My comment was meant to acknowledge that this feature is used for other purposes. If that’s an abuse of the feature, so be it. If that was the only use that this change limited, I’d shrug and move on. It’s not though. And it’s still not stalking if all I do is satisfy my curiosity.
If SG is really concerned about the safety/privacy/wellbeing of players, they’ll do exactly what has been described by others above, and create a new functionality. The chances of this are unlikely imo. So it becomes a choice of which functionality works best within their framework to ensure that both sides of the ‘argument’ are happy with the outcome.
At this point I really don’t have anything new to add to the conversation so I’ll call it a day. The SG team has more than enough feedback to consider. They seem to like polls. Maybe someone will throw one up.
I fully understand the reason for the recent update despite not agreeing with it, however I wanted to suggest a new feature to help protect alliances that if I player who is blocked but has a new name appears in your alliance their name has a muted symbol and if clicked will tell you the name they were muted as. This would not hurt anyone other than problem players and offers no ability to stalk even in general chat it would just let you see anyone in your alliance that’s snuck back in. Will protect from war jumpers and trouble makers alike and the player still has the freedom to change alliance and turn a new leaf or do the same to them but it eliminates stalking anyway which seems to be the main issue I hear.
I have never seen so many people.give so many reason why it’s ok to stalk someone just cause they ticked you off. Your comments alone, and there had to have been many more are the reason this happened. People ■■■■ me off all the time, disagreements happen, but in no way shape or form should someone be able to follow me around everywhere I go just cause I did something they didnt like. With the real life restraining order or what not if you see said person you call the cops and they deal with them, but you being your own DETECTIVES is just as much a violation, just because you didnt agree with what said person did doesn’t mean other people will and following them to talk about them behind their back to other people is still stalking. “Invite only” stops all of this yet you people wanna keep ignoring the easiest solution to come up with scenarios after scenario of why you should be allowed to stalk another player… good grief…no one on this screen can do anything but toss words and or leave an alliance mid war that’s it. If they do that they are gone and now you see why invite only is a function in the first place. Stop blaming SG for not controlling other human interactions when you have tools to handle it yourself.
How the hell is satisfying your curiosity not stalking??
Sorry but if I found out someone was just following me around because they found me curious and I dont know them or have any interaction with said person I call that creepy, and would definitely want a restraining order.
Curious as I have no experience in this area. Blocked players aren’t prevented from re-joining an Alliance? Say, if they are in the Leader or Co-Leader blocked list?
To the devs; a leader of the alliance wouldn’t leave to ‘stalk’ someone. A leader needs to know when blocked player names are changed to prevent them to enter again the Alliance. Nothing more.
And the people they’re concerned about didnt just “■■■■ em off”
Not my business to throw their business out there, but it’s not just a simple disagreement that caused a block. If it was, they would have all blocked me a long time ago.
I understand that you know some people with an issue and that sucks, but two wrongs never make a right. I for one know your are a sensible person, even if we dont always agree, but this was done not just because of one case is all I’m saying. You know as well as me there had to be numerous cases for this to have gone down even had a guy recently stalking our alliance. But to chase them back shows what exactly. They meant nothing prior they will mean nothing after, just another buffoon with nothing better to do.
Mods…I will again ask the stupid question for sake of clarity, (response appreciated)
If blocking a person was based on their user ID, rather than player name, would this not solve the issue.
Someone blocked from an alliance will never accidentally be allowed back in by another member, regardless of how many times they change their name.
Only way they could get back into the alliance would be to set up a second account. Then keeping your alliance entry level high would make it hardly worth the effort, (except for the super focused stalker)
I’m not sure how they track things on the server. I play the game on two different devices and the account number is different for each device. I believe the game is saved in Google Play Games (or equivalent on iOS) which is independent of the game server and linked by your Google Play email login.
I think that this feature needs to be brought back. This is absurd that as a leader you can’t view. Make it for leaders only. But we need to be able to track and warn when players are toxic.
I honestly don’t know. I assume it’s by account. I too would block people that left so I could track them. Purely out of curiosity.
Once, someone joined back with a changed name (not a malicious name, they just changed it for kicks and giggles). I believe I couldn’t see their posts until I unblocked them. Don’t fully recall.
That there is interesting. Assuming it’s true, seems what I said above wouldn’t work. Again, I don’t know how it’s coded.
What’s missing in your logic here is you are not blocked from an alliance as set up. They are individual blocks. Someone in our alliance had blocked someone in the alliance before (don’t ask). Also, people have come back that I’ve blocked to track. They can come in. Blocking is individual, not by alliance.
The solution to this specific issue, which is of course one of (but only one of) the main reasons people want the tracking feature back—is to provide an “Alliance Block”, maintained by the leader, (as opposed to just an individual player’s block), that is based on the user’s game ID rather than the name. Then when a leader blocks for the protection of the alliance, that player cannot rejoin the alliance regardless of name changes.
This protects an alliance from someone who has been in the alliance in the past and created trouble. The other main (valid) reason people what the feature back is to protect their alliance from other known bad actors, even if they have not been on that specific alliance before. So when a member requests to join, allow the alliance to click on a button that shows that person’s name history. If they recognize the person as someone they don’t want, they can deny the request. Both of these solutions address real issues that have been brought up in this forum, without providing what most seem to feel is the drawback to the previous process which is the ability to track someone when used for “curiouosity” or other nefarious purposes. Although that might in many cases be harmless, it does provide the ability for harrassment and even if not harrassment it is simply not necessary.
This, I think, is the main reason they made the change. Either proactively or because of legal issues that came up elsewhere. That being the case they are not going to change it back and expose themselves to legal issues down the road.
An alternative solution is required to address the concerns raised in this thread. Both of @CountryGirl’s suggestions are good ones, alliance block and/or player name history.
The block feature, both in its current and previous functionality, only blocks messages. The blocked account is not limited in any way. If I block another player, I will not see their messages but they are free to join the same alliance, and can send messages to and about me… I just won’t see the messages.
I agree that a feature that allowed a leader to permanently block a player from rejoining, regardless of any name changes, would be very helpful in addressing many of the concerns listed in this thread. I don’t see them updating that functionality any time soon though.
The challenge is concern from the players who have been harassed by another player. In order for the above function to address their concern, they would first need to get the leader to agree to permanently blocking the harasser. Likely not a difficult thing to do if the situation was as disruptive as the ones that I’m aware of. The player would however need to remain in that alliance for the rest of their time playing E&P. If they leave, they risk joining a new alliance with their harasser who has changed their name (small odds but not completely implausible), or just hope that their harasser doesn’t join their new alliance under the same name, or a new one.
This scenario is why I feel that it’s important for players to have the ability to be aware of name changes, and know where the player has moved to. Arguably, simply knowing the name change should be sufficient. There are a lot of duplicate names in the game but if you have to avoid any alliance with a player of a certain name, so be it.
I like this suggestion. Thanks for actually posting a helpful response.
I have to admit I’m bewildered by all the accusations of stalking. The only reason I was following a few blocked people was to avoid them or stop them rejoining. One player we had join a while ago harassed a younger member (was super creepy and really freaked her out- being young she wasn’t super careful with personal details). Then after being kicked he came back about a month later after changing his name. I wasn’t aware of how blocking worked. I didn’t have a clue until the young member figured it out and told me.
Anyhow I’ve also recently been a part of line groups that try to help alliance leaders steer clear of players that repeatedly harass players or commit purposeful war sabotage or generally just upset people. I don’t think following and trying to warn friends fits in the definition of stalking. I’m not actually stalking the players. I have no contact with them. Actually the whole point is I don’t want to have any future contact with them and I don’t really want them messing with my friends alliances either.
Unlike them, I don’t randomly pick on innocent players or intentionally wish to cause harm. The only people I’d like to track are those who stay in the game to continually upset people.
My entire block list consisted of maybe 5-10 people. But these people had all changed their name numerous times AND never stayed longer than a week or two in alliances which strongly suggested to me that they were up to the same tricks and worth tracking in order to avoid them.
One player that joined told my alliance that he did what he did “for kicks” and told us “he’ll be sure to come back and do it again”.
There are people like this and I wish we had some way of avoiding them. I’d love to hear more suggestions on how this might be possible. If it’s not acceptable to keep tabs, then maybe we could create or suggest a better system???
