Option to privatize or opt-out of lodestone displaying character. Show your support!

[Senn]

Two months now give or take. There was a long stretch where I thought she gave up, and then people I know were telling me she was contacting them about me in a negative way and gas lighting them into not being friends with me. And all I did was leave the FC because I felt like nobody wanted to play with me. I didn't do anything that would constitute this even though nothing should, but still. It's working on making me not want to play all together.

Two months is a long time. I've heard some people have been stalked for months or even up to years... You'd have to be a special kind of deranged to stalk someone for that long.

[Stormpeaks]

50/50 on this.
Would be nice but is it necessary? Just blacklist whoever is "stalking" you and you won't have any comms with you, they can't join your PF, etc.

If you have nothing to hide, why make it private? I prefer it public esp when someone would try to impersonate you. The real one will always have your achievements and accomplishments on your public profile.

what an absolutely terrible take

"just blacklist"

say you have never had stalkers without telling you never had stalkers

I was stalked on EU, the person(s) kept making alt characters contacting every single friend I met, they would contact them to tell them how much of a terrible human being I am, creating fake stories and actually a lot of people believed them, leading me to be down to basically no friends or barely any on an entire region because word goes from one ear to the next, especially on EU as it isnt as big as NA, I had to deal with having an amazing vibe with people to them leaving because "I dont want drama" or their close friends had heard bad stories about me

Dont come at people that have had to deal with stalking with "just blacklist", if you have no clue, please keep your opinion to yourself and let people that actually have a clue and are actually compassionate respond instead of just telling these people (including me) to blacklist as if they havent already done that, the stalking I had to deal with and harassement lasted for over a year and a half before I eventually bit the bullet and moved region and apparently they didnt want to cross over, but I tried server changing and DC changing on EU, it did absolutely nothing.

If it was as easy as "just blacklist" this game would have no stalking problem wouldnt it ? So think before you post something like that, it's actually infuriating to read this, this is an emotional response which is actually rare from me but this actually hit home, I was told on EU from the few friends I had to "just ignore it" "just blacklist"

It. Does. Not. Work.

[Ravenblade1979]

Let the GMs handle it.

The focus of this thread is to request an option to privatize or opt-out of lodestone. To anyone who would like this feature, please remember to like the original post. The number of likes on the post matters!

The GMs don't handle it though. They are notorious for not handling stuff like stalkers and that even with actual proof.

This whole idea is horrible. Ya shouldn't be able to hide yourself period.

[Senn]

...

I feel the frustration from this post. Who wouldn't be after being stalked for over a year?

[Senn]

The GMs don't handle it though. They are notorious for not handling stuff like stalkers and that even with actual proof.

This whole idea is horrible. Ya shouldn't be able to hide yourself period.

First of all, did you even read the post I was responding to in that quote? I was replying to a post about the illicit activities that happened during omega ultimate. The GMs handled that situation. Yoshi P addressed the situation himself as well. There was a whole post about how they were handling the situation. So don't come at me saying the GMs "don't handle it".

Second, the GMs do handle situations where the ToS has been violated. I don't know why you think they don't? You can even receive a warning for spamming emotes at someone after they've asked you to stop and have reported you. What are you even on about?

Your take is horrible.

[Senn]

There was a NIN player who was contacted by a GM and given a penalty for being associated with people who used third party tools. The NIN did not use any third party tools. However, their achievement and title were revoked. The GM told the NIN to discard their "ultimate omega sickles" weapon reward, too.

The GMs make a distinction between the people who use third party tools, and those who do not but still benefited from it. The GMs did NOT permanently ban the NIN. There was also a WHM who was associated with this group - they also did not use third party tools themselves. The WHM ended up deleting their character probably due to the harassment.

Why is this ok? The GMs already gave these players appropriate penalties. Why do people feel the need to be arbiters of "justice" when the GMs already took care of the situation? When penalties were ALREADY PLACED on them?
Should these players be tracked down, harassed, and stalked for months? For years?

The GMs gave these players what they deemed a fitting penalty. It's not the communities job to say "hey, we're not satisfied with that punishment. we need to punish them even MORE". What gives you the right?
It's sick. A character deleted, years of progress down the drain. And it wasn't because they were banned by a GM. This is not a fair exchange. This is not ok.

Source

[Stormpeaks]

The GMs don't handle it though. They are notorious for not handling stuff like stalkers and that even with actual proof.

This whole idea is horrible. Ya shouldn't be able to hide yourself period.

Did you even read my post and come to that conclusion ?

Do you like feel any sort of emotion, like you know, compassion and empathy, ever ? For people like me for who it was an absolute nightmare to deal with for over a year and a half until I eventually had to leave the very few friends I had on EU to move to a different region?

God this is a vile take, this thread really brings out of the worst in people

I am far from the only one, because people dont speak up doesnt mean it doesnt happen.

[Halivel]

Fine by me, I support the idea even if personally I don't really need it myself.

I wasn't stalked in ff14 myself, but in one of my ex-FC there was a member who was stalked, for over a year - their harasser kept creating alts and new accounts (some reports did go through) just to keep bothering them. Some people are just disconnected from reality and are so heavily obsessed that no matter how many times you blacklist them and report - they keep coming back. Even if SE's management of such situations was better (and it should be) - there's still only so much they can really do when the banned person can simply create new account and start their harassing again since there's no any other way for a victim to protect themselves other than starting from scratch or leaving the game altogether - and they shouldn't feel pressured to do so.

"But cheaters can then hide their ID" is hardly a good excuse for this tool to not be implemented tbh. The information on lodestone mostly matters for players, as SE should have a much more detailed data on characters, including their unique UIDs that don't change over time and should have nothing to do with the lodestone's URL, as well as a history of name updates and transfers. With that in mind, tracking down someone based on report shouldn't be an issue because you generally provide name, server, date, time and place - all of this is sufficient info to find the user in question. So nope, giving people the option to keep their info private from other players on lodestone shouldn't affect our ability to report cheating and harassing.

[LianaThorne]

The only thing I really disagree with strongly is the claims that the GMs take care of situations quickly and we should just leave it to them. My stalking situation personally lasted for a week, it only ended when the person started making death threats. It could have been ended much earlier when I said the person was literally fantasiaing into my other characters and following me around, but the devs didn't find anything worth investigating until the death threats happened. They will get involved but it is absolutely not unless certain boxes are checked. Hell, you'll still find people here speaking about being stalked through the housing system and Square still not taking any action about it.

Now that that's out of the way:

Lodestone should be privatized, however I am firmly against giving anyone who is an actual danger to the community a safe space to hide in (referring to groomers, pedophiles, rapists, scammers, people with thoughts of harming other people, etc.). I don't really care about the vigilante angle people are tossing out, I just believe that certain actions should follow you around for a while and affect your life. I don't trust the GMs to handle anything in a timely manner that doesn't involve "bullying" in the form of unwanted criticism in dungeon content or competition cheating in Ultimates. So, privatizing should be an option but I don't think that anyone who does something actually screwed up should get a free pass and a safety hole to hide in so they can just name change and start all over again. You should be forced to deal with the result of your action and you should have to face some kind of consequence from your peers if you intentionally go out of your way to prey on minors or physically assault someone you met and started a relationship with through this game. People like THAT should be very much public so people can protect themselves as well and be informed on who they're speaking to.


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Edit: Btw, this is all pointless if blacklisting isn't fixed as a whole. If you were ever friends with your stalker, if any of your friends/FC mates were friends with them, if they know your house/apt location in game...privatizing lodestone won't matter. They'll still be able to find you easily since friend removal isn't a 2-way street and there's no way to prevent someone walking to your residence and standing in your lawn for 24h a day. So, honestly I don't want lodestone fixed until blacklisting is.