Abuse of the TOS. Loophole regarding griefing/trolling. Needs a solution.

[Mochamonarch]

If you're at public places there will always be players interrupting you, intentionally or unintentionally. Where do we draw the line.

Simple, I'll tell you:

The line is drawn when your behavior is a deliberate/planned action with the intent of causing disruption, frustration, grief, annoyance, and distraction without the consent of the victim involved, and if the action(s) persists after being told to cease.

That's what griefing is. What Gothic Dolly is describing, is greifing.

A griefer or bad faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately irritates and harasses other players within the game, using aspects of the game in unintended ways. -Wikipedia

Spamming emotes at people who are trying to roleplay, even after being asked to stop, is considered griefing. and if they leave their emote messages on, it can be considered chat spam too. "sitting on a bench RPers claimed" is not griefing, as they can simply ask you to move, and you can move. However, sitting in their spaces, refusing to leave when asked, and then getting up to follow them only to occupy their future sitting areas repeatedly with the explicit intent of annoying them is griefing.

Dolly, I see you around a lot in Ul'dah, so I hope things work out. Sorry you have to go through this bologna.

[Machi_Machiavelli]

reported


/10chars

Reported for reporting.

[HumanNinjaToo]

@OP:
I am not a RP'er, so I don't know the upset of being trolled in that fashion. But when I have been trolled, be it on FF14 or any other online game, I have always played along with whatever they are doing (minus any uncivil name-calling etc.) until they stop and move on. Sometimes I actually get into it and end up having fun trolling them back. But this is probably rooted in my personality, as I am a person who likes to joke with others. I pride myself on being able to take a joke as well, because my belief is that you have to be willing to laugh at yourself before you can laugh at another. Personally, I am not a fan of reporting people for much of anything other than bots. But I support other's being able to report players who harass them.

If there was any solution I could offer, it would be the creation of a server/world for players who just want to RP. Not so much to have them separate from everyone else, but so that they would have their own space to RP all they wanted. I would like to believe that this would allow for less trolling, and make it easier for GM's to spot malicious behavior targeting RP'ers. In my mind, I am thinking that if everyone on this world is here to RP, then the players who are not would stick out like a sore thumb. Plus, this world would be wide open for RP, instead of having it limited to certain spots (which IDK really if it limited, I am just assuming).

At any rate, I hope you come up with a way to free yourself from being the target of these folks.

[RoyalBeef]

Or you can learn to respect people.
I mean, it really ain't hard...

You'll never change other people, no matter how hard you try. Only thing you can change is how you you let their behaviour affect you. No matter how many people yu report and how many get bans. Trolling will never go away, and they will always find new loopholes and edge cases. You're literally fighting against windmills.

[Gula]

You'll never change other people, no matter how hard you try. Only thing you can change is how you you let their behaviour affect you. No matter how many people yu report and how many get bans. Trolling will never go away, and they will always find new loopholes and edge cases. You're literally fighting against windmills.

So if I like being rude for no real reason, it's ok because people will always be rude. Gotcha. Guess I'll go bang pots and pans in the street because I'm not hurting anybody and people can just choose to ignore me, I'll shout some racial slurs while I'm at it. This is the logic you are encouraging.

[MANTASTIC]

Not content with merely ruining the entire Crystal data center, Balmung now seeks to ruin the entire game.

[Hazmick]

Stalking requires active harrassment. Just being there does not qualify as harrassment. I can sit in front of someone's house in my parking car all week if I want.

No, you can't. The police would ask you to move on if the resident of the house was distressed by your continued presence.

If person A follows person B everywhere, for a prolonged period of time, even if they never say or do anything else to person B, person A is committing an offence by stalking.

[Gwenorai]

Okay, this is one slippery slope. I'll try to be as clear as I possibly can regarding this topic. First of all, if players are stalking you for the whole purpose of irritating you, as in they're constantly emoting at you, whispering you etc. - then that's is indeed ground for stalking, but not by conventional standards. They're not hurting you or causing you to fear; they're just an annoyance. If they're whispering you abuse, then you have grounds to report them on that. But simply spamming emotes, and acting like drunks? Nah, pure inconvenience.

Is it worth a report and GMs getting involved? Again, the slippery slope. What's stopping the stalker from saying they're RPing as some rowdy drunk git, especially if you were in public? While you can report them, I ask why you don't merely blacklist and then teleport away from them using the atherytes or switch instances - or do your RP in a place you know isn't going to attract all of the attention. This sadly should be expected of those who are RPing in city hubs, in the most common of places.

I don't understand why you're not RPing in an LS, or a party - etc., so others can't see your prompts. Which I also personally find irritating when someone is writing a wall of text for which I then have to go into my settings to edit what I see because of cantina RP. People think the same, but hey, at least people should expect this on Balmung. If you're doing it on a server which isn't designated as the RP server, then you're going to attract some attention sadly.

This is the same situation as people spamming emotes over performers because they were sick of hearing them before they could toggle it off. It wasn't rule breaking back then either.

Still, I wouldn't go after you, but I do believe it's a bit too over the top to have people banned for emoting back at you in a public area. They can do what they please as long as it's not breaking the rules. Far as I know spamming emotes isn't something they usually smack for. You think they're following you - stalking you. It's a game, blacklist, teleport away - check to see if they're repeating the behaviour if they are this is grounds for a report. There is nothing in the rules that I can see that is against someone from following you in a public area - it is if they're constantly harassing you. I can only see this being a huge problem is if someone is doing this consistently to you every single day, and then it's grounds for a report and them to deal with it. Not a one-off.

God forbid someone gets banned for being on the same quest objective and folks see it as a grounds for stalking for following the quest line.

[Gula]

Okay, this is one slippery slope. I'll try to be as clear as I possibly can regarding this topic. First of all, if players are stalking you for the whole purpose of irritating you, as in they're constantly emoting at you, whispering you etc. - then that's is indeed ground for stalking, but not by conventional standards. They're not hurting you or causing you to fear; they're just an annoyance. If they're whispering you abuse, then you have grounds to report them on that. But simply spamming emotes, and acting like drunks? Nah, pure inconvenience.

Is it worth a report and GMs getting involved? Again, the slippery slope. What's stopping the stalker from saying they're RPing as some rowdy drunk git, especially if you were in public? While you can report them, I ask why you don't merely blacklist and then teleport away from them using the atherytes or switch instances - or do your RP in a place you know isn't going to attract all of the attention. This sadly should be expected of those who are RPing in city hubs, in the most common of places.

I don't understand why you're not RPing in an LS, or a party - etc., so others can't see your prompts. Which I also personally find irritating when someone is writing a wall of text for which I then have to go into my settings to edit what I see because of cantina RP. People think the same, but hey, at least people should expect this on Balmung. If you're doing it on a server which isn't designated as the RP server, then you're going to attract some attention sadly.

With this line of thinking why would people use /say at all? The point is for if someone is interested, they can join in. It's encouraged with a "When in Rome" mindset. I wouldn't openly RP in, say, Ultros' Limsa because that's like wearing a prom dress to a rave. Reading the room and all that.

No one is obligated to give someone the space to use, but it seems as though common courtesy is lost on the western playerbase in a social game. Just because there are no absolute rules does not mean as a human being you shouldn't realize empathy and understanding.

But really now, why use /say at all even for casual chatter regardless of RP or not? It's gonna bother someone apparently so you'll surely agree it should be done away with, right?

[Gwenorai]

From what I've seen in other MMOs such as SWTOR and ESO, the short text and the like should be done in say, etc, this gets people interested. But the large text prompts should not be used through say because with the size of the text box and all that, it pushes the entire chat upwards. This is why people hate it when folks constantly post FC advertisements. It's not a lack of common courtesy, on my behalf - it's something where large text prompts for RP should not be used through say. From what I gathered from the usage of the RP tag is that you can see certain people who are interested in RP and can message them directly. That's honestly what I thought it was for.

It's not next-level thinking. Thankfully I am not on an RP server, however in SWTOR and ESO the first thing I do is make specific chats that filter this out because people will write large paragraphs and throw it into say. I personally find that inconsiderate. Just like you think me not liking it is lacking common courtesy and or empathy. Unless I'm reading what you're saying incorrectly if so, I apologise as text sadly doesn't have tone.

Of course, you're going to get people who don't do this and thus start acting like gits when they see RP pushing their chat upwards, or they're just there to ruin your day. Either way, I don't see why it matters why me wondering why folks don't use party/LS to do this - I honestly think it's much better than using say because then it's not broadcasted publically and people can be added into the party/LS to enjoy RPing without having people looking in. Shrug.

Finally, as it has occurred to me that you are using sarcasm, tsk. You can't use the defence of a social game when the chat is completely dominated by people using large text prompts - I'm talking about multiple lines of text one after with the use of say that pushes all of the other social aspects of the game upwards, such as FC, Party, Tell, etc. Thankfully say is proximity-based, least they're not doing it in Yell/Shout.