Online Bullying - A Dev request for a response and discussion

[Trisam]

I'll be honest up front and say I only read the first couple pages of the thread, so my reply may be a little repetitive (in fact, I'm sure it will be as I saw many other replies stating more or less what I wanted to say).

I read the messages in the screenshot, and while I will admit the person was clearly trying to be offensive when he asked the tank to bash the eruptions and nothing else, if this gets your panties in a twist, you aren't going to last long in many games.

People will come out and tell me that they have never run into such language in a game before, this is totally groundbreaking new ways to harass, and I will gladly call them liars.

I have been playing online games since Diablo 1 and behavior like this has been around just as long as I have had the pleasure of dealing with others online.

This is not bullying, this is someone taking out their frustration on a tank who doesn't know the fight. Sure, they could have been nicer about it, but they are not required to care about your delicate sensibilities, especially if you (in this case, the tank) are clearly not taking the time to care about their delicate sensibilities by doing your job correctly during the fight, causing wipes.

As I have nothing to go on past the messages themselves, it's impossible for me to say 100% if it was the tank's fault or if blame was being misplaced on him or her, but from the messages they only seem to be irate at the fact that the tank was unable to properly land their interrupts. It's difficult, having to endure the ridicule of others, but that doesn't make it bullying, it just makes them mean and you oversensitive. I have taken abuse like that countless times, some justified and some unjustified, and the only way you're going to last is if you learn to ignore it and realize it's just words and they only hurt you if you let them. The reason for this is, even with a banning system in place so you can feel your revenge lived out by writing up a ticket that may or may not go anywhere (as you'll never know assuming SE's policy on bans is like every other online companies', they investigate but don't tell you the action taken), these people will still exist and even if you get them banned, they won because you gave them the reaction they were looking for.

Online bullying, or cyberbullying as it's taken to being called the past number of years, is (as was stated earlier in the thread) repeated abuse from the same person or group of people, singling you out for no reason than to cause you anguish. I seriously doubt that the person calling the tank all those expletives then followed him to his server to harass him some more.

Maybe FFXIV in 1.0 had a different community in duty finder than 2.0 does, I can't say as I didn't play then, but a knee jerk "ban everyone who hurts my feelings for using bigoted words on the internet" isn't going to make the new community go away. You can instate bans for bad language, but the best recourse is one from both SE's side and the player's side. Learn to deal with the language and not let it affect you, put them on ignore, and have SE implement a function to disassociate your account from the other person's for future duty finds.

Putting the expectation of resolution solely on SE's shoulders is only going to lead to more hurt feelings when you find out that it didn't work and people are still mean, as banning them is not going to change how a large number of the population acts. I'm wholly willing to support cleaning up the community, but some people prefer to be more crass than others and prefer the company of people who can give just as much as they can take, and restricting their play because you don't like the words they use in a single situation of dealing with them instead of disassociating with them is just as unfair as you would find needing to put up with their abuse. Ostracization is the best recourse, especially where money coming in is concerned, and that is better achieved through ignoring and preventing them to play with you than an outright ban.

I play with friends who say some nasty, terrible things (by the standards of some people in this thread), and I'm willing and able to give right back to them because we as people grew up in environments where such was normal in the real world. We stay friends, don't get upset over trash talking and have a good time all the same. Someone who grew up in a more sheltered environment being unable to cope doesn't move us to offer sympathy as we already know you shouldn't take it personally. Has this netted me some enemies, online and offline? Yes. Has this netted me some people who would rather avoid me than deal with me, online and offline? Yes. Do I particularly care? No, because my friends are not in those two groups, and I'm fine with not talking to someone who I don't see eye to eye with if they don't want to talk to me. Chances are, despite what people say, many of the 'abusers' fall into a similar mindset that I do, because I don't recall ever being bullied offline and my life, while not overly glamorous, is one I enjoy that I fill with people who care about me and who I care about.

I generally don't say anything in these situations where there's a bad player in my group I don't know personally who can't do his job and so the dungeon fails because my opinion is unpopular and I'd rather just kick them and find someone who can do their job, something that we're unable to currently do. It may seem harsh, but you can practice interrupts on creatures outside until you get it down pat to try again, you're wasting not only your time but the time of three other people if you don't have the personal ability to do what's necessary to complete the instance. Sure, they could have been nicer about it, and they should probably get a warning for language, but you should also learn to cope so it doesn't ruin your day. I'm not saying this as a resolution, I'm offering a word of advice because even if they get banned, there are a lot more like them out there who aren't banned and probably never will be, despite tools being in place.

Edit#2:

The reason for my way of thinking is I believe people care far too much about what someone else thinks of them or says to them. I have no time to care about someone who only wants to be mean to me (especially if it's just verbally, what does it matter?), so I don't spare them the effort to do so, and I preach this to everyone who has a problem with mean language in a video game or real life. I prefer colourful language because English, my tongue of choice, has so many words to use and it'd be a shame not to find a place for them all, something I blame on my mother as she was an English teacher.

This quote is fitting, if a little pretentious. “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” - Buddha

/rambling