Months of harassment

[Portions]

It's also easier to ignore it when you're not systematically the target of it. What's being doing is explicitly against ToS and people shouldn't have to just put up with it to play a subscription game. The point of paying a subscription is that it pays for development and upkeep. It's great that burying your head in the sand is effective for you, but it isn't sufficient for the populations in question. People deserve better.

[Theodric]

Well, if people are getting upset by such things then I think that they should take the time to distance themselves from the situation. Novice Network can be switched off, after all.

Admittedly not a great situation to be in, though there's ways to help new players without leaning on the Novice Network, luckily.

[Reap00]

It isn't burying your head in the sand if you choose to ignore idiocy. Its called taking the high road.

[Cyreil]

Maybe you should work on your community then since your community typically breeds these parasites.

[Avatre]

Maybe you should work on your community then since your community typically breeds these parasites.

I'm honestly curious as to who from Aether hurt you so bad that you see the whole data centre as toxic? I've been on Cactuar since I started(early 2015), and while there are toxic people - whom I have reported for anything that is a breach of any TOS, I really haven't seen as much toxicity as you seem to believe there is. Hell, with the fact that Balmung is on a completely different data centre(was this the trigger?), I would think you would move on and forget about Aether since you no longer have to deal with anyone from here.

[SerenityChiba]

Well, if people are getting upset by such things then I think that they should take the time to distance themselves from the situation. Novice Network can be switched off, after all.

Admittedly not a great situation to be in, though there's ways to help new players without leaning on the Novice Network, luckily.

NN being switched off isn't going to help anyone, especially new players coming into the game that have that shoved into their faces. Wondering what is going on and if that is how things normally are in this game. I've already seen new and veteran players alike, say they don't want to continue playing the game if that dude is going to continuously spam racial and other hateful slurs in NN. I can guarantee you that if he were to somehow be permabanned from NN and not from the actual game, he would take his extreme spam to main city states, where a LOT of people hang out. The fact of the matter is, those of you that are trying to say to sweep this under the rug, or ignore it, or leave NN and ignore, etc, you are essentially saying that this extreme type of behavior is okay. And let me remind you, it is not. Even if it is not directed directly at you, is it NOT okay to continuously spam racial and other hateful slur words. Considering how much trouble it will get you in the real world, it should get you in just as much trouble in a video game. Just because it is happening in a video game, does not make it any less hurtful than in the real world. I'm honestly appalled at how some of you think this behavior is okay. And for like the 100th time, we cannot blacklist this person because he will just delete that sprout and make a new one, and start the spamming all over again. I would like to see more ideas on how to get the situation under control, vs the unnecessary bickering and "oh just ignore it lol it's just a video game" comments. Those of you that think this type of behavior is okay, should be getting temp bans from the forums, imho.

[chrisfantasy]

I never posted in the forums before and logged in to complain for the same thing and I just gladly realized there was a post about it already. My suggestion is to ban IP addresses. Obviously banning characters from free accounts is not working as the perpetrator/s can just create an infinite number of accounts to keep trolling and harassing people. SE needs to take this very seriously as for a lot of people it's their first experience in the game which can be soured and make them leave. Spam should be removed from the Novice Network. Allowing people to copy paste spam racist/homophobic slurs needs to be addressed if the game is to remain healthy.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

If I remember correctly, can't you join Novice Network through the Smith NPCs? I know you get instantly added if you're a mentor but I could swear the Smith guy (who gives you the early training stuff) can add you also (perhaps only if you have sprout or returner status?).

Also the person might have separate service accounts. I doubt there's a real person in the shadows helping them, it's likely that they have more than one system/computer etc and are using that to enable this purile behavior.

This kind of thing is why I left NN long ago. No one was really using the channel as it was intended anyway. No excuse for this kind of behavior but yeah. :/

[Avatre]

If I remember correctly, can't you join Novice Network through the Smith NPCs? I know you get instantly added if you're a mentor but I could swear the Smith guy (who gives you the early training stuff) can add you also (perhaps only if you have sprout or returner status?).

I can say without a doubt that you don't automatically get added as a mentor. I've never been in NN, and I've been a mentor since shortly after they were added.

[SturmChurro]

Honestly I doubt many of the mentors on this thread care about being banned from the ever so vaunted FF forums, given how this is most of our only posts here. The only reason this thread exists in the first place is to bring attention to the fact that we've been having this problem for a while now and how slow the Aether GM response has been in the hopes that maybe this gets sent to someone higher up. I'm also pretty sure it's not gonna encourage new trolls given the extreme lengths it takes to setup that many alts. But apparently we should just ignore the guy spamming racial slurs constantly since that's the new player introduction that the sprouts deserve right?

What exactly do you want any single GM, or SE to do? They can ban the accounts that spam (which they probably are doing), or they can heavily restrict trial accounts in the future. There is also the option of going above and beyond just banning the account (IP bans, etc.), but that has already been discussed in this thread. This leaves them heavily restricting trial accounts, because of one person. Many of you seem to be in favor of this.