[Question] How to deal with a player who stalks and harasses you In game?

[DeletedUser]

Figure out the offending players guild. Any hoodie in the same guild gets plundered daily. Any allied guilds have their members plundered as well. Message the neighbors that you plunder telling them that the plunder will continue as long as they are associated with the offending player.
Convince your guildmates to follow suit in their hoods.

Collective punishment for an individual's actions tends to lead to corrective actions taken by the community.

Also, to piggyback on this, message the guild leader(s) of the offending player's guild. That has worked for me in the past. I kind of stalked one player that had made repeated insulting remarks, including very personal ones, to me. I messaged the leader(s) of every guild he joined for months, and every single time he got kicked from the guild. And many of those same guild leaders are on my friends list to this day.

 

[DeletedUser15539]

There's an old saying that might be appropriate here:

"Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference."

Put him on ignore and move on.

 

[Mustapha00]

Sorry Mustapha...Scammers will scam....rubes will be rubes...that's how we have learned our lessons over the past few thousand years. Sometimes it takes being taken advantage of to learn "that" lesson. You can't change human nature. There will always be those who are willing to take advantage of those that can be taken advantage of. It's the circle of life, only different than you imagined.

I wanted to respond to two of your emails in one fell swoop.

First, I did not say that the OP had any sort of responsibility to take it upon himself/herself to inform other players about the scammer. He/she does not, but it's quite the feather in the cap of a player who doesn't >have< to do something good for the community but >chooses< to do so. That should not be a controversial point to make.

What I did say is that other posters seem to have completely misunderstood, at least at first, what the OP was trying to do. Recall that the OP stated very clearly what steps he/she had taken in order to warn others and not a few of the posts recommended that he/she takes the steps he/she had already taken. My post(s) were intended to shed additional light as to what the OP had done and my guess as to why.

On the point above...why have laws against fraud then? I mean, if the best way to repeat being defrauded is to be defrauded once and thereby learn from the mistake, then all such laws are superfluous, would they not be?

Yes, I am exaggerating to an extent, comparing fraud in a virtual world to fraud in the real world, but look at it this way: just as there are laws against fraud in the real world, so, too, does Inno have rules against fraud in their virtual world. If they are not going to enforce them, why have them?

Wouldn't you prefer to be forewarned against a scammer than learn about the scammer after he or she scams you?

 

[DeletedUser29623]

“Stalking” seems like overkill to me. If this person isn’t searching out your private identity and contact information and harassing you there, then I think it’s unlikely what they’re doing rises to the level of stalking, which a crime that should be taken more seriously, at least in the real world.

I’m just going to go out on a limb and guess that the OP (who seems to have flounced) may be dealing with this sort of situation for the first time. Everyone is interested in what other people have to say about them and that counts double when it’s negative. Learning to resist the urge to respond to everyone who insults you in a public Internet forum is an actual skill and takes some practice (and the occasional brush-up!). It goes against our social instincts to know you’re being discussed, that all you have to do is click to see it all, and yet refrain from doing so. And of course, it’s much harder to resist the urge to respond to those insults once you’ve broken down and looked at them.

If you look at what this guy says, you will feel driven to respond, and this really is what he wants: to be noticed and at the center of some kind of drama and to upset people he’s decided for whatever pathetic reason he needs to upset. The ONLY solution to this is to cut off the supply of attention.

If the OP or anyone In a similar situation is reading this, you should be aware that while you feel that you need to respond to this person to defend yourself, chances are (as someone mentioned earlier) you will start to look like part of the problem and just as crazy and vindictive to other players, old and new, as he does. He will seem much less significant if he’s just howling in his corner and no one pays him any mind. You are too caught up in this drama to have any perspective, and for your own peace of mind just try setting him to Ignore for a week or two and see how it makes you feel. You’d be surprised how quickly you get over it.

 

[Graviton]

First, I did not say that the OP had any sort of responsibility to take it upon himself/herself to inform other players about the scammer. He/she does not, but it's quite the feather in the cap of a player who doesn't >have< to do something good for the community but >chooses< to do so. That should not be a controversial point to make.

But that's not what the OP was doing, he called it "defending himself". There's no altruism there, only a bruised ego. He also said everybody else in the chat already knew the offender was full of it. That was the primary concern of your first post: that if the OP put the guy on ignore, other players weren't going to be warned. If it weren't causing the OP such grief that he was compelled to ask for advice about it, you might be right, he could get down in the mud with the guy and hope everybody else can keep track of which one is the good guy. However, it doesn't sound like that's working, so I think doing it just to warn other players is a lousy reason to continue to live with the aggravation that the OP expressed.

On the point above...why have laws against fraud then? I mean, if the best way to repeat being defrauded is to be defrauded once and thereby learn from the mistake, then all such laws are superfluous, would they not be?

Well, experience is indeed the best teacher. Human nature will drive people who've never been burned to touch that stove even when warned that it's hot. So yes, the best way to learn to recognize and avoid fraud is to be a victim of it. That doesn't mean anybody's encouraging fraud as a teaching tool, and it doesn't mean the perpetrator should avoid consequences, it simply means the victim is now better able to avoid it in the future, moreso than someone who's not experienced it. It's a lesson learned.

Secondly, let's not make the mistake of thinking that passing a law against something wipes it out of existence. Laws merely provide a means of punishment and restitution when they're broken, they don't prevent anybody from doing anything until they're locked up for doing it in the first place. That's why there should be laws against fraud, and even though there are, people will still scam others, and the victims will be subsequently more vigilant. It's not an either-or situation.

Why Inno has rules in place that are apparently haphazardly enforced, I cannot say. It sounds like they should tighten that up. Until then, the advice given here is sound and I think exhaustive: report him, message his guild leaders and yours, put him on ignore, and move on.

 

[Salsuero]

If they are not going to enforce them, why have them?

Ask Inno. Maybe they like the real world money the virtual world bullies/defrauders provide, but they don't want to appear to be unfair in their policing practices -- on paper? Just one possibility among many.

 

[Salsuero]

message his guild leaders

I just keep thinking... if it's as bad as the OP says it is... his guild has got to know this. So, either he's a one-man guild, the founder of a big guild, or in a guild that doesn't care and/or supports his activity. It seems to me that it would be pretty hard to not know this about a player if he's that notorious. I would think that complaining to a guild that doesn't care... or perhaps even supports this activity (and we have at least a couple such guilds in our world... mercenaries... bullies... from the top down) -- you might just invite even more wrath as you get the rest of the guild involved against you on their fellow guildmate's behalf. It's certainly possible that he's in a blind guild and they would respond in your favor... but how long until he finds a guild of like-minded individuals and then you've now got upwards of 80 players joining in on the fun against you? I still think the best advice is to just ignore the person and move on with your game.

 

[DeletedUser]

I still think the best advice is to just ignore the person and move on with your game.

Oh, I agree with this wholeheartedly. I was just suggesting another avenue for those not satisfied with the ignore option.

 

[Jase249]

I read through this whole thread and I felt myself getting dumber. Just put the guy on "ignore". The whole "I have to see what he says so I can defend myself when he calls me names" spiel is total nonsense because the OP also stated that everyone else is tired of him too, which means the guy carries zero credibility. Let him spout. No one cares. Have you gotten any messages from people leaving your FL based on this guy's obnoxious BS?

It's a game. Why do you care so much about what some random guy on the internet claims? I've hit ignore on a couple players who have proven themselves incapable of carrying on civil dialogue. I have no idea what they're up to these days, nor do I care. Honestly, I don't even remember the names to "un-ignore" them even if I wanted to.