Discussion on the <Blacklist> function

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Edit: Please read my post on page two with the TL;DR instead. This first post is not very organized and was just meant to start thought and discussion.

It's a sensitive topic. I'm no social science expert, but I think the 'Blacklist' system should be reviewed, maybe improved.

Theoretical changes:

"Blacklist" should be renamed as "Ignore". "Ignore" only blocks direct chat and PF. "Ignored" person will permanently see you as "busy". "Ignore" is discreet, they will not be notified you are ignoring them. You are not prevented from interacting with them (functionally same as "busy").

A "Block" feature, prevents all chat messages from appearing to each other, and blocks all blockable direct actions. "Block" must be upgraded from "ignore" and can only be done via executing action on an already "ignored" person. "Block" is not discreet, they will see you are blocking them if they attempt interaction, otherwise it is same as current "blacklist" feature. But you are also prevented from interaction with them.

A "Blacklist" feature. Must be filed in tandem with a "report player action" for documentation via GM.
Can only be implemented by GM, can only be lifted by GM, via automated ticket. The automatic functions are auto-approved, these functions include everything the current "blacklist" offers. However, if the report is investigated to be true and the offending player is flagged by multiple blacklist requests citing actual offences, GM will investigate and take action as necessary.
If action is taken, the requesting player will be "offered" additional options, and depending on the severity of the case, options of character name/image change, server transfer, two-way hard-coded concealment of in-game character and assets (yes, find a way to implement that code), and other supportive actions. May be transferred to customer support.

Theory stuff from my perspective.

The "blacklist" action is inherently a rage feature. It's own nature is not that of a positive one.
Interaction with the system from both sides can result in a "give in" mentality where you just say "f% it, people can't be helped", or "I may have been an idiot and not behaved well, but they were a%ses too". This leaves lasting spots of negativity in player's hearts. There is virtually no way but to take it and eat it. You will never want to apologize or become better in that case. You will want to help other people less. Even if you do, more prejudice will have been built in.

The game does not help by being dishonest with the system prompts. If someone has been "dismissed" from the party, they did not leave. They were kicked by the party leader. If someone has been "vote kicked", they were dismissed by the party. They were not "have been dismissed from both the party and the duty". It is indirect corporate talk. It is disgusting. It does not help. Not if the person was a bully, not if the person was bullied and not quite themselves, not if the person just needed some peace and quiet themselves from other sources, possibly from elsewhere within the game. Not if it makes the person hate the whole party, when in reality it may have been just the party leader's decision, or one particular player.

Sometimes the system doesn't help. Sometimes a PF needs to kick people for logistical reasons, but then the person is added to a "mini-blacklist" and can't even join the party again without friending them and inviting manually.

If "kicking" people, "blacklisting" people is some kind of hush-hush taboo, because it makes society worse, then adding people as "friends" left and right should make society filled with positivity. How is this any more or less toxic than using a "mute party" function? Or issuing a "behaviour warning"? How does this make players hate the game less for whatever faults it occasionally has in their designs and systems?

I know this kind of view may differ between cultures (including what we hear about Japanese "social mannerisms and correctness and pressure on the individual"), but in the end, creativity, open-mindedness, clarity and communication, less 'economic' pressure and more fairness, etc. are always facilitation of better social atmospheres than any amount of hindsight and correcting mechanisms. SE cannot pretend all the creativity and good stuff all come from them, and any oppression and frustration belong to the players, and have no place in their perfectly designed game, but which puts players fairly in their place.

There are not many things in this game that can result in the least desirable outcome for a game aka. a player quitting. But when that happens, I have no doubt it will have to do with all the politics, pressure on performance, rigid playstyles and end-game content, attentive time and emotional labour demanded of players engaging in it, lack of depth and handling in some scripts and scenarios, and in the end, "just not worth it" once weighed in player's minds. They can eliminate the toxicity, but at what cost?

It won't be easy to improve this. If I knew how I wouldn't be here, as I'd joke. But I just hope people don't take a look at it and say "meh it's what it is, it's been what it is, things are just like that".

[Raqrie_Tohka]

I'm sorry if this all comes off a bit as ranting (which it partly is) but it's a bit difficult to think through or find solutions for after all. It's not easy to talk about.
Problems should be addressed for the game to become better for everyone.

[RoyalBeef]

Not if the person was a bully, not if the person was bullied and not quite themselves, not if the person just needed some peace and quiet themselves from other sources, possibly from elsewhere within the game. Not if it makes the person hate the whole party, when in reality it may have been just the party leader's decision, or one particular player.

I'm not ingame to take care of people's mental issues. When I run a party I want to accomplish a certain goal in an effiient way. If you're looking for a quiet place to chill, or aren't 'yourself' whatever that is supposed to mean, my party is not the right place for you.

Underperforming gets a hint to step it up, then a kick if they don't.
Trolling is one strike, then kick and blacklist.
Other than that, I don't care. You can be the biggest a-hole in the world, if you get the job done, welcome on board.

[Kobalos]

I've been kicked in a couple of parties - No explanation or anything just *poof* gone :?

[Gwenorai]

I can't say I'm in agreement. A black-list is not supposed to be positive or nice, or sugarcoated. It's a list of people you refuse to interact with. It doesn't really need to be over convoluted either or complex. It's just a list of people you don't want to deal with. If you regret your decision you simply remove them from the list, if you don't then you keep them on it. Finally, a blacklist doesn't need to be creative or filled with positivity; the fact it exists is because there are a lot of people out there who are not good or nice, or they simply clash with you - there's nothing wrong with that either. Human nature. I don't understand why someone would need their hand held and pushed to a safe word to remove/ignore someone who literally might have just called them the f word moments ago and then go through extra lengths to have access to more block features.

Also, the word dismissed is actually correct as it means they're 'ordered to leave'.
verb
past tense: dismissed; past participle: dismissed
1.
order or allow to leave; send away.
Just like Blacklist is correct; 'a list of people or things that are regarded as unacceptable or untrustworthy and should be excluded or avoided.'

What I think should be done is this;
Just upgrade the blacklist so it's a full cease of interaction -including the inability to emote/locate them.- and have it be account-wide so it catches their alts as well as your own. Increase the blacklist size limits.

However, I am in agreement that its current state certainly needs to be improved upon - just not in the ways where extra hoops need to be jumped in order to gain access to further features to simply remove someone you don't wish to see or interact with.

And finally, if someone is bullied or unfairly dismissed etc - it's all grounds for you to file a report to a GM.

[Vidu]

I'm not even sure what you're proposing here... while I can agree that the blacklist needs to be improved I dont see you suggesting any real improvments, just some weird cuddling-attempts to protect the feelings of people who've been blacklisted or dimissed from parties - two things that are not the same btw...
All of that has some false information sprinkled in, so I'd like to adress the points I think I was able to grasp:

1) You're suggesting that when you blacklist a person you should appear busy to them all the time. Thats a terrible suggestion, because it has the potential to alert the person to being on your blacklist, something thats way to easly circumvented by creating a new character, for example. The current state that it simply blocks all messages without giving the sender any hint that the messages have been blocked is way better in that regard. No one needs to get hints that they might have been blacklisted and not getting an answer to your message (that was never delivered) is a much weaker give-away than a constant /busy-status. Bottomline: blacklisting someone should always be discret.

2) I dont see the need to add workload for the GMs because you want to make it more difficult for people to have an actual effective way of getting rid of someone.

3) I'm not sure why you confuse "dismissing" and "blacklisting", because both are extremly different features and both of them are valid. The only overlap they generate is in the case of someone being kicked from a duty, because they wont be able to join that excat run in progress again - which is a good change they made a while ago since kicking someone sends the very clear message of "We dont want to play with this person" and the system should allow you that. (I recall having a totally undergeard, underperforming tank join a run three times after being kicked again and again. He wouldnt listen to advice, he wouldnt do his job, he just made everyones life more difficult than it had to be.)

If you need to deal with your issues: Do so outside of the game. Step away from the game for a while if you have. And if being dismissed or blacklisted is bothering you: Review both the/your actions that might have lead to that situation, so you can use it as a learning-opportunity (rude behaviour? Wrong gear? Underperforming?) or realise that it was just bad luck, not a personal attack.
In the end the blacklist and dismiss feature can be used to bring positivty to the game - by removing negativty from your life or party. I dont care about the well being of someone who was rude enough to end up being kicked or blacklisted by me. And why should I? Its not that I want to punish them, I dont want to have to deal with them anymore and if that makes them sad its not my problem.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We've seen some actual good suggestions in regards to the blacklist-feature and I'd like to repeat some of them:
- blacklisting a friend or removing someone from your friendlist should remove you from theirs
- blacklisted people should be unable to enter any personal housing you own, even if said housing is open to the public
- highly requested, but way to complicated: Blacklisting should prevent you from being partied up with the person in a random dungeon (that one has the potential to make the whole matching collapsed, so probably not possible)
- unable to interact with your character in any way, aka no emotes
- I've also seen request to just make the blacklisted character "disapear" on your own screen, so you wont even see them
- the blacklist-feature already does this, but I want to stress it again: the blacklisted person should NEVER know they're on someones blacklist.

At the end of the day the blacklist-feature is in place to protect the person whos blacklisting someone - and in that sense its creating a more positive enviroment for them. The same goes for the dismiss and vote-kick feature. If you find yourself at the reciving end of being dimissed, blacklisted or removed from parties so often that it makes you consider quitting the game or just upset in general, you should review your actions and ask yourself how much posiitivy you're bringing into this game.

[Solarra]

OP - Your concern for the feelings/rights of people being blacklisted, seems misplaced to me.
We pay for this game and if we run into someone we would rather not deal with again, then blacklisting is the sensible thing to do. I don't feel any explanations are owed in that situation.
As to forcing a report for a full block, I don't see the point; often people don't want to go this far. At the moment we can control who we block and we can unblock a person at any time. I wouldn't like to see that taken away from players and put exclusively in the hands of the GMs (who surely have enough to do anyway?).

Maybe try and take a look at this issue from the point of view of the person doing the blocking. It's not a 'rage' thing in most cases, just a simple way to prevent someone bothering/harassing you while you play the game.

As to allowing someone to see they have been blacklisted, I feel that suggestion is particularly dangerous. You are giving people too much credit if you see that primarily as a path to reconciliation. While it is just possible someone might apologise for their behaviour, experience tells me that people do not readily admit when they are wrong. I also think it's likely some people would use the knowledge they have been blacklisted to ramp up the abuse (via friends, alts etc).

With all of that said, the present system could do with some improvements. Vidu's post makes some excellent suggestions here:

Snip ...

[Arillyn]

As to allowing someone to see they have been blacklisted, I feel that suggestion is particularly dangerous. You are giving people too much credit if you see that primarily as a path to reconciliation. While it is just possible someone might apologise for their behaviour, experience tells me that people do not readily admit when they are wrong. I also think it's likely some people would use the knowledge they have been blacklisted to ramp up the abuse (via friends, alts etc).

This too. So much this. There are real instances of people being harassed and stalked in this game. If someone is harassing you and especially stalking you, there is no way in the world that letting them know they are now blacklisted is a good idea.

OP - I think you may be a little naive as to how some people in the world operate. I truly do not mean that in an offensive way. But lots of people don't have the same view of life as you. They may not be about reconciliation, but about ramping up harassment. ESPECIALLY because it's on the internet and they can hide behind their screens.

[Rasikko]

Dismiss is just a polite word for kicking, etc, hence why it's used. Yeah I've played some mmos where it's blunt to the point: "You got kicked from the xxxx" "You were thrown out from xxxx"

[Raqrie_Tohka]

I don't usually vote to kick people, or try to kick people myself. If a PF party isn't working worse case we just leave, because as the saying goes, "this isn't worth me getting contacted by a GM".

However, please see my stance on this:
1. The more enacted toxicity I encounter, aka. blacklisting, kicking, vote-kicking I see, the more I feel I should use and abuse these functions too, because these are "quiet" and officially approved ways to take my toxicity out at people.
2. There is so much toxicity. Both my savage party finder clears today, almost every party I was in, someone used some strong words. I was helping out a FC member in Titania normal clear today, and a vote-kick was started against one of the dps, probably for making a mistake from being new or just because someone thought the dps was low. Prejudice, and a thinking that prejudice is justified, and that acting on it is justified, permeates most content. Even low-end content, it occur occasionally. We have a lot of the "supertank" threads whining on forums too.
3. The core problem is lack of communication (and more). There may be actual reasons such as people being tired, language barriers, not wanting to give a care after a week of wiping in PF. But most people, even if they are tired, will be rational and opened to discussion / analysis, if it was friendly. However, even slight agitation, will prompt mirrored responses.
4. Mirrored responses, a full circle, INCLUDES all these extreme and final ways of dealing with people. It's almost as if SE says "you people are a lost cause, just enjoy this content we created that does not require any human contact in principle at all, and if you don't even wanna try, use these power-fantasy tools to enact your will upon other people!"
5. This slowly pushes the overall game into a certain social atmosphere and tints the nature of ALL activity within the game.

No person is purely by nature, toxic. Harsh corporate controls exist for stability and risk management, sometimes risk offloading from the company. It exists foremost, to protect the company, and manage social perceptions that the company is doing their social responsibility, but which the company can manage within an affordable cost. Thus simpler systems. Ofc SE is not like some very bad companies or very unlucky companies having to deal with truly extreme situations in truly eyebrow-raising ways. But toxicity is inherently one of the core problems of multiplayer games, since forever.

And what I currently think is, although the way the system is managed in this game is not the worse I've seen, the taste it leaves in my mouth is one of the worse I've tasted.

Call me an idiot unable to express or even think clearly, but does this game have perfect systems? Is the novice network completely perfect in both operation, and its nature? Are improvements not possible? Can you try to consider things from another person's perspective without either outright dismissing them first or thinking that it means you have to force yourself to accept their viewpoint first? Is the only allowed viewpoint, the correct viewpoint and the viewpoint that thinks "everything should be fine, and anyone saying is otherwise themselves, part of the trouble"?

I don't have any good, actual solutions or even suggestions atm (if I did I'd work for SE), but some thinking, empathy, just putting thoughts out there, shouldn't hurt. Or do we need blacklist feature for forums as well?