Stalking and Harassment, GM/Square Enix Refusal to act

[Solowing]

I don't want to be that WoL, but what the heck are people up to where they're getting stalked and harassed?

I've been playing since 2021, logging in at least weekly and daily the first month or two of every patch, and I've never had this issue. Even after joining several social groups, discords, Linkshells, statics, etc

I feel like the majority of these situations has to be the result of ERP gone arwy

Its what happens when you really steep yourself in the social spaces like venues. The lines tend to get blurred between OOC and OC. Parasocial 1 sided appearance based friendships end up forming.

But the social community does like to be victims and sympathy farm, rather then ya know. Not give the player the time of day.

2 weeks of DnD, ignored tells, and indifference will have the problem solve itself out of boredom.

[TwizzlyTwist]

Its what happens when you really steep yourself in the social spaces like venues. The lines tend to get blurred between OOC and OC. Parasocial 1 sided appearance based friendships end up forming.

But the social community does like to be victims and sympathy farm, rather then ya know. Not give the player the time of day.

2 weeks of DnD, ignored tells, and indifference will have the problem solve itself out of boredom.

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

[KihyiFelhede]

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

This is really just such an ignorant thing to say. I'm sorry you've had to deal with this. Though I've never been involved in a proper stalking situation, the only time I've personally seen harassment/abusive behavior was in the fallout of an externally organized run gone wrong, and GMs were not the ones who resolved the issue (Discord server moderators banned the offender, but as far as we know they faced no game-side punishment). I don't know if GMs spoke to the offender or not, but Mordion Gaol is really not the way to enforce the rules when things escalate beyond a certain point. This needs a hard warning system that will send communications to the service account (like system-side messages and emails) and make it clear that further violations of ToS may result in full account termination. I understand that for milder or first-time offenses such as vulgarity, raging, and trolling/griefing it feels less harsh to have a GM speak to the player, and I actually agree that the human interaction makes people reconsider their actions (more often than not I really do think that people didn't realize they were going too far or got lost in the heat of the moment and feel genuine regret). However a malicious player who is consistently engaging in these behaviors, to the point of using other characters/accounts should be dealt with in a more clinical manner. This also takes some of the burden off of GMs, as it takes way less time to send out a template suspension/ban than to pull someone in an instance, hope they're not afk, have convo etc etc etc.

[Solowing]

I can assure you that nobody in my situation has been "going to venues" to "deserve" this kind of harassment.

Who said anything about what you deserve? I said you'll need to toughen up and stop leaving your emotions on the table.

Imagine if you treated the people bothering you like you would treat my opinion. Lol.

See how Fast your problems get solved.

Imagine that.. the problem goes away quick when you don't give it the time of day.

[Bubert]

Blacklist exists even if it’s not perfect. You cannot see the person whom you blacklisted, nor can you see their alt accounts. Unless they go out of their way to make a completely new Ffxiv account.

[Kamudo]

I feel a lot of the time people just intentionally not use their blacklist so they can claim they're being stalked and harassed for attention.

Hope this helps.

[RedLolly]

I feel a lot of the time people just intentionally not use their blacklist so they can claim they're being stalked and harassed for attention.

Hope this helps.

I've actually noticed this baffling attitude towards using block amd ignore functions in most digital social spaces is somehow showing weakness or just wrong in some way because sites like twitter need high engagement to exist, and fights can keep it rolling.

But the issue with the OP is that said stalker is apparently using free trial accounts to keep coming back.

In my past experience with a break-up with a person that played, I just rolled a new character and moved on. I'm not sure if such a thing is a faux pas in RP spaces or something else prevents the original users from doing that.

[KihyiFelhede]

They can still play bard music and be heard even when you got them blocked. They can still leave messages in the FC book and we can only ban them from the house 10 days at a time before you need to refresh it. They've said many things in languages other than english to get around the moderation system.

Incredible how you can detail exactly where the blacklist system is failing and people will still show up to the thread to blame you lol. Bard music should absolutely not bypass the account blacklist/mute, even putting aside harassment muting player-generated noise is a strong QoL feature for an MMO. Estate message book spam is low-level griefing and should result in an account suspension (it fits in with other ban-worthy activities listed under "Obstructing the activities of others"). 10 day refresh is burdensome, it should be until player chooses to unban by default (and it seems that according to TwizzlyTwist's test it is currently not the same for private vs FC housing). Pretty much every moderation team will agree that using l33t sp34k or other languages to bypass a blocked words list still counts as a violation (and it's still a deliberate violation if they chain together auto-translate terms).

[Brynne]

I see a lot of victim-blaming and deflection in this thread. I think people like to believe that they will never go through something like this, so they have to think the victim is somehow bringing it on themselves or just failing to react in a perfect way that would somehow make everything okay again. It doesn't actually work like that. And I do see a couple of things SE could fix that would ease the burden. The blacklist system should block out bard music, along with any emote spam noise from this person. There should be an option to block the person from the estate permanently - I don't know why they set a limit of 10 days, tbh. Also, I feel they should take reports of stalking and harassment more seriously and investigate deeper.. simply saying "use the blacklist" is not good enough when the harasser is going to this much effort to get around it.

[Solowing]

I see a lot of victim-blaming and deflection in this thread. I think people like to believe that they will never go through something like this, so they have to think the victim is somehow bringing it on themselves or just failing to react in a perfect way that would somehow make everything okay again. It doesn't actually work like that. And I do see a couple of things SE could fix that would ease the burden. The blacklist system should block out bard music, along with any emote spam noise from this person. There should be an option to block the person from the estate permanently - I don't know why they set a limit of 10 days, tbh. Also, I feel they should take reports of stalking and harassment more seriously and investigate deeper.. simply saying "use the blacklist" is not good enough when the harasser is going to this much effort to get around it.

Victim blaming? Nah I'm asking what are the players doing to mitigate their effect on their enjoyment?


Mind you these types of players just don't come out of the blue. They come with quite a few behavior red flags.