If I remove someone off my Friend List, it should remove me off theirs too

[Isutowaru]

Hello

A bit of a serious topic that can be a very very serious matter. It's not as simple as many people will like it to be and unfortunately, due to constant harassment against my friends, it needs to be said, whether its an echo or a repeat of another post, I can't stress this enough about how serious this can be to some people.

Issue No. 1 - How Friend Lists work, and why its flawed.

To the naked eye, the friends list is just the same as any other. You can add friends, see who's online and maybe what they're doing. This is fine and this is information that shouldn't have to change. So what's the problem? When you remove someone off your friend list, you aren't removed from the other person's friends list - basically meaning, they can still see what you're doing ingame and where you are.

Let's create a fictional scenario that can be very repeatable and can actually happen.

Let's say for example; Person A meets Person B and they decide to talk and have fun, they add eachother to their friends list and log off for the night, it's all good for now.

Now Person B, for one reason or another is *attached* to Person A to levels of creepy and stalky behaviour. They approach Person A and starts talking about some really concerning stuff that alarms Person A - depending on the severity, Person A can either tell person B that what they're saying isn't right or remove them from their friends list. It could even be both.

Person A has now removed Person B from his friend list, but on Person B, Person A is still on person B's friend list. Person A blacklists Person B and teleports away, but now Person B can see everything Person A is doing - To what world they're on, to their location, to what instance they're in. The game has unintentionally enabled stalking and it's damn right creepy that its even allowed to happen.

Issue No. 2 - YoshiP's previous response on this manner.

In 2019, Yoshi P was interviewed - here's a post to it here https://gamerescape.com/2019/01/04/y...-yoshi-p-walk/

Q: When I delete a person from my friends list, I want my character to disappear from theirs, as well!

Yoshida: That would lead to the problem of “Why did he delete me?” and might cause trouble, so we didn’t do that on purpose.

What do you mean this might cause trouble? Yoshida, with all due respect, your intentions severely backfire. You've created a system where stalking is enabled and causes more harm than good. People are stalked severely and the friends list is a great method to achieve that if the people in question have talked to eachother.

I'll say this with good intentions right now - people who remove you from their friends list do so for a good reason. If I'm removed from someone's friends list, that's fine, personally I don't care and I don't think many others will care either. Will I be disappointed? Sure, I might be disappointed, but in the long run, ultimately people will just not care and stop caring.

The obvious solution - Make Friend Lists back to back. If Person A is removed from Person B's friend list, then Person A's grief will be moderately reduced because the Player Search function doesn't perform nearly as well as the Friend's List or Linkshell's ability to enable stalking.

Another benefit is that it can make people give up on stalking a lot more quicker when the game is against them in stalking a player ingame.

And lastly, people who remove one from the other's friends list will bring more good than harm if a fight breaks out between 2 players over a disagreement.

I am begging, you are doing more harm than good by having this "intentional feature" in place. I am fully aware that reporting stalkers to the GMs is the right thing to do because stalking is in the terms of service as a prohibition and justice can be dealt, but just GM intervention does not remove the problem of stalking

I hope this can reach the right ears. It's a very serious manner and I'm furious that my friends can't have a peace of mind because of a certain group of people. Thank you for reading.

[Jeeqbit]

The person can still see where you are by doing a Player Search of you, even if you weren't on their friends list.

[Isutowaru]

The person can still see where you are by doing a Player Search of you, even if you weren't on their friends list.

Yes, I talked about it. It's significantly worse as a stalking tool.

[ForteNightshade]

The person can still see where you are by doing a Player Search of you, even if you weren't on their friends list.

Having someone on your friends list means they can teleport to your house, which they can't do simply looking you up in Player Search. Regardless, it's a poor stance for Yoshida to take. If someone opts to remove a person from their friends list, they likely have a reason. He's essentially placing more concern on the person being removed feelings than the one making the decision to remove them.

Unrelated, but you can edit your post to get around the character limit, OP.

[Isutowaru]

He's essentially placing more concern on the person being removed feelings than the one making the decision to remove them.

I couldn't have worded this any better because that's exactly what Yoshida needs to change.

Also, cheers for letting me know about that trick with the character limit, I've merged the posts now.

[DrWho2010]

Yoship's stance on this is purely from a Japanese standpoint. that's the main issue. that it doesn't take into account how friendships/relationships end in every other place in the world. unfortunately they're the ones pulling the strings on this. more fuss would have to be made over there to get a stance change.

[Wasselin]

I've never needed to do this but is there a way to block other people? I think that would be a better tool if you feel like someone is stalking you. Then they wouldn't be able to see if you are online or where you were at all.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I've never needed to do this but is there a way to block other people? I think that would be a better tool if you feel like someone is stalking you. Then they wouldn't be able to see if you are online or where you were at all.

The block/blacklist function does not prevent them from looking you up in player search, nor does it remove you from their friends list if you were originally on it. They can still see everything you are doing. All blacklist does is prevent them from sending you tells (I think also you don't see messages from them in general?) and you cannot join PFs by that person. That's it.

Both the friends list and the blacklist features are terrible in this game, and both need to be adjusted - but this issue with the friends list has been most prevalent and repeatedly brought up time and again. I'm frankly sick of Yoshi's excuse for why it works this way.

[Jeeqbit]

In roulettes I've been matched with people on my blacklist, which seems deeply flawed because now you have to work with this person to overcome bosses.

The blacklist feature should prevent teleporting to the person's estate if it doesn't.

[Theodric]

It's a questionable stance to take on an official basis because many abusers are known to their victim. It could be a close friend, a lover or even a family member - and for whatever reason, the relationship sours and someone might want absolutely nothing to do with that individual ever again.

It's a real shame there aren't better tools in place to prevent people from tracking players who do not want to be tracked.