Online Bullying - A Dev request for a response and discussion

[Fyrebrand]

This isn't about "sucking it up" or whether you think the person being insulted/harassed/trolled should be able to handle it emotionally and move on. This is about what can/should be done to prevent it from happening further. Remarks such as the ones the OP linked to in the screenshot have no place in this game, and don't have to be accepted as inevitable. Square Enix should really look into beefing up their reporting features, as well as cracking down on this kind of behaviour.

Yes, people need to learn how to deal with bullies, difficult people, rudness, etc., in real life. What does that have to do with it? We have to learn to deal with disease, death, theft, and poverty, too. The way to "deal with" problems is not to turn a blind eye, shrug it off, and let them continue to run rampant. That's not "dealing with" anything. That is being lazy, and being a coward.

It's like when people say "Life isn't fair." No, it isn't. Which is why a successful community installs measures to ensure fairness as much as possible. Trolls like these are not a force of nature -- they are selfish individuals who can easily be reported to an authority capable of stopping them.

"These are just immature kids, they will learn some day." Yeah, and they can start learning now that this kind of behaviour won't be tolerated, by having their account terminated. Wouldn't you say that's a good way to learn?

[Trisam]

I'll be honest up front and say I only read the first couple pages of the thread, so my reply may be a little repetitive (in fact, I'm sure it will be as I saw many other replies stating more or less what I wanted to say).

I read the messages in the screenshot, and while I will admit the person was clearly trying to be offensive when he asked the tank to bash the eruptions and nothing else, if this gets your panties in a twist, you aren't going to last long in many games.

People will come out and tell me that they have never run into such language in a game before, this is totally groundbreaking new ways to harass, and I will gladly call them liars.

I have been playing online games since Diablo 1 and behavior like this has been around just as long as I have had the pleasure of dealing with others online.

This is not bullying, this is someone taking out their frustration on a tank who doesn't know the fight. Sure, they could have been nicer about it, but they are not required to care about your delicate sensibilities, especially if you (in this case, the tank) are clearly not taking the time to care about their delicate sensibilities by doing your job correctly during the fight, causing wipes.

As I have nothing to go on past the messages themselves, it's impossible for me to say 100% if it was the tank's fault or if blame was being misplaced on him or her, but from the messages they only seem to be irate at the fact that the tank was unable to properly land their interrupts. It's difficult, having to endure the ridicule of others, but that doesn't make it bullying, it just makes them mean and you oversensitive. I have taken abuse like that countless times, some justified and some unjustified, and the only way you're going to last is if you learn to ignore it and realize it's just words and they only hurt you if you let them. The reason for this is, even with a banning system in place so you can feel your revenge lived out by writing up a ticket that may or may not go anywhere (as you'll never know assuming SE's policy on bans is like every other online companies', they investigate but don't tell you the action taken), these people will still exist and even if you get them banned, they won because you gave them the reaction they were looking for.

Online bullying, or cyberbullying as it's taken to being called the past number of years, is (as was stated earlier in the thread) repeated abuse from the same person or group of people, singling you out for no reason than to cause you anguish. I seriously doubt that the person calling the tank all those expletives then followed him to his server to harass him some more.

Maybe FFXIV in 1.0 had a different community in duty finder than 2.0 does, I can't say as I didn't play then, but a knee jerk "ban everyone who hurts my feelings for using bigoted words on the internet" isn't going to make the new community go away. You can instate bans for bad language, but the best recourse is one from both SE's side and the player's side. Learn to deal with the language and not let it affect you, put them on ignore, and have SE implement a function to disassociate your account from the other person's for future duty finds.

Putting the expectation of resolution solely on SE's shoulders is only going to lead to more hurt feelings when you find out that it didn't work and people are still mean, as banning them is not going to change how a large number of the population acts. I'm wholly willing to support cleaning up the community, but some people prefer to be more crass than others and prefer the company of people who can give just as much as they can take, and restricting their play because you don't like the words they use in a single situation of dealing with them instead of disassociating with them is just as unfair as you would find needing to put up with their abuse. Ostracization is the best recourse, especially where money coming in is concerned, and that is better achieved through ignoring and preventing them to play with you than an outright ban.

I play with friends who say some nasty, terrible things (by the standards of some people in this thread), and I'm willing and able to give right back to them because we as people grew up in environments where such was normal in the real world. We stay friends, don't get upset over trash talking and have a good time all the same. Someone who grew up in a more sheltered environment being unable to cope doesn't move us to offer sympathy as we already know you shouldn't take it personally. Has this netted me some enemies, online and offline? Yes. Has this netted me some people who would rather avoid me than deal with me, online and offline? Yes. Do I particularly care? No, because my friends are not in those two groups, and I'm fine with not talking to someone who I don't see eye to eye with if they don't want to talk to me. Chances are, despite what people say, many of the 'abusers' fall into a similar mindset that I do, because I don't recall ever being bullied offline and my life, while not overly glamorous, is one I enjoy that I fill with people who care about me and who I care about.

I generally don't say anything in these situations where there's a bad player in my group I don't know personally who can't do his job and so the dungeon fails because my opinion is unpopular and I'd rather just kick them and find someone who can do their job, something that we're unable to currently do. It may seem harsh, but you can practice interrupts on creatures outside until you get it down pat to try again, you're wasting not only your time but the time of three other people if you don't have the personal ability to do what's necessary to complete the instance. Sure, they could have been nicer about it, and they should probably get a warning for language, but you should also learn to cope so it doesn't ruin your day. I'm not saying this as a resolution, I'm offering a word of advice because even if they get banned, there are a lot more like them out there who aren't banned and probably never will be, despite tools being in place.

Edit#2:

The reason for my way of thinking is I believe people care far too much about what someone else thinks of them or says to them. I have no time to care about someone who only wants to be mean to me (especially if it's just verbally, what does it matter?), so I don't spare them the effort to do so, and I preach this to everyone who has a problem with mean language in a video game or real life. I prefer colourful language because English, my tongue of choice, has so many words to use and it'd be a shame not to find a place for them all, something I blame on my mother as she was an English teacher.

This quote is fitting, if a little pretentious. “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” - Buddha

/rambling

[KonaZumi]

While I haven't had any problems with trolling in this game, I would just leave the instance and re-roll with players from my own server (DF is crap, anyways). And get the other players to leave as well. That's the best revenge for the Gamer troll. Make him either die constantly in game, or make him re-roll. Report him. And move on~


Edit
Double points, if you get them either temp ban or perma banned. Because harassment is still technically against the rules,
And the Business world doent mess around with rule breaking~

[Bahram]

If online harassment is enough to make you come to these forums and cry, the real world is going to eat you alive when you move out of mommy's basement.

In the "real world," people get their asses beat for the shit said in that screenshot. People lose their jobs and their social standing over that shit. We're not the ones that will be eaten alive, they will.

[Evilized]

oh, i forgot to mention OP

auto translate your message into japanese using google translate when you send in your screenshot and they will be banned 100%.

[Xerich]

I love people that think not doing anything is better than being pro-active in these situations. Anybody that feels that way is a coward. It's not about "having thicker skin" or "sucking it up" as all the big, bearded bros with barbed wire tattoos on their arms would tell you. You guys are so tough and cool, I wish I could be as passive and uncaring as all of you badasses in this thread.

It's about building a better community as a whole.

This isn't the real world, this is a video game we pay to play, created by Square-Enix. The real world rules don't apply, but this game does have it's own set of rules and regulations. We can choose to ignore them or enforce them, or in some cases, bring in better options to handle these situations.

[Diavolo]

Haven't seen so many internet tough guys all in one thread.

It's nothing to do with being an internet tough guy. I just learned at an early age, thanks to my wonderful mother, that words only have as much power as you give them. If you give them no meaning, they have none. Being a veteran for my respective country, I can honestly say that someone talking trash on the internet is the least of my concerns. 9 times out of 10, they wouldn't say it face to face, so why lend it any mind?

[necrosis]

I don't really think that's the right mentality to have.

Yes it is. This is a GAME. Not real life. If someone bothers you there are options. Like leave the party or just get up and walk away from the game for a while, blacklist them...

Your options compared to an actual physical confrontation are much greater. I do not condone bullying and agree physical "in person" bullying is a serious issue. But complaining about "online" or "virtual" bullying is just stupid. YOU HAVE OPTIONS.

[Xerich]

It's nothing to do with being an internet tough guy. I just learned at an early age, thanks to my wonderful mother, that words only have as much power as you give them. If you give them no meaning, they have none. Being a veteran for my respective country, I can honestly say that someone talking trash on the internet is the least of my concerns. 9 times out of 10, they wouldn't say it face to face, so why lend it any mind?

That doesn't mean that we should ignore it.

Just because you learned to take shit and walk away doesn't mean people should have to put up with this behavior.

Christ, think about something other than yourself for once.

[Jayrune]

I had a nice reply written up that I felt covered the points I wanted to hit, but unfortunately the 1000 character limit prevents me from posting both the long version or the abbreviated version, so instead of posting something even shorter that may lead to misconceptions about what I'm trying to say, I'm going to go off topic for this one post and voice my displeasure at the incredibly short word limit.

The 1000 character limit does not apply when you edit a post, so you can get around it by typing it up, Copying it to the clipboard, posting a 10 character post, then clicking the edit button and pasting the real post.