How About An "Incognito" Player Status?

[DaikiKiyoshi]

Because I got tired of ppl calling me aggressive and a troll. /shrug

In all fairness you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. You haven't really provided any good reasons this shouldn't be a thing other than "Omg people are so lazy they can't use the options already available to them." The current options are lacking. Improving and expanding upon them hurts no one.

[TiaHariberux3]

In all fairness you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. You haven't really provided any good reasons this shouldn't be a thing other than "Omg people are so lazy they can't use the options already available to them." The current options are lacking. Improving and expanding upon them hurts no one.

If you think so lol

[Frowny]

Snip

-A stalker stalks for the thrill of pissing you off. Though I agree it can be an issue (in theory, as I've yet to see it myself) the best way to negate that is to not give them said thrill. You don't argue with a troll; you ignore them and they go away. Similar concept here. If they act out of hand, that's what GMs are for as this DOES constitute harassment.

-Busy is restrictive yes, but you can turn it off for brief moments (like to join a party) and slap it back on. It is not an all-or-nothing type affair and it not having a lockout addresses the restrictive issue.

-Do RMT bots use player search though? It is nice in theory, but how do we know for sure what they use? Again, I've only had 1 spam me and I just blacklisted them. Oddly, others haven't really tried after that so I can't say much here.

-Yet FC spam ALSO comes from just being in an area. Personal experience yet again, but I've found most tend to do that vs. player search. The few that do easily fit into a blacklist and in my 1-2 years, most of my blacklist have been RMTs (I spent 6mo without an FC) which is addressed with the new report function.

I CAN see this being useful, however from what I've seen... the tools we have now get the job done if applied properly. I'm not saying this has downsides, I'm just stating with the tools we have now, most of the issues are already addressed.

(Tried to hit all your points, hope I didn't miss one).

[Magic-Mal]

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Experiences are definitely different here lol. I got FC invites all throughout my entire leveling period.

[Pinkie_Pie]

I sure don't want people to know i'm online when I ERP in the back of the quicksand

[Alleo]

I think I will stop replying to some too. Questions are ignored anyway and saying that they were only against some suggestions while at the same time they were already arguing against the idea from page 1 (other suggestions only started later) really shows me that this is truly just about arguing for the sense of it. No need to post long answers anymore if they are ignored anyway and too much arguing would maybe get the thread closed or something which is not good. So going to answers those that are giving some arguments.

(Tried to hit all your points, hope I didn't miss one).

Thanks for answering me Frowny.

Stalker: Sadly for me this is not only in theory. Yes they do this to piss you off and at least blacklisting them would stop the messages. But the problem is that they can still find you. My problem is that I did report the person to the GM and yet he is still there and he is still doing it. Its not something that happens daily but over months. Suddenly standing in the FC house while you are the only one in there crafting and staring at you without doing anything else, having an event with another FC (which he shouldnt know) and yet towards the end is suddenly there. There are many more examples. The problem is, how would SE know if this is already stalking or if its just random. I mean he could argue that he missed the old FC thus visiting the house and I was just there. Maybe he could even say that he just likes to go into different houses to look at the decoration and thus finding us in the house of the other FC. I am quite sure that they need 100% evidence before they are punishing someone and as long as he does not write it down somewhere ingame it gets really hard to have enough evidence. (I mean he is a paying player so I am quite sure that SE wont punish someone so easily) I mean yes some are just doing it too obvious and are stalking hours or even days but he for example is not stupid and it happens over months. Yet its still quite negative for me since you kinda get a little nervous and if he is there again one will remember all the the stress and anger that you had thanks to that person. So blacklisting someone only solves the problem of speech but the Incognito status would at least solve the problem of being found. Yes a stalker could still come just over to the FC house but it would be way to obvious for a stalker to always be there so if you are somewhere in the world you are quite save from such visits. So long story short, after having that person still ingame even after reporting them, I kinda lost the believe in the GM for those situations and it would be nice to help it a little on my own. The suggested status would greatly help there imo.

Busy: Yes you could slap it off for a short time but it would still not help if you dont want to be found per player search while still restricting you quite a lot. Not every single friend is in a LS so sometimes you might just chat with them per tell. If they are on your friend list you could still send tells even with the Incognito status, while you cant do the same thing with busy. And lets not forget that any ready check will not get through.

RMT bots: How would they find us if they dont use the player search? I mean I am standing in my own small house, before that I was on the run far way from Limsa or any of the cities so no Bot could have seen me there and get my name, yet I suddenly got a group invite. The only way they could do that is by player search. Theoretically if they only spam those that they see and not per player search I should have gotten countless tells when I am in a city next to a bot that spams his message. Yet most of my tells are outside of cities or while I am not near any bot at all. So yes I do believe that the only way that they get our names is through player search. There is probably a program that runs through it automatically and just stops randomly and send the tell out to the one where it stops. Having the status would at least stop them from doing that.

And lets just say that instead of it being a icon like busy they could just make it a option in the main settings where you can just click it on. You could still use busy at the same time if you feel like not wanting any tell but otherwise you would be free of a icon and yet none could find you in the search. (IMO I find the busy symbol next to the name really ugly and if you are in party finder or something you would lose the Incognito status since you can only have one icon active at a time so having it in the settings would be nice)

FC Spam: Well my rl friend joined my former FC and now my duo FC because he wanted to get away from all those invites and I remember that I got a lot of those randomly too when I was a sprout. I was even getting them while being outside of a city far away from a player (saw nobody). So maybe a lot of FC just sent it to you when they see you in the cities but I am quite sure that at least those that I experiened used the player search. Yet even if its just a small number of invites with that method it would still stop it. So win win for everyone. (Other than those that sent it through it.)

The problem with the new report system is that you can only truly click report them if they write you. So the new method with the party invites does not fall under it. I have put more RMT on the blacklist the last few weeks thanks to that than by getting a tell in the same time frame and yet no person on my blacklist got deleted till today so I cant truly just kick someone from it.

So yeah the newest problem with the group invites from RMT which gets quite annoying and that stalkers can still found your place are not avoidable with current tools. So it has no true downside and it might help against those. I just cant see much reason for it being not implemented. But still I thank you for trying to explain your reasons.

Thank you Alleo. Throughout the thread you have been explaining the meaning of the request very well. Better than I was able to in the OP.

Aw thanks. I am not a native English speaker so I always fear that my posts dont make sense. Nice to read that they are in some way. I would love to give you more likes for your idea since its really a very good suggestion imo because it does not negative impact the game and it helps people.

[Kosmos992k]

Not sure if this was suggested, but how about an extended version of incognito that allows you to silently logon without any notification even within your FC? It also disables the chat window except for NPC interactions until cancelled.

This was suggested by a friend who occasionally wants to play, but doesn't want to handle the burden of all the chats and invites that can happen. they literally want to logon and play without interruption, and without hurting anyone's feelings by obviously ignoring communication.

[Claviusnex]

\busy is not the answer. Not only does it block normal conversation but if you forget to turn it off before entering a raid things that depend upon the social interfaces like Ready Check don't work. It would be better to allow some granularity on invites and a way to mark yourself not searchable. Having these would still allow you to use the main social aspects of the game without being interrupted by functions that obscure your field of view and require an overt action to end.

[Magic-Mal]

Not sure if this was suggested, but how about an extended version of incognito that allows you to silently logon without any notification even within your FC? It also disables the chat window except for NPC interactions until cancelled.

This was suggested by a friend who occasionally wants to play, but doesn't want to handle the burden of all the chats and invites that can happen. they literally want to logon and play without interruption, and without hurting anyone's feelings by obviously ignoring communication.

It was suggested. Sometime earlier in the thread. I'm not opposed to the option although it's something I probably wouldn't use it myself. I know of some who would benefit off of this.