Looks like the request for better safety features is gaining some traction.

[Fawkes]

I think Yoshi-P already said having the duty finder also check your blacklist would slow it down too much.

And if removing someone from your friend list removed you from theirs then they'd know you defriended them and it could still cause social problems.

[Mika_Zahard]

- Blacklisted people can still show in the same duties as you. Happened to me a few times within the last month or two. Not fun.

I see nothing wrong with this. In fact, blacklisting someone to prevent them from being with u in a duty would be exploitable/abusable instead.

[Steelbreaker25]

The redditor that started the thread that article references hasn't posted any evidence of the stalking they or their friends claim to be undergoing, so at this moment it is hearsay. If people weren't around when there was that fiasco earlier this year, we had a GM go rogue for a bit and start taking down RP adverts in partyfinder. But that was quickly determined to be a sole confused GM and not a policy change by simply having people corroborate screenshots of the conversations.

There's a lot of social features that could use some tweaks and upgrades, but this article feels lazy and doesn't even give the counterpoint of the lodestone ID's commonly being used to track scammer name changes.

That's not what hearsay is. Not only this it not a court preceding, but hearsay is generally using what Person C heard Person B say about Person A as evidence. In the redditor's post, they talked more about the systems in place (of which only the wedding ring teleport is incorrect, I think), and used the experience of others and themselves as examples, although not extensively. There were no accusations thrown around

[CrafterPrimal]

That's not what hearsay is. Not only this it not a court preceding, but hearsay is generally using what Person C heard Person B say about Person A as evidence. In the redditor's post, they talked more about the systems in place (of which only the wedding ring teleport is incorrect, I think), and used the experience of others and themselves as examples, although not extensively. There were no accusations thrown around

You are correct that this is not a court, yet the term is used outside legal settings according to this: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hearsay

Apologies if my English was off, I will edit it to better reflect my intent.

And you are correct that in the original un-edited version of the Reddit post there were no direct accusations, but in further edits and in the replies to that topic OP states:

Edit: We are aware that there's an option to report for this behavior, but after a group of friends and I reported a stalker who harrassed our friend, nothing came off it. He continued harassing her (and eventually some of us) for weeks, until she quit and he got bored, and he's still playing this game, seemingly unhindered and unpunished. Maybe this is an issue with EU GMs, but they did not take this serious at all.

Edit 2: Yes, she also reported them, it wasn't JUST 3rd party reports.

But to who? Who can I go to after GMs do not protect us? I can't exactly meet with YoshiP himself and say "Please hardware ban this person". To whom and how can I escalate this?

To me that is a direct accusation that the EU GM team will not help those who report against bad player behavior. Reddit OP did not lie about a single function that currently exists in-game and through the Lodestone, and if it had just been a post going over the potential for abuse of those systems it wouldn't merit comment because they'd be right.

Then you have the quote the article published pulled:

"I love this game dearly, but it's an MMO, and stalkers and harassment is [sic] plentiful," the Reddit user wrote in the initial post. "I've heard so many horror stories, had to console friends who've had to deal with it, and found myself in this situation a few times as well."

If they're telling the truth the system is broken. If they're lying they are potentially hurting the game by maligning it.

[Vahlnir]

If they're telling the truth the system is broken. If they're lying they are potentially hurting the game by maligning it.

I'm sure it does happen, but I don't think it's an epidemic of sorts. In the very, very few instances that it does happen I have heard it can be frustrating. It's something that should probably be addressed, but I do think they are making it a bigger issue than it actually is for 99% of the game's population. I'm not saying that it's not a big issue for those being affected by stalking and/or harassment. It most certainly is. I really do hope that they get some help with this from the GMs. But it's not a common occurrence. Far from it. Calling it "plentiful" is an exaggeration, at least as far as this game is concerned. Overall, the GMs tend to rule with an iron fist. That's probably why.

[Breezelyn]

And this is a problem because? It's not your party. Your blacklisting choices should not affect third parties.

Agree and disagree with this. I get the whole don't involve third-parties--nothing they did is wrong. However, if the blacklisted person is throwing accusations and harassment to the person who blocked them, then it it WILL affect the third parties in the party. Because the person who blacklisted the offender cannot see what is being said to others. Granted, this is a case-by-case scenario, but it can happen.

I see nothing wrong with this. In fact, blacklisting someone to prevent them from being with u in a duty would be exploitable/abusable instead.

Disagree 100% on this. It's not exploitable/abusing to block people that you had bad interactions with in the past in the field or in DF. To prevent a sour situation for all parties involved, people on your blacklist should NOT be able to end in the same party as you. With how many people are queing for DF daily, how can someone exploit this? I'm sure it's not an unreasonable request to keep people, who don't get along at all, from future interactions with this QoL.

Possibly can work differently when it comes to 24-man raids. Place the blacklisted person in another alliance, no abuse or "exploitation" here then.

[Steelbreaker25]

If they're telling the truth the system is broken. If they're lying they are potentially hurting the game by maligning it.

The post's most advocated change is allowing Lodestone pages to be privated. The Lodestone isn't in-game, but out. I'm not exactly sure how being able to make your own information private would affect the game negatively. This is also the most practical solution.

The other big issue, the friend list one, is already a weird quirk that doesn't make much sense. Fixing that to remove yourself from another person's list wouldn't hurt the game.

The matchmaking issue is one that could affect the game in a bigger way, but more because the algorithm for matchmaking would have to be tweaked, and we don't know how difficult that is. Otherwise, we don't know how duty finder would be affected if it automatically excluded people on blacklists.

The wedding ring thing may not be an issue as some have said it just sends you to East Shroud anyway, though I couldn't say if that's true because I've not been married in game and I don't know anybody who's split. I can't see how changing this function much would greatly impact the game, though.

[Lium]

Is stalking an issue in Japan? Genuinely curious.

[Sove92]

Agree and disagree with this. I get the whole don't involve third-parties--nothing they did is wrong. However, if the blacklisted person is throwing accusations and harassment to the person who blocked them, then it it WILL affect the third parties in the party. Because the person who blacklisted the offender cannot see what is being said to others. Granted, this is a case-by-case scenario, but it can happen.

If the blisted person in the party is causing trouble, the leader can kick them out. You can also ask the leader to kick them when they join.

Thing with the blacklist is that it doesn't care for your reason behind the addition. We can't have PF exclude players based on a non-leader's blacklist because people don't add people to their lists only for the most horrifying causes, but also for the pettiest of reasons and the petty ones aren't fair to the rest of the party.

Disagree 100% on this. It's not exploitable/abusing to block people that you had bad interactions with in the past in the field or in DF. To prevent a sour situation for all parties involved, people on your blacklist should NOT be able to end in the same party as you. With how many people are queing for DF daily, how can someone exploit this? I'm sure it's not an unreasonable request to keep people, who don't get along at all, from future interactions with this QoL.

Possibly can work differently when it comes to 24-man raids. Place the blacklisted person in another alliance, no abuse or "exploitation" here then.

If SE can sort out the matching algorithm issues with it (eg. I get matched with X, who has blisted Y. Y is partied with Z for the same content, should the game unmatch me with X so I have more players matched to me [3/4, 3/8] or keep me with X and not get matched with Y and Z), I'm all for it. The only content where this could really be an issue are duties people don't really queue much for to begin with and The Feast (a competitive gamemode must ignore blist to prevent people from fixing their matches).

[Steelbreaker25]

Is stalking an issue in Japan? Genuinely curious.

I would say that stalking is an issue everywhere, but yes. There's that one idol who a stalker tracked down by using a reflection in her eye to find out where she lived.