Should I report someone for playing two characters at once?

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Just now I got kicked unfairly in Temple of the Fist after confronting a player about what he was doing, and now I'm kind of in the air about what I should report him for. Let me summarize exactly what happened here to get my thoughts straight.

I joined a dungeon that was 22 minutes "in progress" and besides me there was a Summoner and a White Mage. I asked what happened to the tank and the Summoner replied "I let him go" with the White Mage right behind him saying "Ordinary harassing moron." The White Mage from that point was the only one talking while the Summoner stayed silent. The White Mage continued that "They know pretty well -instaqueue-." That made me think that it was one of those tanks unwilling to pull and asking the party to kick them for one reason or another. I remember getting debuff sometimes when I get kicked and thought that if you kick them for being afk, which if they're not pulling they might as well be, then they get the 30 min debuff (this is false as I will later see for myself, lol).

Meanwhile, a new tank joins and we continue on, but I begin to notice something very odd. Not only is the Summoner using Ifrit Egi, but he's not putting any debuffs on the enemies or using Aetherflow. In fact, it looked like he wasn't even spamming Ruin II as fast as your GCD allows you. Even then though, I simply chalked it up to him prioritizing on something else and since we were just on trash it didn't really make too much of a difference. Pulls were slow, understandably so since I was really the only one doing damage, so it takes us about 5 minutes to do what could have been done in 2 if White Mage was doing any damage at all and the Summoner wasn't practically afk. Then we reach Arbuda and things become much more clear.

I'm gonna start with saying that I suck at the boat directions with Arbuda, but I can normally get through it pretty easy and the encounter itself but with the way how the Summoner is acting, I get cold sweats thinking about having to dps this fight solo. This prompts me to ask him right before we get to the boss "(Name of the Summoner) you awake?." He says nothing and the tank since I don't think he was fully aware of what was going on, starts the encounter. It becomes immediately evident within the first few minutes that the Summoner is not being played by a human since while he will accept rezzes and still spam Ruin 2 plus a heal on himself if he's hurt, he also refuses to move... during Arbuda. Now, the White Mage was actually moving at this point but when I put the pieces together that the Summoner was actually a bot, it became clear that there were too many similarities between the way both players typed for them not to be the same person (specifically there was a space after every time he put a punctuation mark, which is not only weird, but is indicative of a pattern). So by this time, my worst fears were realized, but I wasn’t about to let him waste all his MP on his bot, so I used the Red Mage’s instant cast rez to “keep the Summoner in the fight” as it were, but it was mostly to record even more video evidence that it was not a player behind the controls. My biggest mistake though was typing mid-fight “I smell a bot.”

After an intense and long fight, at the end of which both the White Mage and the Summoner were dead, I immediately tried to kick the Summoner and got stonewalled with the error message that a vote dismiss is already in progress. This tells me that despite me practically carrying the entire party along with the tank, that he has on either of his characters already initiated a kick against me within 10 seconds of me and the tank finishing the fight against Arbuda. Knowing that the end is near, I try to get the tank to look at the situation after the first pull post-Arbuda as well as confront both characters which I was fully aware was one person by then. After the roll of the items which happens almost immediately after I confront him, I get the message from the Summoner saying “lets see – you will get 30 min…” after which I am promptly kicked from the game. At that point I decide to save the video, despite me being a tad bit embarrassing on the mic when I find out the guy is a bot, and save screen shots of the chat log. As of right now, since I decided to get the ticket process going while I typed this, I am waiting for a reply from a GM as to what I should do with the video evidence/screenshots of the ordeal (I decided to report him for cheating). I will update this thread when I get the response.

EDIT: I got my response, the GM was nice and waited since it took me a little longer to type some of the long winded stuff because I'm on PS4. I'm posting the censored screenshots of the chat log and the GM response.

[Ruinfeild]

Not sure about forum rules but sounds like the guy was multi-boxing (not sure if that is a thing in FF yet). If he was, I don't think it is actually against the ToS for them to do that.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Not sure about forum rules but sounds like the guy was multi-boxing (not sure if that is a thing in FF yet). If he was, I don't think it is actually against the ToS for them to do that.

I'm sure he was multi-boxing, but I also think the Summoner was on some sort of automation through the use of a 3rd party program. Even if he isn't using automation though he still abused the fact that he had complete control over who he wanted to kick and didn't even try to engage in any kind of chatting with him.

[Krotoan]

I'm currently skimming the ToS for anything that might stop me there from posting their names.

I would not. even loose "Name and shame"-ing has gotten people banned or deleted.

[Reinha]

Multiboxing is not against the rules assuming the multiboxer doesn't use his characters to disrupt others' gameplay. Keeping one character inactive in a dungeon on purpose is a disruption. He should find a way to play both characters at once with creative keybinds and macros instead of being a nuisance to random parties.

This applies if he automates one or all characters:

2.1 Cheating and Botting. You may not create or use any unauthorized cheats, bots, automation software, hacks, mods or any other unauthorized software or hardware designed to modify the Game and gameplay. In addition, you may not take advantage of game system bugs and exploits during gameplay.

This applies if he intentionally disrupts the gameplay of others:

3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of Square Enix's computers and servers.

Preventing people from teleporting by trading them, resetting a mob that has been pulled by someone else and refusing to move or perform one's role at all in a duty are examples of what could count as a disruption.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

snip

Hopefully me posting the video on youtube so I can give it to the GM if they need it doesn't count. I'm not gonna post the video here though so I think it should be fine, still sucks though that this guy probably won't receive any type of punitive action.

snip

Does him multi-boxing badly count, or is that some sort of grey area in terms of a player's skill. I mean, at what point can I claim that he's intentionally disrupting parties when, besides him abusing the vote kick, he just looks like a new or very inept player? I mean honestly if he didn't tip his hand that he was controlling both of them through how he types in chat, then I would still think that it was just the Summoner doing "absentee play."

[Reinha]

Does him multi-boxing badly count, or is that some sort of grey area in terms of a player's skill. I mean, at what point can I claim that he's intentionally disrupting parties when, besides him abusing the vote kick, he just looks like a new or very inept player? I mean honestly if he didn't tip his hand that he was controlling both of them through how he types in chat, then I would still think that it was just the Summoner doing "absentee play."

That's up to the GMs in the end but if you feel like you were disrupted reporting only costs you a little time. Personally I've reported someone for that only once. It was a healer who kept joining our party-in-progress after getting kicked multiple times (it happened before the patch where rejoining a group that kicked you was made impossible). He would refuse to move his character from the entrance so we couldn't progress or get a replacement. It was clearly intentional and completely prevented us from progressing the dungeon so I had to report.

If a player at least performs some character abilities central to their role and moves with the group that's enough for me to not report them (kicking is a different matter). However if I can clearly tell that someone does not intend to finish the duty they queued for and is trying their best to prevent whole group from finishing it then I will happily report that person.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

I got my GM response and updated the first post with all of the screen captures.

snip

I'm looking at my footage since I can't send it in to SE and I get the feeling that he didn't intend to resurrect his Summoner, and that he might have intended to force me to do the fight solo anyway. His bot was always switching to a heal for his character and every action he took didn't seem like it fully rotated the gcd. When I revived him his character is still doing the automatic actions, but when I post "I smell a bot" it's also super obvious when he turns off the bot after I make my comment and then proceeds to spam Ruin 2 at a different rate than his character was before. Funnily enough, him trying to actually control both of his characters is probably what led to him dying in the end since he was spamming Cure 2 and Media 2 and started getting hit by all of the mechanics.

[Fortune_Cookie]

I'd definitely advise against naming anyone here. Vigilantism is never the right approach - let the GMs deal with this. You reported the player for vote-kick abuse, which seems justified, and if there is any evidence that they used more than key cloning software they'll presumably get done for botting as well. Don't turn this into a personal crusade; chalk it up to a bad experience and move on would be my suggestion.

[LunaFaye]

No offense, but you should have opened the ticket, as you did and leave it at that. Posting that whole thing on the forums, adding screenshots, even when the names have been removed as well as the GM response, could cause you serious trouble. Not to mention, that the forum isn't the place to bring our drama, except the duty finder thread of course lol. No but seriously, while it's aggravating, and trust me I got a good share of bs tonight as well, while running things via DF, these kind of situations need to be addressed via ticket and only ticket, if you feel it was that problematic/drastic/traumatizing. I hope you not get a warning out of that, but maybe for the future, you'll take my advise and leave it at that. Enjoy your evening/night, it's not worth getting all railed up over.