[Feedback] Blacklist is better, but not good enough.

[Aidorouge]

They wouldn't even need access to more information to do this, my god.

This is about functionality that should be added REGARDLESS of the stupid plugin.

If you people want to whinge about the plugin, there's several other threads where you can do so. This is not intended to be one of them.

Well, I'm sorry to say that discussion about the black list will inevitably result in the plugin being brought up because the latter comprised the former in such an extensive and intrusive way as to render the black list questionably useful in its current state.

I want the black list to do more as well, but I have no faith in Square-Enix to implement new functions without causing more problems until after a fix has occurred.

[Batbrat]

Making the person invisible to you is a great idea, but you also need to be made invisible to them.
No I dont care about what any of you are arguing about. I just want them to do it right.
Allow blacklisting to remove the both of you from each others lists, and also make it so they can't see you just like you can't see them.
That's it.

[Exmo]

While "out of sight, out of mind" is a step in the right direction, there are some major flaws with the current system that allow blacklisted individuals to keep harassing people out of the game.

People I blacklist should NOT be able to still see me/what I post in the game.

Blacklist additions should be account-wide so I don't have to go add people to each character and hope they're still online by the time I relog to do so.

I hope SE fixes this in future updates to help players feel TRULY safe in the game, rather than just providing the fragile illusion of safety that the current system gives us.

This is such a clearly beneficial and obvious improvement to the blacklist, I'm surprised there are people in this thread arguing against it.

[Supersnow845]

This is such a clearly beneficial and obvious improvement to the blacklist, I'm surprised there are people in this thread arguing against it.

Can you genuinely point to literally anyone in this thread directly arguing against OP’s proposals and saying they are bad on their own merits and not “you are trying to decide about the colour of the paint of the walls while the house is burning down” in terms of these proposals being next to useless while the blacklist is open to such exploitation

Nobody disagrees with OP’s proposals in a vacuum, it’s just OP’s proposals are currently useless and that needs to be fixed first

[Veladrys]

Because people are so paranoid about their info being available to bad actors due to the way the system currently works. To an extent, I get it; the current system wasn't thought out particularly well. Based on my own experiences working in the video games industry, I think developers often fail to recognize that harassment is a real and serious problem, that there are people out there who will just cause problems on purpose, and there need to be robust systems in place to ensure that players can protect themselves. From a CS perspective, it seems like a no-brainer, but developers seem to struggle with it I guess because they're so hellbent on player-to-player interaction being paramount to the game that they can't imagine someone would sow chaos and discord just to make others' lives miserable.

So when the system is implemented the way it is in a way that's easily exploitable if you have the requisite coding knowledge, people are understandably paranoid. I think they're wrong to come and argue against the change due to said paranoia, but I understand why they feel the way that they do.

I'm working under the premise that we can have both a better and more secure system that doesn't transmit player data, and a blocklist that prevents the people that I have blocked from seeing me or my chat. Just because the system as it currently stands is broken in one way doesn't mean we can't also advocate for fixes in other ways. This is not a zero sum game, it is not an "either we fix this thing or that thing."

Can you genuinely point to literally anyone in this thread directly arguing against OP’s proposals and saying they are bad on their own merits and not “you are trying to decide about the colour of the paint of the walls while the house is burning down” in terms of these proposals being next to useless while the blacklist is open to such exploitation

Nobody disagrees with OP’s proposals in a vacuum, it’s just OP’s proposals are currently useless and that needs to be fixed first

See, this is the problem with your arguing though. Both of these things CAN be fixed. You're acting like even suggesting any other change aside from "Break Playerscope" is a bad suggestion - whether you think that's what you're arguing or not, that's how it has sounded. People can suggest multiple things, we can agree that the Playerscope functionality needs to be broken first, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also provide feedback about other aspects of the blocklist functionality.

[Supersnow845]

The only thing I am explicitly arguing against is providing the current blacklist more data. When this thread started OP provided no indication that any change was contingent on fixing the flawed nature of the blacklist FIRST (because it absolutely must come first), hell at least one person (it may have been OP) said “I don’t care if they have my data I just don’t want them to see me” and I believe another said “who cares if they have my data all they will have is a list of people they can’t interact with or I can TOS them” completely missing the point of the breadth of the conferred information, indicating they are happy to not break playerscope if they can have the illusion of security offered by OP’s suggestions built upon the current flawed blacklist

I don’t oppose changes to the blacklist to make it more broadly functional and useful (hell I’ve stated 4 times I agree with what OP is proposing in a vacuum, they are good changes) but like I said breaking playerscope has to come first, implementing any of these changes without fixing the problem of the backlist gives playerscope more data and makes it stronger. So yes if you are fine with building the current blacklist and not fixing how playerscope interacts with it (because playerscope is just one way to interact with it, the core problem is sending data to the client that absolutely should not be on the client) then yes I do oppose that change because all that achieves is making the problem worse while giving the illusion of fixing it.

That reply you replied to was simply me disagreeing with exmo’s point stating that people were directly disagreeing with OP’s suggestions, nobody is, people are saying that everything has to be contingent on fixing the core issue first.

But honestly I just shouldn’t have replied at all, OP has made it clear they don’t want to discuss the plugin (as futile as I believe that prospect is), so I’ll just leave it there, I just wanted to attempt to correct exmo’s sweeping (incorrect) statement implying some of us were arguing against better player privacy protection

[Astronis]

This is such a clearly beneficial and obvious improvement to the blacklist, I'm surprised there are people in this thread arguing against it.

There hasn't been anyone arguing against it in this thread on the merits, but I will now: I explicitly do NOT want the blacklist to function in this way. When I blacklist someone I want it to be done with maximum stealth, not a blatant announcement right in front of them (by my avatar vanishing while they look on) that they've been blocked by me.

If it would be optional that would be fine but it certainly would not be, so no, I don't want the blocklist to function in this manner on the merits of it. It is sufficient for me to remove from my digital sight people I no longer want to see or hear from, I don't need it to be done so in a way that announces to them that I've done it.

[Aidorouge]

Because people are so paranoid about their info being available to bad actors due to the way the system currently works. To an extent, I get it; the current system wasn't thought out particularly well. Based on my own experiences working in the video games industry, I think developers often fail to recognize that harassment is a real and serious problem, that there are people out there who will just cause problems on purpose, and there need to be robust systems in place to ensure that players can protect themselves. From a CS perspective, it seems like a no-brainer, but developers seem to struggle with it I guess because they're so hellbent on player-to-player interaction being paramount to the game that they can't imagine someone would sow chaos and discord just to make others' lives miserable.

So when the system is implemented the way it is in a way that's easily exploitable if you have the requisite coding knowledge, people are understandably paranoid. I think they're wrong to come and argue against the change due to said paranoia, but I understand why they feel the way that they do.

I'm working under the premise that we can have both a better and more secure system that doesn't transmit player data, and a blocklist that prevents the people that I have blocked from seeing me or my chat. Just because the system as it currently stands is broken in one way doesn't mean we can't also advocate for fixes in other ways. This is not a zero sum game, it is not an "either we fix this thing or that thing."

The fix has to occur FIRST though, as adding more functionally in the black list's current state is just offering new avenues of exploitation, and we know full well that said exploitation will happen (it's not a matter of "if") because we've seen the lengths people went through to stalk people already and the black list actually HELPED to make that easier because of how it works compared to before.

Feeding it more data at this stage would just be giving the plugin more power, not giving the rest of us more security. When the hole is plugged, THEN I'll see no problem ramping up its functions, within reason anyway.

I know for example some people out there want it where if you black list someone, it blocks that person from showing up in your queue/roulette, but that creates a different risk of abuse that doesn't even require a third-party tool.