Edit: Please read my post on page two with the TL;DR instead. This first post is not very organized and was just meant to start thought and discussion.
It's a sensitive topic. I'm no social science expert, but I think the 'Blacklist' system should be reviewed, maybe improved.
Theoretical changes:
"Blacklist" should be renamed as "Ignore". "Ignore" only blocks direct chat and PF. "Ignored" person will permanently see you as "busy". "Ignore" is discreet, they will not be notified you are ignoring them. You are not prevented from interacting with them (functionally same as "busy").
A "Block" feature, prevents all chat messages from appearing to each other, and blocks all blockable direct actions. "Block" must be upgraded from "ignore" and can only be done via executing action on an already "ignored" person. "Block" is not discreet, they will see you are blocking them if they attempt interaction, otherwise it is same as current "blacklist" feature. But you are also prevented from interaction with them.
A "Blacklist" feature. Must be filed in tandem with a "report player action" for documentation via GM.
Can only be implemented by GM, can only be lifted by GM, via automated ticket. The automatic functions are auto-approved, these functions include everything the current "blacklist" offers. However, if the report is investigated to be true and the offending player is flagged by multiple blacklist requests citing actual offences, GM will investigate and take action as necessary.
If action is taken, the requesting player will be "offered" additional options, and depending on the severity of the case, options of character name/image change, server transfer, two-way hard-coded concealment of in-game character and assets (yes, find a way to implement that code), and other supportive actions. May be transferred to customer support.
Theory stuff from my perspective.
The "blacklist" action is inherently a rage feature. It's own nature is not that of a positive one.
Interaction with the system from both sides can result in a "give in" mentality where you just say "f% it, people can't be helped", or "I may have been an idiot and not behaved well, but they were a%ses too". This leaves lasting spots of negativity in player's hearts. There is virtually no way but to take it and eat it. You will never want to apologize or become better in that case. You will want to help other people less. Even if you do, more prejudice will have been built in.
The game does not help by being dishonest with the system prompts. If someone has been "dismissed" from the party, they did not leave. They were kicked by the party leader. If someone has been "vote kicked", they were dismissed by the party. They were not "have been dismissed from both the party and the duty". It is indirect corporate talk. It is disgusting. It does not help. Not if the person was a bully, not if the person was bullied and not quite themselves, not if the person just needed some peace and quiet themselves from other sources, possibly from elsewhere within the game. Not if it makes the person hate the whole party, when in reality it may have been just the party leader's decision, or one particular player.
Sometimes the system doesn't help. Sometimes a PF needs to kick people for logistical reasons, but then the person is added to a "mini-blacklist" and can't even join the party again without friending them and inviting manually.
If "kicking" people, "blacklisting" people is some kind of hush-hush taboo, because it makes society worse, then adding people as "friends" left and right should make society filled with positivity. How is this any more or less toxic than using a "mute party" function? Or issuing a "behaviour warning"? How does this make players hate the game less for whatever faults it occasionally has in their designs and systems?
I know this kind of view may differ between cultures (including what we hear about Japanese "social mannerisms and correctness and pressure on the individual"), but in the end, creativity, open-mindedness, clarity and communication, less 'economic' pressure and more fairness, etc. are always facilitation of better social atmospheres than any amount of hindsight and correcting mechanisms. SE cannot pretend all the creativity and good stuff all come from them, and any oppression and frustration belong to the players, and have no place in their perfectly designed game, but which puts players fairly in their place.
There are not many things in this game that can result in the least desirable outcome for a game aka. a player quitting. But when that happens, I have no doubt it will have to do with all the politics, pressure on performance, rigid playstyles and end-game content, attentive time and emotional labour demanded of players engaging in it, lack of depth and handling in some scripts and scenarios, and in the end, "just not worth it" once weighed in player's minds. They can eliminate the toxicity, but at what cost?
It won't be easy to improve this. If I knew how I wouldn't be here, as I'd joke. But I just hope people don't take a look at it and say "meh it's what it is, it's been what it is, things are just like that".
Discussion on the <Blacklist> function
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10-01-2019, 07:03 PMRaqrie_TohkaDiscussion on the <Blacklist> function
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10-01-2019, 07:20 PMRaqrie_Tohka
I'm sorry if this all comes off a bit as ranting (which it partly is) but it's a bit difficult to think through or find solutions for after all. It's not easy to talk about.
Problems should be addressed for the game to become better for everyone. -
10-01-2019, 07:35 PMRoyalBeefI'm not ingame to take care of people's mental issues. When I run a party I want to accomplish a certain goal in an effiient way. If you're looking for a quiet place to chill, or aren't 'yourself' whatever that is supposed to mean, my party is not the right place for you.Quote:
Not if the person was a bully, not if the person was bullied and not quite themselves, not if the person just needed some peace and quiet themselves from other sources, possibly from elsewhere within the game. Not if it makes the person hate the whole party, when in reality it may have been just the party leader's decision, or one particular player.
Underperforming gets a hint to step it up, then a kick if they don't.
Trolling is one strike, then kick and blacklist.
Other than that, I don't care. You can be the biggest a-hole in the world, if you get the job done, welcome on board. -
10-01-2019, 07:38 PMKobalos
I've been kicked in a couple of parties - No explanation or anything just *poof* gone :?
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10-01-2019, 07:43 PMGwenorai
I can't say I'm in agreement. A black-list is not supposed to be positive or nice, or sugarcoated. It's a list of people you refuse to interact with. It doesn't really need to be over convoluted either or complex. It's just a list of people you don't want to deal with. If you regret your decision you simply remove them from the list, if you don't then you keep them on it. Finally, a blacklist doesn't need to be creative or filled with positivity; the fact it exists is because there are a lot of people out there who are not good or nice, or they simply clash with you - there's nothing wrong with that either. Human nature. I don't understand why someone would need their hand held and pushed to a safe word to remove/ignore someone who literally might have just called them the f word moments ago and then go through extra lengths to have access to more block features.
Also, the word dismissed is actually correct as it means they're 'ordered to leave'.
verb
past tense: dismissed; past participle: dismissed
1.
order or allow to leave; send away.
Just like Blacklist is correct; 'a list of people or things that are regarded as unacceptable or untrustworthy and should be excluded or avoided.'
What I think should be done is this;
Just upgrade the blacklist so it's a full cease of interaction -including the inability to emote/locate them.- and have it be account-wide so it catches their alts as well as your own. Increase the blacklist size limits.
However, I am in agreement that its current state certainly needs to be improved upon - just not in the ways where extra hoops need to be jumped in order to gain access to further features to simply remove someone you don't wish to see or interact with.
And finally, if someone is bullied or unfairly dismissed etc - it's all grounds for you to file a report to a GM. -
10-01-2019, 08:12 PMVidu
I'm not even sure what you're proposing here... while I can agree that the blacklist needs to be improved I dont see you suggesting any real improvments, just some weird cuddling-attempts to protect the feelings of people who've been blacklisted or dimissed from parties - two things that are not the same btw...
All of that has some false information sprinkled in, so I'd like to adress the points I think I was able to grasp:
1) You're suggesting that when you blacklist a person you should appear busy to them all the time. Thats a terrible suggestion, because it has the potential to alert the person to being on your blacklist, something thats way to easly circumvented by creating a new character, for example. The current state that it simply blocks all messages without giving the sender any hint that the messages have been blocked is way better in that regard. No one needs to get hints that they might have been blacklisted and not getting an answer to your message (that was never delivered) is a much weaker give-away than a constant /busy-status. Bottomline: blacklisting someone should always be discret.
2) I dont see the need to add workload for the GMs because you want to make it more difficult for people to have an actual effective way of getting rid of someone.
3) I'm not sure why you confuse "dismissing" and "blacklisting", because both are extremly different features and both of them are valid. The only overlap they generate is in the case of someone being kicked from a duty, because they wont be able to join that excat run in progress again - which is a good change they made a while ago since kicking someone sends the very clear message of "We dont want to play with this person" and the system should allow you that. (I recall having a totally undergeard, underperforming tank join a run three times after being kicked again and again. He wouldnt listen to advice, he wouldnt do his job, he just made everyones life more difficult than it had to be.)
If you need to deal with your issues: Do so outside of the game. Step away from the game for a while if you have. And if being dismissed or blacklisted is bothering you: Review both the/your actions that might have lead to that situation, so you can use it as a learning-opportunity (rude behaviour? Wrong gear? Underperforming?) or realise that it was just bad luck, not a personal attack.
In the end the blacklist and dismiss feature can be used to bring positivty to the game - by removing negativty from your life or party. I dont care about the well being of someone who was rude enough to end up being kicked or blacklisted by me. And why should I? Its not that I want to punish them, I dont want to have to deal with them anymore and if that makes them sad its not my problem.
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We've seen some actual good suggestions in regards to the blacklist-feature and I'd like to repeat some of them:
- blacklisting a friend or removing someone from your friendlist should remove you from theirs
- blacklisted people should be unable to enter any personal housing you own, even if said housing is open to the public
- highly requested, but way to complicated: Blacklisting should prevent you from being partied up with the person in a random dungeon (that one has the potential to make the whole matching collapsed, so probably not possible)
- unable to interact with your character in any way, aka no emotes
- I've also seen request to just make the blacklisted character "disapear" on your own screen, so you wont even see them
- the blacklist-feature already does this, but I want to stress it again: the blacklisted person should NEVER know they're on someones blacklist.
At the end of the day the blacklist-feature is in place to protect the person whos blacklisting someone - and in that sense its creating a more positive enviroment for them. The same goes for the dismiss and vote-kick feature. If you find yourself at the reciving end of being dimissed, blacklisted or removed from parties so often that it makes you consider quitting the game or just upset in general, you should review your actions and ask yourself how much posiitivy you're bringing into this game. -
10-01-2019, 08:32 PMRasikko
Dismiss is just a polite word for kicking, etc, hence why it's used. Yeah I've played some mmos where it's blunt to the point: "You got kicked from the xxxx" "You were thrown out from xxxx"
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10-01-2019, 11:16 PMRaqrie_Tohka
I don't usually vote to kick people, or try to kick people myself. If a PF party isn't working worse case we just leave, because as the saying goes, "this isn't worth me getting contacted by a GM".
However, please see my stance on this:
1. The more enacted toxicity I encounter, aka. blacklisting, kicking, vote-kicking I see, the more I feel I should use and abuse these functions too, because these are "quiet" and officially approved ways to take my toxicity out at people.
2. There is so much toxicity. Both my savage party finder clears today, almost every party I was in, someone used some strong words. I was helping out a FC member in Titania normal clear today, and a vote-kick was started against one of the dps, probably for making a mistake from being new or just because someone thought the dps was low. Prejudice, and a thinking that prejudice is justified, and that acting on it is justified, permeates most content. Even low-end content, it occur occasionally. We have a lot of the "supertank" threads whining on forums too.
3. The core problem is lack of communication (and more). There may be actual reasons such as people being tired, language barriers, not wanting to give a care after a week of wiping in PF. But most people, even if they are tired, will be rational and opened to discussion / analysis, if it was friendly. However, even slight agitation, will prompt mirrored responses.
4. Mirrored responses, a full circle, INCLUDES all these extreme and final ways of dealing with people. It's almost as if SE says "you people are a lost cause, just enjoy this content we created that does not require any human contact in principle at all, and if you don't even wanna try, use these power-fantasy tools to enact your will upon other people!"
5. This slowly pushes the overall game into a certain social atmosphere and tints the nature of ALL activity within the game.
No person is purely by nature, toxic. Harsh corporate controls exist for stability and risk management, sometimes risk offloading from the company. It exists foremost, to protect the company, and manage social perceptions that the company is doing their social responsibility, but which the company can manage within an affordable cost. Thus simpler systems. Ofc SE is not like some very bad companies or very unlucky companies having to deal with truly extreme situations in truly eyebrow-raising ways. But toxicity is inherently one of the core problems of multiplayer games, since forever.
And what I currently think is, although the way the system is managed in this game is not the worse I've seen, the taste it leaves in my mouth is one of the worse I've tasted.
Call me an idiot unable to express or even think clearly, but does this game have perfect systems? Is the novice network completely perfect in both operation, and its nature? Are improvements not possible? Can you try to consider things from another person's perspective without either outright dismissing them first or thinking that it means you have to force yourself to accept their viewpoint first? Is the only allowed viewpoint, the correct viewpoint and the viewpoint that thinks "everything should be fine, and anyone saying is otherwise themselves, part of the trouble"?
I don't have any good, actual solutions or even suggestions atm (if I did I'd work for SE), but some thinking, empathy, just putting thoughts out there, shouldn't hurt. Or do we need blacklist feature for forums as well? -
10-01-2019, 11:46 PMViduThere are several things wrong with this post and I'll try to adress them in a sensible order:Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
1) You need to stop lumping "blacklisting someone" and "removing someone from a party" together. They're not the same.
2) How does blacklisting someone create a toxic or negative enviroment? I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this, because what blacklisting is supposed to do - and does, at least to an extend - is allowing you to create a "better" enviroment for yourself, by removing people (to an extend) from it that make your experience unpleasent. Someone is using foul language? You can add them to your blacklist and you dont have to deal with that anymore, ergo your experience just got better.
3) Your whole post sounds like you want to force people to solve issues that might lead to blacklisting and/or dismissing someone. In a sense I can see that point: If I blacklist someone whos using foul language it doesnt solve the actual problem of that person using foul language. I just dont have to see it anymore. But that is actually enough. The game - or its players - arent here to "educate" other people on whats good and bad behavior that way. The game is supposed to be fun and people are here to have fun, so all thats needed are the tools to ensure that your fun isnt "harmed". Among those tools are things like blacklisting people who would harm your fun.
4) If I want to blacklist someone for cause - harrassment, for example - or want to dismiss them from a dungeon with cause - for being disruptive, for example - I dont need to show them "empathy" or consider their view of the situation. Sorry to burst your little bubble here, but I dont really care why someone felt it was okay to insult someone or that people think their 13€ a month entitle them to play however they want and dont consider that they're in a team-based-dungeon. All I need is to remove such a person from my experience.
5) Minor note, but: We do have a blacklist-feature on the forums. Its called "Ignore" here and while it doesnt prevent people from posting in threads created by you or makes you invisble to them, it does hide all posts from that person so you dont have to see them.
I know that a lot of people view MMOs not only as a game but also as some kind of social hub - and thats alright, because MMOs do provide both kinds of experience. I always felt like it was wrong to put such a strong emphasis on the social aspect, at least when it comes to modern MMOs or to a themepark MMO that offers a lot of casual content like FFXIV.
In my personal opinion this game should focus on providing a good game-experience to its playerbase, not a good social experience (I'm not saying the social experience should be bad, though). The blacklist-feature helps with providing a good game-experience by allowing you to remove people from your sight who harm that experience. The same goes for the kick-feature - if someone is disruptive to a dungeon-run the party should have the option to remove them, so they can continue to enjoy the game.
I know all of this sounds pretty cold, but my point here is that I simply dont think that we as a playerbase or SE as the developer should put effort into basically "educating" people on good (or at least appropriate) behavior. Thats something you should already bring to the table when you start playing the game or, in case of your personal skill with the game, develop while playing it.
Blacklisting and dismissing dont add to a toxic enviroment, they help you to remove toxicity from your own personal gaming experience within FFXIV. They might not solev the underlying problem of "there are jerks in the world", but they dont have to. The game doesnt have to solve that problem. All it needs to do is give you tools to keep those jerks out of your way so you can enjoy the game.
This isnt a school for good manners, its a videogame. Dont ask it to be more.
Bottomline: Blacklisting and dismissing - while being two quite different tools - arent "toxic". They're tools that help you to deal with any "toxic" (or even just unpleasent) people you encounter and rather not have to deal with. -
10-01-2019, 11:47 PMRoyalBeefYou should be glad you can't hear my static's banter on discord. Guess we're all toxic and only pretend to be friends ^^Quote:
There is so much toxicity. Both my savage party finder clears today, almost every party I was in, someone used some strong words.
So you don't know the reason. You interprete the incident in a way that serves your narrative and way of thinking.Quote:
I was helping out a FC member in Titania normal clear today, and a vote-kick was started against one of the dps, probably for making a mistake from being new or just because someone thought the dps was low.
The use of "toxcity" is like the boy crying wolf at this point. People who might actually be harrassed, stalked etc ingame won't be taken serious anymore bc everyone cries "toxicity" at everything 24/7.Quote:
The more enacted toxicity I encounter, aka. blacklisting, kicking, vote-kicking I see
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10-02-2019, 01:39 AMErendis
I only want to be able to enter /blist reason...
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10-02-2019, 05:22 AMArillyn
Blacklisting and kicking someone from the party are not the same thing. And I don't do either lightly, but if you (general you) are a complete jerk to someone in my party you'll get a warning first and if you keep being a jerk you will be kicked. I may or may not blacklist you depending on exactly what you were doing. So if I do blacklist you there is a definite reason. I think I've initiated maybe 1-2 kicks due to the person harassing someone in the party - all other kicks were from legit afk people who got dc and just never came back. I have maybe 5 people on my blacklist. This is all since 2.0 launched.
The word toxic keeps getting tossed around a lot and I don't think it means what some people seems to think it means. Are there toxic people in this game? Of course, it's the internet. But most people aren't toxic. But if you need to blacklist someone, that's not toxic. -
10-02-2019, 07:16 AMElladie
My blist is full but that's because I blist and report RMT on a regular basis. I think there are 3 people on my blist in 9 years of playing (since 1.0) who are there because of toxic behaviour on their part. I don't want to jump through a bunch of hoops because I don't want to listen to RMT, and if I decide I need to blist someone for toxicity, I don't want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops then either, I just want them gone because the situation has reached a point where having to deal with that person is causing genuine distress. The current blist function works exactly as it should, although I do agree that removing someone from your friends' list should remove you from theirs.
Party kicks have nothing to do with blist so not really sure why you brought that into the discussion. -
10-02-2019, 02:17 PMDumdogsWorld
I think they should make an entirely separate blacklist for bots and RMT advertisers. It would be just like the normal blacklist when adding players from other servers - the results are stored on your PC instead of your account. Then, make it so that the max number of entries is customizable. Think your PC can handle a million slots? Go for it!
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10-02-2019, 03:52 PMSinSiew79
After having played the game since beta, I have blisted (and later deleted) alot of RMTs over the course of the last 5 years. I see no reason to "fix" or change its function at all, it does exactly what it says on the tin.
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10-02-2019, 05:48 PMRaqrie_Tohka
TL;DR For some people, if the car doesn’t perform well enough on the road, they build a better car. But I’m saying to build a better road, and a whole better traffic framework to go with it. It’s stupid when put this way, really.
If I may attempt to elaborate on why I perceive the blacklist function as not really helping:
“Competitive” atmosphere-
End-game experience is elitism rife with politics, criticality, judging, comparisons.
This is exacerbate by pressure, to do everything with absolute value and efficiency. Because this is how the game content was designed. With pressure to perform, quotas, hard grind for hard rewards. Too much of type of logic is undesirable and from this angle, much can be improved.*
Cold “end-game atmosphere”, paired with rigidity, lack of creativity, objectives-trivialisation of the designed content, results in an environment susceptible to the risk of absolute thinking, hasty attitudes, and thus toxicity.
“Institutional violence”-
It is not harsh as real institutional violence, but hear me out:
Institutional, as in “officially sanctioned action”. Systemic, part of the infrastructure. Inhumane and insensitive.
Inherent violence, as in being a nature of punishment. Players may wonder, because it is punishment, thus must have done something wrong. But what? Simply playing the game? Engaging with other players? So you see the problem now.
Furthermore, “kick”, “blacklist”, are harsh words, possibly due to a translation problem. I doubt the Japanese description of these features make it sound as physical as a kill-list.**
The end result is closed-ended logic, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the means justify the means. It will result in what I posted before, the “give-in” mentality.
Prejudice-
I quote: “Every person has once in their life, trusted. To believe in and be prepared to devote their all to something/someone. But this point rarely results in actual finality, and more often than not life goes on. But we yearn for it, amongst many other things, and it is the ultimate goal of a game to allow us to relive, even if via an illusion, that feeling again.”
Good social atmosphere is akin to and negativity immunisation. (creativity, communication, economic prosperity and fairness, mindfulness). ***
Unfortunately, players do not trust each other. The game gleefullly provides their own NPCs for us to ‘trust’ instead. Vibrant and talented is the playerbase, but it is not integrated into the game well. Everything ‘community’ has to go through SE, while in-game mechanics are not particularly encouraging of inter-player community activity. ****
The failure to develop multiple social spheres, attempting to take everything into the game but failing (because immersion), then resulting in ‘push aside’ ways to deal with it such as ‘blacklist’.
Players wont develop a maturity without first be allowed to separate their social sphere from the in-game activity sphere. And in the impossibility of that, to separate the in-game social sphere into multiple thresholds. {*}
There has to be places, time, activities, which simply allow players to trust, or for some reprieve/partition from volatile influence. Currently this is almost nigh impossible, nigh inexistent, and not positive.
Perfection-
Continuing with the quotes, one about MMOs: “The human mind is not as adept at processing certain calculations as machines, but it excels at being simply ‘human’, providing a holistic awareness of an encompassing situation, and reacting with suitable complexity as a person. MMOs should seek to laterally engage players in all faculties of their emotional and logical minds, to let them simply ‘live’.”
An ideal game is not one which forces the player to make one cold decision after another, and every game is in the end, an RPG. Emotion, whimsical, liveliness, etc. this type of creative design the game and franchise does well, but not in a satisfactory way to invoke highest faculties, or be artistically significant. To have pillars, principles, which resonate with players and become part of the defining immersive atmosphere, part of the actual playstyle. (example, if your game’s content is about a clusterfudge of hobos going royale at each other, then that’s the level its ‘atmosphere’ will be.)
Good design in aesthetics of logic can function to naturally push players into a better social direction, but black spots will stand out more noticeably and be more impactful. One such black spot, as I perceive, is the current end-method of dealing with toxicity, almost a symbolic snapshot of everything bad,
to weigh on the mind. That’s why I describe it as “leaving a bad taste”, because few games need to encompass so much in this aspect, and have it concentrated so.
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I would like to write more on systems design, with future proofing and redundancy etc. Allowing for options almost unthinkable, like remittance. It’s all about designing logic, making systems, not individual features and mechanics.
Also more on the whimsical and artistic stuff, but maybe will (have purpose and clarity to) write someday else. Wrote way too much here.
But in the end, what has been written above I believe is a fair representation of my perspective and stance. And a bit of what I see out of this <blacklist> system, from my angle.
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*(If I may quote a recent suggestion, allowing receiving missed lockout rewards from the past week. It effectively turns the weekly lockout into a bi-weekly lockout, allowing more freedom and less pressure on players. And future possibility in new designs.)
** (Consider to change ‘vote kick’ to ‘vote dismiss’ and ‘blacklist’ to ‘block’. Or ‘ignore’. Change the perspective of the action, devolve the situational context of the action away from a hostile one.)
*** (Another recent suggestion of mine revolves around improvement of the glamour system to allow for more player creativity, fun, and less rigidity. Glamour is a large part of inter-player expression and less ‘stuck-up’ glamour is beneficial for a healthy in-game atmosphere. ‘Indirect’ methods of improvement, slipping in bits of positivity, improving the ‘infrastructure’ of the game, are equally important as direct solutions. Any problem cannot be considered in isolation from its broader context.)
**** (For instance, not much in mechanics to encourage low-organisation inter-player activity. Not even a floor-based carpet board-game furniture for FC events. No true FC activity design which actually involve FC members (airships? furniture? please) (I once suggested a botanical vaults feature, aka. tended instanced gardens).
Nothing in the game requires ‘human’ contact by principle. The raids are basically mechanical puzzles where players are chess pieces, and healers and tanks are tools, (ever wonder why so few healers), content more suited for machines than humans.
{*}(Project Titan from Blizzard as a revelation is significant, because perhaps Blizzard recognized the importance of multiple ‘social spheres’ and the affect it can have on a game. But perhaps they never fully theorized it, or failed to find a way to realistically implement it into a game. Or that the revelation itself was not significant enough on its own.)
(Some people have also posted that they don’t actually use blacklist that much, this can be interpreted in multiple ways from the function itself as being partially redundant, to most toxicity is not suitably addressable with this function or that there are more problems without the right tools.) -
10-02-2019, 06:18 PMRoyalBeefNot really. Those players have been told that they need to improve before, they just yelled "harrassment" until people were not allowed to tell them the reason anymore. So now they're playing the victim again, bc shutting people up by force surprisingly didn't end up with them keeping the bad ones in the party, but instead kicking/blacklisting them without providing a reason just to mke sure they can't get reported.Talk about something blowing up in your face.Quote:
Inherent violence, as in being a nature of punishment. Players may wonder, because it is punishment, thus must have done something wrong. But what? Simply playing the game? Engaging with other players? So you see the problem now.
So they made their situation worse themselves. They were being kicked before, but at least they knew why. Now they're still being kicked, but they don't know why. Instead they come here and complain about being kicked for "no reason" and try to make that a reportable act as well :rolleyes: -
10-02-2019, 07:12 PMSolarra
OP - Your concern for the feelings/rights of people being blacklisted, seems misplaced to me.
We pay for this game and if we run into someone we would rather not deal with again, then blacklisting is the sensible thing to do. I don't feel any explanations are owed in that situation.
As to forcing a report for a full block, I don't see the point; often people don't want to go this far. At the moment we can control who we block and we can unblock a person at any time. I wouldn't like to see that taken away from players and put exclusively in the hands of the GMs (who surely have enough to do anyway?).
Maybe try and take a look at this issue from the point of view of the person doing the blocking. It's not a 'rage' thing in most cases, just a simple way to prevent someone bothering/harassing you while you play the game.
As to allowing someone to see they have been blacklisted, I feel that suggestion is particularly dangerous. You are giving people too much credit if you see that primarily as a path to reconciliation. While it is just possible someone might apologise for their behaviour, experience tells me that people do not readily admit when they are wrong. I also think it's likely some people would use the knowledge they have been blacklisted to ramp up the abuse (via friends, alts etc).
With all of that said, the present system could do with some improvements. Vidu's post makes some excellent suggestions here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vidu
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10-02-2019, 07:39 PMValyrianBloodCome on, you know like everyone else that 'foul' language and banter between friends is not the same as with random strangers in a group. Calling your friend a noob is not the same as calling a stranger one ^^Quote:
Originally Posted by RoyalBeef
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10-02-2019, 07:46 PMRoyalBeefOf course you don't randomly insult strangers, there was no talk of insults tho, she said "strong language". I mean there's a profanity filter in the game, which is enabled by default. Why woul you even disable it if strangers dropping f-bombs or whatever triggers you?Quote:
Originally Posted by ValyrianBlood
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10-02-2019, 08:22 PMAlleo
I am sorry OP but IMO the black list should be even harsher than its right now. I dont care about the feelings of those that land on it because if I choose someone to go there its for a good reason. Most of the time its for people that are just horrible and for those I dont care how they feel. They choose to make my run of the dungeon/instance horrible by being a jerk. I dont care if they had a bad day, I too have bad days and sometimes I can be a bit passive aggressive too but most of the time even when I am not feeling good I dont take it out on others. And if you do then dont be surprised to land on someones blacklist and maybe be reported too..
IMO the blacklist should also make sure not to group me up with the person ever again. (Which it fails right now) -
10-03-2019, 01:15 AMArillynI may be misinterpreting this, I apologize if I am. But what I am getting from this is that in general the playerbase doesn't trust each other and we just blacklist people instead of trying to understand each other. That we need to be social in the game and work together. If I am interpreting this correctly I have to say that this game is very social. I have a very social FC and several ls's that I am in, and we do work together. We have a lot of fun together in the game. I also have fun with randoms that in the game too, if they feel like talking. Many don't though and sometimes I don't feel like talking to a bunch of randoms either if I'm just trying to get a roulette done. Being social in this game is on you (general you again) to find "your people". I don't have the desire nor responsibility to be social with people who are hostile and those are the people I put on my blacklist. As I stated before, I think I have maybe 5 people on my blacklist from all the years I have been playing this game. If you are on my blacklist you earned it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
I'm not sure where all the concern is coming from for the feelings of those who have been blacklisted. In most cases, those places on blacklists have been earned. I bet i'm on the blacklist of those who are on my blacklist. My feelings aren't hurt. Not everyone is going to get along in this game just like not everyone is going to get along irl. It's a valuable lesson to learn not to waste your precious time (relaxation time at that) with people that you just don't get along with. -
10-03-2019, 01:23 AMArillynThis too. So much this. There are real instances of people being harassed and stalked in this game. If someone is harassing you and especially stalking you, there is no way in the world that letting them know they are now blacklisted is a good idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Solarra
OP - I think you may be a little naive as to how some people in the world operate. I truly do not mean that in an offensive way. But lots of people don't have the same view of life as you. They may not be about reconciliation, but about ramping up harassment. ESPECIALLY because it's on the internet and they can hide behind their screens. -
10-03-2019, 01:39 AMNessaWyvern
I wouldn't want to have to open a ticket so a GM can blacklist someone for me. I blacklist people at the end of raids who don't roll on loot on purpose, and make everyone else wait. I just don't want them in any of my PFs in the future in case they try it there as well, and I highly doubt a GM would grant a Blacklist for that :P
I do think that blacklisting should be changed in one way. Make it an account blacklist, that way they can't make alts to bypass the blacklist, if you have blacklisted them for some kind of harassment. -
10-03-2019, 01:54 AMArillynThat would be great for people who do get harassed or stalked.Quote:
Originally Posted by NessaWyvern
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10-03-2019, 02:14 AMLittleChickenNugget
Blacklisting ain't this deep, OP.
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10-03-2019, 08:16 AMhynaku
I just want them fix duty finder where some times puts your with players on your blacklist and mailing. Found out even if have them blacklisted and they where once your friend they can still find you and mail stuff to you. At least they could do is remove the penalty if leave a party if there is one on your blacklist in it.
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10-03-2019, 08:43 AMTsalmaveth
Personally, I'm upset that blacklisting was changed where I can't blacklist just by searching for a name and choosing to blacklist them then and there. I have to wait for them to say something around me or to be in a party with them. This is not cool for people I know are a problem, have stalked and/or harassed me in the past and/or are on alts... Change THAT back, too.
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10-03-2019, 08:47 AMVahlnir
It is functioning as intended. It's not supposed to be nice but it is actually quite neutral all things considered. It's supposed to work the way it does so that a person can continue to have their gaming experience unaltered or untainted by poor behavior, RMT spam, trolling, etc. Granted all of that is relative to the person doing the blacklisting. They may find something offensive that others don't. The world isn't always a nice place, but having some measure of peace and quiet can help sometimes.
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10-03-2019, 10:00 AMhynakuJust use contacts if your in a dungeon to blacklist one makes it really simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsalmaveth
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10-03-2019, 10:06 AMhynakuDoesn't work how it should GM told me once that anyone had blacklisted would never be in your party using duty finder. Know once had a very bad experience where they sexual harassed me and even some how got my email address and sent nude pics. My parent had to finally take care up it since was there email he sent them to. It needs fixed because sure doesn't work like how it should be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vahlnir
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10-03-2019, 10:13 AMJunseiKeiThis is not a good suggestion. Game staff is incredibly small compared to your playerbase. This would require a system that knows who you're reporting and why. This does not consider players that will blacklist first (trust me, they exist, even if you don't think they do). This also doesn't prevent blacklist request spamming, and vicariously, floods the GMs' ticket queues, making investigations take even longer (because now they have to sort through spam). The end result you suggest is a player being given free pay items. That's a recipe for abuse right there. There are resources outside of the game to track who players are and were that are beyond SE's control.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
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10-03-2019, 01:31 PMVahlnirThat sounds like an issue that went far beyond the blacklist system. I never said it was perfect though, just that it serves its general purpose, probably for a majority of people. Most things can be improved though and the blacklist is no exception. But what you said here? Yeah, I doubt even an improved blacklist could have really fixed that. You have my sympathies regardless, that sounds awful.Quote:
Originally Posted by hynaku
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10-03-2019, 03:11 PMNanaWiloh
No, I am sorry no sugar coating. If you afk, go offline, act like a jerk or just be plain lazy in a dungeon/raid I am vote kicking you. I mostly blacklist RMT bots and only on rare occasions have I blacklisted a player, the few that I have were getting under my skin which is not easy to do. Players have a right to ignore or not interact with players they dont like or agree with. Players have the right too remove another player from a dungeon or raid be it for playstyle,afking,etc. No one should be forced to tolerate others or go carebear mode to avoid hurting someones feelings.
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10-04-2019, 01:03 AMRaqrie_Tohka
90% of replies are missing my main point (though I admit it’s not explained very clearly).
Blacklist, being a key subsequent action from toxicity, is not necessary nor fit to address many “lesser” cases of toxicity. While the more extreme cases of toxicity cannot be fully addressed or have their effects soothed simply by blacklist.
Furthermore, it is but a reaction, not a cure, to the symptom and not the cause. Many causes of player aggression or hostility, ranging from pressure from content and how the content is structured, to lack of supporting and positive social influence, all indirectly affect what we are scrutinizing and trying to improve, which is prevalent and permeating effects of in-game toxicity and all forms of systemic pressure, including but not particularly limited to the blacklist function and related systems.
Possible flaws and shortcomings of the system itself was also explored and briefly discussed, but which as idea points did not make much logical sense, understandably, as they were considered within a limited framework of only real and current perspectives of the system. “Theoretical” musings were largely (read: completely) ignored because I have the writing capability of a sandstone tile.
But in the end, that does not mean they system is perfect, there is no problem, and all my related suggestions/theories are worthless! I apologize for failing at it but in the end I too wish the game could be better. Just probably best to not hold it to “perfection” standards yet. -
10-04-2019, 01:24 AMVahlnirYou are correct. It does NOT solve the issues that tend to lead to blacklisting. That falls to the players and the players alone. But it is better than having no way at all to deal with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
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10-04-2019, 02:27 AMViduIts neither the game nor its playerbase job to "cure" the cause of why people might blacklist someone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
Seriously, this a video game - an entertainment product - that people play in their freetime. Its not the place to teach people good manners or behaviour and considering that the majority of the playerbase are most likely people between 20 and 40 (kind of a wild guess, I'll admit) we should have the reasonable expectation that they come into this game knowing how to behave in a more or less social enviroment.
I spend my work day trying to teach children around 10 how to behave, I certainly dont want to have to deal with that when I come home.
So... when someone behaves poorly, I want to be able to make sure I have to deal with them as little as possible. And thats what the blacklist is.
Its not a punishment-tool or a tool to better peoples behaviour - again, a video game is not the place for that. Its a tool that allows people to keep the jerks out of their personal game experience.
SE cant do anything to change that fact that there are jerks in this world. We, as players, cant do much about that either - unless you want to sit down with such a jerk who just insulted you to tell them that that was really mean, hurt your feelings and to please not do that again (please try and tell me how that went...).
The underlying problem here cant be fixed and its not a problem a videogame company should even attempt to fix.
As a last note: You spoke about people considering the feelings of the poor, poor person being blacklisted... to that I can only say: Most people dont blacklist without a reason, so chances are that person did something bad/wrong enough that someone else doesnt want to play with them anymore. Poor soul! Being such a jerk that other people would rather not interact with them anymore! Yeah, we should totally consider the feelings of such a person... -
10-04-2019, 03:30 PMRoyalBeefSorry, for me there is no point. It's word salad containing "toxicity" thrice per sentence and something about "systemic pressure" :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka
What I get from it is another try to force players upon parties when those parties decided they don't want to play with that person. if you're on my blacklist, you are there for a good reason. Do I want you out of the game? No, keep supporting the game financially, that benefits me as well. But I don't want you in my parties, and I don't want to accidently join your parties bc I forgot who you are. So blacklist is working as intended.