Guild Wars 2

Let me start by saying that I do like the friend system in this game. It’s nice that you can see where your friends are, how many achievement points they have etc.

But this information should only be shown to friends. Not to followers.

Recently me and several guildies have had problems with stalkers. Players who follow you from zone to zone abusing you in mapchat.

“Just block them!” you might say – and of course, we do block them. However… this is the bad part – they can still see which zone you’re in when you block them if they have you added a friend.

This means that if you have an enemy in the game, your enemy can add you as a friend and then follow you from zone to zone spreading lies about you in mapchat. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can try to find another overflow, but that’s not as easy as it used to be. You can switch servers, but you might still end up in the same overflow…

A simple fix would be this: once someone blocks you, you can’t see where they are in the game. At all. Ever. Ideally, you would need to be a mutual friend to see this info, but I’d settle for being able to block people properly.

…and before someone tells me “just report them” well, it would be nice if that worked

Here is what ANet has to say about stalkers/harassers.

Gaile Gray Source
ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead
“Each case of reported “stalking” or harassment is reviewed by our Customer Support team individually and with care. Here are some steps you could take:
Block the player on your Friends List
Play in Invisible Mode
Try reaching out to the person’s guild leader if you feel that the person would be receptive to helping you
File an in-game report
Submit a support ticket (see below for details)
If the harassment extends to real life (at your home, place of business, via telephone, etc.), contact your local law enforcement agency
Now, there are occasions when claims of “harassment” run in both directions. I am not making a judgment about any situations mention here, but sometimes chat records show a back-and-forth bickering or attacking that does not allow an easy solution. This means an agent confirms an in-game report but also notes that the alleged victim also was in breach of the UA or the RoC. If there’s evidence of what we call “mutual antagonism” then it gets trickier and a resolution isn’t as simple to reach.
If someone is overtly harassing a player, the team may well be able to help with the situation if that player wishes to file a support ticket. (We cannot accept a ticket on behalf of a third party — the person involved should reach out to CS.) When doing so, please provide your character name, the offending player’s character or display name, and a very precise time, time zone, and date. Screenshots are not necessary if you can provide those details, at which time an agent will look up the incident and see what took place.
Bottom line: if you’re being harassed, do not react. Do not have your friends react. Don’t post about it on a forum or make a public issue of it. Do not start a flame war or fire a bunch of verbal mortar shots back in the direction of the person who initiated the attacks. Simply submit an in-game report or, if necessary, a ticket.
If you have submitted a ticket and the team has not reacted, then you need to continue your private discussion with a CS agent, as we would not discuss particulars here on the forums.”

Wouldn’t it be easier just to prevent people from seeing which zone you’re in when you block them? I bet that’d save CSRs a lot of work…

warduke.1780:

Wouldn’t it be easier just to prevent people from seeing which zone you’re in when you block them? I bet that’d save CSRs a lot of work…

Yes, it would. If you block someone they should not be able to emote messages to you, see what map you are on, spam group invites to you or group up with you or have the game tell them when you log on or off. Since these problems have been known for years, either ANet can’t change the system or won’t.

Until ANet does fix it, the only thing you can do at this time is report them and update your report with each incident.

warduke.1780:

Wouldn’t it be easier just to prevent people from seeing which zone you’re in when you block them? I bet that’d save CSRs a lot of work…

But they like helping you, and it expands America’s job opportunities.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes, it would. If you block someone they should not be able to emote messages to you, see what map you are on, spam group invites to you or group up with you or have the game tell them when you log on or off. Since these problems have been known for years, either ANet can’t change the system or won’t.

Until ANet does fix it, the only thing you can do at this time is report them and update your report with each incident.

Bolded the key word here. Harassment doesn’t affect the economy, therefore it is of no concern to them.

“Following” someone is an important tool in WvW. When you know of the driver or commander on the enemy team, knowing what BL they’re in is key to having good fights, or knowing where to go to avoid the zerg. It it’s really “stalking”, per se. In the real world, that’s illegal. In the virtual game world, it’s just knowing where someone is.

Now if they’re abusing you in game, that’s a different story. Then it becomes a reportable issue.

Wait, there’s a big difference between in game and in real life. Also, my spider sense is tingling on this thread. As I wonder if it’s even really occurring. Also wondering if someone was doing something to others first to instigate such a response?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

“Following” someone is an important tool in WvW. When you know of the driver or commander on the enemy team, knowing what BL they’re in is key to having good fights, or knowing where to go to avoid the zerg. It it’s really “stalking”, per se. In the real world, that’s illegal. In the virtual game world, it’s just knowing where someone is.

Now if they’re abusing you in game, that’s a different story. Then it becomes a reportable issue.

The OP stated that these people are abusing him/her in map chat. That is vastly different from putting a commander from an opposing server on your friend list. Assuming you don’t whisper them with insults all day :P

DeWolfe.2174:

Wait, there’s a big difference between in game and in real life. Also, my spider sense is tingling on this thread. As I wonder if it’s even really occurring. Also wondering if someone was doing something to others first to instigate such a response?

There have been enough reports of people using the friend’s list to stalk others to believe that this happens. As Gaile points out, usually both sides share some blame. But if one side has disengaged from an argument, blocked the other and left and the other is pursuing and trying to get around the block and using loopholes to do so, then it is stalking and harassing no matter how it started,

warduke.1780:

This means that if you have an enemy in the game, your enemy can add you as a friend and then follow you from zone to zone spreading lies about you in mapchat.

So? What’s to stop them from spreading lies in every other map? Unless you like to chat it map chat, in which case other people might join in, why does it matter if they’re spreading lines in the zone you’re in? It’s not like map chat can stop you from doing anything and you can’t see it because you’ve blocked them, right? Just report it, block them and move on. If anything, you complaining about it makes it even more hilarious to them. Either ignore them entirely until they get bored or say something once in map chat after them, like don’t mind <name>, that’s just my pet stalker. Directly replying to them or acknowledging them as a problem however will only fuel them.

Hiding your location from blocked players probably isn’t going to happen. It would be easier to simply remove the location field entirely than having to poll every account’s ignore list every time someone opens their friends/followers list. Even if ignored players couldn’t see your location, what’s to stop them from simply buying a new account or asking someone else?

In the end, if someone really wants to stalk you, and I mean dedicated, they’re going to find you regardless.

Healix.5819:

warduke.1780:

This means that if you have an enemy in the game, your enemy can add you as a friend and then follow you from zone to zone spreading lies about you in mapchat.

So? What’s to stop them from spreading lies in every other map? Unless you like to chat it map chat, in which case other people might join in, why does it matter if they’re spreading lines in the zone you’re in? It’s not like map chat can stop you from doing anything and you can’t see it because you’ve blocked them, right? Just report it, block them and move on. If anything, you complaining about it makes it even more hilarious to them. Either ignore them entirely until they get bored or say something once in map chat after them, like don’t mind <name>, that’s just my pet stalker. Directly replying to them or acknowledging them as a problem however will only fuel them.

Hiding your location from blocked players probably isn’t going to happen. It would be easier to simply remove the location field entirely than having to poll every account’s ignore list every time someone opens their friends/followers list. Even if ignored players couldn’t see your location, what’s to stop them from simply buying a new account or asking someone else?

In the end, if someone really wants to stalk you, and I mean dedicated, they’re going to find you regardless.

Why are you concerned if they are lies as you say yourself

Smooth Penguin.5294:

“Following” someone is an important tool in WvW. When you know of the driver or commander on the enemy team, knowing what BL they’re in is key to having good fights, or knowing where to go to avoid the zerg. It it’s really “stalking”, per se. In the real world, that’s illegal. In the virtual game world, it’s just knowing where someone is.

Now if they’re abusing you in game, that’s a different story. Then it becomes a reportable issue.

You don’t see where your opponent is when you follow them, it only says “wvw”. Some friends of mine are on a different server which my server has been up against the past weeks. Now I can see again at which borderland they are, during our matchups I couldn’t.

If the victim has an injunction against the suspect in real life, then they can call their local law enforcement agency and have the wording in it to include video games. With screenshots saved in a folder, it would be easy to prove the suspect is stalking the victim and violating their injunction. If the suspect further harrasses the victim via Guild Wars 2, then the suspect would be arrested.

Regardless of the derailing of this thread, I do think it’s reasonable for a user to expect that the act of blocking another user should prevent all forms of them knowing their location in game. It simply doesn’t make sense for a user you’ve blocked to be able to acquire that information. Blocking someone should mean that you want to cut all possible form of contact with them, and thus is seems sensible for them to have no means by which to determine your location in game or whether you aren’t or are online.

Mind you, I haven’t verified myself that the system currently allows for this in the manner described, but I’ll give the OP the benefit of the doubt.

Playing in invisible mode might alleviate the problem in the meantime, but it shouldn’t be necessary for a user to do that for people they’ve already blocked.

stalkers bad. stalker prevention good.

RoRo.8270:

Healix.5819:

warduke.1780:

This means that if you have an enemy in the game, your enemy can add you as a friend and then follow you from zone to zone spreading lies about you in mapchat.

So? What’s to stop them from spreading lies in every other map? Unless you like to chat it map chat, in which case other people might join in, why does it matter if they’re spreading lines in the zone you’re in? It’s not like map chat can stop you from doing anything and you can’t see it because you’ve blocked them, right? Just report it, block them and move on. If anything, you complaining about it makes it even more hilarious to them. Either ignore them entirely until they get bored or say something once in map chat after them, like don’t mind <name>, that’s just my pet stalker. Directly replying to them or acknowledging them as a problem however will only fuel them.

Hiding your location from blocked players probably isn’t going to happen. It would be easier to simply remove the location field entirely than having to poll every account’s ignore list every time someone opens their friends/followers list. Even if ignored players couldn’t see your location, what’s to stop them from simply buying a new account or asking someone else?

In the end, if someone really wants to stalk you, and I mean dedicated, they’re going to find you regardless.

Why are you concerned if they are lies as you say yourself

Would you be happy if someone went around slandering you in each zone you visited?

Other users have mentioned the invisible function – yes, this can help, but it also means nobody can reply to my whispers, and my friends can’t see that I’m online. Essentially I’m being punished for the stalker’s behavior if I use offline mode.

Enemies in a PvE group encouraged game? Wat?
What are they gonna do, come help you kill Karka faster and ruin your day?

You can see where people are if they’re on your block list too.

To tell a story, that will undoubtedly get some controversy, I use this fact to let people know about a certain individual whenever I feel they’re in my realm of influence. This individual lies about touchy subjects or things common people dont know lots about. They’d lie about being a canc’ survivor, war veteran, LGBT subjects, and a slew of other things a common internet goon would know very little about and you’d be a kitten for trying to call someone out on things like that simply because of the nature of those topics. I wont go into the ‘how’ I know about those things because it’d be like writing a book on here and derails from the OP.

They’d use these lies to scam people out of in-game money and services, scam people IRL for actual money, and from my pov basically a sexual predator too.

I use the fact you can see where this person is located at near ‘stalkerish’ levels because I consider it my moral obligation to let other humans know about this sociopath. I obviously wont name names here because that breaks the ToS, but I just wanted to share from the other perspective.

Cbomb.4310:

You can see where people are if they’re on your block list too.

To tell a story, that will undoubtedly get some controversy, I use this fact to let people know about a certain individual whenever I feel they’re in my realm of influence. This individual lies about touchy subjects or things common people dont know lots about. They’d lie about being a canc’ survivor, war veteran, LGBT subjects, and a slew of other things a common internet goon would know very little about and you’d be a kitten for trying to call someone out on things like that simply because of the nature of those topics. I wont go into the ‘how’ I know about those things because it’d be like writing a book on here and derails from the OP.

They’d use these lies to scam people out of in-game money and services, scam people IRL for actual money, and from my pov basically a sexual predator too.

I use the fact you can see where this person is located at near ‘stalkerish’ levels because I consider it my moral obligation to let other humans know about this sociopath. I obviously wont name names here because that breaks the ToS, but I just wanted to share from the other perspective.

Why don’t you just report them? If they’re doing the things you say, surely they’d be banned…

warduke.1780:

Cbomb.4310:

^_^

Why don’t you just report them? If they’re doing the things you say, surely they’d be banned…

Anet can only react to things they can actually see. Chatbox logs and such. Im not sending foreign facebook links, military ARs, medical txts, recorded teamspeak conversations, and steam chats as ‘proof’. They wont ban someone based on that and I wouldnt expect them to.