GM Promoting Harassment in Game

I was running Labyrinth of the Ancients last night and there was an AFK member still on the spawn area. I asked the party politely to kick him because this is considered leeching and it's not fair for me or other alliance members. Not only they refused, one of the group also used bad language and they got me kicked after the boss battle.

I tried reporting it to the GM and as usual they can do nothing about it as I should have asked the group if there are any restrictions in the beginning..? Seriously? Who would enter a raid and ask if being AFK is allowed?!

I went in details with my report to the GM, all what they did was copy paste their usual response about being kicked and nothing can be done. They even skipped the verbal harassment part which clearly they didn't read it carefully, yet they say "We take this seriously".

Why not find a solution like those who entered as a group can't vote kick? I'm sure many went through this and it's really a waste of time.

I aggree whit you that the GMs are way to tolerant when it Comes to kick abuse - but i really have to ask how it happened that a Player of another alliance was afk and this Players groupe managed to influence your Group to kick you?

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Originally Posted by Tam_Hawkins

I aggree whit you that the GMs are way to tolerant when it Comes to kick abuse - but i really have to ask how it happened that a Player of another alliance was afk and this Players groupe managed to influence your Group to kick you?

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It wasn't a member of another alliance, It was a member in my party. Apparently they entered as a group and they can easily get me kicked with just 4 votes.

While I agree wholeheartedly.. I've learned the best course of action is to just run the dungeon, do my part and then leave. Other people and what they're doing isn't my concern. If it really out of hand and really bothers me then ill just leave the dungeon and que up again. You and I have no control over other players. Better to just focus on what your trying to get done and not let the stress get to you.

The GMs don't share the results of their investigations but that does not mean they don't take action. They have access to the logs of everything that happened up until you got kicked so if an exchange of words happened they can see it all. That includes anything you may have said to provoke a vote kick against you. It's prudent to remain mature in these situations as if you want resolve you need to handle it the right way from the beginning. If you didn't retaliate with foul language or a poor attitude then you could simply rest assured that those guilty of voting you out unjustly have now gotten their accounts earmarked.

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Originally Posted by LordHadi

It wasn't a member of another alliance, It was a member in my party. Apparently they entered as a group and they can easily get me kicked with just 4 votes.

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oh, now i understand it, that is a shame but premade Groups sometimes act very rude to Outsiders within (ok that sounds strange but i hope it is clear what I mean)

I really think SE should Hand out some Kind of general rules for this (only kicking when afk/dc/...) and the excuse of aggrements within group should only count if all mambers agreed before the dungeon/raid/... begins (the gms should have a possibility to read out our chat data a sfar as i know)

It sucks that this happened to you~! bad experiences are the worst but from your OP it doesn't sound like they're promoting harassment, merely ignoring it.

Promoting? Wat?

Inaction isn't promoting anything.

This community begged for the vote kick option. I wouldn't doubt if the GM's attitudes toward vote kick abuse is a bit sour, though really a lot of it comes down to "he said/she said." and that situation gets you nowhere.

I see no promoting of harassment in anything you have mentioned.

Also, you have a language filter. Use it if you don't like seeing 'bad language.'

I agree SE should man up and pick a side already, with how DF is to be used and how Vote Kick is to be used. That's been the problem since the first day these were introduced, that they step back and want to leave every such ambiguous case to the players. Which clearly doesn't work, and really, the only thing making them ambiguous is the fact that they don't provide clear-cut rules/explanations/descriptions/whateveryouwannacallthem.

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Originally Posted by TheMunimai

It sucks that this happened to you~! bad experiences are the worst but from your OP it doesn't sound like they're promoting harassment, merely ignoring it.

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The reason why I said promoting is because when I told the guy I'm going to report you for bring someone to leech (which I thought was harassment but apparently it's not and the group can set their rules) he said "do it, bitch". That means he knows the the GM won't really take action on it by doing it and using bad language, he sounded sure.

Sorry for not adding enough details, but it wouldn't allow me to write more than 1000 words for the thread.

While he was rude, and it wasn't called for, telling you that was not harassment so they wouldn't really do anything about it.

(To play Devil's Advocate) Based on that, they could see your calling for the party member being temporarily AFk harassment. They could be on VOIP and the person needed to leave for just a few min but you were so quick to get rid of them because they had to go or couldn't play with only one hand while eating a sandwhich. It's no different than people early pulling and leaving someone behind.

There are 2 sides to every story....

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Originally Posted by LordHadi

The reason why I said promoting is because when I told the guy I'm going to report you for bring someone to leech (which I thought was harassment but apparently it's not and the group can set their rules) he said "do it, bitch". That means he knows the the GM won't really take action on it by doing it and using bad language, he sounded sure.

Sorry for not adding enough details, but it wouldn't allow me to write more than 1000 words for the thread.

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Ahh I see!

What I find worse is that if you tell people "Im going to report you" they can effectively report you straight back for "harassing" them :/

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Originally Posted by ExKage

While he was rude, and it wasn't called for, telling you that was not harassment so they wouldn't really do anything about it.

(To play Devil's Advocate) Based on that, they could see your calling for the party member being temporarily AFk harassment. They could be on VOIP and the person needed to leave for just a few min but you were so quick to get rid of them because they had to go or couldn't play with only one hand while eating a sandwhich. It's no different than people early pulling and leaving someone behind.

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Then why to enter from the first place if he knew he was going away for long? He went AFK as soon as we got in and stayed AFK for long. He wasn't locked out or anything, he just entered the duty and stayed where we started not moving.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

While he was rude, and it wasn't called for, telling you that was not harassment so they wouldn't really do anything about it.

(To play Devil's Advocate) Based on that, they could see your calling for the party member being temporarily AFk harassment. They could be on VOIP and the person needed to leave for just a few min but you were so quick to get rid of them because they had to go or couldn't play with only one hand while eating a sandwhich. It's no different than people early pulling and leaving someone behind.

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Ok, Trabek, I'll go with "what are reasons not to queue?"

Not reason to afk for more then 1/4 of the run... Not a reason for their friends to be spouting profanity... Certainly not a valid reason to kick the person who mentioned the afk.

As much as I hate analogy in debate, this situation is quite akin to that of teachers overlooking bully's and punishing the victim by ignoring their plight.

Why you care kicks so much?

I got kicked (as Tank) because the group failed a dps check, so who cares. Move on and requeue.

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Originally Posted by Taliph

Not reason to afk for more then 1/4 of the run... Not a reason for their friends to be spouting profanity... Certainly not a valid reason to kick the person who mentioned the afk.

As much as I hate analogy in debate, this situation is quite akin to that of teachers overlooking bully's and punishing the victim by ignoring their plight.

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You clearly do not know what playing the Devil's Advocate means do you?

Where did OP post how long he was AFK? I see no measure to base "too long" AFK anywhere. Maybe he was AFK for just a boss? Maybe not even 1 boss. Maybe just adds and 1 boss. A BRD in my party last night told us a sandwhich was just delivered after the first WoD boss which they had ordered long before they even queued for the fight. They told us, played Foe's Req and auto-attacked during just 1 trash pull. They finished and started to play again BEFORE THE NEXT PULL but they were harassed during the rest of the raid afterwards. One user couldn't even see that the BRD was actually doing their job but CLEARLY just 1 trash mob convinced them the player was not playing.

Perhaps the player needed to poop when they were queued with their friends and were going to come back as soon as possible but they did not want their friends to be penalized because they had to withdraw and they knew 1 person in Labyrinth of the Ancients is nothing. Maybe they were going to just leech. We don't know how long this person was AFK or how long the OP was even in LotA in the first place.

By no means am I saying that they're right to do so or that they were right to call him a bitch, but there's not nearly enough details and perhaps the OP was jumping to a conclusion too fast.

i'm pretty sure the dungeons autokick you if you're idle for 5 minutes or so. Dunno if this is true in the towers, but we had this as an issue in a coil run when someone had to go handle their baby or something.
So it pretty much does constitute a breach of some sort of rule if they don't move from the entrance.

There is a auto kick in wod atleast

I can't see this as abuse. You should have just left when they said no.

I think the place where this falls apart a bit is that you threatened to report the player for leeching to begin with. My wife and I use the "Hey <playername>, you coming?" in party chat to test the waters first. If we get a parade of jerkish responses from the rest of the party we can assume that they grouped together and either leave or deal with it (if they ever were to get abusive in their responses, we'd report it, but none have gotten there yet).

If you see players trying to get the group wiped (and they admit to it in the chat window), that the GM can do something about. Leeching? Not as much.

Hard for me to believe there isn't more to the story when you exaggerate to the extreme to say they are promoting harassment. I agree more should be done against those that harass in DF, but they in no way promoted harassment, come on. This whole story could be exaggerated for all we know.

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Originally Posted by LordHadi

The reason why I said promoting is because when I told the guy I'm going to report you for bring someone to leech (which I thought was harassment but apparently it's not and the group can set their rules) he said "do it, bitch". That means he knows the the GM won't really take action on it by doing it and using bad language, he sounded sure.

Sorry for not adding enough details, but it wouldn't allow me to write more than 1000 words for the thread.

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I'd just like to stop you right there... strictly speaking from a semi-personal experience. My old FC leader once acted not so very nice to an alliance in WoD one time (I was completely mortified the entire run /sigh) and many people threatened him with a call to a GM because of his behavior. Well don't tell me they don't do anything and just turn a blind eye, the next few days he got a warning then two days after that he got a temp. ban. Apparently someone at least reported him and the GM investigated due to his bad behavior and he was rightfully punished for it.

Also if you just type out everything you want, post just a little or the 10word min. then copy/paste what you typed before you can by pass the 1000 word limit.

Sadly, "Vote Kick abuse" doesn't quite exist. SE claims it does, but in truth, there's barely anything that would fit their strange definition of what consists abuse.

You also can't rely on random people to be reasonable about vote kicking. I've often seen people behaving like the worst scum on the earth not getting kicked, while others get kicked for the tiniest reasons. It's basically part of the game's already rampant RNG. If you want to avoid vote kick frustrations, try to sign up with half a group - 2 people for 4 mans, 4 people for 8 mans, then you have the power to kick whoever you want, and nobody else can kick anyone without your group's consent.
To clarify, I'm suggesting this ONLY to help you avoid abuse in the future, NOT to enable you to abuse the system yourself. You only need 50% to kick someone, no more, no less.

In 4 man dungeons, 2 people can kick either of the other 2. So when there's a disagrement between 2 groups of 2 people each, whoever kicks first, wins. Don't let jerks push you around, but don't be a jerk yourself.

Stryder, bad language doesn't necessarily mean they're swearing or cussing, people can abuse you by using everyday words "Why are you so retarded?! Can't you do anything right?!" for example. Things like that I've seen will upset people much more than swearing at them or calling them out directly with the 'usual' insults like n00b.

As for the GM's actively promoting a toxic community? I wouldn't go so far as to say that's true, but I do believe we need greater ability to help curb bad attitudes before we wind up with League of Legends style toxicity.

Oh how this reminds me of last night in WOD. Two horrible healers who literally weren't healing, to the point of literally letting the whole team die on the VERY first set of ADDS. They barely healed during the first boss. Half the team died multiple times while they stood around doing very little. One was even in Cleric Stance DPSing while people were low health to dead.

Then finally, my friend speaks up and says that while they appreciate some extra DPS, we aren't getting any heals. I respond and say yes, they need to do their jobs and heal, and if they don't like healing they should pick a new job.

One of the healers tells us to "go f**k ourselves." We get to Cerebrus and the one who told us "to go f**k ourselves" flat out in chat says they refuse to heal us for the battle. Luckily Second Wind and Eos auto healing were enough to keep me alive that fight.

Then as the whole alliance is standing at the entrance to the Cloud of Darkness room, they vote kick me. Two of my static members were with me and voted no, but it seems they were outvoted because the other 5 people were all in the same FC together.

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Originally Posted by LordHadi

Why not find a solution like those who entered as a group can't vote kick? I'm sure many went through this and it's really a waste of time.

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So if I decide to run a dungeon or raid with some friends and we end up with one random idiot that acts up and makes it miserable for us, we shouldn't be able to kick them? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. :|

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Originally Posted by Tanthalus

The GMs don't share the results of their investigations but that does not mean they don't take action.

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This. They can't tell you about what they did with the other players because of privacy concerns.

I think the important part here was that the rest of the party was okay with the player being AFK for whatever reason. They could have been leeching, or they could have had to AFK for a legit reason-- you don't know that. I've had a situation where I've gone in with a group (with all of us on VOIP) and one person needed to temporarily AFK because their pizza was delivered. We all knew they would be back, so if someone had tried to kick them, we would've voted 'No.'

Heck, I once had to AFK right as a dungeon started because my parakeet got out of his cage. Fortunately I was with a group of friends, but things can and do happen and there isn't always a clear-cut way to tell whether an AFK is legit or not.

Or just make it so that premade groups can't initiate vote kick?

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Originally Posted by CYoung187

Hard for me to believe there isn't more to the story when you exaggerate to the extreme to say they are promoting harassment. I agree more should be done against those that harass in DF, but they in no way promoted harassment, come on. This whole story could be exaggerated for all we know.

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This. Supply screenshots of this alleged altercation, or I'm calling bull.

Basically its as the GM said, dungeons are a group desicion as to what happens. If the majority of people say that they don't care if the person is afk, its fine. Same as how people complained about being kicked in spirit bond gear. If the group doesn't agree with you spirit binding, then they can kick you. Your group governs itself and if you don't like that you can make your own group in party finder. That's basically the rules.

Thank you for bringing these concerns about our customer service to our attention. I will be making sure that the issue that you raised about your interaction with a GM and the information you were provided is looked into and that an investigation was properly conducted according to our policies. However, due to our privacy policy, we cannot discuss any details about those investigations.

Since there is a discussion about the appropriate use of the vote to kick option ongoing, I will not be closing this thread at this time. However, I will monitor it to ensure it stays on topic, and will close it if it is deemed necessary.

LGM Enkrateia

Vote kick abuse: A partial premade kicks one of the people who joined via DF just so their friend can join in progress and skip the majority of the dungeon.

Vote kick abuse: Joining a party via DF, saying "I'm new," and getting vote kicked immediately.

Not vote kick abuse: Demanding someone else be kicked, throwing a fit when the rest of the party says no, and then being kicked for it.

Not vote kick abuse: Threatening to report someone and then being kicked for it. Most people don't take kindly to threats, and such behavior likely qualifies as harassment.

Not vote kick abuse: Saying anything at all that your party doesn't like and being kicked for it.


The complications arise when one of the first two situations occur, because it can be very hard to prove it wasn't actually just the last one.

looks like your not telling the whole story.

Sounds to me like you where just being rude and got justly kicked out by a FC Alliance. Good day.

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Originally Posted by Yuki_Tokita

looks like your not telling the whole story.

Sounds to me like you where just being rude and got justly kicked out by a FC Alliance. Good day.

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I don't need your assumptions, I wouldn't have reported if I was rude when I know they can check the chat log. It's the first time I report someone in game as I felt it was needed. Good day.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Promoting? Wat?

Inaction isn't promoting anything.

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Inaction is an indirect way of saying it's okay to do these things. Perspectives. ;) I always use this as an example, but the AFK situation for PvP in WoW years ago is a perfect example of inaction and players unintentionally forcing the devs hand. It was so bad... so bad to see 70/80 players (if not the both teams entirely) in a 40v40 match just AFK every single time. It started off as nothing major, with a few doing this, then after months of it happening and no penalties for it, practically everyone joined in. No reason to bother to play honestly, since there were no consequences for doing nothing. It's the same as DNF with Chocobo Racing, but the difference being that unlike racing, you DO negatively affect the potential reward at the end of a match in the PvP situation that I refer to. So the devs eventually added a Vote Kick/AFK reporting option, where they literally stated that reports will be looked at and continued abuse of being AFK will result in consequences (bans, reward/item removal that were obtained from your AFKs, etc).

The only true way to see devs take action is to force their hand, as per the WoW example. Of course, such a thing won't happen overnight, though it will come sooner than it would have otherwise (if it would have even come at all). Thankfully, so far, it doesn't happen TOO much, but LotA is a perfect example of where you/anyone could take advantage. The mobs/bosses die fast, meaning each wing is cleared in minutes. People generally don't notice or care if you're not around for the first boss (thinking maybe you got locked out), but then take note of the fact that loot is still hanging. 5min timer? Yeah, no ones gonna wait for it to default to someone before they continue. Can't kick because it hasn't been 15min... though moreso, you can't kick while rolling on an item AND you can't kick in combat. When the time hits that it auto passes, you're already fighting the next boss, loot drops, can't be kicked. It's honestly the perfect means to be bad and I just laid out how it works. Simple, easy, and free of consequence.

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

Thank you for bringing these concerns about our customer service to our attention. I will be making sure that the issue that you raised about your interaction with a GM and the information you were provided is looked into and that an investigation was properly conducted according to our policies. However, due to our privacy policy, we cannot discuss any details about those

LGM Enkrateia

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I appreciate your response.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Inaction is an indirect way of saying it's okay to do these things. Perspectives. ;)

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Thank you, your comment says it all. That what I meant with promoting, not promoting directly but players will just get advantage of it and use it as they know there's no punishment for it.