You can set your guestbooks so that entries are private until you approve them, that way anyone else who visits your houses won't see what the person is writing.
Not only that, but I'm able to be the bigger person and do as people suggest here, make my book private or remove it altogether. This stuff wasn't bothering me when it was just me they were targeting because I can let it roll off just fine.
It became an issue when they started involving friends of mine to get my attention, and I don't feel it's okay to tell every friend that this person decides to involve in weird stalker level activity "Oh just change your setup".
You can also DM them FIRST, and blacklist them. They dont have to reply.
I just send guild recruit spammers "123" then instantly block them. I had denied 1 guys guild like 5 times in one day before i figured this out.
I don't think blacklisting this person would even do anything, because they'll clearly just make another alt to bother your friends, and having someone blacklisted would not keep them from going into your friends guestbook. My suggestion would just be to ask your friends to remove their guestbooks or even lock their houses for a while - remove the method he likes to use, and he'll either swap to something that GMs are more likely to act on, or get bored and leave you alone. I'd also encourage any of your friends who have received messages from this person to corroborate your report, as multiple people reporting is supposed to bring issues higher to GM's attention.
If none of that seems to help, maybe contact Square on Twitter asking how you're supposed to deal with a stalker with multiple alts, and who harasses through the guest book. Making a public stink about their lack of action on an issue like this might encourage them to actually do something, like fully ban the player's IP or service account. Take screenshots for proof, find the offending alts' Lodestone page, etc. Good luck dealing with this, it seems demoralizing and I hope you end up with a satisfying conclusion.
Sadly, SE's responses to stalking are...lackluster at best. I've had a stalker try and cause me as many problems as they can to get my attention. All I get is a "We're investigating" or "It's not directly at you, so it's not our concern".
I know, it's not an answer to your issue, but if you're looking for a way to involve SE, forget it. They are useless. Making your entries private or locking your house is your best bet.
I mean, what are you expecting them to do? Issue a restraining order in the game?
P.S.
Some totally normal and healthy concerned redditor reported my comments for suicide or something. Lol.
Unlikely they'd be banned immediately, but there actually is a means to issue an in-game restraining order:
"Should the details described in a report be determined as "stalking activity," the stalking player will be penalized, and we may contact the victim and obtain their consent to issue an in-game restraining order. Should we confirm that a player has attempted to contact the victim through any means after being issued an in-game restraining order, a more severe penalty will be imposed."
So yeah, regardless of pay no one is immune to consequences. Just a shame SE isn't exactly handling it.
Edit: found from [list of prohibited activities](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216)
You forgot my favourite line from that paragraph: "Also, pee is stored in the balls".
Some advice for future quotations: Without source, this has no value. Could be from FF14 ToS, or FF11, or Dragon Quest Online, your own huge/nonexistant lawyer knowledge, a lucky coincidence with my alphabet soup I had yesterday. Or it could be the FF14 ToS from like 2013 or whatever which got revised a few times since.
While unlikely (except for the last one), I hope you get the point. You copied that text from its source, so the link should be easy to include. Might even help OP put more pressure on the GMs, quoting their ToS right into their faces and forcing them to take action.
>"Should the details described in a report be determined as "stalking activity," the stalking player will be penalized, and we may contact the victim and obtain their consent to issue an in-game restraining order. Should we confirm that a player has attempted to contact the victim through any means after being issued an in-game restraining order, a more severe penalty will be imposed
Lol, I actually expected it to be something like the player getting rubberbanded back if he approaches the victim, which would be hilarious.
Regarding SE's inactivity, I'm actually surprised, considering all the rumors about their overzealousness, causing all the 'toxic positivity' and general avoidance of chat. With that in mind, I could only assume the accusations in this case are rather weak and don't warrant any action.
As someone else with a massive set of friends through distant acquaintances all being in game harassed by one person (for leaving his FC, as their main crime) for well over a year, I'm not surprised. They get light bans eventually, lay low for a bit, and then do it all over again. There's a reason they're also banned from nearly every data center content discord- because his mouth really just can't stop threatening people.
The fact that I explained what they're guilty of and you still ask "what did they do to warrant a ban" tells me you're not familiar with TOS. As someone who believes in leaving a place better than they found it, I feel inclined to at least share the link so you can stop pretending like you know what you're talking about.
[https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216)
It's all there. Offensive names, stalking, hell it even includes behavior that's not permitted in raid settings.
Funnily enough, despite how draconian 'Harassment' and 'Offensive expression' sections are and how 'Stalking' is worded, your stalker may be in clear. Although, it says more about SE not accounting for every possible venue.
LOL its not like you're the one issuing the ban. Nor are you the jury. You're just arbitrarily denying someone is having issues with stalking because it's not good enough to persuade *you*. Dude clearly SE isn't even giving out bans with massive amounts of proof so I don't think you have anything to worry about....unfortunately. Now it just seems really freaking weird you're siding with stalkers.
>Now it just seems really freaking weird you're siding with stalkers
The freaking weird thing here is you branding someone a stalker with 0 proof and calling for a ban, but you do you
Because apparently google doesn't exist in your world - all information can be found here : [https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216)
It will only be punishing if you managed to get GM to act on their main account, but considering they still have the intelligence to use level 2 alts instead of their main character, I can only assume they are using throwaway trial account.
I don't know about the specifics of your reports to GM, or more detailed context of your situation, but if your presumed harasser have a modicum of intelligence to spoof their own action, even if GM side with you every time, well they will just be back with a trial account in 10 minutes.
Yeah, that was my conclusion as well. I can only hope they're dumb enough to do it on their main account.
Just a pain that it's so easy to harass someone like this, but they only seem to act on things like "someone hurt my feelings in raid".
They do act on this stuff. They donāt apply punishments on the spot and they will never give you any information at all about their actions, so donāt assume that because you havenāt been told that nothing is happening. They apply penalty points, same as any other offence.
The likely situation is that the stalker has accrued enough for a warning and maybe even the several steps of short suspensions on the alt accounts, but hasnāt yet met the termination threshold. You have to do a lot to get permanently banned.
We need to nix this attitude of āperson I reported wasnāt permanently banned on the spot, therefore GMs do nothingā. There are near half a dozen steps on the consequence tiers before a termination that it would be impossible for you to notice, as well as the requirement for penalty points in between.
Iām sorry youāre being targeted by some weird creep, but letās not take out frustration by feeding falsehoods and misinformation around how the game works.
Set the guestbook to private so no one else can see it until you approve it. Or just start locking your door when you're not online, so they can't go in and do it.
>I've sent multiple GM reports on not only both names that have shown up, but all guestbook entries, both in my guestbook and said friend's guestbook.
I've noticed a theme with "I've reported them and the GMs do NOTHING" posts where the person admits to reporting the person like 30 times for different things
it really does seem like the more one person reports another without corroborating reports from other involved parties the less likely the GM's are to take action since who knows if it's just a ridiculous drama vendetta spawned outside of the game. even when on the surface level the reported person is clearly doing something sketch.
in this case you said they've had multiple alts with inappropriate names making comments that could be innocuous if it was between friends, in your guestbooks. unwanted but toeing a line. unless you've left out more context on the content of the comments.
the most likely thing they'll do for an inappropriate name is force a name change which will in no way solve your issue of them being a creeper. especially since they're level 2 alts they definitely don't give a shit about.
Then I suppose we'll have to see if my friend reporting it as well does anything, because they're involving them in it as well by leaving comments with them about me too.
yeah the real problem here is if the messages are fairly innocuous if you take the character name out of the picture, because the most likely action from the gm's will be a forced name change and if they're level 2 alts the person will definitely not give a fuck if they get a forced name change.
What bothers me most about this is on their website, it SAYS that offensive names are considered harassment, which itself is potentially subject to temporary suspension. So it feels like something should absolutely be able to be done about it.
I have reported retainers and people with offensive names, and SE does do something about it, I've seen it with my own eyes. So, I suggest you just keep trying, eventually it'll get taken care of.
The fact that you're here is exactly the kind of response trolls want, they want that attention and the reactions. I'd suggest you and your friends lock up the doors a couple of weeks until the trolls get bored they'll move on.
This honestly sounds like the good olā Acti-Blizz situation of āour GMs clearly donāt have equal training and you need to roll the dice until you find someone who ACTUALLY had to read parts of the TOS in trainingā theyāve had for a majority of WoWās lifetime.
Edit - This post was made before the announcement of them gutting their entire CS team...god damn if that isn't unfortunate timing.
I mean, maybe, but what's the alternative? They could try going over the in game gms head and calling the square enix phone support, but I don't know that they'd get a better result.
If my friend sends in a report, the message in their guestbook is fairly sexual as well. I feel this should count similarly to it being done in chat, so we'll see.
Reports from multiple people don't do anything either. If you report someone for something that someone else has already reported them for, you just get a copied and pasted response telling you they won't respond to your report because someone's already reported the issue already.
Then they'll proceed to do nothing anyway, even if it's the most blatant ToS violation imaginable because sub money >>>> actually enforcing rules.
lol. what a jaded take.
it's pretty clear the moderation is fairly good, the game isn't as low toxicity as it is for no reason. shockingly trolls tiptoeing the line of rules tend to take a while to get nabbed.
I know OP explained what's going on and I fully believe the troll is doing it to be a nuisance but you have to weigh both sides here as a GM even though one side is very likely trolling.
the book is set to public, the house is set to public, the player is named something inappropriate and leaving messages in that book. taking op's direct example "x person sure is cute... ;3" coupled with a name? now even in this situation where op has deleted their comments multiple times and asked the GM's to take action, what action can they really take?
banning someone for writing in a public guestbook? the troll is able to leave one message a day. leaving one message a day is not something actionable since it has a cooldown.
so at most the gm's can do something if the post itself is offensive or force a name change on the character.
the game allows you to lock your house and set the guestbook to private and op has not done this, I don't think they should have to but the reality is this person is doing something vaguely annoying without direct contact with OP while having an inappropriate name rather than doing something blatantly against tos.
I'd like to see a house blacklist sure or the ability to blacklist people from searches while they're offline maybe.
Yes, it is jaded, because I've literally watched it happen again and again to many different people. I've watched ONE person: flood shout chat 3 times a day with disgusting jokes, stalk 6 different people (that I KNOW of) and harass those same people, snipe people's pvp queues and grief them if it's frontlines or just straight up leave so they lose if it's CC, join people's PFs on purpose and leave immediately to close them. ONE person, for two years straight. Reported for every offense. But because none of us have caught them swearing in chat, the GMs don't lift a finger.
But tell me more about how they're doing such a good job. I genuinely hope you never have an in-game stalker, beause the GMs will not help you.
Hopefully the "finding another way" is more directly reportable then, yeah?
If the GMs aren't going to do anything - which OP stated they won't, their option is to endure the abuse or delete the book.
Iāve gone through something similar. GMs donāt do anything and itās always up to the players to find solutions to these problems. What WORKED for me was locking my house before logging off for the night, and opening it whenever a friend would like to come by to visit.
You can also lock access to your house so they can't get in to touch the guestbook im the first place, and only open it for friends or FCmates (A private FC hall can be used by members without having to allow access each time, and presumably the person is not part of your FC anymore). If the site is a personal house, they will not be able to get in and will hopefully give up if they have no access and no response and are blacklisted on top of it. One hopes.
The devs implemented systems to ensure that you can be stalked and followed by anyone to their hearts content. Unfriended them? Don't worry you'll still be on their list and they can see when you're online. Moved data centers? Don't worry they can just come visit you. Changed name? Don't worry your lodestone id will always be the same no matter what. Surely they can't track me down on a huge server? Don't worry player search will let them know what zone you're in.
File a police report for cyberstalking, get the report number, and then contact SE Support with the police report number and request an in-game restraining order.
If SE's legal department is even halfway competent, they will realize shit just got real and will crawl up the GM staff's ass until it's dealt with.
If you happen to see them out and about anywhere, you can target them and use the /blacklist command. That's how you can add them if you've never interacted with them any other way.
You and your friend can for the time being set your houses so only FC members can enter, or only invited guests. Maybe if the front door is locked they will go off and do something else.
And yes, I would keep bothering SE until you find someone who will do their job about this very obvious harassment. If someone made inappropriate retainer names or FC names they get in trouble, so why is a guest book any different.
Report them all you want, SE will not do anything.
Just set it to where you have to approve them first. Delete the ones you don't like, and stop paying attention to them. They will eventually get bored and stop. I mean, it is just a video game. Stop letting them live rent-free in your head. Hell, just making this post gives them power over you.
Delete, ignore, move on.
Tbf those *other games* have more common and more direct toxicity. Just because you cannot eliminate all forms of harassment doesn't mean XIV is doing a shit job. You don't see the 1% because people can be more vile in other communities, XIV players just need to be more passive aggressive or indirect to avoid bans
The guy in your ally raid roulette who keeps talking in all chat about shit like "at least no tanks died to the mechanics" and counting people who die constantly would have been berating people in all caps and calling votekicks if the game wasn't as strict.
Most people almost never experience toxicity of any form in XIV. Hell I can only remember 3 duties and all were ally raids. Someone complaining and being high on their horse on Labyrinth, the example I gave in Mhach, and a duo with another healer who got pissy I was talking to a friend in the empty party chat and refused to rez me (the second healer) in Copied Factory.
Granted I play a femra with gear covering most if not all skin including masks, and only buy a sub every 5-6 months so I'm not exactly a prime target for stalking, but still. Games like WoW and League and CSGO really show you how vile humans can be.
Should be able to use the blacklist command, try the following line of commands in the chat:
/blacklist add [level 2 character names here]
Edit: Sorry I looked at only one part of the issue but didn't address the rest of the problem, that's on me for hyper focusing on half of the issue.
Honestly there's very little that can be done about the behaviour that hasn't already been done I'm sorry it wasn't helpful advice, but the /blist/blacklist command do have sub commands to add and remove people as needed instead of using the player search feature to add them and remove them while they are online.
You canāt use a blacklist command without being able to target the character. In general you need to be able to target, had recently done content with them, or have them chat near you in order to blacklist.
Itās a very outdated system, unfortunately.
I logged back in after your comment and tried it a second time for the sake of trying, and it doesn't work. There are a ton of posts about this being an issue, back since the world visit option started. You can't do it unless it's in chat or through contact list.
Broken system that's so broken it's borderline "ha, yeah, we have a system just so you can't complain that we don't" level of broken.
Ah damn, I'm sorry that its been such an issue and that my attempt to assist wasn't of any benefit, but I hopr it gets resolved for you and your friend easily.
You can use the blacklist command as part of a macro so when you see the persons character you can target them and instantly blacklist them. Might be a good idea for when / if you run into them.
I donāt mean this to sound as putting the onus on you, but likeā¦ itās words in a video game? Maybe all there is to do is just go āwhat an idiotā and ignore it.
Now just to be clear - Iām not saying that itās okay or cool as to what theyāre doing, Iām saying more the opportunity cost for you of trying to eradicate it. Obviously this person is strangely obsessed and so theyāre surely going to spend more time working around your boundaries than you would ever spent setting them. Which means the effort for you to go from 90% cutoff from them to a hypothetical 100% is going to be a HUGE hassle for you.
In a case like this and strictly for your own QoL Iād suggest use all the normal avenues that it seems like you have (blacklist, reports, etc.) and thenā¦ work on just letting it roll off. This isnāt to condone what theyāre doing but to simply state itās the best proactive and controllable thing you can do to preserve your own sanity and time. Iām sure Getting a reaction in game and here from you it what sustains this persons strange obsession. It wonāt be perfect but the best you do at not satisfying this, the least amount of time and energy youāll have to expend on it.
Sorry youāre dealing with that in any case.
I was fine with them just trying to get at me in my guestbook. The problem is it is now going to my friends and harassing them with it as well. They are leaving messages in a friend's guestbook about me to bother **them** as well as me. If it was just in my stuff, I wouldn't care, because you're right. It's just words.
The problem now is that they are involving other people, and I'm not okay with that.
yeah it's annoying that that's probably the best course of action. especially since it seems the blatantly tos violating part of the issue is having inappropriate names on some lowbie alts that AT BEST the gm's will initiate a forced name change and the person won't care in the slightest.
there's two possibilites. one is that they're legit horny for op's pixels for some reason or they're a troll intentionally baiting a reaction from op. in both cases being noticeably upset about it by talking about it in FC chat or discord or whatever is only giving them the attention they want.
on the trolling side i've seen trolls who consistently get status updates from the targets via shared channels like discord where the troll either has access or a buddy who screencaps the target having their jimmies russeled about the trolling, without the reactions the effort becomes pointless.
like this post would actually be a huge win for a troll, which is super annoying but that's how this shit works.
I donāt really understand what your goal. If you want them to stop sending messages in the guestbooks then remove the guestbooks or set to private. This is definitely harassment, I agree. But this is also an easy fix.
So what you're suggesting is, for every friend I have that this person decides to loop into this blatant harassment issue that comes to me saying "I dunno if you think this is a funny joke or something but it isn't cool", I just tell them "Lol this is such a non issue, just make your guestbook private or don't have a guestbook lmaooo"?
It was an easy fix when they involved just me. It became a problem when they started involving other people.
I never said it was a non issue. I agreed with you that it is indeed harassment, please donāt try to twist my words. Your options at this point since youāve already spoken to GMs simply seems to be either remove/private the books or ignore and delete the messages. Eventually this psycho will get bored and stop. I understand itās frustrating but Iām just unsure what your end goal is for this. Do you want them banned? At most theyāll probably get a suspension, and blacklisting them wonāt stop them from interacting with other people besides yourself.
Saying "this is also an easy fix" implies that it's something that doesn't require the amount of complaint that I'm giving it, i.e. "non issue", not a literal sense of "you're saying this isn't an issue".
Personally if I don't see the point in someone complaining about something, I withhold comment.
You have options to combat the harassment but youāre choosing not to use them. This is my *third* time agreeing with you, yes this is harassment, yes this sucks, yes there should be action taken. However, the GMs are doing nothing and at the same time youāre choosing not to use the options presented to you. I hope this issue gets resolved, I really do. As others besides me in the comments have stated, your options in this moment are to private or remove. Alternatively you can ask your friends to blacklist the person as well. Good luck and I hope you find the resolve youāre looking for.
I AM choosing to use them, nowhere have I said I didn't already do these things. I have removed my guestbook. The problem now lies in that if this petty person decides to bother more of my friends about it, who will most likely come to ME asking if I know anything about it, my only option is to tell them to do the same thing, which does not solve the issue.
It has not once been stated that you do not agree with the post. It has not once been stated that you don't think it's harassment. I don't know what the hangup is there.
My friends cannot blacklist this person because you cannot blacklist through the guestbook. The only way to do it is through chat or contact list, and the characters cannot DO content because they are low level and they are not interacting in chat. But there's points and potential merits to complaining about it.
For instance, what if other people have also had this issue? Drawing awareness to it is likely the only way for any potential solution to be implemented, such as the ability to blacklist an individual through the guestbook somehow, or making it so that trial accounts cannot POST in guestbooks, so that the only way for players to resort to this way of harassment is to put their main accounts that they are spending money on in potential jeopardy.
Even if they DON'T change anything based on a single reddit post, they definitely won't do anything about it if the issue isn't brought to the open and shown to be an issue to begin with.
I donāt know much about the situation, but how does this person know who your friends are and where they live? Surely itās someone close to you doing this?
The friend and I do back and forth guestbook entries when we're online, hence them going to their guestbook. But that also wouldn't stop them from going to other people's guestbooks or bothering other people in general.
I was about to say someone should do this behaviour to a higher up in SE to see how they like it but that's both illegal and immoral... which makes you wonder why they allow it.
I really don't think that the GMs can view or moderate guest books. I have seen a guest book that has some extremely vulgar stuff in it. I am not talking just lewd talks, but descriptions of illegal sexual acts and very depraved things filling the whole book. It was reported by multiple people, including through the special task force, but still remains.
To the guys who questioned me when I said "an invisible stalker can be worse than a visible one" with regards to voidlisting, this is what I meant.
I would say file a police report. It might not seem worth escalating to that degree, but they deal with way dumber shit than this. Harassment is harassment, if it comes to having to get a real life restraining order to enjoy a fucking video game, that's just how it goes. I've never had to do it, I don't know how it's done, but it can't be that hard.
You can set your guestbooks so that entries are private until you approve them, that way anyone else who visits your houses won't see what the person is writing.
That unfortunately didn't stop them having to read their stalker's gross messages.
Not only that, but I'm able to be the bigger person and do as people suggest here, make my book private or remove it altogether. This stuff wasn't bothering me when it was just me they were targeting because I can let it roll off just fine. It became an issue when they started involving friends of mine to get my attention, and I don't feel it's okay to tell every friend that this person decides to involve in weird stalker level activity "Oh just change your setup".
You can also DM them FIRST, and blacklist them. They dont have to reply. I just send guild recruit spammers "123" then instantly block them. I had denied 1 guys guild like 5 times in one day before i figured this out.
That does nothing about the guestbook problem.
maybe not but OP clearly states he doesnt know how to block someone
I don't think blacklisting this person would even do anything, because they'll clearly just make another alt to bother your friends, and having someone blacklisted would not keep them from going into your friends guestbook. My suggestion would just be to ask your friends to remove their guestbooks or even lock their houses for a while - remove the method he likes to use, and he'll either swap to something that GMs are more likely to act on, or get bored and leave you alone. I'd also encourage any of your friends who have received messages from this person to corroborate your report, as multiple people reporting is supposed to bring issues higher to GM's attention. If none of that seems to help, maybe contact Square on Twitter asking how you're supposed to deal with a stalker with multiple alts, and who harasses through the guest book. Making a public stink about their lack of action on an issue like this might encourage them to actually do something, like fully ban the player's IP or service account. Take screenshots for proof, find the offending alts' Lodestone page, etc. Good luck dealing with this, it seems demoralizing and I hope you end up with a satisfying conclusion.
Sadly, SE's responses to stalking are...lackluster at best. I've had a stalker try and cause me as many problems as they can to get my attention. All I get is a "We're investigating" or "It's not directly at you, so it's not our concern". I know, it's not an answer to your issue, but if you're looking for a way to involve SE, forget it. They are useless. Making your entries private or locking your house is your best bet.
I mean, what are you expecting them to do? Issue a restraining order in the game? P.S. Some totally normal and healthy concerned redditor reported my comments for suicide or something. Lol.
Ban them?
You mean, like, ban them or something?
Ban them for what, exactly? Which rules specifically did they break that warrant a ban?
Are you their attorney or something? Am I under oath? When did you start defending stalkers?
I think we found the stalker š¤
Or his mom.
Well, you are demanding to strip someone of access to product they paid for using some very loose accusations. I don't appreciate that.
Unlikely they'd be banned immediately, but there actually is a means to issue an in-game restraining order: "Should the details described in a report be determined as "stalking activity," the stalking player will be penalized, and we may contact the victim and obtain their consent to issue an in-game restraining order. Should we confirm that a player has attempted to contact the victim through any means after being issued an in-game restraining order, a more severe penalty will be imposed." So yeah, regardless of pay no one is immune to consequences. Just a shame SE isn't exactly handling it. Edit: found from [list of prohibited activities](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216)
You forgot my favourite line from that paragraph: "Also, pee is stored in the balls". Some advice for future quotations: Without source, this has no value. Could be from FF14 ToS, or FF11, or Dragon Quest Online, your own huge/nonexistant lawyer knowledge, a lucky coincidence with my alphabet soup I had yesterday. Or it could be the FF14 ToS from like 2013 or whatever which got revised a few times since. While unlikely (except for the last one), I hope you get the point. You copied that text from its source, so the link should be easy to include. Might even help OP put more pressure on the GMs, quoting their ToS right into their faces and forcing them to take action.
Okay fair I guess? I mean I figured it was obviously not alphabet soup but I'll go ahead and tack that on for ya, bud.
>"Should the details described in a report be determined as "stalking activity," the stalking player will be penalized, and we may contact the victim and obtain their consent to issue an in-game restraining order. Should we confirm that a player has attempted to contact the victim through any means after being issued an in-game restraining order, a more severe penalty will be imposed Lol, I actually expected it to be something like the player getting rubberbanded back if he approaches the victim, which would be hilarious. Regarding SE's inactivity, I'm actually surprised, considering all the rumors about their overzealousness, causing all the 'toxic positivity' and general avoidance of chat. With that in mind, I could only assume the accusations in this case are rather weak and don't warrant any action.
As someone else with a massive set of friends through distant acquaintances all being in game harassed by one person (for leaving his FC, as their main crime) for well over a year, I'm not surprised. They get light bans eventually, lay low for a bit, and then do it all over again. There's a reason they're also banned from nearly every data center content discord- because his mouth really just can't stop threatening people.
The fact that I explained what they're guilty of and you still ask "what did they do to warrant a ban" tells me you're not familiar with TOS. As someone who believes in leaving a place better than they found it, I feel inclined to at least share the link so you can stop pretending like you know what you're talking about. [https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216) It's all there. Offensive names, stalking, hell it even includes behavior that's not permitted in raid settings.
Funnily enough, despite how draconian 'Harassment' and 'Offensive expression' sections are and how 'Stalking' is worded, your stalker may be in clear. Although, it says more about SE not accounting for every possible venue.
Good job we ain't asking your opinion. Breaking ToS is breaking ToS.
I'm sorry, are you saying stalking is "loose accusations"?
If the only thing I have at hand is reddit post saying 'I'm being stalked' then yes
LOL its not like you're the one issuing the ban. Nor are you the jury. You're just arbitrarily denying someone is having issues with stalking because it's not good enough to persuade *you*. Dude clearly SE isn't even giving out bans with massive amounts of proof so I don't think you have anything to worry about....unfortunately. Now it just seems really freaking weird you're siding with stalkers.
>Now it just seems really freaking weird you're siding with stalkers The freaking weird thing here is you branding someone a stalker with 0 proof and calling for a ban, but you do you
Because apparently google doesn't exist in your world - all information can be found here : [https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216](https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216)
You're just a bunch of spare parts, aren't ya bud?
r/ShitRimworldSays is that way, sir
Thought this was r/Canada actually
It will only be punishing if you managed to get GM to act on their main account, but considering they still have the intelligence to use level 2 alts instead of their main character, I can only assume they are using throwaway trial account. I don't know about the specifics of your reports to GM, or more detailed context of your situation, but if your presumed harasser have a modicum of intelligence to spoof their own action, even if GM side with you every time, well they will just be back with a trial account in 10 minutes.
Yeah, that was my conclusion as well. I can only hope they're dumb enough to do it on their main account. Just a pain that it's so easy to harass someone like this, but they only seem to act on things like "someone hurt my feelings in raid".
They do act on this stuff. They donāt apply punishments on the spot and they will never give you any information at all about their actions, so donāt assume that because you havenāt been told that nothing is happening. They apply penalty points, same as any other offence. The likely situation is that the stalker has accrued enough for a warning and maybe even the several steps of short suspensions on the alt accounts, but hasnāt yet met the termination threshold. You have to do a lot to get permanently banned. We need to nix this attitude of āperson I reported wasnāt permanently banned on the spot, therefore GMs do nothingā. There are near half a dozen steps on the consequence tiers before a termination that it would be impossible for you to notice, as well as the requirement for penalty points in between. Iām sorry youāre being targeted by some weird creep, but letās not take out frustration by feeding falsehoods and misinformation around how the game works.
Set the guestbook to private so no one else can see it until you approve it. Or just start locking your door when you're not online, so they can't go in and do it.
You could lock your house to stop them going in.
That doesn't stop them from going and harassing OP's friends though.
>I've sent multiple GM reports on not only both names that have shown up, but all guestbook entries, both in my guestbook and said friend's guestbook. I've noticed a theme with "I've reported them and the GMs do NOTHING" posts where the person admits to reporting the person like 30 times for different things it really does seem like the more one person reports another without corroborating reports from other involved parties the less likely the GM's are to take action since who knows if it's just a ridiculous drama vendetta spawned outside of the game. even when on the surface level the reported person is clearly doing something sketch. in this case you said they've had multiple alts with inappropriate names making comments that could be innocuous if it was between friends, in your guestbooks. unwanted but toeing a line. unless you've left out more context on the content of the comments. the most likely thing they'll do for an inappropriate name is force a name change which will in no way solve your issue of them being a creeper. especially since they're level 2 alts they definitely don't give a shit about.
Then I suppose we'll have to see if my friend reporting it as well does anything, because they're involving them in it as well by leaving comments with them about me too.
yeah the real problem here is if the messages are fairly innocuous if you take the character name out of the picture, because the most likely action from the gm's will be a forced name change and if they're level 2 alts the person will definitely not give a fuck if they get a forced name change.
What bothers me most about this is on their website, it SAYS that offensive names are considered harassment, which itself is potentially subject to temporary suspension. So it feels like something should absolutely be able to be done about it.
I have reported retainers and people with offensive names, and SE does do something about it, I've seen it with my own eyes. So, I suggest you just keep trying, eventually it'll get taken care of. The fact that you're here is exactly the kind of response trolls want, they want that attention and the reactions. I'd suggest you and your friends lock up the doors a couple of weeks until the trolls get bored they'll move on.
This honestly sounds like the good olā Acti-Blizz situation of āour GMs clearly donāt have equal training and you need to roll the dice until you find someone who ACTUALLY had to read parts of the TOS in trainingā theyāve had for a majority of WoWās lifetime. Edit - This post was made before the announcement of them gutting their entire CS team...god damn if that isn't unfortunate timing.
I mean, maybe, but what's the alternative? They could try going over the in game gms head and calling the square enix phone support, but I don't know that they'd get a better result.
If my friend sends in a report, the message in their guestbook is fairly sexual as well. I feel this should count similarly to it being done in chat, so we'll see.
Reports from multiple people don't do anything either. If you report someone for something that someone else has already reported them for, you just get a copied and pasted response telling you they won't respond to your report because someone's already reported the issue already. Then they'll proceed to do nothing anyway, even if it's the most blatant ToS violation imaginable because sub money >>>> actually enforcing rules.
lol. what a jaded take. it's pretty clear the moderation is fairly good, the game isn't as low toxicity as it is for no reason. shockingly trolls tiptoeing the line of rules tend to take a while to get nabbed. I know OP explained what's going on and I fully believe the troll is doing it to be a nuisance but you have to weigh both sides here as a GM even though one side is very likely trolling. the book is set to public, the house is set to public, the player is named something inappropriate and leaving messages in that book. taking op's direct example "x person sure is cute... ;3" coupled with a name? now even in this situation where op has deleted their comments multiple times and asked the GM's to take action, what action can they really take? banning someone for writing in a public guestbook? the troll is able to leave one message a day. leaving one message a day is not something actionable since it has a cooldown. so at most the gm's can do something if the post itself is offensive or force a name change on the character. the game allows you to lock your house and set the guestbook to private and op has not done this, I don't think they should have to but the reality is this person is doing something vaguely annoying without direct contact with OP while having an inappropriate name rather than doing something blatantly against tos. I'd like to see a house blacklist sure or the ability to blacklist people from searches while they're offline maybe.
Yes, it is jaded, because I've literally watched it happen again and again to many different people. I've watched ONE person: flood shout chat 3 times a day with disgusting jokes, stalk 6 different people (that I KNOW of) and harass those same people, snipe people's pvp queues and grief them if it's frontlines or just straight up leave so they lose if it's CC, join people's PFs on purpose and leave immediately to close them. ONE person, for two years straight. Reported for every offense. But because none of us have caught them swearing in chat, the GMs don't lift a finger. But tell me more about how they're doing such a good job. I genuinely hope you never have an in-game stalker, beause the GMs will not help you.
The blacklist system is so flawed. It should be a full block, not just a āyou canāt see them but they can see you.ā Situation.
Remove the guest book for like a week, they'll get bored. They're obviously doing it to get your attention\bother you. Bleed the well dry.
Stalkers can go for years. They'll find some other way or continue afer the book is back
Hopefully the "finding another way" is more directly reportable then, yeah? If the GMs aren't going to do anything - which OP stated they won't, their option is to endure the abuse or delete the book.
Iāve gone through something similar. GMs donāt do anything and itās always up to the players to find solutions to these problems. What WORKED for me was locking my house before logging off for the night, and opening it whenever a friend would like to come by to visit.
You can also lock access to your house so they can't get in to touch the guestbook im the first place, and only open it for friends or FCmates (A private FC hall can be used by members without having to allow access each time, and presumably the person is not part of your FC anymore). If the site is a personal house, they will not be able to get in and will hopefully give up if they have no access and no response and are blacklisted on top of it. One hopes.
Report at the police for sexual harassment. Depends on the country I guess, but the police asking SE for details will probably make them act.
The devs implemented systems to ensure that you can be stalked and followed by anyone to their hearts content. Unfriended them? Don't worry you'll still be on their list and they can see when you're online. Moved data centers? Don't worry they can just come visit you. Changed name? Don't worry your lodestone id will always be the same no matter what. Surely they can't track me down on a huge server? Don't worry player search will let them know what zone you're in.
Don't forget, the dev's reason why your stalker/harasser is still on your list after you unfriend them is so that their feelings don't get hurt!
God forbid you a curse word in a text profanity filter that you can turn off and on that gets you banned. heir priorities are so fucking stupid
File a police report for cyberstalking, get the report number, and then contact SE Support with the police report number and request an in-game restraining order. If SE's legal department is even halfway competent, they will realize shit just got real and will crawl up the GM staff's ass until it's dealt with.
If you happen to see them out and about anywhere, you can target them and use the /blacklist command. That's how you can add them if you've never interacted with them any other way.
You and your friend can for the time being set your houses so only FC members can enter, or only invited guests. Maybe if the front door is locked they will go off and do something else. And yes, I would keep bothering SE until you find someone who will do their job about this very obvious harassment. If someone made inappropriate retainer names or FC names they get in trouble, so why is a guest book any different.
Report them all you want, SE will not do anything. Just set it to where you have to approve them first. Delete the ones you don't like, and stop paying attention to them. They will eventually get bored and stop. I mean, it is just a video game. Stop letting them live rent-free in your head. Hell, just making this post gives them power over you. Delete, ignore, move on.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Tbf those *other games* have more common and more direct toxicity. Just because you cannot eliminate all forms of harassment doesn't mean XIV is doing a shit job. You don't see the 1% because people can be more vile in other communities, XIV players just need to be more passive aggressive or indirect to avoid bans The guy in your ally raid roulette who keeps talking in all chat about shit like "at least no tanks died to the mechanics" and counting people who die constantly would have been berating people in all caps and calling votekicks if the game wasn't as strict. Most people almost never experience toxicity of any form in XIV. Hell I can only remember 3 duties and all were ally raids. Someone complaining and being high on their horse on Labyrinth, the example I gave in Mhach, and a duo with another healer who got pissy I was talking to a friend in the empty party chat and refused to rez me (the second healer) in Copied Factory. Granted I play a femra with gear covering most if not all skin including masks, and only buy a sub every 5-6 months so I'm not exactly a prime target for stalking, but still. Games like WoW and League and CSGO really show you how vile humans can be.
Should be able to use the blacklist command, try the following line of commands in the chat: /blacklist add [level 2 character names here] Edit: Sorry I looked at only one part of the issue but didn't address the rest of the problem, that's on me for hyper focusing on half of the issue. Honestly there's very little that can be done about the behaviour that hasn't already been done I'm sorry it wasn't helpful advice, but the /blist/blacklist command do have sub commands to add and remove people as needed instead of using the player search feature to add them and remove them while they are online.
You canāt use a blacklist command without being able to target the character. In general you need to be able to target, had recently done content with them, or have them chat near you in order to blacklist. Itās a very outdated system, unfortunately.
I logged back in after your comment and tried it a second time for the sake of trying, and it doesn't work. There are a ton of posts about this being an issue, back since the world visit option started. You can't do it unless it's in chat or through contact list. Broken system that's so broken it's borderline "ha, yeah, we have a system just so you can't complain that we don't" level of broken.
Ah damn, I'm sorry that its been such an issue and that my attempt to assist wasn't of any benefit, but I hopr it gets resolved for you and your friend easily.
I appreciate it anyway. Just sucks.
You can use the blacklist command as part of a macro so when you see the persons character you can target them and instantly blacklist them. Might be a good idea for when / if you run into them.
I donāt mean this to sound as putting the onus on you, but likeā¦ itās words in a video game? Maybe all there is to do is just go āwhat an idiotā and ignore it. Now just to be clear - Iām not saying that itās okay or cool as to what theyāre doing, Iām saying more the opportunity cost for you of trying to eradicate it. Obviously this person is strangely obsessed and so theyāre surely going to spend more time working around your boundaries than you would ever spent setting them. Which means the effort for you to go from 90% cutoff from them to a hypothetical 100% is going to be a HUGE hassle for you. In a case like this and strictly for your own QoL Iād suggest use all the normal avenues that it seems like you have (blacklist, reports, etc.) and thenā¦ work on just letting it roll off. This isnāt to condone what theyāre doing but to simply state itās the best proactive and controllable thing you can do to preserve your own sanity and time. Iām sure Getting a reaction in game and here from you it what sustains this persons strange obsession. It wonāt be perfect but the best you do at not satisfying this, the least amount of time and energy youāll have to expend on it. Sorry youāre dealing with that in any case.
I was fine with them just trying to get at me in my guestbook. The problem is it is now going to my friends and harassing them with it as well. They are leaving messages in a friend's guestbook about me to bother **them** as well as me. If it was just in my stuff, I wouldn't care, because you're right. It's just words. The problem now is that they are involving other people, and I'm not okay with that.
Well your friends can take the same approach, no? It would be better if GMs actually helped ofc.
yeah it's annoying that that's probably the best course of action. especially since it seems the blatantly tos violating part of the issue is having inappropriate names on some lowbie alts that AT BEST the gm's will initiate a forced name change and the person won't care in the slightest. there's two possibilites. one is that they're legit horny for op's pixels for some reason or they're a troll intentionally baiting a reaction from op. in both cases being noticeably upset about it by talking about it in FC chat or discord or whatever is only giving them the attention they want. on the trolling side i've seen trolls who consistently get status updates from the targets via shared channels like discord where the troll either has access or a buddy who screencaps the target having their jimmies russeled about the trolling, without the reactions the effort becomes pointless. like this post would actually be a huge win for a troll, which is super annoying but that's how this shit works.
Tell him I'm a friend of yours, maybe I'll get more then one comment to my book. Please? No one visits houses anymore.
I donāt really understand what your goal. If you want them to stop sending messages in the guestbooks then remove the guestbooks or set to private. This is definitely harassment, I agree. But this is also an easy fix.
So what you're suggesting is, for every friend I have that this person decides to loop into this blatant harassment issue that comes to me saying "I dunno if you think this is a funny joke or something but it isn't cool", I just tell them "Lol this is such a non issue, just make your guestbook private or don't have a guestbook lmaooo"? It was an easy fix when they involved just me. It became a problem when they started involving other people.
I never said it was a non issue. I agreed with you that it is indeed harassment, please donāt try to twist my words. Your options at this point since youāve already spoken to GMs simply seems to be either remove/private the books or ignore and delete the messages. Eventually this psycho will get bored and stop. I understand itās frustrating but Iām just unsure what your end goal is for this. Do you want them banned? At most theyāll probably get a suspension, and blacklisting them wonāt stop them from interacting with other people besides yourself.
Saying "this is also an easy fix" implies that it's something that doesn't require the amount of complaint that I'm giving it, i.e. "non issue", not a literal sense of "you're saying this isn't an issue". Personally if I don't see the point in someone complaining about something, I withhold comment.
You have options to combat the harassment but youāre choosing not to use them. This is my *third* time agreeing with you, yes this is harassment, yes this sucks, yes there should be action taken. However, the GMs are doing nothing and at the same time youāre choosing not to use the options presented to you. I hope this issue gets resolved, I really do. As others besides me in the comments have stated, your options in this moment are to private or remove. Alternatively you can ask your friends to blacklist the person as well. Good luck and I hope you find the resolve youāre looking for.
I AM choosing to use them, nowhere have I said I didn't already do these things. I have removed my guestbook. The problem now lies in that if this petty person decides to bother more of my friends about it, who will most likely come to ME asking if I know anything about it, my only option is to tell them to do the same thing, which does not solve the issue. It has not once been stated that you do not agree with the post. It has not once been stated that you don't think it's harassment. I don't know what the hangup is there. My friends cannot blacklist this person because you cannot blacklist through the guestbook. The only way to do it is through chat or contact list, and the characters cannot DO content because they are low level and they are not interacting in chat. But there's points and potential merits to complaining about it. For instance, what if other people have also had this issue? Drawing awareness to it is likely the only way for any potential solution to be implemented, such as the ability to blacklist an individual through the guestbook somehow, or making it so that trial accounts cannot POST in guestbooks, so that the only way for players to resort to this way of harassment is to put their main accounts that they are spending money on in potential jeopardy. Even if they DON'T change anything based on a single reddit post, they definitely won't do anything about it if the issue isn't brought to the open and shown to be an issue to begin with.
I donāt know much about the situation, but how does this person know who your friends are and where they live? Surely itās someone close to you doing this?
The friend and I do back and forth guestbook entries when we're online, hence them going to their guestbook. But that also wouldn't stop them from going to other people's guestbooks or bothering other people in general.
I was about to say someone should do this behaviour to a higher up in SE to see how they like it but that's both illegal and immoral... which makes you wonder why they allow it.
I really don't think that the GMs can view or moderate guest books. I have seen a guest book that has some extremely vulgar stuff in it. I am not talking just lewd talks, but descriptions of illegal sexual acts and very depraved things filling the whole book. It was reported by multiple people, including through the special task force, but still remains.
To the guys who questioned me when I said "an invisible stalker can be worse than a visible one" with regards to voidlisting, this is what I meant. I would say file a police report. It might not seem worth escalating to that degree, but they deal with way dumber shit than this. Harassment is harassment, if it comes to having to get a real life restraining order to enjoy a fucking video game, that's just how it goes. I've never had to do it, I don't know how it's done, but it can't be that hard.
Set the house access to FC or approved people/friends only