Discussion on the <Blacklist> function

[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.

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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.