Stalking and Harassment, GM/Square Enix Refusal to act

I don't want to be that WoL, but what the heck are people up to where they're getting stalked and harassed?

I've been playing since 2021, logging in at least weekly and daily the first month or two of every patch, and I've never had this issue. Even after joining several social groups, discords, Linkshells, statics, etc

I feel like the majority of these situations has to be the result of ERP gone arwy

The blacklist thing is basically the equivalent of "Oh, you're experiencing a stalker problem? Put on this blindfold. Yes the stalker is still there, but now you can't see them. That fixes the problem, right?"

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

I don't want to be that WoL, but what the heck are people up to where they're getting stalked and harassed?

I've been playing since 2021, logging in at least weekly and daily the first month or two of every patch, and I've never had this issue. Even after joining several social groups, discords, Linkshells, statics, etc

I feel like the majority of these situations has to be the result of ERP gone arwy

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I myself have experienced stalking and harassment just because I played pvp and some people didn't like me. Can happen if you enter in some unwanted groups, if you play one game wrong or similar, then people usually want to harass and stalk. If you are a friend of someone that they hate -> you get stalked. If you did ERP and you quit with said person, they will stalk or talk bad to everyone. Going to venues and a lot of other things just increases the chance of getting stalked.

I know a couple that play this game and they have been harassed and stalked by several people (guy and 2 girls) for years mind you. For years... That's just obsession or something.

Edit: Also do mind that FFXIV is one of games where drama regularly pops up every month or so and we see big pdf / google doc files.

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

I myself have experienced stalking and harassment just because I played pvp and some people didn't like me. Can happen if you enter in some unwanted groups, if you play one game wrong or similar, then people usually want to harass and stalk. If you are a friend of someone that they hate -> you get stalked. If you did ERP and you quit with said person, they will stalk or talk bad to everyone. Going to venues and a lot of other things just increases the chance of getting stalked.

I know a couple that play this game and they have been harassed and stalked by several people (guy and 2 girls) for years mind you. For years... That's just obsession or something.

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What exactly did that look like for you? Did they just happen to be on the same world & FC as you? Were they messaging you on multiple accounts or something?

Would need more context of the couple and how they interact with other people. I'm not saying that anyone deserves to be harassed or stalked, but there's typically always a lot of information that's left out. Continued Disparaging/offensive remarks would get them permanently banned. I got someone suspended like within 30 minutes of reporting them because they called people trash in a party for an extreme trial like a few patches ago.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

I don't want to be that WoL, but what the heck are people up to where they're getting stalked and harassed?

I've been playing since 2021, logging in at least weekly and daily the first month or two of every patch, and I've never had this issue. Even after joining several social groups, discords, Linkshells, statics, etc

I feel like the majority of these situations has to be the result of ERP gone arwy

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One time I hard focused this Ninja in FL who killed me over and over, I made it my mission to kill him as much as possible, after the match he came to my home world and told me to off myself multiple times until I blacklisted him.

Some people are just mentally ill

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

They can still play bard music and be heard even when you got them blocked. They can still leave messages in the FC book and we can only ban them from the house 10 days at a time before you need to refresh it. They've said many things in languages other than english to get around the moderation system.

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I'm sorry that sounds awful :(

I had a bit more success with the GMs in my own matter with this. Was away for over a year. Changed servers. Changed identity. Wanted a reset. Not 2 or 3 days after resubbing, someone from the past sought me out, whom was posing affably at first then went totally sociopath on me... and the worst part was they were acting mostly on the behalf of another who couldn't even be man enough to do it themselves.

Unwilling to be driven off a second time over such nonsense, got a GM involved. The weirdness ceased after whatever was presumably done. I'd seen that puppet like once or twice after that but they didn't try on anything else abusive and then after that I just didn't see them nor the ringleader again. They may still be playing but in that case idc because I just don't run into them.

I suppose it was easier done in my case as I'm relatively private and somewhat uncontactable outside of the game (not on many SM sites and such). That, and those involved were obviously pretty meek to have given up chase like that after a GM prompt that may have been just a telling off for all I know.

ED: It doesn't cease to amaze me how this is the MMO, out of all I've played (and some were your typical toxic by default pvp-focused MMOs where I expect it and brush it off based on that) that this one has... been interesting in the level of extracurricular interest given to people in response to feeling slighted over nothing or... honestly I don't know why sometimes, because they don't directly confront the object of their ire lmao

"what did you do to make someone stalk you"
Really? That's the part we're taking from this? Nothing should warrant stalking as a reaction.

Either way, we're just going to continue barring them and reporting them whenever they show up to try to initiate conversation. We disabled teleports to the FC, so they bought an apartment nearby. Lovely.

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

"what did you do to make someone stalk you"
Really? That's the part we're taking from this? Nothing should warrant stalking as a reaction.

Either way, we're just going to continue barring them and reporting them whenever they show up to try to initiate conversation. We disabled teleports to the FC, so they bought an apartment nearby. Lovely.

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If you want I can meet you in game sometime and I'll also file a report, maybe the more people do it the better, idk, let me know!

I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with this (going to your private house/GC and using tools to take pictures of your character nude, in sexual poses and seeing their data etc)

This is not normal healthy minded behaviour by a long shot. You do get some nutjobs in this game. GMs don't seem to do much unfortunately but hope this gets resolved or more tools are added by CBSIII. A blacklist should be account wide, it sounds like it currently isn't, if it were new characters would also hidden (or in the case of multiple accounts/trial accounts - they should log the IP and other data to tackle multiple accounts that stalk)

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

If you want I can meet you in game sometime and I'll also file a report, maybe the more people do it the better, idk, let me know!

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I appreciate the thought but we've already had at least 10 people report their behaviour and nothing has unfortunately changed :(
They've been visiting every single evening for several hours, standing right in front of our FC house gate because they cannot enter the plot itself anymore.
Imagine stalking people ingame instead of taking care of your wife and kids... Ugh..

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

I don't want to be that WoL, but what the heck are people up to where they're getting stalked and harassed?

I've been playing since 2021, logging in at least weekly and daily the first month or two of every patch, and I've never had this issue. Even after joining several social groups, discords, Linkshells, statics, etc

I feel like the majority of these situations has to be the result of ERP gone arwy

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Its what happens when you really steep yourself in the social spaces like venues. The lines tend to get blurred between OOC and OC. Parasocial 1 sided appearance based friendships end up forming.

But the social community does like to be victims and sympathy farm, rather then ya know. Not give the player the time of day.

2 weeks of DnD, ignored tells, and indifference will have the problem solve itself out of boredom.

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Originally Posted by Solowing

Its what happens when you really steep yourself in the social spaces like venues. The lines tend to get blurred between OOC and OC. Parasocial 1 sided appearance based friendships end up forming.

But the social community does like to be victims and sympathy farm, rather then ya know. Not give the player the time of day.

2 weeks of DnD, ignored tells, and indifference will have the problem solve itself out of boredom.

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I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

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This is really just such an ignorant thing to say. I'm sorry you've had to deal with this. Though I've never been involved in a proper stalking situation, the only time I've personally seen harassment/abusive behavior was in the fallout of an externally organized run gone wrong, and GMs were not the ones who resolved the issue (Discord server moderators banned the offender, but as far as we know they faced no game-side punishment). I don't know if GMs spoke to the offender or not, but Mordion Gaol is really not the way to enforce the rules when things escalate beyond a certain point. This needs a hard warning system that will send communications to the service account (like system-side messages and emails) and make it clear that further violations of ToS may result in full account termination. I understand that for milder or first-time offenses such as vulgarity, raging, and trolling/griefing it feels less harsh to have a GM speak to the player, and I actually agree that the human interaction makes people reconsider their actions (more often than not I really do think that people didn't realize they were going too far or got lost in the heat of the moment and feel genuine regret). However a malicious player who is consistently engaging in these behaviors, to the point of using other characters/accounts should be dealt with in a more clinical manner. This also takes some of the burden off of GMs, as it takes way less time to send out a template suspension/ban than to pull someone in an instance, hope they're not afk, have convo etc etc etc.

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

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Who said anything about what you deserve? I said you'll need to toughen up and stop leaving your emotions on the table.

Imagine if you treated the people bothering you like you would treat my opinion. Lol.

See how Fast your problems get solved.

Imagine that.. the problem goes away quick when you don't give it the time of day.

Blacklist exists even if it’s not perfect. You cannot see the person whom you blacklisted, nor can you see their alt accounts. Unless they go out of their way to make a completely new Ffxiv account.

I feel a lot of the time people just intentionally not use their blacklist so they can claim they're being stalked and harassed for attention.

Hope this helps.

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Originally Posted by Kamudo

I feel a lot of the time people just intentionally not use their blacklist so they can claim they're being stalked and harassed for attention.

Hope this helps.

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I've actually noticed this baffling attitude towards using block amd ignore functions in most digital social spaces is somehow showing weakness or just wrong in some way because sites like twitter need high engagement to exist, and fights can keep it rolling.

But the issue with the OP is that said stalker is apparently using free trial accounts to keep coming back.

In my past experience with a break-up with a person that played, I just rolled a new character and moved on. I'm not sure if such a thing is a faux pas in RP spaces or something else prevents the original users from doing that.

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

They can still play bard music and be heard even when you got them blocked. They can still leave messages in the FC book and we can only ban them from the house 10 days at a time before you need to refresh it. They've said many things in languages other than english to get around the moderation system.

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Incredible how you can detail exactly where the blacklist system is failing and people will still show up to the thread to blame you lol. Bard music should absolutely not bypass the account blacklist/mute, even putting aside harassment muting player-generated noise is a strong QoL feature for an MMO. Estate message book spam is low-level griefing and should result in an account suspension (it fits in with other ban-worthy activities listed under "Obstructing the activities of others"). 10 day refresh is burdensome, it should be until player chooses to unban by default (and it seems that according to TwizzlyTwist's test it is currently not the same for private vs FC housing). Pretty much every moderation team will agree that using l33t sp34k or other languages to bypass a blocked words list still counts as a violation (and it's still a deliberate violation if they chain together auto-translate terms).

I see a lot of victim-blaming and deflection in this thread. I think people like to believe that they will never go through something like this, so they have to think the victim is somehow bringing it on themselves or just failing to react in a perfect way that would somehow make everything okay again. It doesn't actually work like that. And I do see a couple of things SE could fix that would ease the burden. The blacklist system should block out bard music, along with any emote spam noise from this person. There should be an option to block the person from the estate permanently - I don't know why they set a limit of 10 days, tbh. Also, I feel they should take reports of stalking and harassment more seriously and investigate deeper.. simply saying "use the blacklist" is not good enough when the harasser is going to this much effort to get around it.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

I see a lot of victim-blaming and deflection in this thread. I think people like to believe that they will never go through something like this, so they have to think the victim is somehow bringing it on themselves or just failing to react in a perfect way that would somehow make everything okay again. It doesn't actually work like that. And I do see a couple of things SE could fix that would ease the burden. The blacklist system should block out bard music, along with any emote spam noise from this person. There should be an option to block the person from the estate permanently - I don't know why they set a limit of 10 days, tbh. Also, I feel they should take reports of stalking and harassment more seriously and investigate deeper.. simply saying "use the blacklist" is not good enough when the harasser is going to this much effort to get around it.

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Victim blaming? Nah I'm asking what are the players doing to mitigate their effect on their enjoyment?


Mind you these types of players just don't come out of the blue. They come with quite a few behavior red flags.

I highly doubt most people are honest about being stalked/harassed. It really sounds like a major over exaggeration. What ever happened to strong independent women that needs to man (square enix team) to fix it for you?

people should stop using ff14 as dating sim, then all this wouldnt happen anymore

I hate to say it, but this is also one reason why SE caved in and raised the rating to R17. One of the recent complaints I saw was from someone stalking/harassing a character that was being played by a known minor (a 15 year old) and no amount of complaints, blocking from the FC house, etc was able to stop the stalker. The stalker also shit talked about the FC leader and the player character of the teenager, which is just gross and obsessive behavior regardless.

Anyway, it used to be that SE was okay with a teen playing the game with parental supervision, but shit like this keeps happening because of creeps who won't respect boundaries.

Sadly GM moderation in this game only amounts to “Don’t say bad stuff boohoo” for the most part. They can’t even deal with PvP ‘drama’ involving cheats without having to rely on offender saying anything offensive or self incriminating in-game lol. It’s no surprise they’re also similarly bad on stalking/harassment issues.

Bard music not being filtered, bypassing with auto-translate/other language, and 10d restriction limit on estates are just bad though. Didn’t know those were even a thing. I think they should look into this further at the very least if they can’t help with your issue specifically.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

I hate to say it, but this is also one reason why SE caved in and raised the rating to R17. One of the recent complaints I saw was from someone stalking/harassing a character that was being played by a known minor (a 15 year old) and no amount of complaints, blocking from the FC house, etc was able to stop the stalker. The stalker also shit talked about the FC leader and the player character of the teenager, which is just gross and obsessive behavior regardless.

Anyway, it used to be that SE was okay with a teen playing the game with parental supervision, but shit like this keeps happening because of creeps who won't respect boundaries.

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It's still T for teen in the USA, and online interactions are not rated forever for all kinds of online games since it's impossible unless they're breaking the ToS noticeably.

Honestly, I don't think SE is OK with teens playing w/o parental supervision since they can meet terrible ppl online in most online games but as a company they can't control how parents will or will not watch over their kids in games with others speaking as someone who grew up with the stranger danger warnings about the internet too.

For stalking, if it's that serious, I would try to contact the local police about cyberstalking, which is a crime too in some cities since I don't think SE can just stop someone from making infinite FT accounts to stalk others like they can't even stop the Weaboo Police from harassing ppl for ages in their world/DCs apart from muting them.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Bard music not being filtered

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I was able to test this specifically (my FC lead is very busy so I haven't been able to test the FC rightsholder bit for bug reporting purposes), and no, bard music doesn't play through a blacklist. It vanishes the player and their sounds completely. (Sorry random bard in Limsa I just blacklisted and then whitelisted for testing purposes!)

Blacklists wouldn't do much if a stalker keeps making new accounts...about the only way to mitigate THAT is to have an FC house in Ishgard. Brand new players can't get there easily at all.

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Originally Posted by JerryBerrry

I highly doubt most people are honest about being stalked/harassed. It really sounds like a major over exaggeration. What ever happened to strong independent women that needs to man (square enix team) to fix it for you?

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Like your whin- complaint about premades on the PvP section of these boards right now? Sorry but that was just begging for a snark-back.

Nah man. My incident occurred because at the time I didn't know you could opt out of follows and shit on the lodestone (iirc that was somewhat new when I came back?) I'm thinking my "stalkers" saw activity via that and went to intercept.

I was livid since it was literally within 2-3 days of me coming back to the game and on a different server and I wasn't having any of that malarkey following me around while trying to acclimatize to the game again after a year+ of being away. So yeah, I summoned GM intervention as it was within my right to do so. It apparently worked, along with blacklisting and ignoring any advances thereafter that.

I just don't assume that result was purely down to the preventative measures I undertook, I do believe the GMs might've done something to help that process along (or would like to). Either way I can't complain. I've had overall pretty okay results whenever I've had a GM get back to me. It's just with the PvP side of things I really can't verify if it was just empty cordiality that took place versus actual action.

And I mean my anecdotal episode there kinda goes a little towards proving not all the weird ass behaviour stems from some romantic misadventure lol, as some here are lead to believe. Some may be karma farming but some of them are also unfortunately real. The kind that follows you across servers or even DCs. Personally not seen this before until this MMO, not over PvE that's for sure.

Myself and many others detailed exactly where the current software-side and GM-side remedies were lacking, and somehow that's "looking for attention" and e-dating related, apparently. Blacklisting someone who keeps following you into field operations and telling people not to party with you doesn't solve the problem, because now you just don't see them doing it. If there's 50 people in the instance, they all see the spam and now our names are associated with the bad actor. It shouldn't be on us to server hop, that's a burden on us for them breaking the rules. It took that person being banned from non-squenix Discord servers for them to lay off, while we just got boilerplate communication from GMs and don't even know if they faced in-game disciplinary action. (And ftr, this was not a "social side" or "dating" thing. A fight broke out after we tried running high-end content together and the perpetrator decided that screaming insults at people, spamming DMs/pings, and chasing us around to warn others that we suck at the game for a *week* was an appropriate response) People seem to be missing the fact that a player who is spamming emotes/instruments/shouts is obstructive to everyone, even if only one person is the target, and bystanders will associate both perpetrator and victim as annoyances. I'd imagine all the people putting time and effort into buying an FC house, decorating it, hosting events etc. wouldn't be too happy about becoming "that one plot with the yelling bongo player we have to keep blacklisting"

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Originally Posted by Astronis

I was able to test this specifically (my FC lead is very busy so I haven't been able to test the FC rightsholder bit for bug reporting purposes), and no, bard music doesn't play through a blacklist. It vanishes the player and their sounds completely. (Sorry random bard in Limsa I just blacklisted and then whitelisted for testing purposes!)[...]

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That's a relief. They still should do better on FC estate limitation though.

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[...]Blacklists wouldn't do much if a stalker keeps making new accounts...about the only way to mitigate THAT is to have an FC house in Ishgard. Brand new players can't get there easily at all.

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This made me chuckle, though more because I forgot Empyreum stays inaccessible till completion of 3.3. Still, I think Free Trial accounts should not have access to housing zones at all. Or limit their excursion i.e. only for 30 minutes a day then get auto boot until next refresh.

No amount of GMs or rules can make up for the fact that most millennials are terrible parents who are too busy watching and posting tiktoks to monitor their children.
You don't have to edate someone for them to stalk you, some people are so mentally deranged that they can easily fall in love your XIV character alone without you even saying anything.
Not as a hroth though, they're unattractive enough to be safe.
If someones stalking you into your house, lock your house. "I dont want to" ok then ban them from entering your house. But really, just lock it-I dont get people who refuse to. It takes 000.2 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Batbrat

Not as a hroth though, they're unattractive enough to be safe.
seconds.

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Oh my sweet summer child. Stay this innocent.


But I do consistently see the same weird behavior in NOT using every tool at your disposal to keep people away from you and never grasp the full reasons why.

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Originally Posted by Solowing

Its what happens when you really steep yourself in the social spaces like venues. The lines tend to get blurred between OOC and OC. Parasocial 1 sided appearance based friendships end up forming.

But the social community does like to be victims and sympathy farm, rather then ya know. Not give the player the time of day.

2 weeks of DnD, ignored tells, and indifference will have the problem solve itself out of boredom.

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I have no idea what OOC or OC is.

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Originally Posted by TwizzlyTwist

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

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Most people don't "Deserve" anything but its immature/naive to act careless because of that ideal. At the end of the day you have to be responsible for yourself and the situations you put yourself in. Life and bad things will still happen regardless unfortunately, but you can at least give yourself the best chance of staying out of harms way.

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Originally Posted by Kamudo

I feel a lot of the time people just intentionally not use their blacklist so they can claim they're being stalked and harassed for attention.

Hope this helps.

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Its either that or they've burned all the bridges in their (e)RP space

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Originally Posted by Brynne

I see a lot of victim-blaming and deflection in this thread.

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It's not victim blaming. Eventually you have to grow up be accountable for the spaces or situations you place yourself in. "Blame" is the wrong word to use. Its typically used in a manipulative way. Should you be able to go anywhere you want and have a good time without worrying about being harassed/assaulted? Absolutely. Does the world work that way? Absolutely not. You have to take care of yourself and use good discernment.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

It's not victim blaming. Eventually you have to grow up be accountable for the spaces or situations you place yourself in. "Blame" is the wrong word to use. Its typically used in a manipulative way. Should you be able to go anywhere you want and have a good time without worrying about being harassed/assaulted? Absolutely. Does the world work that way? Absolutely not. You have to take care of yourself and use good discernment.

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The world let's you have restraining orders against the behaviors depicted in this thread. Until Square has a viable digital equivalent, you cannot bring real world issues into this, since there is a real solution there. You are victim blaming because the real world has solutions and you're essentially telling these people it's their fault to expect the game to have these basic guard rails in place. The game is basically stripping you of a basic human right 99% of the world agrees upon. You have the right to not be stalked and hunted like the individuals in this thread experience in game.

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Originally Posted by Uzephi

The world let's you have restraining orders against the behaviors depicted in this thread. Until Square has a viable digital equivalent, you cannot bring real world issues into this, since there is a real solution there. You are victim blaming because the real world has solutions and you're essentially telling these people it's their fault to expect the game to have these basic guard rails in place. The game is basically stripping you of a basic human right 99% of the world agrees upon. You have the right to not be stalked and hunted like the individuals in this thread experience in game.

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The game strips you of rights?

You don't think that's a bit of gross hyperbole?

Square has gone above and beyond to really look out for the player experience here. They're stripping you rights because you don't have the exact type of social blocking features?

I think its pretty robust. But because they didn't give you the perfect one.You wanted , it's a microaggression against you? You're like purity testing the people who are on your side.
I

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Originally Posted by Batbrat

No amount of GMs or rules can make up for the fact that most millennials are terrible parents who are too busy watching and posting tiktoks to monitor their children.
You don't have to edate someone for them to stalk you, some people are so mentally deranged that they can easily fall in love your XIV character alone without you even saying anything.
Not as a hroth though, they're unattractive enough to be safe.
If someones stalking you into your house, lock your house. "I dont want to" ok then ban them from entering your house. But really, just lock it-I dont get people who refuse to. It takes 000.2 seconds.

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People.\nWant to try to upkeep the performance to be seen as a good person. So they willfully engage with these people for the social karma, or they simply ignore all the red flags they give off.

They tend to be overly friendly , overly sharing and overly clingy. Once I see those traits , I disengage from chatting, or just go Grey rock. And they tend to move on and seek players they get more engagement from.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

I have no idea what OOC or OC is.

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"Out of character" and "original character." In the context of RP, essentially not know when the player is just being themselves or "acting" as their character in the setting of role-play.

Unfortunately, lots of role-players are just bad enough at acting that being "in character" is indistinguishable from from just hanging out with that person in game.

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Originally Posted by Uzephi

The game is basically stripping you of a basic human right 99% of the world agrees upon.

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Shall we start a letter writing campaign to Amnesty International?

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

"Out of character" and "original character." In the context of RP, essentially not know when the player is just being themselves or "acting" as their character in the setting of role-play.

Unfortunately, lots of role-players are just bad enough at acting that being "in character" is indistinguishable from from just hanging out with that person in game.

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And a fair bit of RP drama starts because roleplayers aren't always great at keeping the fiction fiction regarding their feelings. Not that that's what happened in the specific case that restarted this thread, but I'm sure it contributes sometimes.

Thread completely derailed by people who want to debate *why* stalking and harassment happens instead of the material points we brought up. Awesome. To recap the issues:

- Estate book spam/vandalism, which would qualify as low-level griefing, seems to have no remedy other than removing the book entirely. As per ToS this should result in account suspension and eventually a permanent ban.
- 10 day refresh on housing ban is an unnecessary preventative measure. There are very good reasons to keep someone banned permanently, the previous issue being one of them, and you can manually remove it. If the 10 days is so important then it should be a toggle for 1 day, 10 days, perma etc.
- Seems to be conflicting reports on whether or not character-generated noise such as instruments can be heard over a block. Regardless, someone spamming noise is disruptive and a GM who monitors the situation should easily be able to tell if the person is being malicious.
- Blocked phrases list should be longer and ideally incorporate wildcard characters for real in-depth filtering. a, A, 4, á substituted in the same word should be able to fully filter the message, e.g. the common /shout spam of "gamba".
- Blacklisting does not resolve the issue if someone is causing a public disturbance. In this case, every player in the instance will have to blacklist them, and they can still cause trouble if they grief (e.g. provoking NMs in Eureka to get attention). If someone uses your name, there are two issues: If you blacklist them, that just means you won't see it and won't know if they're doing it; Everyone else in the area will see that message if they haven't blocked the person and like it or not you are now associated with the troll.
- A person who is abusing the free trial system should not be able to keep coming back with a new throwaway email. IP bans should be handed out liberally.
- Overall I should point out that when you leave the burden on us, the players, to deal with people violating ToS, it makes it less fun to play. Why should we have to take an extra 5 steps to play the game the way everyone else does? It becomes our burden when someone else is breaking the very rules that squenix supposedly set up to prevent this kind of thing. God forbid the million dollar company invest some time and resources into keeping griefers out of their MMO.

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Originally Posted by KihyiFelhede

Thread completely derailed by people who want to debate *why* stalking and harassment happens instead of the material points we brought up. Awesome. To recap the issues:

- Estate book spam/vandalism, which would qualify as low-level griefing, seems to have no remedy other than removing the book entirely. As per ToS this should result in account suspension and eventually a permanent ban.
- 10 day refresh on housing ban is an unnecessary preventative measure. There are very good reasons to keep someone banned permanently, the previous issue being one of them, and you can manually remove it. If the 10 days is so important then it should be a toggle for 1 day, 10 days, perma etc.
- Seems to be conflicting reports on whether or not character-generated noise such as instruments can be heard over a block. Regardless, someone spamming noise is disruptive and a GM who monitors the situation should easily be able to tell if the person is being malicious.
- Blocked phrases list should be longer and ideally incorporate wildcard characters for real in-depth filtering. a, A, 4, á substituted in the same word should be able to fully filter the message, e.g. the common /shout spam of "gamba".
- Blacklisting does not resolve the issue if someone is causing a public disturbance. In this case, every player in the instance will have to blacklist them, and they can still cause trouble if they grief (e.g. provoking NMs in Eureka to get attention). If someone uses your name, there are two issues: If you blacklist them, that just means you won't see it and won't know if they're doing it; Everyone else in the area will see that message if they haven't blocked the person and like it or not you are now associated with the troll.
- A person who is abusing the free trial system should not be able to keep coming back with a new throwaway email. IP bans should be handed out liberally.
- Overall I should point out that when you leave the burden on us, the players, to deal with people violating ToS, it makes it less fun to play. Why should we have to take an extra 5 steps to play the game the way everyone else does? It becomes our burden when someone else is breaking the very rules that squenix supposedly set up to prevent this kind of thing. God forbid the million dollar company invest some time and resources into keeping griefers out of their MMO.

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This is a good list, and I'll add one more:
- Adding someone to the blacklist should remove you from their friends list if they have you on it. Just because someone was once a friend doesn't mean they should be able to track when you're online after you've blacklisted them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KihyiFelhede

Thread completely derailed by people who want to debate *why* stalking and harassment happens instead of the material points we brought up. Awesome. To recap the issues:

- Estate book spam/vandalism, which would qualify as low-level griefing, seems to have no remedy other than removing the book entirely. As per ToS this should result in account suspension and eventually a permanent ban.
- 10 day refresh on housing ban is an unnecessary preventative measure. There are very good reasons to keep someone banned permanently, the previous issue being one of them, and you can manually remove it. If the 10 days is so important then it should be a toggle for 1 day, 10 days, perma etc.
- Seems to be conflicting reports on whether or not character-generated noise such as instruments can be heard over a block. Regardless, someone spamming noise is disruptive and a GM who monitors the situation should easily be able to tell if the person is being malicious.
- Blocked phrases list should be longer and ideally incorporate wildcard characters for real in-depth filtering. a, A, 4, á substituted in the same word should be able to fully filter the message, e.g. the common /shout spam of "gamba".
- Blacklisting does not resolve the issue if someone is causing a public disturbance. In this case, every player in the instance will have to blacklist them, and they can still cause trouble if they grief (e.g. provoking NMs in Eureka to get attention). If someone uses your name, there are two issues: If you blacklist them, that just means you won't see it and won't know if they're doing it; Everyone else in the area will see that message if they haven't blocked the person and like it or not you are now associated with the troll.
- A person who is abusing the free trial system should not be able to keep coming back with a new throwaway email. IP bans should be handed out liberally.
- Overall I should point out that when you leave the burden on us, the players, to deal with people violating ToS, it makes it less fun to play. Why should we have to take an extra 5 steps to play the game the way everyone else does? It becomes our burden when someone else is breaking the very rules that squenix supposedly set up to prevent this kind of thing. God forbid the million dollar company invest some time and resources into keeping griefers out of their MMO.

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Well, if you ask why the stalking happens, you can find ways to prevent it. Rather than willfully or unwittingly walking into a lions den.

Preemptively , look out for yourself now to save yourself from headaches later. Remember it's the internet nobody knows they're talking to a well adjusted person , a serial killer or a unstable person.

But the asking for tools is logical and makes sense