Crime & Punishment. Why have GM's that are unable or unwilling to suspend accounts?

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Completely true.



Completely false. There are a lot of forms of harassment, they don't need to insult you to be warned or banned. If an individual say constantly early pulls hunts/puts them behind rocks so that they go LoS, repeteadly kicks others in dungeons for no reason or does some sort of clear griefing just for the sake of it I can assure you that person is gonna be having a few words with a GM.

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You are absolutely correct but that answer was in direct response to the OPs situation. Nothing of the sort was mentioned on his end so the only other way a GM could have possibly done anything for him was if words were involved. Sorry for the confusion!

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Originally Posted by ThirdKeyOfSun

You are absolutely correct but that answer was in direct response to the OPs situation. Nothing of the sort was mentioned on his end so the only other way a GM could have possibly done anything for him was if words were involved. Sorry for the confusion!

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If the situation involves insults then you immediately meet a GM guaranteed, but it's not an always 100% requirement. If whoever the TC reported anecdotically kiked him because of different playstyles nothing's gonna happen (I'm inclined to think that's most likely the case), however, if the person the TC came across has been repeteadly kiking others for apparently no reason and amassing reports that person is gonna end up talking to a GM.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

Something to keep in mind, a lot of MMOs will do mass bannings at once. So bots and the like may get away with things for awhile, and then after enough have fallen into the net, a mass-ban will happen.

No clue if this is how SE handles certain botting behavior, but it is a fairly common tactic.

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As far as bots go, this seems to apply strictly to the mass-produced gil-farmers that hack and teleport around, because the same gathering bots are still around after over a year of me reporting them.

Even in the case of the gil farmers, it takes them far too long to act against them, since they're generally able to farm for several days before they get purged.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

Something to keep in mind, a lot of MMOs will do mass bannings at once. So bots and the like may get away with things for awhile, and then after enough have fallen into the net, a mass-ban will happen.

No clue if this is how SE handles certain botting behavior, but it is a fairly common tactic.

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I'm fairly certain the only bots included in the mass bans are the Level 1 RMT advertisers in city states that you can right-click report, and the bots that bot through the MSQ with nonsense names to farm Gil for RMT. PvP bots and crafting/gathering bots rarely ever seem to be included in there. I'm aware of a few crafting and gathering bots on my server that are still botting away despite reports, and have been for quite some time. All I can do is encourage my friends to at least not give them any business, but that doesn't stop them.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Completely false. There are a lot of forms of harassment, they don't need to insult you to be warned or banned. If an individual say constantly early pulls hunts/puts them behind rocks so that they go LoS, repeteadly kicks others in dungeons for no reason or does some sort of clear griefing just for the sake of it I can assure you that person is gonna be having a few words with a GM.

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The other reasons may be valid, but the GMs have gone on record saying that early pulling Hunt marks is not a reportable offense, nor is it harassment. Only way it could be considered harassment would be if the puller was being abusive in /shout or something, but then that is harassment via chat, not early pulling. Now, pulling and constantly resetting a Hunt is reportable.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

Yes you are right, but have ever read the comments of what people say during the hunt?

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In which case, the comments are the source of harassment and the basis of a report. Not the early pulling. Which is exactly what I said in my post you quoted. There is a difference between reporting an early pull, and reporting an individual that early pulled AND harassed people in /shout.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

Okay, let's take it from another perspective, do you think I should record dungeon runs from now on just like a dashcam on a car? What am I gonna do with the video footage?
As much as I really want to, unlike real life, I can't post it on here or reddit due to the stupid rules involved.

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Maybe it's just because I played the game for 4 years or so and never got kicked or the way you come out swinging for the fences but something tells me you're just upset you got kicked out right before a final boss because of a legit reason. Hell, if someone is being a douche in a dungeon I do the same stunt. Being a Warrior does help as we can literally solo the Expert roulette bosses right now.

I have been here since Beta and the release. The only mass ban I recall was in the first month or so with anyone that made any amount of gil on the market board. I am sure a bunch bought the gil also but a bunch quit the game when that happened. Some got caught, some lost their gil without cheating. Don't really recall much about it but that was the only time I recall SE doing anything against players. I feel they are too scared to enforce their own ToS for fear of losing their player base. Either they know there is a lot of cheating and fear they will lose a lot of players or they are unsure what will happen if they actually enforce their ToS and worry about losing subs. Honestly, it would be nice to have a game that cheating is kept to a minimum. I think most players would be happy to have a fair game. But SE will never bother enforcing their ToS as I report bots daily and they rarely get a time out.

you can't get banned unless you hurt someone's feelings via text uwu

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

The other reasons may be valid, but the GMs have gone on record saying that early pulling Hunt marks is not a reportable offense, nor is it harassment. Only way it could be considered harassment would be if the puller was being abusive in /shout or something, but then that is harassment via chat, not early pulling. Now, pulling and constantly resetting a Hunt is reportable.

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True, early pulling isn't a form of harassment, but go ahead and early pull every hunt yourself during months, and after that spam the manderville emote and shout something like "X is dead but don't fear, it will respawn again!". I can guarantee you you'll be meeting a GM.
All I'm saying is, you don't need to just insult someone to get banned, if you are a douche via other ways and you are persistent at it, you'll end up eating a warning too.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

True, early pulling isn't a form of harassment, but go ahead and early pull every hunt yourself during months, and after that spam the manderville emote and shout something like "X is dead but don't fear, it will respawn again!". I can guarantee you you'll be meeting a GM.
All I'm saying is, you don't need to just insult someone to get banned, if you are a douche via other ways and you are persistent at it, you'll end up eating a warning too.

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Yes, but not from early pulling; you’ll get banned for being an arse in /shout, not for pulling Hunt Marks early. I think it’s important to note that difference because “getting banned from early pulling” is unlikely, but not “getting banned for being a tool and insulting people in /shout”.

As for meeting a GM, they’d be more likely to meet with an individual if they said a curse word in chat, not for pulling mobs and then performing /manderville. That’s the surest way to get banned: say a “bad word” and someone report you over it.
But they’ll continue to ignore the rampant PvP bots, and crafting bots and gathering bots killing a server’s economy or markets.

Personally, I’m still more of a fan of not giving those tools the time of day. Ignore them, and they eventually stop because they aren’t getting a rise out of you.

When I first read the thread title I thought that this would truly be about a crime and not one single kick from a dungeon. First we dont know the whole story and only one perspective. Its kinda telling though how you write in this thread and that you somehow had to mention DPS and stuff like that. Maybe your comment after the wipe came over as rude to them? There are so many reason why you can be kicked and maybe it was not just to get a FC mate in there but maybe something else.

Suspending an account just for one kick would be way too harsh and I am quite sure that you would think that too if you make a mistake in the game, get reported for it and maybe have a suspended account for something relatively small. Also You write it as it was a horrible crime (like stalking and things like that) and which happens more than once and the GM did not do anything against it..yet it was just one kick from a dungeon and on top of that you just got the standard mail from them. How do you know that they were not punished? Maybe they did get a warning, maybe they did get a 1-day ban. Just because they dont tell you that wont mean that they did not do that and honestly a abused vote kick with evidence should still not give that big amount of punishment.

Is it weird that Ive never been vote kicked? Maybe its a DPS thing. Except my friends who are just DPS people have never been vote kicked randomly either. Not saying it dont happen, just saying Ive never experienced it.

When people do vote kick, its usually cause someone is a jerk. Just what Ive noticed in my time playing.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Yes, but not from early pulling.

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actually head gm ezk said if you find a hunt and someone pulls it before your team arrives that is a valid early pull, but only the finder can claim its a early pull.
i will see if i can refind the exact qoute.

found it, i was alittle off but yea. it's very rare but possible.

course this is from 2014 so its nearly 4 years old xD

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

Greetings, all!

I was quite excited to see a rules discussion here, since it gives me the opportunity to join in and hopefully clarify our policies. The GMs do their best in the game to explain policies; however, space constraints (typing large amounts of text into the chat system) can sometimes cause misinterpretations. Hopefully a forum post, where a larger amount of text and be read easier and digested over time, will provide a clearer view of these types of violations.

To begin, at its most basic level, resetting hunt marks can be considered a grief tactics violation. This post will be discussing grief tactics in general as a violation of the rules, and that general discussion would apply to this particular topic, as well as any number of related topics (MPK, zone disruption, etc.). If you would like a point of reference for this rule, you can find it under the FINAL FANTASY XIV User Agreement, specifically section 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.

When discussing grief tactics, there is one important detail that is needed to determine that an action was a violation of the user agreement. That detail is the intent of the customer as determined by a GM. Because of this, while any suspected grief tactics violation can (and should) be reported to a GM, only after a GM completes their investigation will a decision be made about if there was a violation.

The intent of the customer is important, since this determines if they are trying to disrupt the game play of other customers, or just trying to play the game. To use an example, this could be best represented in the potential conflict between a customer that needs to defeat certain monsters for a quest and another customer who is defeating the same monsters for an item drop. Each customer may feel the other is interfering with their game experience, although that interference is not their intent. Of course, there are a number of additional factors that could come into play, and change this from an innocent conflict to a grief tactics violation.

This is why a GM investigation is critical, and why the final decision on the violation rests on GM discretion. The GM will look at all of the information available, measure the plausibility of the stated intent, and make a decision about if a violation occurred. This allows the GM to make a decision based on customer activity instead of just what they state their intent is. Using the above example, the farmer may say they are just farming, but the GM's investigation may show they would follow the person trying to complete the quest and would kill enemies before they could get credit.

I would like to note, before closing, that hypothetical situations are usually something I do not like to use, since they tend to simplify a situation to give a certain bias or justification. This example is no different, and should not be used as justification for that type of behaviour or assumption of another customer's guilt. Every situation is unique, and only through a GM investigation can the full situation be reviewed and a final determination be made.

In closing, grief tactics concerns should be reported to a GM when possible. To assist in these investigations, knowing the name of the person who is suspected of violating the rules is immensely helpful, since it allows us to focus our investigation. Without a GM investigation, calling out other customers for perceived violations does more harm to the community than good, since it creates a negative atmosphere. Should a violation be found, we will issue the appropriate account actions, based on the violation, prior violations, and our current policies. One note that is always important here is that we do not discuss the those results of investigations, since they reveal details about another customer's account.

If there are questions about this, I will be monitoring the thread to try to help provide additional clarifications.

LGM Enkrateia

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

In general, any monster in the world that is able to be attacked can be attacked at any time. There is no user agreement section that details the proper time to wait before attacking a hunt mark, at this time. That being said, actions determined to be taken with the intent of disrupting the game play of others can be reported as a grief tactic. This disruption applies to the people actually at the hunt mark, and convoluting the "disruption" to apply because not enough people were present for you to get full credit misses the actual impact of the disruption. And because nothing is black and white, this does not mean that pulling the hunt mark will not result in a grief tactics violation. The circumstances that would cause it are rarer, but not impossible. A GM would make that determination after investigating a report on potential grief tactics.

As in several of my posts, as a player, I appreciate the players who can get people to wait a bit to give more people a chance to participate. However, unless the hunt mark is pulled in a manner that a GM finds to be intentionally disruptive, waiting is a social behaviour, not an edict within the rules.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Is it weird that Ive never been vote kicked? Maybe its a DPS thing. Except my friends who are just DPS people have never been vote kicked randomly either. Not saying it dont happen, just saying Ive never experienced it.

When people do vote kick, its usually cause someone is a jerk. Just what Ive noticed in my time playing.

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I've seen vote kicks for everything, lack of dps, to get a friend in instead of said player, lousy healing/tanking, afk, someone even initiated a kick once because they didn't like the person's glam, it didn't go through but needless to say people do it for the dumbest of reasons.


What I don't get is why bother having a report option for kick abuse if they don't care? It seems counterproductive.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

I quit

The reason why is simple, SE policies are bad, contradictory and the players happily support SE's policies as is. If the majority of the player-base is happy with this, there's no reason to change at all.

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I hope you mean you're going to stop playing mmos then, because SE's policy on harassment is pretty standard. Even Blizzard, who are known to have an excellent GM service, would have given you the same experience you had with the incident that lead you to make this thread.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

ngs Pearl Abyss has to offer.

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I really dont see why you are quitting over this.
Compares to other mmorpg, FF14 GM has fastest reponse time over player harrassment (usually within 10 mins).
Do you know how long does it take for WoW GM to respond to your ticket? It is more than 24 hours.

If we should't be allowed to join on dungeons/raids with blacklisted people, alot of problems would be solved on this kick thing.

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Originally Posted by ThirdKeyOfSun

even if GM's did take action they are rule bound not to tell you what, if any, their actions were against the offending parties. That is just a part of the guidelines they follow. Never ever expect to be told if they took action or what those actions were. Sorry you had a bad day :/

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This stuff never makes sense to me. If someone's been punished for harrasment or something the victim should generally be told.. (due process)

The silence policy is just strange and wrong. It's like someone murdering your mother and you never being told by the police or courts if they were arrested or convicted for the crime.it just doesn't work that way.

Likewise if I reported my neighbour for harassment the police would tell me what actions if any were taken. They have to

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Originally Posted by Dzian

This stuff never makes sense to me. If someone's been punished for harrasment or something the victim should generally be told.. (due process)

The silence policy is just strange and wrong. It's like someone murdering your mother and you never being told by the police or courts if they were arrested or convicted for the crime.it just doesn't work that way.

Likewise if I reported my neighbour for harassment the police would tell me what actions if any were taken. They have to

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If players got told exactly what happened or didn't happen to who they reported then GMs would get harassed because the punishment isn't enough or because of the absence of one.

For example lets say player A is a serial offender of minor trolling and player B was extremely rude to a player but only once. Player A is more likely to get punishment than B because A is frequently causing grief. However to a person who doesn't know how often A and B commit offences, they would complain to a GM that B got off lightly while A got a harsh punishment.

It's a GMs job to deal with various issues, but justifying the sort of punishment they dish out is not one of them. This would frankly waste GM time and would draw attention away from players who actually need their help.

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Originally Posted by Shouko

I've seen vote kicks for everything, lack of dps, to get a friend in instead of said player, lousy healing/tanking, afk, someone even initiated a kick once because they didn't like the person's glam, it didn't go through but needless to say people do it for the dumbest of reasons.


What I don't get is why bother having a report option for kick abuse if they don't care? It seems counterproductive.

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lol I have seen some silly votes pass. For shits and giggles I initiated a vote on someone not being a Lala, and it passed. Honestly I do not think many people look at the reason and just click yes.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

This stuff never makes sense to me. If someone's been punished for harrasment or something the victim should generally be told.. (due process)

The silence policy is just strange and wrong. It's like someone murdering your mother and you never being told by the police or courts if they were arrested or convicted for the crime.it just doesn't work that way.

Likewise if I reported my neighbour for harassment the police would tell me what actions if any were taken. They have to

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Because you would complain until the other player has been permabanned? Also are you holding a privately owned company to the standard of a public service? Please, be a bit more real. SE and their staff doesn't owe you any transparency.

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Originally Posted by Shouko

I've seen vote kicks for everything, lack of dps, to get a friend in instead of said player, lousy healing/tanking, afk .

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Its such a messy feature. Like, I've vote kick'ed for someone who had all of their gear break so they wouldn't get a penalty for leaving even though there's not actually an option for that on the checklist. But at the same time, I've had tanks sit out for most of an alliance dungeon in a manner that would qualify as both afk AND harassment who couldn't be kicked because they q'd with friends.

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Originally Posted by Texa

Its such a messy feature.

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It only is because of how it's used. Vote kick is used for all sorts of silly or justifiable reasons in every game that has it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

It only is because of how it's used. Vote kick is used for all sorts of silly or justifiable reasons in every game that has it.

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True true.

It'd be nice if there was an "other" option with a write-in section that people could use to self incriminate. Like "other: THEY SAID ANIME ISN'T REAL". Y'know?

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Originally Posted by Texa

True true.

It'd be nice if there was an "other" option with a write-in section that people could use to self incriminate. Like "other: THEY SAID ANIME ISN'T REAL". Y'know?

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As if anyone would if they thought they could get reported for it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

As if anyone would if they thought they could get reported for it.

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That was a joke.

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Originally Posted by Texa

Its such a messy feature. Like, I've vote kick'ed for someone who had all of their gear break so they wouldn't get a penalty for leaving even though there's not actually an option for that on the checklist. But at the same time, I've had tanks sit out for most of an alliance dungeon in a manner that would qualify as both afk AND harassment who couldn't be kicked because they q'd with friends.

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At that point I would just eat the 30 min penalty.

Seems an abuse of the kick system if you were clearly doing your job and playing the game. Makes zero sense sometimes.

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

Because you would complain until the other player has been permabanned? Also are you holding a privately owned company to the standard of a public service? Please, be a bit more real. SE and their staff doesn't owe you any transparency.

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but at the same time a lot of companies are a lot more open. even mmos and stuff. and to be fair its said a lot that one of the problems people have with SEs customer service and why it has such bad ratings is because no one ever feels like they are listened to. and part of that is likely down to the fact they never get told whats been done about there concerns or complaints..

in some cases it wouldn't even have to be that detailed... if you're reporting players for /say /sh rmt spam near market boards or numerous players botting in pvp or whatever. even a simple "as a result of reports received x number of players have been sanctioned" even if it doesn't give names and say whatthe sanctions were it enough to assure a player they were heard.

a little more transpanrancy might actually do wonders for there customer service as it would show players are taken more seriously.

its partly why a lot of people have given up reporting botters or rmt activity because the general feeling is nothing ever gets done. which is even more evident when you you read the forums and see some of the massive threads about why nothing is ever done...

Edit.
RMT for example. those characters that spam /say /sh messages. it would take a gm literally 60 seconds to gather evidence and ban that account. yet at times you can report them be near that market board / bell crafting away for 2 hours and that same guy is still there spamming messages every 30 seconds.