In maps that must have shaman assistance, shamans may do nothing to assist mice in reaching the cheese. In the meantime, few shamans can attempt knocking mice off of the map by repeatedly summoning Cannon balls. If the map can be done without the assistance from the shaman, sometimes they can block the mouse hole (often by placing a large box with a B-anchored plank). If a mouse is wall-jumping, there are variety of ways for the shaman to block or even knock them off, like dropping anvils, dropping large crates, summoning a medium plank (Or the big plank if they have the "Big Plank" skill activated) or summoning a cannon ball.
Example of troll uses of various Shaman Items:
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Troll methods as a Mouse
The trolling abilities as a regular mouse mostly affect the shaman. For example, troll mice can run into a contraption that the shaman has built, and knock it off the map (sometimes putting the shaman in the path of the build, and knocking him/her off the map with it!). In collision maps, troll mice can be even more violent in their trolling, by deliberately pushing other mice off of the map, mainly the shaman.
A more passive kind of trolling is just using animated emotes (such as dancing or laughing), or ducking repeatedly toward the shaman to taunt them. The shaman may attempt to knock the mouse off the map with a cannonball, but this may waste time that can be used to complete the map. Some mice can also refuse to go into the mouse hole to progress onto the next map, typically resulting in longer waiting times and the shaman not being able to go into the hole. However clever shamans used the "Easy Victory" skill to get more saves or the ice cubes to kill mice. (Ice will be extended if they used the "Stern Mouse" skill.)
Verbal Trolling
Verbal trolling isn’t limited to just Transformice. It can take place where anyone can speak. Verbal trolling can be done by anyone (as long as they have the ability to speak in-game). But in the game, depending on the severity of the case, verbal trolling can result in a mute from a moderator. Some words are forbidden to be used, namely racial/ethnic slurs and slurs related to sexual orientation. Promoting political or religious subjects can also result in a punishment or warning, as they often result in flame wars. Players may deliberately break the rules to anger other mice. [1]
However, there are forms of verbal trolling that are not rule-breaking, and thus more common. But they usually still involve minor insults, such as harassing others if they can’t wall-jump, or insulting the shaman if he/she can’t build properly. Sometimes, a player can reach an “island” of ground that is very difficult to access, and taunts other mice by chanting “Pro island” to possibly encourage other mice to try to get there, usually leading to mice falling off the map attempting to reach the “island”.
Verbal trolls often have a narcissistic personality when it comes to competition. They may be targeted by a shaman, but dodge all the attacks from the shaman and brag about their victory of not being knocked off the map. If they get first place (or sometimes anywhere near first), they may also chant of their victory.
Room Dedicated to Trolling
One room dedicated to trolling is room “troll”. Typically, it is similar to the survivor minigame, except in normal maps. The shaman often uses many trolling techniques to prevent the mice from getting cheese. Blocking the mousehole is often not considered trolling, and may result in a vote-kick from the room.
Trollet
The Trollet is one of the easiest and most simple of the trolling techniques found on the Wiki. [2] The link shows a how to video of a possible way to make it. On some levels it may be of more use to make one of these than more than one Rune. Please remember that trolling may get you vote banned, and you should only troll in rooms where it is accepted like Room Troll.
Favoritism
Favoritism is an extremely annoying and raging method of trolling mice, sometime letting friends, and only them, to win. It's rule is when a troll is a shaman, there are many mice and some of them are his friends, he tries to trick the non-friended mice and trap them, so only his friends will make it to cheese, sometimes laughing and trying to make trapped mice ragequit. Though most of mice fall for the trick, some smarter players might notice something that is wrong and avoid the trap, though they will still most probably die via Cannon balls launched their way by the shaman or another preset trap set by smart trolls for the mice who actually avoid the first one. Favoritism is worse than traditional trolling, as rules of the game are actually making it legal and strict with game rules (Except for mice trapping what is not), sometime leading to the fact troll and his friends can't be banned. Only good way to prevent Favoritism players and their friends is to try to make them ragequit by trolling them back or sending non-offending, but raging messages, though these methods do not work for clever mice and rarely even lead to you being banned. Generally, mice and moderators are harmless against Favoriters because they are strict with rules, except for trapping mice what sometimes lead to ban.
Skills
Skills are also used for trolling.