Harassment, internal policies, and what can be done?

[Aethelinda]

First of all I apologize for my write. My main is not English.


Here is my feedback on the matter. My major is psychology and even though it provides me with a bit of more interpersonal skills than the rest, what I have seen so far in this gaming community it is pretty disturbing. I think I have seen it all from sexual harassment, very abusive language to even someone committing suicide because in one of her downside she logged in and had the bad luck to confront a bully in the day. Probably not a game that someone with suicidal tendency should play but still doesn't excuse the lack of action against people with bad attitudes. Games were made to make you happy or entertain you but sadly some see the game as the perfect opportunity to entertain or feel better about themselves by making others feel bad. This is something pretty common and normally these same people will restrain themselves when face to face because is all about the anonymous status that gives them power.I normally suggest the same thing that others suggest, ignore them or blacklist them however some really go too far. Think ignore them or blacklist them prevents them to ignore you or even stop behaving like they do with others? No, not really.Because of my major or maybe it is just a personal thing, I tend to care more about others than myself so I try to help when I can and give a little bit of hope in humanity as I hope them to give me. I know not everyone is mean or rude, so by trying to make the difference maybe that person will pass it on. Also sometimes we have bad days so not everything should be taken in consideration but I hope that we all have enough common sense to know when it is going too far.

I have come across with some that I seriously would suggest them some sort of anger management help asap. Is just sad how this little bit and temporary good feeling for making others feel like trash, keeps them going. It is such a vicious cycle that it is eating them inside and sadly affecting others for no reason. Either way I'm not here to tell them what to do but I want to suggest something to those that are affected or were witness of an event like this. You have heard it before so I will say it again, blacklist. I'm not the fan of blacklisting I will admit. Blacklisting is just a false sense of resolving the issue but it helps to ignore. Now comes the important part that MANY don't do, REPORT. I know that you might feel it doesn't help which probably is true but don't give up. Maybe just maybe a few others reporting the person will make the difference. In my personal experience I have seen nothing done to a few people that , in my opinion, should have gotten banned a long time ago.

There is someone from my old server. I have never seen someone so dedicated to make everyone in the party just feel bad. It was visible that it was a low self esteem issue but wow. That person had the power to just put anyone down. To my surprise I learned, by someone in the party who I was backing him up, he was always like this with everyone. I just had to report him. Even though it wasn't with me the problem I just couldn't stand the level of verbal abuse this guy had towards the others. I contacted the GM then the GM told me that the offended ones had to report them and not me. I understood so I just hope that the rest would report but months passed and this guy is still playing the game and still being the bully. Reason I know is because a few from my FC played with him and even reported him.

There was another case of someone calling someone else retarded and then someone else defended him and the abuser said "I will put my balls in your mouth..." You would have thought that at least a warning would have taken place right? Nope, it didn't and as expected this person still keeps the same behavior. No one pay for our game and we surely don't pay to get treated bad by someone that we don't even know. What these people do to you, they will continue and do it to someone else so take action and report even though you think it might not do anything. Just 2 minutes of your time. We all have someone that we love and care, think about them getting harassed and use that as your motivation.

Also GMs, come on. You guys have the chat log. It just requires a tiny common sense to see if there is any need to take action or not. We got dramatic and overreacting people, I'm aware of that, but we do have many that are educated enough and with a pretty good damn idea of what exactly needed to be taken in consideration. This is not about revenge or seeing someone getting banned but more that they want to avoid others and themselves being the target of harassment and abuse. We just want the game and the healthy community that we pay for.

[Aethelinda]

I mean: what does it need for a game master to finally show up after several reports? A 'wordy' letter about how a player might quit the game? (whatever wordy is)

If I am fed up - if I am hurt too much - I will not send another letter to support desk, for they cannot help, it seems. I would just quit the game - but the bad players will remain and spoil other people's fun too.

People starts to play an MMO for the game itself - but people stay for the people they play together with.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers
Angel

By the way Angel, next time when you want to post something bigger than 1000 characters, just post anything first like a sentence or a word and the edit it with what you want to add. I will go through. I just figured it out! Also thanks for the feedback on Darkmoon's topic.

[RiceisNice]

Technically I don't believe they can take it to legal matters if SE were to close your account for whatever reason, since they pretty much outright said in the user agreement that your account is their property and they can close it with or without reason.

That being said, does the ingame block feature not work for emotes and such? I've had a few incidences of players griefing others in alliance DFs (such as ST) and getting the entire party stuck. The GM that handled my issue responded to me and said he'd look into the issue, even asking for when it occurred and such. There was no follow up after that, though it was DF so it was something I could put aside.

[DarkmoonVael]

First of all, thanks Angel and Aethelinda for your well thought out and well written responses. I agree that the in-game tool do not really help in this issue, as you can blacklist all you want, but if the person is on the same server, it resolves next to nothing. People are still able to emote spam you and follow you around etc, so nothing is really gained from blacklisting. One thing i have to agree with from both your responses, is the need to be able to deal with things like this that you witness, yet are not directly involved in. Perhaps getting the community involved more may help the game in the long term.

One thing that seems to be a common occurance in these anacdotes is the lack of power that GM's seem to have in certain cases. Where as Square Enix has their own terms of service already set out in writing, and i would imagine they also have appropriate responses set in writen as well for breeeches of these ToS, perhaps what is needed is a more wider ranging way to deal with these offenders. Warning>suspension>permanent bad leaves the GM's with little moving room for offenses that maybe are too serious to get a warning, yet not serious enough for a bad. Perhaps more needs to be done in terms of punishment to deter these misdemeanors for happening again, and maybe tese need to be more creative in terms of the impact on the offenders game time. Constantly and consistently harassing someone, then maybe all your classes should be delevelled by 10 levels for a week, and you are unable to level any classes up for that week. Constantly trolling duty finder and abusing vote kick in a pre-made party, then your next class you level get a 50% experience penalty. The type of people that are generally doing these kind of things need a clear deterrent to start behaving properly in game!

@RiceisNice, DF trolls everywhere as well it seems! As you said, at least you can move on (albeit in an annoyed manner) since usually they are from another server. As for blacklist and emotes, it stops the notification of them in your chat log iirc, but it does little when people choose to follow you around doing it, with their character around 2cm away from yours O.o

[Aethelinda]

@RiceisNice, DF trolls everywhere as well it seems! As you said, at least you can move on (albeit in an annoyed manner) since usually they are from another server. As for blacklist and emotes, it stops the notification of them in your chat log iirc, but it does little when people choose to follow you around doing it, with their character around 2cm away from yours O.o

Agree 100%. A penalty would be nice. Might promote a better behavior or think twice before using those hands to make someone feel bad.

[AngelHorn]

I am not a fan of penalty systems, due to my long term experiences. They would work in real life, where people care about the consequences. Aside of that many people can come up with different systems - all right - all more or less fair.

That has been said, it is incredibly hard to come up with a fair / appropiate idea for penalty for players who are spoiling our fun.

Remembers me of a game I once played:
When a player is considered guilty for bad behaviour a GM could put him/her in a jail instance. During that instance the prisoner could not do anything, but moving around in a small area, using skills aside of teleport and such, and no ability to chat except using public chat which works only for that instance.

It was used in hours and has been doubled / increased the more bad a case was. Like 1 hour for verbal harassment - 6 hours for repeating harassment - 12 hours for ... etc.

It was used by the GMs by their decision without penalty points or whatever. Of course it will be noted on a player's file once a warning or penalty has been given, but besides of that nothing difficult like 10 points up or 10 points down.

The effect was triggered by its system: you have to be online ingame to make the time of your jail time run out. For example: when you are put in there for 6 hours - and you log off after one hour jail time - next time you login you start in jail again with the remaining 5 hours to sit there.

It was effective because the property of the game account was untouched - the jail was part of the game - and someone who is in jail can think about the playtime he/she is wasting there, while his/her friends are just seeing he/she is in jail instance.

Before I end my off topic here - I like to share this link with you:
http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The...Shaping-Player

This topic reminded me somewhat of that.

I hope there will be more people to share their thoughts and opinions on the matter. Because this is nothing a system would be able to solve - but only a community who shows those writers of the policies that it is more important to take care about the whole community instead just of a few, who poison the community for long term...

[Fliss]

I have been sexually harassed a minimum of three times - probably more, but I honestly can't be arsed to remember all of the instances anymore - by three different people. Most recently, it was someone sending me a /tell pretending they were soliciting me as a pimp and/or prostitute. I told them I did not appreciate it and that it was a form of sexual harassment, and they proceeded to insult me AND get a friend of theirs to /tell me with disgusting sexual comments as well. I did not know either of these people, had never even seen them before they decided to do this.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good dick joke or innuendo as much as the next person, but I joke that way with my FRIENDS, whom I've known for years, not a random person in the streets of Ul'Dah whom I've never before seen and likely won't ever again. I am absolutely not okay with some random asshat propositioning me and then getting her jerkass friend to say she's going to "smash my pussy in." It's pretty scary that young people (and I'm saying this as a twenty-three year old, which scares me even more) think this is an okay thing to do to somebody. This kind of garbage is exactly why sexual harassment is on the rise everywhere; people think it's okay. They think it's a joke, and it's NOT. If someone says to stop, you stop; that's the correct response. You don't insult them because they're not enabling your BS.

The fact that harassment, both sexual and otherwise, is (apparently) so prevalent in this game is very telling. I have reported every person who has harassed me in any way, and I honestly don't think anything was done about it. That concerns me. In my last ticket, regarding the two I spoke of above, I said that I don't want to think that Squeenix is, by way of not cracking down on it, condoning sexual harassment, but the fact that this sort of thing keeps happening makes me wonder. I received no words to address this concern, merely the same scripted reply they send to everyone with only a slight alteration to say that I had been offline when my report was received, so they couldn't speak to me directly. That was it. I still don't know if anything was actually done, but with the experiences I've had regarding reporting this kind of behavior, I doubt it.

On the site I work for, we take this kind of thing very seriously. Somebody sexually harasses another person, they're gone. Full stop. No negotiations. No excuses. You're done, hit the road, beat it, walk the plank, yer effin' nicked mate. Gtfo, we don't want you and count yourself lucky if we don't call the cops in your city, especially if the person you're after is underage. We have done this before. We will no doubt end up having to do it again. We take it seriously; Squeenix should too, and I unfortunately have not seen evidence that they do.

[AngelHorn]

Somebody sexually harasses another person, they're gone. Full stop. No negotiations. No excuses. You're done, hit the road, beat it, walk the plank, yer effin' nicked mate. Gtfo, we don't want you and count yourself lucky if we don't call the cops in your city, especially if the person you're after is underage. We have done this before. We will no doubt end up having to do it again. We take it seriously; Squeenix should too, and I unfortunately have not seen evidence that they do.

I could not agree more on that. There is no legitimate reason, why SQEX should not remove people who harass other sexually from the game. It IS no joke. And people who thinks so deserves nothing less than a lesson and consequences if they need that to understand. If Square Enix did not do a thing about it, then I agree with you - SQEX actually encourage people to be bad, when there is no consequences given which would subdue such behaviour.

[AngelHorn]

I would wish a representative of the GMs or those who are responsible would comment that, because it is something which matters the whole mood of the community. And I keep telling: if the mood is gone, then the community will die silently, and then there is no one left to be protected or who would play a game with a toxic community.

[KingOfAbyss]

Sorry if it's a late reply, only seen it today.

Sadly they use a system like:

1- Warning
2- Ban for a few days
3- Ban for a week or month
4- Perma-ban.

Now, some people have too much free time with their lives, after let's say clearing T9 and having their character fully equipped, leaving them with boring stuff (for them) to do.

So hey - why not bullying some peeps? That sounds fun! (and even if I had a tendency to use a stereotype like a kiddo, we might be surprised that it's a 40yo, single, no-lifer, that misses his mom so he has to get high by putting others down.)

When a GM contact them, if all they can do is to give them a warning - I don't believe said players will care.

Until it comes to the last point where Perma-ban is close, then they will stop if they still wants to play.

Still the DPS is done.

If there was more than one person to report them, it might help your cause.

If I was about to leave a game because of this, and being sure I would close this account and never coming back.. I would not mind putting them on a forum so that all could see and then perhaps SE would do something about it.

Sad that if they do, you won't be there to see.

If you like the game as much as us, I am very well pleased to see that you guys can keep your cool.
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One possible solution to all of this (you might not like it)

1- Select a server that your name doesn't exist.
2- Create a new character with the same name.
3- Switch server (18$)
4- The game will ask you to change your name since one already exist. You change it.
5- Delete Character name on the new server.

I know it's not the best, you might lose your FC house and such, friends, etc..

But.. it's one solution, while hoping SE will do something about it.

Hope you took ScreenShots of all this so you can hand them over to a GM.

Best of luck to you guys.