Re: Regarding the Use of Third-Party Programs and Player Safety

[MisterNublet]

Please this is no victim blaming, but how the hell does one get stalked and who on earth is this bored or sick to actually stalk someone..? Ive been wondering since years now..

It's the RP community.

FFXIV's RP scene just happens to be one of the worst, childish, sensitive, and antagonistic RP communities.

Vast majority that complain about "stalking" and "harassment" are abusing the words and are not actually suffering from either.

I run a nightclub and seen first hand the drama.

"They said my RP was awful." "They said they don't want to RP with me." "They didn't like my glams."

Now they cannot be in the same area together without becoming hysterical, and have actually asked me to remove the other player from the venue.

Did they say anything to you? "No."
Are they near you? "No."
Are they even talking about you. "No."

"But the player's pixels on screen is causing me mental anguish."

[ZXN]

Please this is no victim blaming, but how the hell does one get stalked and who on earth is this bored or sick to actually stalk someone..? Ive been wondering since years now..

Any answer given would just be scratching the surface really as there are A TON of factors to be considered, so it's a bit...difficult to really answer this. But I guess to give super basic answer: you get stalked/stalk someone simply because -------. No I did not censor anything: you could replace the ------- with pretty much anything you can think of, even something minor, and it can be someone's reason to stalk someone / get stalked. For example: you bump into someone at a grocery store, they drop something because of it, you pick it up for them and hand it back and then leave. Sounds like you just being a nice person since the bump is what caused them to drop said something and you just picked it up for them, what's the deal? To them, however: that could unironically be a reason for them to start stalking you. From taking revenge, to being para-social, to having mental health issues, to wanting to be controlling, to having low self-esteem, and many, many more reasons: if you can think it, then it can be a legitimate reason to stalk someone / get stalked, both IRL and online.

I won't pretend to know the RP community for FF14 that well since I keep to myself, but I have no doubt that like other RP communities; there are absolutely a few who take it WAY too seriously, and just like all the reasons listed above, anything you can think of in-game can be a reason for them to stalk you / get stalked.

"They said I was bad at RP!"

"They didn't like my glamour outfit!"

"They undercut me on the marketboard!" <- [This one here is why this 3rd party program actually exists apparently: because the maker wanted to know who the retainers of the person undercutting them on the marketboard belonged to.]

Overall, to put as absolutely basic and blunt as possible: People stalk and get stalked simply because. Probably not a good answer as a whole since answering "How does someone get stalked / why does someone want to stalk?" is pretty difficult due to all the factors and parts that make up each specific stalking situation, but hopefully it offers a bit of insight into it.

[Rinoa_353]

Please this is no victim blaming, but how the hell does one get stalked and who on earth is this bored or sick to actually stalk someone..? Ive been wondering since years now..

My kindness is often confused with flirting for some odd reason with a large percentage of guys in this game.... Many of them treat this game as a sort of dating sim despite me friendzoning them from the start because I don't do long distance online relationships nor am I looking to date as well when I play this game to have fun and escape from the stresses irl brings around me. This particular stalker follows me around after I rejected their advances and they also tried to blackmail me (failed) in hopes of causing friction between my friends and I. They follow me around and stand near me looking like Michael Myers and emoting at me too even though I don't see them anymore but my friends who visit my homes seen them there. They have tried talking through my friends to get me to unblock them and more. I'm generally very forgiving and gave this guy many chances to be friends only but he always ends up abusing my kindness in hopes of getting me to be subservient to their twisted whims..... The terms of the blackmail (happened outside of the game) was for me to be subservient to them and also control what I said and who I can be around with.... Thankfully my friends saw through his deceit and what he tried to blackmail me with (He used 3rd party tools to have my characters naked and spread online as revenge porn of sorts but that doesn't really bother me since it's not myself irl). All of this took place outside the game, he is smart enough not to harass through tells/say chat directly to avoid the ire of GM's. Fortunately, I never gave them information about myself irl so it's only confined to the game and rarely outside through social media when he tries to contact me through friends.

Did you blacklist them?

Yes I did but he creates trial characters and my friends see him once in a while when he stalks me.

[SaberEx]

My kindness is often confused with flirting for some odd reason with a large percentage of guys in this game.... Many of them treat this game as a sort of dating sim despite me friendzoning them from the start because I don't do long distance online relationships nor am I looking to date as well when I play this game to have fun and escape from the stresses irl brings around me. This particular stalker follows me around after I rejected their advances and they also tried to blackmail me (failed) in hopes of causing friction between my friends and I. They follow me around and stand near me looking like Michael Myers and emoting at me too even though I don't see them anymore but my friends who visit my homes seen them there. They have tried talking through my friends to get me to unblock them and more. I'm generally very forgiving and gave this guy many chances to be friends only but he always ends up abusing my kindness in hopes of getting me to be subservient to their twisted whims..... The terms of the blackmail (happened outside of the game) was for me to be subservient to them and also control what I said and who I can be around with.... Thankfully my friends saw through his deceit and what he tried to blackmail me with (He used 3rd party tools to have my characters naked and spread online as revenge porn of sorts but that doesn't really bother me since it's not myself irl). All of this took place outside the game, he is smart enough not to harass through tells/say chat directly to avoid the ire of GM's. Fortunately, I never gave them information about myself irl so it's only confined to the game and rarely outside through social media when he tries to contact me through friends.





Yes I did but he creates trial characters and my friends see him once in a while when he stalks me.

LOL the blackmail


I want to remind everybody here that it's a video game, thank you for your time

[KairiElise]

I'm just gonna put down some thoughts I have regarding this whole situation with the stalking/harassment third party program via the marketboard and SE's downright failure with the blacklisting system. Personally I believe something as malicious as this (player scope) was only going to happen in a matter of time. I've seen so many threads made on here and reddit from players who have voiced their terrible experiences with stalking and targeted harassment by other crazy players who go to extreme lengths to make their gaming life miserable. I've also seen some of these people downplayed by some in the community, ignored, made a mockery of or silenced in general. It's a shame that it took something as awful as this for others to realize the dangers of what these bad actors are capable of. Not only to current victims, but potentially yourself. The person who made this plugin clearly only has malicious goals and anyone that downloads it certainly does too. FFXIV is no longer a safe place when it comes to privacy. Any alts you made to escape, retainers you didn't want known, your location, everything is compromised because of it. So how can anyone have a peace of mind playing your game SE when our privacy is undermined? Why did it take so long for you to fix the blacklist only for you to completely bomb it by putting it on the client side not the server side? There are so many ways this whole thing could of been handled better.

And with that said, I'd like to add some ways I think would combat this. I played a bit of XI back in the day. I liked how the Auction House worked. Essentially, it was the marketboard for XI. Instead of retainers, you sold everything you picked up or made in game through that. You'd set your price and wait for a sale. Once the sale was made you'd go back and check in with the Auction House to see what sold or go to your Mog Home to check your Mail to obtain your gil. Players wouldn't know who they were buying from or who they were selling to until the end of the transaction in the selling history. And it didn't matter where you sold it from, Sandoria, Windurst, Bastok etc because everything was done via the Auction House not by retainer. Your location did not matter. I think SE should follow this outline now that this has happened. Retainers can still function as storage units, but they no longer can sell your items nor do they have your crafted signatures. (1/2)

[KairiElise]

XI also had an anonymous feature and those that played can correct me if I am wrong but putting in /anon privated your info from searches while in game. It made you appear as a ??? when people examined you. I think this feature could help alleviate stalking. If updated and applied to this game, the blacklisted players could no longer search you through player search in game, tomestone, fflogs or whatever other websites that stalkers use as tools to find you. You would be completely invisible to the account holder and any of their alts. You would have control over your privacy and be free of those that have bad intent and essentially making this plugin useless. (2/2)

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It’s hard to give the ‘right answer’ as to why people stalk other than “it’s crazy people”. Doesn’t matter whether it’s from RP or other subset of community. All it takes is just one person or group crazy & wanting enough to cause harm to their target that they dislike for whatever reason.

Google & take your time reading the “FFXIV Koike Incident” and “FFXIV Dingo Case”. While they’re not about stalking strictly, they’re certainly something that can happen more easily should more and more people, good or bad, becomes aware of the BL system flaw. Besides, oftentimes, ‘stalking’ doesn’t necessarily means ‘just following you around lol.’ They worsen the spaces you regularly go to and tend to affect those that normally hangs with you as well.

[dsgawwewerfw]

eureka and bosnia have player position checks

[EunJuAnna]

[I]Free Trial Players cannot use the "shout," "yell," or "tell" in-game chat options during the Free Trial.

noticeably "say" is not listed here

Person A uses situational awareness and blacklists Person B's new account.

great so we get to play a more intense version whack a mole than we already were. lovely.



I've seen people who don't participate in RP get stalked in game and it translated to irl soon after. your experience of running a venue is not the end all be all. so miss me with trying to minimize this issue.

SE has been so so hands off when it comes to the stalking problem their game has had for a long long time. this is just another example of that behavior. blatant rookie coding mistake that actively made the stalking issues in this game worse, through a function that was supposed to help the issue.

[MisterNublet]

noticeably "say" is not listed here

Nope, say isn't listed there. But being limited to say chat where everyone can see it, and report it, (and limited to certain expansions) goes against the previous replyer's narrative that Free Trial accounts are very "generous" in allowing players to stalk.

great so we get to play a more intense version whack a mole than we already were. lovely.

A half second inconvenience to add someone to the blacklist vs navigating SE's "1990's" website to create a new service account.

I've seen people who don't participate in RP get stalked in game and it translated to irl soon after. your experience of running a venue is not the end all be all. so miss me with trying to minimize this issue.

I'm sorry that the "people" you know ended up being stalked IRL because they gave away their personal information to strangers on the internet.

SE has been so so hands off when it comes to the stalking problem their game has had for a long long time. this is just another example of that behavior. blatant rookie coding mistake that actively made the stalking issues in this game worse, through a function that was supposed to help the issue.

The plugin doesn't bypass the Blacklist feature which voids out the blacklisted players entire account. Which is an improvement against stalking than it was prior to 7.0, even with the vulnerability. People asking for the removal of the current Blacklist feature are wanting CB3 to remove the only defense a player currently has.

Should the coding been as half-arsed as it is currently? Absolutely not and it should be fixed. But this isn't some massive breach in personal data and security that everyone is making it out to be.

Rinoa_353's post sounds legit because it makes sense with the systems in place, and I'm terribly sorry they have been dealing with the harassment. No one should have to deal with something like that. Sadly, a lot of the malicious harassment takes outside of the FFXIV servers which the Dev's are unable to do a whole lot about, but it does sound like the Blacklist feature is working appropriately for her by making her stalker invisible in game. My only concern is why do her friends continue to interact with her stalker, and why are they informing her that her stalker is nearby?

Everyone else's exaggerations and hysterics reeks of attention-seeking and has people who want to understand the issue rolling their eyes instead.