Option to privatize or opt-out of lodestone displaying character. Show your support!

a year ago some made a reddit post about this as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ling_stalking/

and you may ask how often. It happens a decent amount of times but how ever how often do we all hear about them?

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Originally Posted by Corrupted

Given what I said already, how else am I supposed to know who they are in order to blacklist if I don't keep track of them (and their frequent name changes)? I don't know how the blacklist handles characters on a different data center, but if it is anything like friendlist then yeah I would first need to wait for them to be in the same DC/world to blacklist them (which they currently aren't, and is the problem)

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Ideally, you should blacklist players as soon as they do something that makes you not want to talk to them again and you don't need the lodestone to do this. If they are on the same world region on another data center, I think you are able to travel to their current server and blacklist them*. It's a healthier alternative than tracking someone for years.

*https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...25cb0c1c99b3c4

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Blacklist

Players blacklisted from the other logical DC will remain on the list and no change will be made to the display.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Ideally, you should blacklist players as soon as they do something that makes you not want to talk to them again and you don't need the lodestone to do this. If they are on the same world region on another data center, I think you are able to travel to their current server and blacklist them*. It's a healthier alternative than tracking someone for years.

*https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...25cb0c1c99b3c4

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You can blacklist players, as long as you are not in a duty, or in a number of other instaced areas, and it will do nothing to keep them from seeing you or being able to mess with you, just sending messages or other requests to you.
The blacklist system as it is needs work. I've seen plenty of disagreements in parties where it could be solved by blacklisting. You have to leave the instance, blacklist them, and then go back into the instance, which is a lot of work as well as in DF you are going to take a 30 minute ban on queueing.

and this is all besides the fact that blaclisting is per character, so it can be side stepped by making a new character, and then going to a major city to harass the player. There's no way to currently deal with this since things are treated as a per-character basis instead of account wide. If someone wants to they can make as many alternate level 1 characters as they want to harass you, and you cannot do anything about it until each character sends a message

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

You can blacklist players, as long as you are not in a duty, or in a number of other instaced areas, and it will do nothing to keep them from seeing you or being able to mess with you, just sending messages or other requests to you.
The blacklist system as it is needs work. I've seen plenty of disagreements in parties where it could be solved by blacklisting, particularly the people who have extremely long macros with sounds in them. If you don't like that you have to leave the instance, blacklist them, and then go back into the instance, which is a lot of work as well as in DF you are going to take a 30 minute ban on queueing.

and this is all besides the fact that blaclisting is per character, so it can be side stepped by making a new character, and then going to a major city to harass the player. There's no way to currently deal with this since things are treated as a per-character basis instead of account wide. If someone wants to they can make as many alternate level 1 characters as they want to harass you, and you cannot do anything about it until each character send their first chat message to you.

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And how is tracking the perp on the lodestone an upgrade compared to using the blacklist feature?

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Originally Posted by Reinha

And how is tracking the perp on the lodestone an upgrade compared to using the blacklist feature?

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It's not, but there needs to be an overhaul on both features since both are entirely awful for dealing with abuse. Both the Blacklist and the Lodestone do basically nothing to stop someone from finding you, and spamming level 1 alts at you until you either delete your character or they get bored.
Both need heavy overhauls and the privacy options are completely insufficient for a modern game this size.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

It's not, but there needs to be an overhaul on both features since both are entirely awful for dealing with abuse. Both the Blacklist and the Lodestone do basically nothing to stop someone from finding you, and spamming level 1 alts at you until you either delete your character or they get bored.
Both need heavy overhauls and the privacy options are completely insufficient for a modern game this size.

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I agree. Blacklisting someone should blacklist all characters on the entire account, and only show a snapshot of the name+server of the blacklisted character from the time it was added to the blacklist (this would prevent blacklist from being used as a tracking tool).

I'm not sure what other things can be done about harassment done with lvl 1 trial characters but being able to hide yourself on the lodestone before changing your name would be a sure way to prevent that.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Who's job is it then? If you care about someone then it isn't about who's job it is, it's providing them a courtesy by making them aware of their own mistakes. And no, they will not self-reflect and correct if they are coddled. This is not how the human brain works. They will in fact do the exact opposite.


Listen to what you're saying here. The victim has to make their lodestone private, change their name, change their server. And in the worse cases, they might have to start all over again. All the while you give the harasser the ability to do the same thing with their own account(s). If you cannot see what is wrong here, then I do not know how to explain it further. You need to realize that in one breath you're saying that a player making their lodestone private will protect them, and then when you argue in the next breath you say that the harasser making their lodestone private won't protect them.


If this is how you feel, then let them do their job. If this is how you feel, then what is the point of this thread? Please understand that I am on your side, and I don't want harassment and stalking taking place in any form on this game, or any other, or any other platform. I want the offenders punished, and made an example of to let others would be arseholes know what awaits them should they decide to violate the ToS instead of allowing others to maintain an enjoyable experience while online.

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I'm sorry, but do you understand the concept of the information that player would have access to and the information that GMs would have access to? Because it sounds like it flew right over your head, and that makes the world of difference here.

If the profile is set to private, it protects someone who may be the victim of harassment since there is no way for a user to find them as they can't access that profile and have no access to internal identifiers - i.e. system identifiers. It protects them from a harasser.

However, there should be internal systems at SE that don't care about whether the profile is private or not, and there are people with access - possible SE employees, maybe not - could be GMs, whatever- who can look up a character and track them no matter what they do. Thus a harasser is NOT protected, if they change their name , change their profile settings, change servers, etc.

Personally, I would have the lodestone profile set to private by default, but at least- have a private option.

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Originally Posted by Senn

It doesn't matter. People should have the option to privatize regardless of how common stalking and harassment is. If you change your username in WoW, their version of lodestone doesn't link the profile with the old username. There are plenty of MMOs that don't even have a lodestone-like feature. It's not necessary. We don't need to play this game of "Just how common is it really?"

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It wasn't a game. It was a simple wonder but alright. Can't wait for the day where everything is locked down to prevent anything from happening /s

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

I'm sorry, but do you understand the concept of the information that player would have access to and the information that GMs would have access to? Because it sounds like it flew right over your head, and that makes the world of difference here.

If the profile is set to private, it protects someone who may be the victim of harassment since there is no way for a user to find them as they can't access that profile and have no access to internal identifiers - i.e. system identifiers. It protects them from a harasser.

However, there should be internal systems at SE that don't care about whether the profile is private or not, and there are people with access - possible SE employees, maybe not - could be GMs, whatever- who can look up a character and track them no matter what they do. Thus a harasser is NOT protected, if they change their name , change their profile settings, change servers, etc.

Personally, I would have the lodestone profile set to private by default, but at least- have a private option.

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Exactly this. Stalking and harassing is against the ToS, so just report the person doing it. Even if they hide their lodestone profile, change their name, and transfer their server, a GM can still find them. I don't know why people seem to think this system can be abused, and the harassers hiding their lodestone will have zero consequences. That's not how it would work at all. Just make sure you fill out all the necessary information in your report (date, time, etc...)

Wondering if there has been any news regarding privatization options. Haven't really been keeping up with any liveletters or anything.
Also, has the friendlist 2-way removal thing been implemented yet?