Holy now a bannable spell.

The GM team appears to have a plenty of time in their hands. So, why they don't start banning bots?

Is there anyone with the time to make a bingo card for this thread?

1. Crafting: Will never be considered spam. Its intended to be done in town or housing wards because market boards are there. Stop pretending this is even an issue with your silly slippery slope fallacy.
2. Melding: Will never be considered spam. Its intended to be done in town or housing wards because market boards are there. Stop pretending this is even an issue with your silly slippery slope fallacy.
3. Performance: Will almost never be considered spam if you're making an effort to actually play music. Maybe if you macro or tape down a single note for an hour just to annoy people, sure. But then you deserve the consequences.
4. Spells: There is no reason to spam Holy in town for minutes on end except with the intent of harassing people. No, don't try your silly slippery slope fallacy here either. You're not going to get banned for pressing your dash button on Dancer or your movement speed buff on the ranged DPS. Yes, you are going to be reported for intentionally spamming Holy for minutes on end for no reason other than to be a nuisance. Intent matters. End of discussion.

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

honestly yes it does mean exacly that the system is for that very reason if you dont like x person you black list em and turn off spells ... so honestly yes it does mean they shouldn't get punished use the damn system if you dont want a person saying something to you black list it

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I disagree. Trolling behavior shouldn't be unpunishable just because people can go out of their way to turn off spell effects. Also you can't turn off spell effects on a per person basis. IE you can't just mute the troll specifically's spell effects. Nor does black listing turn of sound effects, and you may not want to turn off ALL sound effects just to deal with one guy. Even if it does, harassment and trolling should not be tolerated just because there are tools to avoid it. This temp ban was 100% deserved and it was only a 3 day suspension it's not like his account was deleted. The existance of tools to black list people does not justify trolling behavior and you cannot defend this behavior as anything but a deliberate attempt to annoy people.

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Originally Posted by Priya

Be careful bard performers. I love you, but judging by this you might not be safe :(

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Yes, please! Bards playing in hubs are so annoying!

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Yes, please! Bards playing in hubs are so annoying!

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Obviously they should have put Perform in combat, such bad game design!

Performers are fine. The Perform equivalent of this incident would be spamming the same note over and over to annoy people instead of playing a song, which would also just be someone trying to annoy people. There is no slippery slope here. Someone deliberately spamming to annoy people was given a three day suspension. It wasn't some person just minding their own business.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Obviously they should have put Perform in combat, such bad game design!

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People would probably think their notes are doing damage, knowing this community.

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Originally Posted by PeppermintBrown

Performers are fine. The Perform equivalent of this incident would be spamming the same note over and over to annoy people instead of playing a song, which would also just be someone trying to annoy people. There is no slippery slope here. Someone deliberately spamming to annoy people was given a three day suspension. It wasn't some person just minding their own business.

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except he said it wasn't to annoy people.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

except he said it wasn't to annoy people.

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He was killing all those enemies in town, right?

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

He was killing all those enemies in town, right?

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I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. He said others were doing it and he joined in. It's a communal participation thing. It's like when people start clapping or stomping their feet or chanting and others around join in. Like when one healer needlessly heals another and they just start healing each like crazy. It happens in every mmo. It's a very natural, human, thing to do.

So it was "communal" spamming?! Even worse, I hope they all got banned! That must have been so obnoxious! If two people jump off a bridge you shouldn't jump off it too!

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Then let's break it down, because that's another assumption.
The information presented by the log:
- The player in question was SUSPENDED, not banned.
- The player in question was told by the GMing the issue was they were spamming
- The player in question established that they were spamming holy
- The player in question admitted to having a previous strike
That's ALL we know.

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The guy has been suspended because he broke ToS, he has been reported and asked to stop, he did not so he got it.
I am not arguing he did not break the ToS because he clearly did, what i want to help you realize that:

- The game has an option for everyone to turn everone visuals off
- The guy has been banned despite the option being available in the game

He was spamming those abilities not to harass anyone intentionally but to play with other few people who were spamming abilities with him just for fun. What does that mean? It means GM could suspend your account for virtually anything as long as someone offended by you will come up with good reason to report you.
You could get banned by using in game features, being able to use skills in towns is one of them, that means you could get punished for using any features if someone will find it annoying and report it to the GM.

ToS is so wiggly written that anyone could interpret on its own and come up with different results. Terms of service allows to punish anyone for anything as long as a reporter come up with the evidence or anything, my friend got warned for "suspicious behavior" in pvp not long time ago, to this day he has no idea what was the deal.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

So it was "communal" spamming?! Even worse, I hope they all got banned! That must have been so obnoxious! If two people jump off a bridge you shouldn't jump off it too!

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Wow, this has absolutely nothing to with jumping off a bridge. Perhaps you and the GMS should come down from your ivory towers and spend some time with real salt of the earth human beings. But, you've probably lost too much spine for that.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

Wow, this has absolutely nothing to with jumping off a bridge. Perhaps you and the GMS should come down from your ivory towers and spend some time with real salt of the earth human beings. But, you've probably lost too much spine for that.

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What exactly are you so vehemently defending here? A group of morons right to spam an entire hub zone with a very loud, bright spell? What purpose does this "communal" activity have? At least bards are presumably trying to play music. This is worthless.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

The guy has been suspended because he broke ToS, he has been reported and asked to stop, he did not so he got it.
I am not arguing he did not break the ToS because he clearly did, what i want to help you realize that:

- The game has an option for everyone to turn everone visuals off
- The guy has been banned despite the option being available in the game

He was spamming those abilities not to harass anyone intentionally but to play with other few people who were spamming abilities with him just for fun. What does that mean? It means GM could suspend your account for virtually anything as long as someone offended by you will come up with good reason to report you.
You could get banned by using in game features, being able to use skills in towns is one of them, that means you could get punished for using any features if someone will find it annoying and report it to the GM.

ToS is so wiggly written that anyone could interpret on its own and come up with different results. Terms of service allows to punish anyone for anything as long as a reporter come up with the evidence or anything, my friend got warned for "suspicious behavior" in pvp not long time ago, to this day he has no idea what was the deal.

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They actually had an official respons to this line of thinking a while back - I'll admit that I'm to lazy to look for it right now, but the bottomline was that the ToS are "wiggly" on purpose, to allow for judgment calls. If there were tight definitions on whats okay and what isnt, people would find ways to juuuust stay on the egdes of those lines or finding work arounds to "technically" not break the ToS but still being annoying or insulting.

I dare say that as long as you play the game in a "minding your own buisness"-style, you have little to worry about. After all those wiggly guidelines not only mean that we're on the mercy of the GMs, but also that they take a look at the context to make decisions based on that, since the ToS are wiggly to allow for that.
So all this "but there is holy spam in dungeons!" or "there is crafting next to the market board!" becomes nothing more than hyperbole, since we should expect GMs to look at the context and determine wether or not the report warrants that actions are being taken.
Holy-spam in cities is not the intended use for that skill and while people might consider it "fun", I dont think its to surprising that other people might consider it "annoying" - and since it has no real use or purpose and could be done pretty much anywhere else (for example a place where it doesnt annoy the 30+ people currently in Limsa), it does seems somewhat fair and reasonable to me to interpret this has disrupting other peoples gaming experience.
I do think that the "guideline" offered by the GM in this scenario isnt a bad one: Dont act like a jerk and be aware that you're not alone in this fantasy world and you'll be fine.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

The guy has been suspended because he broke ToS, he has been reported and asked to stop, he did not so he got it.
I am not arguing he did not break the ToS because he clearly did, what i want to help you realize that:

- The game has an option for everyone to turn everone visuals off
- The guy has been banned despite the option being available in the game

He was spamming those abilities not to harass anyone intentionally but to play with other few people who were spamming abilities with him just for fun. What does that mean? It means GM could suspend your account for virtually anything as long as someone offended by you will come up with good reason to report you.
You could get banned by using in game features, being able to use skills in towns is one of them, that means you could get punished for using any features if someone will find it annoying and report it to the GM.

ToS is so wiggly written that anyone could interpret on its own and come up with different results. Terms of service allows to punish anyone for anything as long as a reporter come up with the evidence or anything, my friend got warned for "suspicious behavior" in pvp not long time ago, to this day he has no idea what was the deal.

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He claimed to be doing it to not harass intentionally and was just spamming for fun. He claimed he joined in with other people.

Whilst I accept he /might/ not be being disingenuous and that it's bad GMing, but this ties back to not jumping to conclusions when we have only a part of the story. But when people are caught doing something wrong it's not uncommon for people to back pedal and try to paint their own innocence. Hence again, my points about "take it with a pinch of salt". And I think about the amount of times I heard customers say "I wasn't rude, I was calm and stated my case, it might have gotten a little heated, but the agent was really rude to me" -listens back to the call and the customer was raging, rude, nasty and the agent was not letting themselves be spoken to in such a poor manner and didn't instigate it- Or a case as an FC member I am sent a log about how somebody was aggressive with them and then find the other person sends me the full log showing the part of the story where they were a lot worse and instigated it. Drawing conclusions without the full picture can easily mean you draw the wrong ones.

With regards to the options on visuals. It's still a nuisance. If we were to go back to the RP example I brought up, any emote special effects or none in the right places can be very distracting & annoying, but that is a very specific scenario.

But just because I have means of lessening or stopping a person from trolling or harassing me, that doesn't change the fact that they shouldn't be trolling or harassing.

With wiggliness, I concur with Vidu. And it's nothing new for an online community either. You can't write rules for every circumstance and situation nor as a catch all, so there needs to be a level of judgement within those rules that allows for such flexibility, whereby the right call is suspension, but the player is capable of arguing their way out on a technicality. As an FC lead I have a rule that says the FC lead can override any ruling, I've only ever had to use it once or twice and that's because the situations called for it. I don't use it unless I have to. If I start using it as an abuse of power that's when I start losing members.

And in the terms of combatting trolling, arguably judgement calls are needed. A good troll can troll you whilst respecting a rigid set of rules despite them well, very clearly trolling.

It can also mean errors in judgement, for sure, people are only human, this can occur regardless of community or game as long as humans are involved, regardless of rules and it is unfortunate should it happen. It could even be as simple as that, the GM in question could have got the end of the stick & made the wrong judgement call and not this whole melodrama about how people'll now get banned for spamming holy or bards performing and so on.

I expect there's an escalation process should that occur, I've seen it in other games, but never looked into it here (because I haven't needed to), but as an example of a game where I did: I was able to get a permaban lifted on Runescape, despite it being one so severe they wouldn't lift it, but I wasn't even logged in when the offence took place. They rereviewed the evidence, my account had been compromised, they lifted the ban and forced me to reset my password and told me to be more careful in my account's security. Even though I technically was responsible for my account's security (even by their own terms) so was not blameless, they still lifted it. If they don't have that here, then the lack of one would be fair criticism to have.

It really is amazing how many people in the XIV community are vindictive pieces of work just waiting to make sure someone "gets theirs" when they do something stupid.

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By this logic, then crafters are bannable by spamming "Failed to attach materia" in the chat log, or its a bannable offence to craft in general in cities.

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Time to mass report those pesky crafters! They all spam chat with their abilities. XD

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Uhh, no? They're actually playing the game and doing something productive, unlike Holy / Ring spammers who aren't doing anything but trying to be annoying.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

It really is amazing how many people in the XIV community are vindictive pieces of work just waiting to make sure someone "gets theirs" when they do something stupid.

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Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV, the game is hot fire, but the community is hot ***

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Originally Posted by MsQi

except he said it wasn't to annoy people.

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Is there any other reason to spam Holy? The only use for that in hub cities is to annoy people. There are absolutely zero good reasons for spamming Holy in the cities.

People should know SE doesn't like spam. Ottergate was glorious.

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Originally Posted by AsukaAsakura

This feels like a reach for any kind of punishable actions with FFXIV

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I feel like we didn't get the full story about this. There is no way someone could get in trouble for spamming a spell for only a few seconds. GMs have better things to be doing than chasing down players for casting a handful of spells.

That player must have been spamming for a minute or more, which is actually a long time to be spending doing one ability. Given they were in a town they potentially did that in a highly populated area and must have annoyed enough people that several reported them and not just one person.

Let's not forget how enormous, bright and loud holy is. This isn't like spamming Cure 1. Sure people can mute their audio and turn down spell effects...but that person could just as easily had some decency and not spam such a dramatic spell for long enough to get other people annoyed enough to report them.

This looks like a case of someone abusing the freedom to cast spells in towns. There is always some wiseguy that goes too far.

I approve. If you are doing something that bothers other people and enough players report it. You deserve what you get.

Well I'll be a bit more serious for this even though this thread just repeats the same arguments on every page.

For at least the time I've played, Holy and other actions were kind of a "celebration" that happened a lot on major patches people enjoyed. 2.0 was definitely a lot of people doing it in Mor Dhona and where NIN's stating point was announced. So as obnoxious as it was in terms of its sound and light, I always took it as a way to celebrate or pump up for new content.

That being said. I think people forget that if you're doing this in a zone like Limsa, you're going to get a lot of NEW players there - and that means they don't exactly know about all the "under the hood" settings in this game and let's face it there's A LOT of controls people don't learn about till much later. So if someone is asking you to stop, it may be a good idea to especially in an area full of new players. You may want to take the time to educate them about settings that can be used to alleviate the situation - Example: how many people complain about people blocking a quest marker (and someone ALWAYS has to tell them if they hit the confirm button they'll be able to select it easily).

I guess that's why I'm more neutral about the whole issue, because well it happened... but I don't know enough information to really side over something I'm just used to seeing during patch cycles. But I do understand there's new people who don't understand all of the game yet coming on and seeing all that noise and effects.

One thing though that isn't helping the case of defense is that I've seen this posted and pretty much SPAMMED on reddit in various topics that HAVE NOTHING to do with this offense, like in threads about Job Balance etc... So kinda makes one wonder about getting in trouble for "Spamming"

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Originally Posted by Wavaryen

I approve. If you are doing something that bothers other people and enough players report it. You deserve what you get.

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so because alot of people cry over something that sometimes can be legitly innocent and harmless and they mass report it just to be a jerk that person desevers to be banned.

Most people don't even ask you to stop they ninja report you maybe call you some names like "edge child" and that other nonsense which honestly is more reason for them to be reported with flat out insults.

Hell I remember one day I was minding my own business in my fc house plot and I poped a emote on a friends Ifirt that went something like "burn me master of the inferal and cast your mighty hell fire on me as punishment. (really innocent) and then that guy brought 2-3 others to the plot and basicly massed on me when I didn't go out of my way for them and I was staying within my fcs land ...

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

Hell I remember one day I was minding my own business in my fc house plot and I poped a emote on a friends Ifirt that went something like "burn me master of the inferal and cast your mighty hell fire on me as punishment. (really innocent) and then that guy brought 2-3 others to the plot and basicly massed on me when I didn't go out of my way for them and I was staying within my fcs land ...

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Truly a great tale about minding your own business.

Given what I've seen the mods on the forums suspend and ban people for, as well as that one person being locked inside GM Jail for several hours. This somehow doesn't surprise me.

Remember when a JP player posted logs where a GM banned them for linking their nsfw Twitter in their search history and people believed it for years until it was proven false and admitted that the op did it for Twitter followers?

There's probably more to this holy story, I don't by 'that they just saw 3 players spamming it and decided to join them'

Always someone in this game ready to get easily hurt or offended. When out among other players just be wise,mindful and cautious. You never know when Mister or Miss sensative looking for a reason to be hurt may be in the area or watching chat.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Truly a great tale about minding your own business.

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Masochism is innocent and when your within the fc land and its just you and a friend ya it is minding your own business.. which my friend only summoned him because they know how I feel about demon like creatures and stuff.

My point still remains is stuff like that does happan alot of people gang up on someone for alot of reasons and as screwed up as it is even In real life people do this to others they hide behind rules/laws but in this case they hide behind the tos purposely trying to set the person to say something "insulting" so they can basicly get away with abusing the system. Simpley because they dislike one or two things about a person like they might hate you over your rez macro or summoning macro or alot of other reasons which are unreasonable ... and yes it does happan Idk why or how people remain so naive when it obviousely happans.

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

so because alot of people cry over something that sometimes can be legitly innocent and harmless and they mass report it just to be a jerk that person desevers to be banned.

Most people don't even ask you to stop they ninja report you maybe call you some names like "edge child" and that other nonsense which honestly is more reason for them to be reported with flat out insults.

Hell I remember one day I was minding my own business in my fc house plot and I poped a emote on a friends Ifirt that went something like "burn me master of the inferal and cast your mighty hell fire on me as punishment. (really innocent) and then that guy brought 2-3 others to the plot and basicly massed on me when I didn't go out of my way for them and I was staying within my fcs land ...

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I don't understand the problem here. The community reported someone for being annoying. It had to be more than just 1 report. When a group of people report something, and it is consider spam. It bother enough people to get a GM to do action.


This fake outrage is just silly. People talking about they scared to do things or talk to people. Or worried they might get reported. I've seen some crazy chat, and some silly stuff being talked about. In fact, I bet even if you got reported by a group of people for something. Unless the gms catches you in the action, or sees chat log of said thing. You are fine.
Point is, you might get away with being annoying in other mmos. In this one, they don't like toxic things and punish people harshly for it. It is the reason you can't complain about peoples dps who are at least trying or you can get in trouble.


Many of us like how the game is ran, and like that we as a community can report players for being toxic. And we can as a group put in what is acceptable and what is not. I've seen people role play the biggest jerks in the world and guess what? The community did not report them, but if you spamming Holy in the city knowing it bothers people. Well tough..

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Originally Posted by Haxaan

100% this. If casting Holy three times is chat spam, then Every single person in Limsa should be reported for harassment. Do you know how many emotes get flooded into the chat log there? It's absolutely absurd.

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Well in theory if those spam it too much (the emotes) then yes you could report them. Its just that a lot of people tolerate a lot of things but dont spam too much or you might get punished. There is also a difference between crafting and emotes and skills. Crafting is intented to be that way thus just simply crafting is not punishable. Emotes are normally used only a bit and you also have the option to not spam chat with them by turning it off. If you are spamming the exact same emote constantly then yes you are not using it the intended way because nobody would normally emote that way. And skills are there to kill monsters. Its 100% not intended to spam that in cities, especially those completely annoying ones like holy who blind you and is making a noice.

Honestly if people just behave that way dont cry if SE will one day just stop making it possible to use them at all.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

There is no common sense, you are not going to find one when it comes to the ToS in this game.
Please have a read on it
https://support.na.square-enix.com/f...6&id=5382&la=1



So is crafting right? It makes really annoying sound around and flashes, you could take it to extreme levels and ask someone to stop crafting, if he wont then you could report him and say it triggers you seizure and the guy did not stop when asked, he will get banned or warned i could bet 10$ on it.

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No. Crafting isn't even in the same ballpark or planet as spamming holy in a city with no possible mobs ever. There's reaching and then there's - I can never go outside again cause aliens might throw a rock from mars and it has the chance of hitting me killing me instantly- reaching you just pulled. Want to know how you can escape being reported or banned? Act like how you would act in real life. I know shocker right? Be a decent human being. It's REALLY not that hard.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Well in theory if those spam it too much (the emotes) then yes you could report them. Its just that a lot of people tolerate a lot of things but dont spam too much or you might get punished. There is also a difference between crafting and emotes and skills. Crafting is intented to be that way thus just simply crafting is not punishable. Emotes are normally used only a bit and you also have the option to not spam chat with them by turning it off. If you are spamming the exact same emote constantly then yes you are not using it the intended way because nobody would normally emote that way. And skills are there to kill monsters. Its 100% not intended to spam that in cities, especially those completely annoying ones like holy who blind you and is making a noice.

Honestly if people just behave that way dont cry if SE will one day just stop making it possible to use them at all.

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I'd rather they just stick to the rules, if using skills outside of combat is against the TOS, then it's their fault for allowing players to do it in the first place and it the blame is squarely on SE at this point.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

I'd rather they just stick to the rules, if using skills outside of combat is against the TOS, then it's their fault for allowing players to do it in the first place and it the blame is squarely on SE at this point.

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Using skills outside of combat isn't an issue.

SPAMMING THEM OVER AND OVER AROUND OTHER PLAYERS is the issue here. A holy or two wouldn't have caused any problems.

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Originally Posted by PeppermintBrown

Using skills outside of combat isn't an issue.

SPAMMING THEM OVER AND OVER AROUND OTHER PLAYERS is the issue here. A holy or two wouldn't have caused any problems.

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That much worse, so you're saying that combat doesn't matter it's being around people so in dungeon or fates with others it's a ban able offence

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

That much worse, so you're saying that combat doesn't matter it's being around people so in dungeon or fates with others it's a ban able offence

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The post you quoted said nothing of dungeons or fates.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

I'd rather they just stick to the rules, if using skills outside of combat is against the TOS, then it's their fault for allowing players to do it in the first place and it the blame is squarely on SE at this point.

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As PeppermintBrown pointed out, its not about using them maybe once but spamming them. Some buffs are great to walk a bit faster and they are not annoying. Just dont spam these things and you are save.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

That much worse, so you're saying that combat doesn't matter it's being around people so in dungeon or fates with others it's a ban able offence

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I didn't say anything about dungeons, are you just trying to twist my words around? Obviously using your spells in combat isn't a bannable offense. We're talking about social situations here.