Catastrophic Friends List / Blacklist Oversight

Okay, all of the changes done to the Blacklist so far are great, but one massive oversight that needs attention is this which I post below, I have tested this with an Alt account:

You make a friend and add this new friend to your Friends List. :)

However, this friend later turns into a psychotic crazy person, and you decide it is best to now remove this crazy person from your Friends List. :D

Crazy person friend is removed from your Friends List at the click of a button, joy. :rolleyes:

Hang on, what is this! Crazy person friend just teleported to my <--redacted--> house!!! :mad:

Okay, no problem, I seem to be still on Crazy persons Friends List (confirmed this is the case, you are NOT removed from a "De-friended, friends, Friends List"), I'll just add Crazy person to the Blacklist.

BAMMMMMMM, where did crazy person go? totally invisible and can't see crazy persons messages anymore, nice.

But wait...

It's not over....

Crazy person STILL has me on their Friends List! What! WHY!
They can see my name, my online status, my location, my FC, and they can teleport to my estate!!!

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Problem:

Removed friends keep you on their Friends List.
Blacklisted friends keep you on their list as a friend and can see your status and teleport to your house.

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Solution:

In both cases, the de-friended friend and the Blacklisted friend, need to have you automatically REMOVED from their Friends List.

You don't need to tell them with a system message, just remove the de-friended friend and/or Blacklisted friend.

I thought that after the update, adding someone previously on your Friends List to the Blacklist, would you know, automatically remove you from their list so they can't keep tabs on what you're doing.

There is actually a worse thing. If Former friend ever looked you up on lodestone they might well know the unique identifier number for your character. That number does not change if you change servers, fantasia, change name; It doesn't change ever. If Former friend becomes a real stalker your only recourse is to roll a new character and start over. That ident number is in plain sight for everyone to see.

The friends list has worked this way from the beginning, little chance they will change it at this point.

I just do not understand the logic behind not fixing this issue to this day. Why SE? Is the spaghetti code that bad? Removing people from your friendlist should remove you from their friendlist too.

see, this seems like an actual issue that needs to be seen. i would suggest sending in-game feedback because our forums are stupid af and i honestly don't know if they're ever lookrd at by anyone who can do anything.

as for the lodestone character id thing, hopefully the new way blocking people works helps, as it should block ALL characters on that account if i understand correctly. so unless they're so desperate as to make new accounts to harass you with...at least there's that.

this doesn't stop them from trying to be malicious in other ways, though, so the ability to stalk thru lodestone is still not good...

I feel like some of this isn't necessarily accurate.

As far as I'm aware of, removing the person from your friends list removes their ability to teleport to your estate (obviously eternity rings are an exception but that's a whole other issue). We also have the feature now where you can add someone to your house ban list so they can't access the estate. That should solve that issue mentioned in your post.

In terms of voiding people, the point is to not see the person right? Who cares what they're saying at that point? They're one person in a sea of thousands and their opinion means nothing to no one except you. You ultimately got what you set out to get by having them not able to speak to you or interact with you.

I'm not at all saying that we shouldn't have the removal work on both ends because it would ultimately be the best solution, however we do have more tools now than we did before and they will help mitigate issues that people have also been having for years as well.

He knew where your house is and got there that way. Everything you said about the FL is true but people you remove from your FL can't teleport to your estate or FC the options don't show. Thats an easy way to tell if someone removed your from their FL if you can't teleport to either their house or FC.

That being said the FL is flawed and ancient. It needs a huge rework.

they cant fix it, aswell as they cant really fix housing. They also dont remove you from blocked people friendlists, even if you beg for it at the customer support

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

I feel like some of this isn't necessarily accurate.

As far as I'm aware of, removing the person from your friends list removes their ability to teleport to your estate (obviously eternity rings are an exception but that's a whole other issue). We also have the feature now where you can add someone to your house ban list so they can't access the estate. That should solve that issue mentioned in your post.

In terms of voiding people, the point is to not see the person right? Who cares what they're saying at that point? They're one person in a sea of thousands and their opinion means nothing to no one except you. You ultimately got what you set out to get by having them not able to speak to you or interact with you.

I'm not at all saying that we shouldn't have the removal work on both ends because it would ultimately be the best solution, however we do have more tools now than we did before and they will help mitigate issues that people have also been having for years as well.

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I tested out a few things, such as adding my alt (different account) to my main characters Friends List and then proceeding to remove my alt off of my main characters (main account) Friends List only.
Doing so resulted in my alt still having my main character on the Friends List, okay not really a problem, except, my alt can teleport to my mains house, see my name, my online status and also see my profile thing with jobs/levels.

That doesn't bother me as much as what happens when I then add my alt to my main characters Blacklist.
My alt can see my name, my status, my profile, teleport to my house, etc.

This is a serious issue that needs attention. It did not stop or change anything; it just made my alt invisible so my main couldn't see my alt standing outside the house.

At minimum, Blacklisting someone, that was removed from your Friends List, needs to either remove you from the Blacklisted-persons Friends List as well (logical), or change your name to <Unable to Retrieve> (this is actually used in the FL already for deleted characters as even they stay on peoples FL) so they think you're gone and can't see you.

And about the Lodestone character ID (URL), while the number can be saved to stalk, now with the update it matters not as the entire character profile is locked, you can't view anything related to the ID number. Try searching my character, it doesn't show in the search anymore and if you know the URL, the page is dead, nothing there.

So even if you had my URL saved, I could have changed worlds and name, character and race, and you'd never find me again, unless I unlocked my profile.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cat_Girl

And about the Lodestone character ID (URL), while the number can be saved to stalk, now with the update it matters not as the entire character profile is locked, you can't view anything related to the ID number. Try searching my character, it doesn't show in the search anymore and if you know the URL, the page is dead, nothing there.

So even if you had my URL saved, I could have changed worlds and name, character and race, and you'd never find me again, unless I unlocked my profile.

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wait, you can do that?! what...- !! that's awesome

I guess there was an interview back in 2019, and someone asked Yoshi why this isn't a thing. He said they don't want to offend the other person by removing your name from their list. It might hurt their feelings.
So yeah, to hell with you and your reasons for removing them. We care more about keeping them happy by...

- Letting them know which server you're on, or if it's the same server, knowing which zone you're in.
- Letting them know if you pay for a name change, and what that new name is.
- Letting them know your online status, which FC you're with, if you're in a party right now...

The friend list is such a handy tool for stalkers, and such a shitty feature for the victims. And this new blacklist is even better!

- Now they get perfect stealth for following you around the world. They know what zone you're in, and they could be standing right beside you. But you won't see them because they're invisible. And somehow that makes it better, right? "Out of sight, out of mind"

If anything, blacklisting someone should make ME disappear from their screen, not the other way around. I don't want them seeing me standing around AFK or whatever. I want them to keep on running and never look at me again. My name should fall off their friend list, my name shouldn't show up on a player search, nothing about me should be accessible to them ever again.

If Squenix really cared about harassment, they'd do better. But instead they're worried about dishonoring or offending the stalker.

I can't support this enough - SE, please remove us from other people's friend's list if we remove them from ours.

The devs are literally creating the most complicated system in all of social aspects of gaming in any MMO I've ever played in the 20+ yrs I've played MMOs with this silly make person invisible + mute list + blocking out words features when all we've asked for, for years has been to REMOVE US FROM FRIEND'S LISTS THAT DON'T HAVE US IN THEM.

It's insane to me. I can't blame it on cultural differences between JP and ENG b/c even other asian MMO's will remove you from other people's friend's lists! It is honestly such a shameful thing to not fix this but create multiple other systems that do not fix the problem of stalking. Also considering how FFXIV was in the middle of a pretty serious real life stalking case IN JAPAN!! This is ridiculous. FIX THE FRIEND LIST PLEASE.

This is absolutely something that needs to change. It has needed to change for years. Right now, FFXIV is a stalker's and harasser's paradise. They continue to have complete access to their victims, now even with the handy dandy ability to be invisible while doing so!

We need to be removed from the fiends list of people who are no longer on ours. Yes, maybe it would be "awkward" for some people to find out they've been unfriended by someone, but it is ludicrous that adding friends requires consent from both parties, but once you're on there you can never take that consent back. The expanded blacklist features are a stopgap measure, at most.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Myrany

There is actually a worse thing. If Former friend ever looked you up on lodestone they might well know the unique identifier number for your character. That number does not change if you change servers, fantasia, change name; It doesn't change ever. If Former friend becomes a real stalker your only recourse is to roll a new character and start over. That ident number is in plain sight for everyone to see.

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With lodestone update alongside 7.0, you can now completely make your lodestone profile private. If set to private, anyone trying to access it just gets a broken link page instead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marcus_Sheridan

I guess there was an interview back in 2019, and someone asked Yoshi why this isn't a thing. He said they don't want to offend the other person by removing your name from their list. It might hurt their feelings.

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Having had to remove someone from my friends list that started getting weird, I can absolutely say that it really doesn't prevent hurt feelings. They still eventually found out that I'd removed from my friends list when they noticed they could no longer estate teleport to me, and they went ballistic anyways.

Needless to say they ended up on my blacklist, but they continued to stalk me for a while after because they could still easily find out where I was. For all I know I'm still on their friend list.

I am so disappointed with how blacklisting works. I was praying that it would kill the eternal bonding ring and finally remove me from the list of someone who has been stalking me for three years now. It was such a freeing thought, that it would be over and I would be able to do things in peace without looking over my shoulder to make sure he didn't show up where I was again.

The other annoying thing about this is adding someone to the blacklist who isn't right in front of you is a mess. You can do it remotely with blist add but only if the person is online and then you get into the territory of the Stalker who has multiple character and the one you knew them as was not their content main. Who knows when he will next log in that character so I can blacklist him but at this point why bother if it is just going to be like before, except now I don't have to see him while he's doing what he's always done.