Instant Temp Bans

While I haven't ever been in trouble in FF14, I have had people report me for dumb stuff playing games like DarkSouls and others with a lot of interaction between players. I have always received an email from the devs/GM regarding the issue and some message about them looking into the matter (and I've never been banned BTW). In my experience there is usually some sort of proof for a ban to take effect, such as: screen shots or video of the disparaging remarks when it comes to harassment. I would wager that 99% of people know exactly why they have been banned, they just don't want to take responsibility for it for whatever reason.

Also, I could see how people have a hard time realizing that freedom of speech doesn't exist within a private organization's game/forum or whatever, so they may not agree that whatever they said or did was all that bad.

I appreciate the comments, if anything I m gonna watch what I say in chat. I tend to be very sarcastic at times. I just like to joke with people but that could mean someone else determining that as harassment and get me a ban just seems wrong to me. Of course completely subjective.

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

I appreciate the comments, if anything I m gonna watch what I say in chat. I tend to be very sarcastic at times. I just like to joke with people but that could mean someone else determining that as harassment and get me a ban just seems wrong to me. Of course completely subjective.

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Just keep that to discord and you'll be fine. Its what I do.

As other have noted, when you report someone a GM contacts you and asks a few questions. In my case they thanked me for providing a copy-pasted chat log with time stamps. I think the timestamp was the valuable piece so they could check their own logs.

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

I guess my question of topic is how can SE regulate this and determine what is harassment. Also, this is an easy exploitation for trolls to get people off the game they don't like or just to be trolls in general.

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GMs can pull up logs from the chat and go over what was said. Often when you make a report, especially regarding harassment, a GM is pretty quick to contact you, they then ask a series of questions. Usually stuff like "What time did this happen?" "What was said?" "What duty and or thing were you doing at the time?" all to help narrow the search area down. So they can find and review the incident and if it is severe enough, they can pull people into 'jail' and question them. So that's often how they determine harassment.

On the troll thing, no it is not an exploit for trolls. When the GMs do an investigation, they don't just look at the offending party, they look at the whole incident. So if they find that YOU were actually the one being an ass and you're just reporting someone to try and get them in trouble, well then, get ready for the GMs to turn back on you and give you the boot. False reporting is not tolerated and is the quickest and possibly most efficient way to speedrun yourself to perma ban status.

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Originally Posted by IzzyData

From what I've seen in other games they spend little to no time investigating and just take the reports word for it. Moderation is getting too difficult for a lot of games so they leave it to automation.

I really hope FFXIV is different, but I have my doubts. To believe that there are no false positives in their methods is pretty ignorant though.

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This is not true in this game. GM's have access to all interactions you do in game, conversations, trade, what you bought and sold, ect.... Most people who put in a good report attach the logs of the actual harrassment. I'm sure whatever this person did warranted a big "time out" from SE.

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

I appreciate the comments, if anything I m gonna watch what I say in chat. I tend to be very sarcastic at times. I just like to joke with people but that could mean someone else determining that as harassment and get me a ban just seems wrong to me. Of course completely subjective.

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I have learned that public chat is pretty much a no go for my own sense of humor, which I reserve for discord and private link shells.

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Originally Posted by HumanNinjaToo

I have learned that public chat is pretty much a no go for my own sense of humor, which I reserve for discord and private link shells.

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I see we'd be good friends :D

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Personally I think they should apply NA cultural norms to this sort of thing when applying them to NA, but that's just me. I will say when my new representative takes office they will be getting a letter about the strictness of SE's new rules and see if they can't apply pressure to alleviate some of them at least within the US. Discusion of the reasoning behind wanting to do this is well beyond the scope of this thread. If you're interested in discussing it, feel free to make a new thread.

But in either case, we are where we are now. That means no crude jokes. No innuendo jokes. None of that. Nothing that anyone could find gross, disgusting, lustful, or any of that. Like I've said in another thread. Keep your communications in game to a minimum. Use discord for any sort of friendy communication. SE has made its rules far too strict to communicate in game for most of us. Just take a look at their ruleset to see for yourselves:

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first of all, your "representative" isn't going to do anything, they have no power over SE, and there's no leverage for them to do anything. second of all, if you can't communicate in game at all without getting warned or suspended, I would say the problem doesn't really lay with other people, sounds like this is a you issue. if the same thing keeps happening over and over and the only common thread is that you're the one involved in it, you can probably rest assured that you are the reason.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

This could have been a crude joke cracked somewhere. Something in bad taste, or whatnot. Lets just say that SE has a super conservative approach to this sort of thing coming from a culture where indency and the like are taken very seriously. Personally I think they should apply NA cultural norms to this sort of thing when applying them to NA, but that's just me. I will say when my new representative takes office they will be getting a letter about the strictness of SE's new rules and see if they can't apply pressure to alleviate some of them at least within the US. Discusion of the reasoning behind wanting to do this is well beyond the scope of this thread. If you're interested in discussing it, feel free to make a new thread.

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SE's policy is basically "You can report anything and we will decide if the person was being an asshole", which they seem to be enforcing just fine. Everyone who I've seen complaining about unfair banns so far turned out to be either lying or complaining about how calling someone a useless retard is not an insult.