Blatant sexual harassment? This should be zero-tolerance.

agentnx5

I know pretty much none of us like the broken "report spam" function that seems to often get abused. It's almost unanimously opposed. But this recent comment I read is alarming enough for me to raise attention to it with a new topic and inquire on the specifics.

zenzenarimasen wrote: »

(edit)
I'd like to add another to the list of things not to do if you want to avoid being chatbanned. In light of someone on the forums reporting that someone is going around threatening chat bans on female characters if they won't cyber with him:

-Do not refuse to cyber with someone.

Oh? And who might that be? I'd be happy to kill them in PvP if they said something like that to me or one of my friends, as that's pretty low.

I'm not talking about joking about "get back in the kitchen" comments, or stuff like that which is dependent on the audience you're with (you can make crass jokes with friends in private who know you well enough to know you're not being serious, that's certainly ok). But if it's what you have described here as publicly broadcasted threats that's unquestionably sexual harassment and not funny at all, not to mention blatantly against the the ToS or possibly even illegal in the US if it goes far enough and there's a record of it.

So out with it, who is it? Evidence is needed for something like this (you don't want to accuse the wrong person who is innocent off this just off of hearsay), but if it's really so blatant as you described it, zenzenarimasen, then a bit of video evidence should be enough to bring down the ban hammer on that account.

This is something that I feel should have a zero-tolerance as it has a highly negative impact on our community, whether it's a female playing the female character or not. We are a better community than to tolerate this. Agreed?

PS: More reason to get rid of that broken system... >_>




From "da rulez" (officially):

10. User Conduct

You must observe these Terms, all Rules of Conduct, all applicable laws and all basic rules of etiquette and common courtesy when using the Website and the Service. Any conduct that violates the law in an offline, real world community is also a violation of these terms. PWE will not tolerate any illegal or offensive conduct.

Without limiting the foregoing, in addition to the User Content rules set forth in Section 10 above, you agree not to take any of the following actions:

(a) Harm minors in any way;
(b) Impersonate any person or entity, including any PWE officials, forum leaders, guides, hosts, employees or agents, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
(c) Forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any message transmitted through the Website;
(d) Upload, post, e-mail, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail", "spam", "chain letters", "pyramid schemes", or any other form of solicitation;
(e) Interfere with or disrupt the Service, the Website or servers or networks connected to the Website, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Website;
(f) "Stalk," threaten or otherwise harass or cause discomfort to another;
(g) Collect, store, post or otherwise disseminate any personal data about other users;
(h) Impede or disrupt the Service or the normal flow of game play or dialogue in the game or in Interactive Areas on the Site or use vulgar language, abusiveness, use of excessive shouting (ALL CAPS) "spamming" or any other disruptive or detrimental methods in an attempt to disturb other users or PWE employees;
(i) Engage in, encourage, or promote any illegal activity, or any activity that violates these Terms or the Rules of Conduct;
(j) Engage in any actions that defraud or attempt to defraud, scam or cheat others out of any items that have been earned through authorized game play;
(k) Cheat or utilize unauthorized exploits in connection with the Games or the Service;
(l) Using or exploiting any bugs, errors, or design flaws to obtain unauthorized access to the Service or to gain an unfair advantage over other players,
(m) trade, sell, auction or otherwise transfer any virtual items or goods of any nature outside the game; and/or
(n) Take any action that disrupts the Service or that negatively affects or may prohibit other users from enjoying the Website, the Games or any other aspect of the Service.

Hopefully this comment of zenzenarimasen's is more of a game a telephone where because the message has been relayed so many times, it's now becoming exaggerated beyond what actually happened.

If you can provided some evidence or witness account on what the original situation was, then please speak. All I ask is that we all remember the importance of "innocent until proven guilty". Do NOT want somebody to be accused of something they didn't do. Clear?

nextnametaken

agentnx5 wrote: »

Oh? And who might that be? I'd be happy to kill them in PvP if they said something like that to me or one of my friends, as that's pretty low.

Whoa whoa whoa put away that epeen before you poke out an eye.

agentnx5

Got anything constructive to add for a change nextnametaken?

helbjorn

This particular incident/issue was already acknowledged by a CM in a previous thread and supposedly more information already gathered from the accuser by said CM.

nepht

Yeah it does sicken me to hear that some players might be blackmailing people to cyber with them.

Having a daughter that plays Champions Online I would like to see this type of thing stamped out the game is a teen rated one after all.

Theres a word for people that try to cyber with teens . Theres also a place for them its called jail -.-



/signed A concerned parent.

nextnametaken

There is a report abuse function.
Anyone experiencing any kind of abuse can access that feature.
I've used it when I needed it and people have literally vanished.
Could be coincidence. Or it could be that the system works.

If you or your children don't know how to deal with online people
good and bad as they come, then you and/or they really don't belong online
anymore than the bad people who don't know they don't belong online.

Yeah...

By "you" I don't mean Nepht of course.

If you are playing with your kids online, then you can make private channels.
They can whitelist chats/tells/etc and avoid all stranger dangers.
If you are just a girl toon, you can ignore anyone, anytime.

Of course forum people know this and nobody but forum people are
going to read this crazy thread anyway.

"You done got my daughter pregnant. Prepare to marry her or eat PVP. I'm packing purple gear, what you got, huh?"

helbjorn

Believe it or not, text-only cybersex with a minor is in most cases not a Federal crime. Especially in an anonymous setting such as an MMO where no physical sex is solicited or elicited.

Different states have laws that vary on this matter, so it can be somewhat more complicated at the local level.

agentnx5

I didn't know you were a mom Nepht! Aww... (pretty cool mom if you play games)

I also have an adoration for families & couples that play video games online together. There's a part of me that really wants that to be my family someday I think.

I digress though...

helbjorn wrote: »

Believe it or not, text-only cybersex with a minor is in most cases not a Federal crime. Especially in an anonymous setting such as an MMO where no physical sex is solicited or elicited.

Actually it's explicitly against the ToS regardless, read the above quote block for #10 on the list. So it doesn't really matter. It's ban-hammer time regardless.

Whomever is doing this in-game, if you witness it yourself please:
Take screenshot, record video with FRAPs, etc. and then REPORT that evidence directly to Perfect World Customer Support.

Any person who is doing this (threatening sexual harassment, especially if is towards a minor) should lose their account, ASAP. No questions asked. I'm being deadly serious.



I'm still hoping in part that this whole thing is just a rumor about somebody doing this, because if somebody is actually doing this as Zenzenarimasen pointed out, then that's really REALLY bad. Not cool.



PS: The PvP thing was an sardonic, inside joke that went over some people's heads and must have invited trolling, sorry. This thread is a serious one though. Pretty sure Nepht here can wreck most of my characters for instance (although being humble, I'm no pushover either, just ask Mahoff), and Malware is no joke either (although we do use the same passive on our mains). I'm getting off-topic, let's get back to focusing on what's important here please? Super-cereal gais.

nepht

nextnametaken wrote: »

By "you" I don't mean Nepht of course. *snip*

Of course, even though shes 17 I keep a hawk like eye on what she does online.

You gave some sound advice why ruin a good post by calling this thread crazy it raises issues we should always remember when letting our kids play online games.

You seemed to mostly agree with the OP then made pregnancy jokes

In threads like these I lock my crazy away in a box. First half of that post was like I said before was sound advice, maybe you should have a little box for your crazy too?

We should not make jokes about such issues.

theravenforce

I know how this stuff feels sadly =__=

I kept getting messages from a player telling me that I was his wife etc and PMing me with dirty jokes and I got fed up and stopped playing CO for like a week only to find he'd spammed my mail with ban threats... he tried to hack my account earlier this year..and cryptic alerted me to this and i thankfully have my account back in my grasp.

I back this thread 100%. I think it is a huge shame and the wrong message to those comming to the game for the first time and those who have been here for some turbo-d0uches to come along and treat people like that.

/signed.:mad:

helbjorn

agentnx5 wrote: »

Actually it's explicitly against the ToS regardless,

Of course it is, but my post was in response to Nepht's claim that those who cybersex with minors belong in jail. Though I may agree with her sentiment, unfortunately the law in many cases does not.

nextnametaken

We are in theory having a whole group of sob story gamers strolling into our little neighborhood.
Is this really the weekend to be raging about "sexual harassment" & "zero tolerance"?

There is already 'zero tolerance' for sexual harassment wherever its found.

No need to screech about it in the forums, bringing it up like is an infestation
thats taken over all corners of the game. It hasn't.

How about we all make a thread about ever little issue that comes up?

My next thread is "Champions players are so needy and pushy", and then
I'll go on and on about how all I did was say "hello" to someone from the
forums and then I couldnt' get rid of them for an hour because I'm too polite.

Stay tuned.

nepht

helbjorn wrote: »

Of course it is, but my post was in response to Nepht's claim that those who cybersex with minors belong in jail. Though I may agree with her sentiment, unfortunately the law in many cases does not.

Indeed this is a unfortunate fact.

nepht

nextnametaken wrote: »

We are in theory having a whole group of sob story gamers strolling into our little neighborhood.
Is this really the weekend to be raging about "sexual harassment" & "zero tolerance"?

There is already 'zero tolerance' for sexual harassment wherever its found.

No need to screech about it in the forums, bringing it up like is an infestation
thats taken over all corners of the game. It hasn't.

How about we all make a thread about ever little issue that comes up?

My next thread is "Champions players are so needy and pushy", and then
I'll go on and on about how all I did was say "hello" to someone from the
forums and then I couldnt' get rid of them for an hour because I'm too polite.

Stay tuned.

No the OP showed concern because more and more people have been chat banned after doing as you said.

There has been a rise of people saying that they have been troubled by people wanting ERP.

There must be some truth to this.

theravenforce

nepht wrote: »

No the OP showed concern because more and more people have been chat banned after doing as you said.

There has been a rise of people saying that they have been troubled by people wanting ERP.

There must be some truth to this.

Yeah..alot more ppl seem to want ERP...so I'm thinking of making hideous fat costumes for all my chars so ppl won't ask.

Recently my ignore list has grown exponentially..which is a shame..but a necessary action.

nightr0d

theravenforce wrote: »

Yeah..alot more ppl seem to want ERP...so I'm thinking of making hideous fat costumes for all my chars so ppl won't ask.

Recently my ignore list has grown exponentially..which is a shame..but a necessary action.

nepht wrote: »

No the OP showed concern because more and more people have been chat banned after doing as you said.

There has been a rise of people saying that they have been troubled by people wanting ERP.

There must be some truth to this.

You know there are 2 sides to each coin right? I've seen quite a couple of skimpy looking female toons out there. I think there are even some SGs with that as a theme.

My point is that if some ppl make nude or very provocative looking toons then they have only themselves to blame. I'm not saying that everyone does this but I'm sure some players are themselves to blamed for this. Just stick around close to the tailors for a while you'll see what I mean.

Personally I'm a rather skeptical person and I don't believe that things happen out of the blue. I'm certain that there are people out there who actually create provocative toons on purpose to bait others.

All this stuff is kinda crazy IMO. People are sick, and in an MMO they show it the most. There is nothing Cryptic/PW can do about it short of a psychological test before the activation of an account. I'm not trying to say that this is OK. I just don't get what people think that can be done about this more than reporting them.

So yeah just report those people via tickets or whatever means there are and move on. Drawing too much attention to this might actually be counterproductive.

zebelle

nextnametaken wrote: »

We are in theory having a whole group of sob story gamers strolling into our little neighborhood.
Is this really the weekend to be raging about "sexual harassment" & "zero tolerance"?

There is already 'zero tolerance' for sexual harassment wherever its found.

No need to screech about it in the forums, bringing it up like is an infestation
thats taken over all corners of the game. It hasn't.

How about we all make a thread about ever little issue that comes up?

My next thread is "Champions players are so needy and pushy", and then
I'll go on and on about how all I did was say "hello" to someone from the
forums and then I couldnt' get rid of them for an hour because I'm too polite.

Stay tuned.

i understand that things get blown out of proportion on the internet (and in life as well), but sexual harrassment is something that should be taken seriously until it's determined not to be the case.

no one should ever be coerced to do something s/he has no desire to do. whether that's in a game setting or otherwise should make no difference.

no one should encourage anyone to participate in something s/he doesn't wish to participate in, regardless of possibly getting silenced. end of story.

agentnx5

theravenforce wrote: »

Yeah..alot more ppl seem to want ERP...so I'm thinking of making hideous fat costumes for all my chars so ppl won't ask.

Recently my ignore list has grown exponentially..which is a shame..but a necessary action.

I wouldn't say that's annoying. Heck I don't even mind people doing E-RP, truthfully. I've had one person politely ask me if I wanted to join (this is in my entire time playing Champions), and I politely refused. That was it. Very civil.

As long as you're going to your own little private hideouts to do... whatever it is your do there, I don't want or need to know honestly.

I don't persecute people who choose to do E-RP; that is also wrong to persecute others.

I also don't just use the in-game "ignore" or "report spam" on people easily. You have to earn my disdain through your repeated actions, and even at that I believe in the power of mercy & forgiveness though penance. I'm proud to say that I recently just went back and updated/edited my ignore list for and of those I couldn't remember why they were on there. I currently have only about a dozen people ignored (although one of them is a guy I'm counting as one here when he has a total of 8 different accounts). That's it. Those few people are typically absolute scumbags, pests who won't leave me alone when asked, or repeat-offense scammers. But having a small ignore list is a mark pride, where as bragging about having a large ignore list looks more like one who can't get along with anybody and who's exceedingly judgmental of others.

That's my two cents on that anyways. :cool:



To be sure this does not represent the community as a whole. This community is honestly one of the most generous, outgoing, and helpful communities I've encountered. There's always a few bad apples in any community. If there's a "bad apple" individual exhibiting this specific behavior however, then they have no place in our community and need to be kicked out the door. It's pretty simple really... I didn't think I needed to explain that.

biffsmackwell

Closing this down. You can't call a witch hunt on players, you can't name-and-shame people on the forums. If this happens, REPORT IT. It will get taken care of.

YOU do not need to know who it was doing what. If they did it, they'll be found, and proper action will be taken.