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

[Exmo]

You were essentially asking, with your recent posts, for people to give proof that you can see, that proves that this plugin is actually increasing the amount of stalking that is occurring, or if it's just "hypotheticals" that people are going overboard with. You asked for something that is pretty much impossible for anyone in this entire thread to ever prove. There is simply no way to give concrete evidence that this plugin is actually increasing the amount of stalking that is occurring without asking someone who is using said plugin if they are using it for stalking, and I have a feeling they won't be so keen on just going "Absolutely!" to said question so openly. Hence why, to me only in this specific instance since I cannot/will not speak for others, your posts looked like you're just attempting to gaslight people and then give troll responses to them. Hell you even replied to me by opening with me "flying off the handle", which implies that I must be absolute irate with you to have replied in the way I did. I can assure you I am calm and I have no anger towards you. The is the internet after all.

You sound mad. If that's not your intent, you're doing a bad job of communicating your intended tone. But listen, it's clear you only want to interpret things in the least generous way possible, so I'm not interested in talking to you. In the world I live in, it's not impossible for a player to post in this thread or on reddit or anywhere else something along the lines of "my stalker found my alt and messaged me from a new account." We don't need omniscience, we don't need 100% concrete proof, we don't need a total player-wide survey. Let's not be idiotic here, come on.

By the way, putting hypotheticals in scare quotes there is weird behavior considering it was a way someone else described this conversation first. But you're trying to make it out like I'm downplaying things because I used the same word that was in a post I was quoting.

Given how quickly you went on the attack and the attitude of some people here that it doesn't even matter if this plugin has caused harm, it really sounds like some of you don't care about actual victims of harassment, like they're irrelevant to this conversation. You spent so much of your post taking about SE and Yoshi-P it looks like all you want is to score points against the devs.

[BigCheez]

You sound mad. If that's not your intent, you're doing a bad job of communicating your intended tone. But listen, it's clear you only want to interpret things in the least generous way possible, so I'm not interested in talking to you. In the world I live in, it's not impossible for a player to post in this thread or on reddit or anywhere else something along the lines of "my stalker found my alt and messaged me from a new account." We don't need omniscience, we don't need 100% concrete proof, we don't need a total player-wide survey. Let's not be idiotic here, come on.

By the way, putting hypotheticals in scare quotes there is weird behavior considering it was a way someone else described this conversation first. But you're trying to make it out like I'm downplaying things because I used the same word that was in a post I was quoting.

Given how quickly you went on the attack and the attitude of some people here that it doesn't even matter if this plugin has caused harm, it really sounds like some of you don't care about actual victims of harassment, like they're irrelevant to this conversation. You spent so much of your post taking about SE and Yoshi-P it looks like all you want is to score points against the devs.

[EunJuAnna]

That's a "no" then.

people were being stalked and harassed, along with those behaviors crossing the line into irl, BEFORE 7.0 released.

of course this tool made it worse.

[EunJuAnna]

You sound mad. If that's not your intent, you're doing a bad job of communicating your intended tone. But listen, it's clear you only want to interpret things in the least generous way possible, so I'm not interested in talking to you. In the world I live in, it's not impossible for a player to post in this thread or on reddit or anywhere else something along the lines of "my stalker found my alt and messaged me from a new account." We don't need omniscience, we don't need 100% concrete proof, we don't need a total player-wide survey. Let's not be idiotic here, come on.

By the way, putting hypotheticals in scare quotes there is weird behavior considering it was a way someone else described this conversation first. But you're trying to make it out like I'm downplaying things because I used the same word that was in a post I was quoting.

Given how quickly you went on the attack and the attitude of some people here that it doesn't even matter if this plugin has caused harm, it really sounds like some of you don't care about actual victims of harassment, like they're irrelevant to this conversation. You spent so much of your post taking about SE and Yoshi-P it looks like all you want is to score points against the devs.

continue to play devils advocate and keep this thread alive. genuinely helping me keep it on the front of these forums. appreciate it.

[ZXN]

You sound mad. If that's not your intent, you're doing a bad job of communicating your intended tone. But listen, it's clear you only want to interpret things in the least generous way possible, so I'm not interested in talking to you. In the world I live in, it's not impossible for a player to post in this thread or on reddit or anywhere else something along the lines of "my stalker found my alt and messaged me from a new account." We don't need omniscience, we don't need 100% concrete proof, we don't need a total player-wide survey. Let's not be idiotic here, come on.

By the way, putting hypotheticals in scare quotes there is weird behavior considering it was a way someone else described this conversation first. But you're trying to make it out like I'm downplaying things because I used the same word that was in a post I was quoting.

Given how quickly you went on the attack and the attitude of some people here that it doesn't even matter if this plugin has caused harm, it really sounds like some of you don't care about actual victims of harassment, like they're irrelevant to this conversation. You spent so much of your post taking about SE and Yoshi-P it looks like all you want is to score points against the devs.

Lol. Lmao even. Well, I guess you got your response you were fishing for, so enjoy your clap and a half.

Anyway, back to having an actual conversation now-

Just add an anticheat in 8.0 we need it at this rate.

This is not a good idea. Adding anti-cheat will, I suppose, "cripple" the game, since I really don't believe adding it would outright kill FF14 like some players say it would, but it would absolutely hurt the game quite a bit overall. A LOT of people just use mods to change how their character looks to them, be it for RP purposes or because character creator is lacking overall, or use Quality Of Life/Basic Features that should really be in the game at this point in the game's life, like Chat Bubbles. Some also use them for more accessibility options, since the current one implemented in-game are pretty lacking. The Devs no doubt know this, otherwise I think anti-cheat probably would've been thrown in sometime ago given all the situations that came up as a result of the more problematic plugins in the past.

However, this current situation is entirely on Yoshi-P and the Devs to fix. Someone warned that something like this could occur months ago on Reddit, and they were pretty much laughed at for bringing it up as a "who cares lol" type of deal. Now everyone is seeing first hand just how badly Yoshi-P and the Devs implemented the Blacklist system and how it handles the data it receives as this plugin is essentially exploiting that to get all this information to begin with. Them nuking all mods because they don't want to fix their own system would be laughable. They just have to fix their blacklist and how it handles the data it receives in this specific instance.

[MisterNublet]

people were being stalked and harassed, along with those behaviors crossing the line into irl, BEFORE 7.0 released.

of course this tool made it worse.

Maybe I'm clueless, but how does this tool make it worse?

If you blacklist a player, you block their entire account. So even if they were to jump on an alt, or you were playing on an alt, they still cannot interact with you. The blacklist feature makes it harder for those to stalk or harass after 7.0.

The only way they could bypass the blacklist feature is by creating an entirely new service account. They don't need a plugin to do that.

From what I understand, this plugin doesn't even give away personal information, just in game information that is already easy to figure out for the most part.

[Dante131]

Maybe I'm clueless, but how does this tool make it worse?

If you blacklist a player, you block their entire account. So even if they were to jump on an alt, or you were playing on an alt, they still cannot interact with you. The blacklist feature makes it harder for those to stalk or harass after 7.0.

The only way they could bypass the blacklist feature is by creating an entirely new service account. They don't need a plugin to do that.

From what I understand, this plugin doesn't even give away personal information, just in game information that is already easy to figure out for the most part.

it make it worse to provide this information at all. nothing stops a person who already have the criminal mind for stalking someone to create a new account. You dont even have to buy the game since we have such a generous free trial. So people can have multiple accounts just to do harmful activitys. Please dont pretend like people would not do that, people have multiple accounts even without criminal minds in their head. So how it make it worse ? You have a database now which shows everyones character and the alts. Here an example for this situation.

Person A ( attract the stalker by whatever action undercutting market / or not have the same intrest in the person or whatever ) blocks a person
Person B ( the blocked ) is intrested enough to stalk Person A or harras Person A or whatever.
Person B realizes oh i am probably blocked
Person B decides to switch to a new account and there we go nothing will stop them
Person A switches to an alt character to escape
Person B knows this and can just continue his actions on this character.

This is the most basic case of how things can go wrong. But it can gets worse.

Let’s talk about people who use online games as an escape or a safe space separate from their real life. Imagine a teacher, CEO, or business owner dentist, doctor, IT people,someone expected to maintain a certain public image. If they engage in roleplay (RP), ERP, or just act differently in-game, and someone with a grudge gets access to their in-game activities, it’s not impossible that this information could be used to harm them in real life.

Sure, this might sound extreme, but in today’s world, doxing and harassment happen all the time. It’s naive to assume this won’t be misused.


Which one of this cases might or might not happen doesnt really matter since every case is bad and to say its the tools fault is just tone deaf if you and your team which gets money every month created the posibility for such tool.

[Rinoa_353]

Have there actually been any cases of the plugin being used to further stalk players on their alts? We all know that's what it's for and in theory it can be used to that end, but has it happened yet?

It has with me, a stalker I have been dealing with has been wandering around me as my alts they shouldn't know about

[EunJuAnna]

It has with me, a stalker I have been dealing with has been wandering around me as my alts they shouldn't know about

I'm sorry this is happening to you. you don't deserve it, no one does.

[Kuroka]

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..