The Continued Concern of Win-Trading in The Feast

[RinrinHeartilly]

Hello SE & GM team!

There is a continued issue of win-trading taking place in competitive Feast 4v4 matches that we would like to bring to your attention. This win-trading typically takes place between healers who make an agreement that either one or the other will "force" forfeit the match by barely healing/not healing their team at all, or one of them will disconnect/leave the instance entirely.

Those involved in agreement will purposely withdraw from queues if they do not receive the same instance and wait out queue penalties. Unfortunately, the 30 minute penalty does not suffice in stopping this issue. They are able to wait out the penalty and resume queuing. The individual exploiting this effort is already in the top 10 for the Aether data center.

We would like further clarification that these win-traders are being investigated when we report them, and if any adjustments will be made to The Feast in the future to prevent this sort of blatant cheating.

I would like to quote an answer given by Yoshida in an interview he did with Mogtalk;

Q: One of the biggest complaints I receive from PvPers is towards what they feel is a lack of moderation. Players who abuse the system in ways such as queuing in with the intention to lose as fast as possible in order to get reward or hurt another’s rank go seemingly unpunished. This makes it difficult to take the competitive modes seriously when players see these situations occur. Are there any plans to combat this or increase moderation of such abuse?

Naoki Yoshida: This issue is extremely tough to tackle. We investigate every time we receive a report, but many of the cases aren’t as extreme as users describe them in the reports. As it relates to PvP, competition can become heated and the reports can sometimes become exaggerated, so we cannot take it at face value. We thoroughly investigate things like conversations and action logs and deal with players if we do discover a problem.

It seems that we need to look outside the reporting function based on Yoshida’s answer. We believe there needs to be more proactive measures in place, it should not get to the point where multiple reports are made my multiple people before a person is punished for foul play. By this time, so many matches for other players who are doing nothing wrong are already ruined.

As a community we have come up with a few suggestions and resolutions;

• Surrender rewards/ban; multiple reports have been submitted by players across the Aether data center and we would appreciate if rewards for any users found guilty of win-trading surrender their top 100 placement & any rewards for the season. We also feel there is grounds for permanent ban from at least ranked PvP if found guilty and their scores wiped so others can qualify for the top 100 legitimately. Just as SE announces RMT bans, we feel bans for foul play like win-trading should also be announced (redacting names).
• Increased penalty system; once a player has disconnected 2+ times within an hour+ timeframe, the penalties should increase. The first time a person abandons an instance, they receive a 30 minute penalty. The second time, it should be 60 minutes, 90 minutes and so on. We understand some players have internet issues from time to time, but having a disconnect once will not affect these players. However, if you continue to play knowing you may disconnect and cause a loss for your team, we feel this increased penalty is fair and it also deters win-trading.
• Immediate de-rank penalty; if a player disconnects/leaves a match over 3 times in a row within a 2 hour timeframe, they should immediately de-rank. This again, will deter win-trading and also doesn’t pose a threat to most players with normal internet connectivity issues.
• Flag system; Is there a way for a feast match to be automatically recorded for GM review if flagged by multiple players, since 3rd party recordings like youtube aren’t able to be used in official investigations? Since we only have chat logs to go off of, this does not actually tackle the win-trading issue. If the GM’s were able to either view a replay or live-view matches, they would be able to see win-trading happen
• Point adjustment in DC/short matches; we understand this is a little more controversial as it can be abused so it would take further thought and development. Matches under a minute or matches that conclude without a full 8 players should reward/lose less points than a normal match (-10 points instead of -20)

We cannot stress enough that this has become a major issue for multiple seasons now. We have seen an increased popularity in the Feast after SE introduced changes with the release of Stormblood and we would love to continue to see new players join us, however we feel this growth will always be stunted so long as win-trading is still prevalent.

I would like to call upon others in the Aether data center to confirm this issue and contribute any other ideas they may have. I am unsure if this issue exists on other data centers, but if it does we are sure these measures will help them too. We appreciate any attention on this matter!

Thank you for your time,

Rinrin Heartlily
Gilgamesh

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I'd like to lend some support behind this by noting that because it's well known that logs and conversations are reviewed, those who are coordinating these efforts to wintrade and cheat ensure that nothing is discussed in an area that can be reviewed by GMs. For this reason, a flagging system would really go a long way toward helping to identify these players who wildly disregard the rules, and at this point, openly.

A proper system of review is certainly in order, and I personally think SE should reconsider their stance on visual evidence. Speaking as a player that enjoys making video highlights of my PvP matches, it would most certainly NOT be easy to edit footage so as to bear false witness against another player. There's simply too much information on screen alone that would need to be altered as well to make for a seamless edit, and frankly, most players wouldn't have the time to do such a thing, let alone the technical knowledge to do it or the will to make such an effort. Thus maintaining a stance of visual evidence being arbitrarily invalid really only works against us all, and allows these players violating the rules to remain unchecked.

Above all else, the PvP community simply wishes to see proper, effective action taken. The 5th season of the Feast is nearly come to an end, and yet still with issues of cheaters and rule-breakers from even season one remaining unpunished. This HAS to change. We players are reliant upon you SE, to spearhead this. Just as with issues of exploits in PvE, we need this matter addressed proportionately, as it directly impacts other players, and the overall health of the game.

[KfLeX]

I get hit by these guys daily. Getting really frustrating. This needs to end.

[Hecathedrk]

If you get 4 withdrawals in 1 pop, consider stop feasting for some hours, because wintrading is happening.

[Syrus_Draco]

Coming from the Primal Server, I do give my voice to this. I have reported Throwers and Leavers with objective details several times over. In some instances I have reported the same player as a known Leaver/Win-Trader, and I still see them in Ranked Feast. This type of behavior needs to be punished, as it does not make for a positive PVP community and growth.

I do applaud the devs for creating a PVP environment that welcomes a vast amount of new players and promotes growth, but if we want to continue to grow the PVP community (and I strongly want PVP to grow in XIV as a whole), then we the players need to see the Leavers, Throwers, Win-Traders be punished and removed from PVP in some form or fashion. We want the PVP in this game to be strong and enjoyable as any other.

[CostiaRose]

Thanks for this thread. This has gone on long enough, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain it in depth to provide some insight for the devs / GMs to better handle the situation.

[Mantrus]

But who would
Ruin matches by
Using their healer friend to
Set up matches vs
Each other and immediately disconnecting to secure
Free wins???

[CostiaRose]

But who would
Ruin matches by
Using their healer friend to
Set up matches vs
Each other and immediately disconnecting to secure
Free wins???

People with alts. People with enough skill to quickly regain their desired rank. People who just like gaming the system.

[Heerorito]

I Support this,this happens to me twice during the time i was trying to climb up Plat. Made me lose my qualifiers because of the win trading happening. I reported the same win traders twice already, if Square enix does want pvp to grow in this game, they need to fix this asap. I am in Primal btw.

[Theodric]

I'll just throw my full support behind this thread!