Uncomfortable/Creepy Player Conduct

[Sic]

Over the last few months, there's been a very uncomfortable shift in the RP community where people are being MASSIVELY sexually aggressive OOCly, and I'd like to know if anything is being done about this. Events I've witnessed/had happen to me:

-Multiboxing alts surrounding me to flirt OOCly in whispers, completely unprompted

-Unsolicited whispers from a player explicitly describing their fetishes and how I/my character would play into them

Both of these instances were reported, and I've seen both players walking around free as a bird since. Are we just pretending that this isn't a problem?

[GraspingVileTerror]

Misconduct and harassment are the purview of the GMs, and if you are reporting the events and you feel the Code of Conduct is not being enforced appropriately, you may wish to speak with @GM Widower (I think.  Honestly, I don't know the Homecoming Team hierarchy for complaint escalation, but I think Widower is the most senior GM).  Alternatively, to the best of my knowledge, @Cipher is the person whose name is on the Homecoming LLC, so if you feel the problem is that severe, you can attempt to address it all the way to "the top."

But please bear in mind that as a volunteer outfit, where members have various levels of professional experience or training as GMs, there might not be anything malicious going on.  Some issues may simply be falling through the gaps in the system.

 

Please see the following thread for details specific to GMing and ERPing:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/27764-bannable-erp/

 

 

If you are asking the roleplay community to create a culture shift, so overly-aggressive sexual prompting is less frequent, well . . . some of us are doing all we can.

Crystal Dragon has been running some general roleplay seminars, with a very strong focus on promoting consent.  Likewise, I do my best to reinforce messaging on the importance of informed consent in all things.  Many players have tried to create dedicated spaces for players who are interested in erotic activities, so those players can be away from the general public.  However, aggressive anti-ERPers have made a habit of disrupting those spaces in an effort foment a hostile environment with the intent of driving away all ERP.  And, given the official rules in place, actively promoting spaces where ERPers can group up away from the public is technically not permitted, so there aren't any solid protected spaces, leaving some ERPers "cruising" in public zones.

 

It should also be stressed that not all ERPers are alike or united (far from it).  There are some cliques (some of which are hostile to other cliques), some are free-floating between groups, and some are totally isolated and unaware that they can find permanent companionship away from the general population.  Some have strict rules (see above:  Informed Consent in All Things), some are less rigid, and some .  .  . the "problems," are definitely in need to being reported to the GMs.

There are also some non-ERPers out there who get their jollies by misrepresenting ERPers, but their activities invoke Poe's Law.  I have no excuses to offer for that kind of conduct.

 

All of that is to say that it's a complex issue that doesn't have an easy fix.  Because even outlawing it entirely won't stop it from happening.  This game has a long, LONG history of enabling ERP, and players will continue to seek it, whether it's against the Code or not.

Honestly . . . I kind of wish the Homecoming Team felt it appropriate to discuss the matter a little more openly, and to allow for protected established spaces that can ensure a way for cruising players to not risk offending the sensibilities of others in public.  The way things are right now, there's too much fear of "narc'ing" to have such the existing spaces comfortably promoted.  Either the creators of the space are afraid of someone coming in and reporting the place to the ground, or the people floating around are afraid that the space is actually a honeypot to get them suspended or banned.  The fear and uncertainty leaves them out in the public, as risky as that is.

 

 

If anyone else has some ideas, or they feel I've misrepresented any information, I welcome them to speak about it.

However, please also note that I've tagged Widower and Cipher (and @Jimmy and @GM Impervium, since they were active in the last thread on this topic).  This thread might be locked or pruned, as this topic could potentially be deemed against the Code of Conduct, depending on their considerations.

[GM Kaiju]

Please PM me the support ticket numbers so I can review them. If further problems have happened since, please add that info as well.

 

If anyone receives inappropriate or abusive communications from another player, please take the following steps:

 

- Tell them in no uncertain terms to stop. This means not as part of “in character” dialog but player to player.

 

- Place them on Global Ignore

 

- Take screenshots of the inappropriate communications or save the chat logs, and submit them with a support request.

 

We take these situations very seriously and do act on them. However, every situation is different, and we unfortunately cannot discuss any outcomes, including what actions were taken.

[laudwic]

5 hours ago, GM Kaiju said:

 

 

We take these situations very seriously and do act on them. However, every situation is different, and we unfortunately cannot discuss any outcomes, including what actions were taken.

 

I do not understand this last statement. 

 

You certainly can discuss what occurred, what actions were taken and what the outcomes where, you are choosing not to.  There is no right to confidentiality here, we are not dealing with a school or other protected area.  I do not understand the hesitancy to inform the victim that, for example, someone has been banned for a week or for life or nothing has happened.  To me, there is a difference to informing a victim than posting the results in a forum.  I think a victim should get to know.  If there are reasons otherwise, I am curious as to what they are.  

 

Also, it may make sense, and I'm sorry I don't know the technical side of this, to assist a victim in changing a global name or character names to facilitate avoiding an individual.  A CoH Witness Protection Program if you will.  Players can migrate characters to other servers and do name or costume changes on their own.

 

It may make sense to suggest to people that want to do in character roleplaying that they go to Paragon Dance Party, a holiday event zone in the off season (or even the new event area), or the Kalisti (sp) Warf until it is completed.   Think of Role Players park on Virtue in the days of live.  You can role play, just stay out of everyone elses way.  While I don't recommend it, you could differentiate from a PG-13 Area versus R.  You know it is going to happen, this is a way to keep it contained.  

 

With that being said, I sympathize with the GMs as, no matter what, when people gather there are going to be a small subset of people that engage in greatly inappropriate behavior that diminishes the game for others.  There is no good way to deal with this, or to fix inappropriate conduct.    Its even worse when you consider that the individuals providing the game and additional contact are not being compensated for this headache.   

 

 

[June]

I remember old rules dating back two years said the very more relaxed with guidelines with tells, but supergroup and team chat they were not monitoring acticely, but would still be looked at as it had been local.

 

In my opinion team chat should be more relaxed than tells in general. Because there's no way to give consent to tells or withdraw it other than to put the person on ignore. In team chat you can always withdraw your consent and leave the team chat. And people need to accept the invite before you can actually talk to them in team chat. To give a tell you don't need permission. Not saying you are not supposed to do tells, but it shouldn't be that relaxed and if you do send inapropriate tells to someone, you should know the person first and know that they are fine with such tells. In team chat you can just keep it private and leave whenever you feel uncomfortable. Preferable you tell people before you leave, so they know not to keep pushing after you left.

Edited July 31, 2021 by June

[Haijinx]

This does sound bad.

 

I don't see where the mute feature is mentioned?  Probably a good time to use it. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

13 hours ago, GM Kaiju said:

We take these situations very seriously and do act on them. However, every situation is different, and we unfortunately cannot discuss any outcomes, including what actions were taken.

I have to agree with laudwic on this one.

 

Look, I realize that you're just following the rules, and that you didn't write those rules, so I'm not attacking you. I'm simply commenting on the rules.

 

Shortly after Guild Wars 2 launched a player posted on Reddit that he'd been banned from GW2 for no reason at all. He made up a bunch of stuff and basically did his best to paint ArenaNet in a bad light. Then a moderator, Gail Gray IIRC, posted in the thread that he'd actually been banned for spouting racist nonsense and included screenshots of his in-game chat to prove it. Needless to say this had a positive effect on how people viewed ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2.

 

And when I play Seige I regularly see things like "Battle Eye has banned xXxRacistNamexXx."

 

The point being that some game companies choose to make their moderation public and it has the positive effect of letting people know that people are actually getting banned and it makes people less likely to want to do something that will get them banned.

 

So there's no reason why The Council of 13 can't discuss moderation and/or disclose outcomes, they simply choose not to. They could, and it might actually be a good thing if they did.

[Sic]

Appreciate all of the responses on this. I didn't expect much more than a "yeah, me too" from one or two people, but the well thought out responses give me some hope. While I always ignore the people performing this kind of behaviour, it doesn't exactly fix it. I've seen more than enough bios with explicit, not at all subtle 'hinting' at a character's sexual features, their sexy pheremones, etc. I'm absolutely fine with people ERPing among consenting adults, but I'd really rather not be made a part of it by total strangers.

[Sic]

16 hours ago, GM Kaiju said:

Please PM me the support ticket numbers so I can review them. If further problems have happened since, please add that info as well.

 

If anyone receives inappropriate or abusive communications from another player, please take the following steps:

 

- Tell them in no uncertain terms to stop. This means not as part of “in character” dialog but player to player.

 

- Place them on Global Ignore

 

- Take screenshots of the inappropriate communications or save the chat logs, and submit them with a support request.

 

We take these situations very seriously and do act on them. However, every situation is different, and we unfortunately cannot discuss any outcomes, including what actions were taken.

I might need some guidance on finding the support tickets, I'm in no way familiar with the system. That being said, I appreciate the mod attitude and attention to this.

[chase]

10 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I have to agree with laudwic on this one.

 

Look, I realize that you're just following the rules, and that you didn't write those rules, so I'm not attacking you. I'm simply commenting on the rules.

 

Shortly after Guild Wars 2 launched a player posted on Reddit that he'd been banned from GW2 for no reason at all. He made up a bunch of stuff and basically did his best to paint ArenaNet in a bad light. Then a moderator, Gail Gray IIRC, posted in the thread that he'd actually been banned for spouting racist nonsense and included screenshots of his in-game chat to prove it. Needless to say this had a positive effect on how people viewed ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2.

 

And when I play Seige I regularly see things like "Battle Eye has banned xXxRacistNamexXx."

 

The point being that some game companies choose to make their moderation public and it has the positive effect of letting people know that people are actually getting banned and it makes people less likely to want to do something that will get them banned.

 

So there's no reason why The Council of 13 can't discuss moderation and/or disclose outcomes, they simply choose not to. They could, and it might actually be a good thing if they did.

There's a good deal of consumer protection law that makes these kinds of policies difficult to publicize without risking suit (not about the ban, but about the intentional infliction of harm by publicizing the private action.  The GW2 issue you mention was possible because the player himself volunteered that they were under disciplinary action but gave a false narrative for the reason.  That (false) voluntary discolsure of facts gave GW2 reasonable justification to correct the public record.  Had GW2 posted what they did publicly at the start, they could have fun afoul of those protections (COULD HAVE- they may not lose such a suit, but they'd certainly have to pay lawyers to argue it).

I don't play Siege, but its approach has been to use the term "ban" widely ( I'm told that the common "ban" is said to be "temporary ban" for consecutive reverse friendly fire incidents) and make every one public through the message text (not the details of the ban, just whether someone has been banned).  Their argument, should anyone try to sue, is to equate the ban as integral to the core mechanic of the game, ranking, and pairing system, equitable to suspensions/penalties applied in major sports.  

In general, though, most businesses still do treat bans as administrative action between the business and the consumer- even if the consumer's actions affected other consumers- and don't make public the results of that interaction, so I can understand taking that policy to heart, even though I'd love for a spotlight to be put on some of that bad behavior.



 

[GM Kaiju]

11 hours ago, Sic said:

I might need some guidance on finding the support tickets, I'm in no way familiar with the system. That being said, I appreciate the mod attitude and attention to this.

 

I sent you a PM. 

For anyone else with the same question, if you click the "Support" option in the header navigation, you can see and reply to your support requests.

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 hours ago, chase said:

There's a good deal of consumer protection law that makes these kinds of policies difficult to publicize without risking suit (not about the ban, but about the intentional infliction of harm by publicizing the private action.

None of the current consumer protection laws governs video games or the video gaming industry. That's the reason why video game companies are able to repeatedly lie to us about the features available in their game and why they're able to get away with selling a broken product. If a car dealership (in the US) knowingly sold broken cars they'd get shut down and put out of business, but for EA selling broken product is a daily thing.

 

All a company has to do to protect themselves is place a line that they can and will talk about moderator action, at their discretion, into their terms of service and they're covered. They don't really have to do that even. Libel laws do protect you sure, but they don't protect you from the truth, and they don't apply to fictitious names like user names or game handles.

[Hyperstrike]

On 7/30/2021 at 2:01 PM, laudwic said:

 

I do not understand this last statement.

Simply because someone is being a creep/perv/jerk doesn't mean the GMs are going to air the dirty laundry to the community.
Quite simply You Do Not Need To Know.  If the GMs tell you "It's handled.", you take that as "It's handled." and move on.
Anything else gives rise to an endless cesspool of community drama llamas.

No
Thank
You!

[Crystal Dragon]

This is a matter I actually had discussed with my roleplaying guide class tonight. You have every right to say no, reject their tells, and hide yourself from being contacted, your ignore via the chat window is global to their account. If the problem persists, this is why the report feature is built into the game as well. Taking a stance against unwanted, and uninvited attention of that kind is one of the big reasons why I started teaching the newer roleplayers about the rule of consent, because no one should ever feel guilted, or bad for saying no to unwanted advances of any kind.

[TombTyrant]

I keep wanting to say something but this whole thing just makes me sad.  We have to be better than this guys. Punishment, naming and shaming, I mean if that's what it takes fine. I don't actually think it will work, but I am hardly an expert.

 

I play a decent amount. I roleplay a little, mostly when I am extremely comfortable with  the content I am doing. Just like, it's been so many years, if my rust is showing I am not going to handicap my typing by channeling a character or adding brackets. But when I am doing something I find easy and comfortable I will roleplay a little. I like to actually. I like the game's lore and exploring creativity with other people. I play on Everlasting. I can't say I have never been hit on. On both my male and female characters, although, of course, the female ones more often. Hardly exclusively though. I consider myself fortunate that regardless of my avatar this has never escalated beyond the level of interested flirting. I have never witnessed this concern firsthand, but I believe without reservation. I know all too well how a certain predatory type will behave if allowed.

 

Our game must unreservedly be safe from that kind of predation. I applaud efforts to bring that goal to a swift realization.

[laudwic]

On 7/31/2021 at 9:52 AM, chase said:

There's a good deal of consumer protection law that makes these kinds of policies difficult to publicize without risking suit (not about the ban, but about the intentional infliction of harm by publicizing the private action.  



 

 

This is not my normal area, so can you give me examples from the United States Code of the Code of Federal Regulations that you are referring to?  The cite alone is fine.

 

It is my experience that businesses say that they can't do something when the simply do not want to.  If there are, as you say, numerous laws that restrict such disclosure, I would be curious to see them.  

 

I'm especially curious as to confidentiality requirements that also extend to prevent notification to the person that lodged the complaint/victim.   I am well aware of some that exist in the education sphere that would not apply here.  

[Siouxsie]

There may also be concern about exposure to civil suits.  Back when I was head of a large PA in SWG we had an issue that had to be taken up by the GMs.  They wouldn't let any of us know the resolution, other than we know the player being bothered wasn't contacted again.  How they came to that policy I can't say, but I'm sure legal had a hand in crafting it.

[TombTyrant]

It is probable that the shaky legal status of the private server makes it difficult for us to take a legal stand, and that is not something you'd want to advertise.

 

It should be noted though that difficult is not impossible.

[Sic]

People are really blowing this out of proportion, and it's by no means what I intended with the thread. I simpl wanted more attention paid to the issue. There's no need to talk about naming and shaming, etc. This is purely a moderation and community behaviour issue.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/30/2021 at 3:07 AM, Sic said:

Are we just pretending that this isn't a problem?

 

I'm sure you have done at least some of this

Use Menu>Support>Harassment and Conduct - to report the character(s) by name and server

Get screen shots or recorded footage and send it in when you get the email from support.

Put the offensive characters on /ignore

 

I'm not part of the intense roleplay community here, but I have had one of my characters sent suggestive tells and followed from zone to zone by another character.

I reported it. I put them on ignore. I have never seen that offensive character again

... but I server and character jump a lot.

 

If you are in an rp-community that shows up in given places than that makes you an easy target.

I'm sure there are other members of the rp-community that you know that would back you up. They can get screenshots or footage of whatever is going on as well and send in their own tickets to back you up.

 

[UltraAlt]

On 7/30/2021 at 3:01 PM, laudwic said:

You certainly can discuss what occurred, what actions were taken and what the outcomes where, you are choosing not to. 

 

The DEVs/GM are taking the higher path. (Do I need to say that's my opinion? Shouldn't have to, but it seems appropriate in this case)

You are in your rights to disagree.

They are well within their rights to take the stance they decide to take as well.

They are the ones that will be making the final decision.

 

I'm going back in to add this.

 

You don't seem to be too knowledgeable about the City of Heroes.

You can rename your characters at any time.

Renaming your global? haven't tried, but a support ticket would probably make that happen in the worse case.

No need so much to do either in most cases. If you put the offending character on ignore you are invisible their searches and you don't get their message. If someone isn't on your global friend list, then you aren't on theirs. 

 

Also. There are RPG groups and clubs that have meetings. Check Clubs - there is a Roleplay-A-Day club.

Some RPG groups have meetings in bases or in locations like you indicate. 

 

We really don't need the specifics of what went on.

Harassment is harassment regardless of where it is going on in THE CITY or otherwise.

(On person's kidding around can be harassment and that is where the line can get blurry. Sexual innuendos and what not are pretty clearly harassment.)

 

Oh, the DEVs here are tech and ethics savvy. They can deal with offenders on multiple levels as they feel it is necessary.

Edited August 3, 2021 by UltraAlt

[UltraAlt]

On 7/31/2021 at 2:12 AM, Sic said:

I might need some guidance on finding the support tickets, I'm in no way familiar with the system. That being said, I appreciate the mod attitude and attention to this.

 

Check your email. I think I recall they sent you an email response to all tickets.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/31/2021 at 5:38 PM, Krimson said:

It happened to me a few times on Everlasting. One of the reasons my toons are on Excelsior. However, the mute function works better than ever. 

 

"Out of the thirty-six ways to get out of a bad situation, the best one is to leave." - Lu Da - "Outlaws of the Marsh"

[June]

Of course if you have no interest in RP at all, then leaving Everlasting shouldn't really be a big loss. However if you do like to RP, most RP'ers tend to be on Everlasting.

 

For me usually the best way to avoid harassment is to stay away from pocket D. I rarely ever get any harassment outside of that location in particular.

 

Someone should go talk to DJ Zero that they should keep a better eye out on the place they own.

Edited August 3, 2021 by June

[teamtr]

I don't think ERP is a big deal, so long as it stays out of public channels, is exclusively kept between consenting adults, and those who engage in it have some self awareness about it.

 

(It can be an annoying obstacle when players who aren't interested in it are trying to dodge the writhing catgirl hordes, but that's just the price we pay for civilized society. Or something.)

 

Anyway, I don't think out-of-the-blue propositions are necessarily bad either, so long as they aren't explicit and the person sending them knows how to behave like a normal human being if they get rejected, blocked or ignored.

 

It's far more convenient for me if people just outright say that they only want to interact as a bit of foreplay to ERP. That way, I can tell them I'm not interested and go merrily on my way without thinking there might have been a chance for some RP I find actually engaging. 🤷‍♀️