There's ingame drama and toxicity.
Then there's misconduct and actual abuse.
I created this thread and perfectly accepted by the way, that I could lose ALL communities of the FFXI brand, retail and private.
I am willing to take that risk that I'd be the only one vs. everyone else against me. I am not here to make frens.
Sharing this for me and if I need to walk away completely on my own, I'd have much more peace in my whole being.
BEFORE YOU PLAY A PSERVER GUIDE (FOR WOMEN/MINORS)
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BEFORE YOU PLAY A PSERVER GUIDE (FOR WOMEN/MINORS)
RadialArcana said: » I love how you know they are forced to read these threads here and they desperately want to shut it down as they do on their own discord, but they can't. ]  Who you talking to? Damn, this is reminding me of Minimuse being community manager of Dreadnaught.
You can be part of something without knowing/realising/believing the extent of the abuses being committed. Sometime you need to experience the abuses yourself before you realise who you thought was your friends are actually capable of doing what they were accused of doing. People also have different tolerances for abuses. Just because someone is ok with game abuses like getting 500% extra exp or synth skill gain, doesn't mean they would be ok with sexual abuses. And when someone is your "friend", is part of your tribe, you might not believe the sexual abuse allegation until it happens to you.
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There’s very little way that you’re part of the largest, admin/gm LS, and don’t know of all that especially over two years. Understandablly and unfortunately if it happens to you your perspective is changed, but until then I guess it’s just “ ok because it’s not me and I’m currently benefiting from all of this”.
Sylvebits said: » Who you talking to? the people who run them I don't think you can blame her for being in the admin/gm LS; it seems like they were actively seeking out the prominent females on the server. They likely did not make it known upfront that she was welcomed because they wanted to prey on her.
This plays back into the power issue. If a linkshell does things like that on retail, they will become known for it. On a private server, they have a substantial amount of power to silence and chill criticism.
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Sylvebits said: »
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Sylvebits said: » everyone on ffxiah turns into animals when we talk about private servers It's more like 3-4 people who cant help but bait each other into 5 pages of nonsense rehashing the same points over and over
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Sylvebits said: » There’s very little way that you’re part of the largest, admin/gm LS, and don’t know of all that especially over two years. Understandablly and unfortunately if it happens to you your perspective is changed, but until then I guess it’s just “ ok because it’s not me and I’m currently benefiting from all of this”. Remember that staff by default are going to have an advantage here. Most people aren't going to seek out an unknown accuser to ask for their side of the story. When staff go on a massive smear campaign to discredit and invalidate their accusers, it's only natural for people to believe staff. I understand this hurts people who love the server greatly.
I loved it whole heartedly too. I really did. I gave so much time and energy into it. But if a private server is going to be managing much more people in the future. Strive to imitate retail and market that. It's not only content. There's also a level of conduct and laws set in place because they serve for their particular reasons to prevent these things from ever happening. They protect everyone. If people don't desire to improve you're not gonna get better. You can't just keep putting everything under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. And I get it when it's not regulated there's no incentive to. It's not the first priority. But there's consequences to that eventually. Every company, organization, and community project has to deal with these type of issues face on. Otherwise major lawsuits, jail time, or shutdowns can come out of it. And as of now I'm just a girl on a forum pointing it out. How am I a threat again? Use this to your advantage to take it seriously and fix it. I wish you well on private servers
Private servers are just terrible places- broken and filled with people who wanted something their way and had to have it their way. It's a pathetic place filled to the brim with has-beens. I advise you to play a better game but if you truly want to experience ffxi (I advise against ffxi) then retail is the best by miles. Retail is just better than private in every facet and anyone else refuting otherwise has mental issues. Gotta worry about grooming and server masters is just a terrible practice that should not exist in gaming. The problem is people aren't skilled enough to play retail ffxi to the endgame. FFXI isn't hard it's just they have been hand-held in other games for 10+ years and now people expect it.
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Sylvebits said: » No thanks, I'll pass. No part of me needs to think about validating a private server as anything other than trash. None of this garbage goes home with me because I never walked into one thinking that it would be a good idea. I knew better, OP clearly didn't. Abyssea has a learners permit to drive. Maybe it's old enough for Horizon players to start hitting on it. This type of stuff isn’t even exclusive to FFXI private servers, I’ve known people who were groomed by other games private servers admins. This thread is a good read because there may be someone who is a target right now but just doesn’t see it. Abuse and grooming is often very hard to identify if you are the one being abused or groomed, especially in these tight knit communities with a ton of peer pressure involved.
Glad for OP for speaking out and sharing their story, and giving solid tips to avoid getting into their situation. We should encourage talking about these experiences too and not try to lambast someone or make psychological guesses at their intentions. Side note : one of my biggest things with horizon was admins participating in end game content. While I’m sure some had good intentions it just leads to drama. Makes me almost believe that these things being run for profit create a better environment than those run out of passion.
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imagine playing an old version of ffxi with an unironic admin/gm ls, absolute shambles. who even takes this rubbish seriously
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There are good reasons SE employees are excluded from certain in-game events, including Mog Bonanza, even if they pay their sub and have a character they play on their off-hours.
Anything that opens up an avenue for abuse of power is a big no-no. Even if you say "well just trust them or don't" is not enough. The incentive is there and the temptation will also always be there to do "just a little" abuse. Only way to avoid temptation is to remove anything that would allow it in the first place. For PS that would mean all GMs/Admins or anyone associated with the running of the server will have to be disallowed from also having a character on the server. But that won't happen precisely because it means less power to those same people. It follows that the very fact those same people even run a PS is precisely to gain this power over others. That's who you're playing with on PS.
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Dodik said: » For PS that would mean all GMs/Admins or anyone associated with the running of the server will have to be disallowed from also having a character on the server. But that won't happen precisely because it means less power to those same people. I think that is a bit unfair, claiming it is all about power, the reason GMs and Admins play on the server is if they had no interest playing on it there wouldn't be a server. I think that is what leads to this seemingly unavoidable outcome, and as someone else pointed out it is not a uniquely ffxi PS issue. The people who create private servers want to play on them, and that creates a conflict of interest their game play experience vs the generic user. Only a saint could run a server and play on it and not find the power going to their head.
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The conflict of interest is unavoidable, the handling isn't. A server aiming to allow administration to play should be able to recognize upfront that there are serious concerns about abuse of power. I would argue that the best way to do this is by giving greater ability to audit the behavior of administrators.
If a report is made regarding an administrator, both the report and the response should be published to the public with any supporting details. This process would require administrators to remain accountable for their actions, and make it much harder for them to hide their own malfeasance. In the event they tried to abuse this sort of system, the possibility of a user showing evidence to contradict their take would leave an immense stain on their reputation. I urge Horizon, and any other server that values their reputation, to implement this sort of system. It sends a clear message that you are opposed to the behavior being described in this thread, and are not placing your administration above your playerbase.
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If I were in a position where I was a staff. Personally I would not be playing the server. I'd be treating it as a job. I wouldn't be friends with any normal player. I'd always be invisible and private. And the only form of contact would be through tickets or when I need to fix a requested problem. Otherwise I'd stick with the other staff because they'd be my equals. My form of fun would be beta testing.
If I wanted a normal player experience, I'd be playing a different private server then or retail. Why? Because I respect myself and wouldn't want to cross the boundaries into even the idea of the bad possibilities I could risk jeopardizing myself. It's not worth it for me. I think there's more power to the person where there's self discipline and striving to be a trustworthy and careful. I think that's where true respect comes from. But now with what I know I wouldn't even want to engage any of the community. It'd be a hard job to correct other staff if they were in better positions and there for entirely different reasons than my values. Who wants to go down the ship with that bad of a reputation that's been ongoing for so long? And one also have to factor in, not all the staff are equal. We've heard of devs quitting or leaving too for various reasons and whatever internal conflicts we know nothings of. Reading this thread has been incredibly enlightening btw. tannifae said: » If I were in a position where I was a staff. Personally I would not be playing the server. I'd be treating it as a job. I wouldn't be friends with any normal player. I'd always be invisible and private. And the only form of contact would be through tickets or when I need to fix a requested problem. Otherwise I'd stick with the other staff because they'd be my equals. My form of fun would be beta testing. The issue with this stance is that there are very few people willing to do the work of staff while playing, much less under the terms you're outlining. It is certainly preferable, but without a clear source of funding it is unlikely FFXI private servers can source enough talent to maintain these standards. Without naming names, there have been serious corruption issues on Horizon in the past. Entire characters have been created out of thin air. Database alterations have been done to finish missions for people, spawn items, etc. To their credit, the person behind these events was ousted. I believe most or all of the recipients of these were banned. But, this is not common knowledge. Every comment made by staff about it was vague, and tried to maintain reputation over transparency. There's no accountability, nor any assurance that systems will be put in place to prevent this sort of abuse in the future. This echoes my earlier sentiment; if the system must allow staff to play, it must also ensure that staff are held to a higher standard of scrutiny than any other player.
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The problem is you can’t say they shouldn’t play on the server they are GMing on because someone of those GMs started GMing because they enjoyed the server. It’s a hard balance to strike.
Real cringe of the private server is the pretending they are playing ffxi
everything else is just the cherry on top. not like retail is any better but at least it takes real skill and you can be racist. Jetackuu said: » what the actual ***... If it bothers you stop playing, grow up, move on. /end Sure, but the problem is people get invested in their character and waste tons of hours working on a character then feel the sunk cost and don't want to step away from their investment. Or even if they do step away, then they have to give up a character/friends they love to stop playing a game they enjoy, because they were mistreated. Oh, I guess it's not a problem though...just stop playing and move on. Imagine you had to stop playing FFXI (or whatever game you actually play) and move on because the people running the game were harassing you and gaslighting you. You wouldn't think that's a problem, just because there's a solution (stop playing)? OK, you can block them on Discord. How about when they make a new account and send you another DM? How about when they continue talking ***about you and other former friends of yours send you shitty messages? What if you gave someone your email, phone number, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever other details and it was doxed by the admins? Oh, just change your phone number, email, all of your social media, remove all your Discord friends, change your privacy settings, and change your last name. And delete the character you've been playing for 2 years. It's EASY, geez. I wish these people would just move on and shut up about their experiences, it's making me uncomfy. It's like nobody can possibly imagine being in these shoes and just assume it's as simple as blocking a single person on Discord, uninstalling the game and it's over. edit: also as you can clearly see from the testimonials in this thread, lots of people including witnesses and friends of both parties are reluctant to get involved for fear of losing their connections or, worse, their characters. I offer now as the time for someone to tell me how this could happen on retail.
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Carbuncle.Maletaru said: » Jetackuu said: » what the actual ***... If it bothers you stop playing, grow up, move on. /end Sure, but the problem is people get invested in their character and waste tons of hours working on a character then feel the sunk cost and don't want to step away from their investment. Or even if they do step away, then they have to give up a character/friends they love to stop playing a game they enjoy, because they were mistreated. Oh, I guess it's not a problem though...just stop playing and move on. Imagine you had to stop playing FFXI (or whatever game you actually play) and move on because the people running the game were harassing you and gaslighting you. You wouldn't think that's a problem, just because there's a solution (stop playing)? OK, you can block them on Discord. How about when they make a new account and send you another DM? How about when they continue talking ***about you and other former friends of yours send you shitty messages? What if you gave someone your email, phone number, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever other details and it was doxed by the admins? Oh, just change your phone number, email, all of your social media, remove all your Discord friends, change your privacy settings, and change your last name. And delete the character you've been playing for 2 years. It's EASY, geez. I wish these people would just move on and shut up about their experiences, it's making me uncomfy. It's like nobody can possibly imagine being in these shoes and just assume it's as simple as blocking a single person on Discord, uninstalling the game and it's over. edit: also as you can clearly see from the testimonials in this thread, lots of people including witnesses and friends of both parties are reluctant to get involved for fear of losing their connections or, worse, their characters. I offer now as the time for someone to tell me how this could happen on retail. Summed it up pretty well. It is that easy; uninstall the game. Next thread, please.
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cool devices 7
Shiva.Thorny said: » I don't think you can blame her for being in the admin/gm LS; it seems like they were actively seeking out the prominent females on the server. They likely did not make it known upfront that she was welcomed because they wanted to prey on her. This plays back into the power issue. If a linkshell does things like that on retail, they will become known for it. On a private server, they have a substantial amount of power to silence and chill criticism. Nothing I say below applies here, whatsoever: The server is both an overall violation of property rights AND they derive exactly zero dollar value from it...however....as I look through this thread (and we move rapidly to a new era) let me offer some advice... Allegations like this in a public forum had better be substantiated beyond just your viewpoint/opinion or you can easily find yourself sued for libel (like slander, but in print) and be held financially responsible for losses. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't 100% accurate. I'm just saying be smart and be absolutely critically sure you are being accurate. False accusations (and I'm not saying this is one!) are fast becoming penalized as directly and deeply as possible..
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In terms of personal responsibility, sure, all you have to do is step away and not play the game. Easier said that done for some, but still pretty straightforward.
If the experience was really unhealthy, though, its not unnatural to want to warn others from being hurt in the same way. When this happens several times over the course of years, a pattern emerges for anyone to see who bothers to pay attention. This is what goes on with Horizon, over and over. Some people won't care. Others will think it can't happen to them. Then the next tannifae comes and the cycle starts again. Hopefully with a more visible warning like this thread it might not happen as frequently, but as long as the same people are running the Horizon server, it will happen again.
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IGDC said: » Summed it up pretty well. It is that easy; uninstall the game. Next thread, please. I think you missed a couple words there. Im just glad tanniefae came here. I made a lot of great friends in-game but here(FFXIAH) is the soul of the game. From Rooks and Vyre and the purples and Panta and Eiryl and RA! (I could go on forever fr). I'm personally on Jet's side of the situation, but still, she came to right place.
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