Months of harassment

[Maria1693939]

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.

We want the trolling to stop. I don't care how they do it, the trolling needed to end days ago.

[SturmChurro]

We want the trolling to stop. I don't care how they do it, the trolling needed to end days ago.

It will never stop until this person gets bored, that's what a lot of you people seem to not understand.

Also, I forgot to add, the only actual restriction for trial accounts that has actually been suggested is to not be able to join the Novice Network. Really shows where some people's priorities are.

[Corvus_V]

Just because he's a vile person doesn't mean you should dismiss their mental illness if they have one.

Plenty of people have mental illnesses and don't end up this way. Even if they all did, it isn't anyone else's responsibility to put up with it; or even try to help them. The implication that they are in any way shape or form, responsible for this type of person is negligent to exponentially more people's mental health.

Indeed. They are giving this person exactly what they want. They are crying for attention and getting it in droves. It could be blacklisted and ignored but that is to easy apparently.

You're a genius, really. No one could've thought of blacklisting him but you (for the 100th time). The spammer doesn't have the extra braincell necessary to just make a new, not blacklisted character, and spam more on it. Thank you for outstanding, noteworthy critical thinking skills. Next time I forget how to breath I'll remember Reap00 will remind me to blacklist the spammer. If you suggest it again, I might remember next time to blacklist a character that probably comes into existence for all of 3 minutes before being deleted.

How about someone who sucks gets banned, permanently and loses all of their progress for being insane and racist in a network meant to help people? Is it possible you don't want that to happen?

Additionally, this guy would need to get to level cap to become a mentor again, assuming his main gets banned, no? Which I've already stated, but he can't do that on a free account either. How is this not enough of a deterrent? You think some closet schizo has like 50 copies of FFXIV and its expacs?

It will never stop until this person gets bored, that's what a lot of you people seem to not understand.

Also, I forgot to add, the only actual restriction for trial accounts that has actually been suggested is to not be able to join the Novice Network. Really shows where some people's priorities are.

Plenty of people do not want trial accounts to have restrictions to novice network. That literally defeats the purpose of the novice network. Everyone just wants the GMs, SE or whoever is supposed to handle this sort of thing to stop being lazy and ban the person's main who is inviting his alts.

You want me to admit that I'd rather, out of spite, see him lose everything he has and have to build it from the ground up again, just to lose it once more if he's THAT determined to be a pain to everyone else? Because I will. I want to see him get banned. And you know what? He deserves it. We don't need to make nice and pretend to be forgiving to people like that. He's made it his personal mission to be a nuisance to everyone, and affects way more people than he helps. He shouldn't be allowed to play, period.

[KageTokage]

Honestly, just adding some kind of minor level/questing restriction to trial accounts before being able to join the NN would probably axe the problem.

IE, require them to finish the Hall of the Novice trials before they can join or some such.

[Corvus_V]

Honestly, just adding some kind of minor level/questing restriction to trial accounts before being able to join the NN would probably axe the problem.

IE, require them to finish the Hall of the Novice trials before they can join or some such.

I have like, 16 80s and I haven't even done the Hall of the Novice trials.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

They could try legal action if this hurts their pocket enough.

[Theodric]

You're free to agree to disagree with my stance on the matter. Though I do think it's a bit of a slippery slope to act as if there is only one way in which the problem in question could be dealt with.

I'd also note that nobody in this thread is stating that it's okay to post slurs. They're simply pointing out that those slurs are being posted to provoke a reaction and until the GM's step in, ignoring them is a good way to keep 'safe'.

[Vinupra-Rosa]

Midgardsormr Novice Network mentor here chiming in to say that this guy is definitely a problem. No, blacklisting doesn't work. Kicking doesn't work. And, so far, reporting hasn't worked either.

It's easy to say 'just ignore him, blacklist him and move on!' when you're not the one afflicted by this trolling. You're blacklisting an alt that's just going to get deleted and replaced with a brand new character in about 10 minutes or less. Kicking doesn't work because the guy knows how to kick-evade, and even if you DO catch one alt, they can just hop on in another alt.

I wouldn't want more restrictions on novice network / free trial players as a result of this, but something MUST be done to the mentor who is doing this.

"Just Leave NN" is basically giving up, and also means that when they catch unsuspecting sprouts there would be less people to give said sprouts a debriefing on the troll and that's not a good impression you want on people who are new to the game.

And it's 5 seconds of inconvenience, but you have to take into account cumulative stress, and the fact that there ARE people who will be disturbed by the slurs and targeted harassment. We've had our fair share of sprouts going "geez, I'm going back to primal" or going "how do I leave this channel" thanks to the troll.

And, contrary to popular belief, while Novice Network has its troubles from time to time we DO try to be welcoming and helpful to newbies (at least on our world). Throwing shade at NN because 'lol it's nn it's full of burger crown mentors who just want bragging rights you deserve this' is a roundabout way to support the troll and might actually be part of their motivations: "It's bad anyways, might as well troll it". Please don't make the problem worse.

[chrisfantasy]

I've been a player since 2014 and I literally just joined the forums to complain about the same thing. SE should track the perpetrators by IP address. These accounts are created by a troll (or trolls) who have dozens of free accounts made just for this purpose. Create a 3 strike policy from the IP, then ban the IP completely, or upon opening an account SE could require some sort of id (could be a debit C or something) so these people are less "inclined" do it as they won't get away with it without consequence. Just my two gil.
Edit: Also,
1-put GMs to monitor the Novice Networks.
2-disable the option to copy paste and post 20 comments. This is easily done as many games don't let you spam in chats or reply too quickly.
3-Allow to report players for harassment by right clicking them. Currently the only option available is the GMT report, and to file a harassment report you have to go to the support desk which is a bit long and cumbersome and doesn't get much done.
4-to mitigate the issue, improvements have to be done at a both policy and development level.

[Aldora]

It's really sad that such things happen in the novice network, this could really spoil the fun for a lot of players experiencing this on a daily basis. Just because a 1 person or a handful of people decides to spam the chat with vulgar / insulting messages.

I can totally understand that it is incredibly difficult to trace such an individual. Especially, since it appears like he's using a bot like application / script to create characters, enter the Novice Network, Logs off and repeats the process.

2-disable the option to copy paste and post 20 comments. This is easily done as many games don't let you spam in chats or reply too quickly.

Outside of putting a GM on this "Full time", the above suggestion is the only thing i can think of that might limit the amount of messages a player can spam the chat with. But, i'd go even further by issuing a (temporary) ban on sending a message to a chat channel if 3 identical messages have been sent in quick succession.

Some of the existing chat channels already have such a limitation in place, but all chat channels should have this system in place. This would not solve the issue, but at least prevent a wall of text to be sent to the Novice Chat and alleviate the issue.

In addition to that, the player should automatically be flagged and sent to the GM's/Special Taskforce for further investigation. If a pattern can be found, based on text, similarities of the player name, assigned account name and IP-address, slam the ban hammer on them.