Let's talk about a ToS Grey Area

Recently our FC accepted an application from a person wishing to join our FC. After we discussed the rules with her, she joined up with us. Since she was a new person, she had access to the first tab of our FC chest, which is set up so our newcomers are able to do sprout things, without having to take a huge financial hit. This way we can teach our sprouts, and some people who come in WITHOUT the sprout status don't understand some of the ways of how an FC can be beneficial.

The next day we logged in, to find that she had left our FC, and taken with her:

gathering grasp materials (3)
fishmeal (20)
mamook pear (17)
o'ghomoro berries (12)
valfruit (37)
Cieldalaes pineapple (65)
doman plum (23)
magicked stable broom (10)
krakka root (150)
xelphatol apple (20)
glamour prism (380)
glamour dispeller (57)
soot black dye (99)
snow white dye (70)

Thankfully we are an FC that can easily recover, from this theft, it will just take time to regrow the plants...and hunt seals.

When she was asked, if she could, please, return the items that were taken, since she had left the FC, she said, "No, good luck reporting me! ToS works all in my favor!"

What really burns, is that she is correct. Since we did have the items unlocked, she could take off with all of the items in that tab.

We started to ask around about her. Turns out she has been doing this for YEARS.

The reason WHY she can get away with all of this, according to the ToS, you are not allowed to publicly blacken someone's name. You are not allowed to publicly announce that a theft has occurred. So people can continue to 'harvest' FCs in this manner.

What we found out about this person is that the toon she used to steal the items is actually an Alt, whose name she changes ever few weeks, to throw off people. It doesn't matter if an FC is large or small, she goes in, and waits for a day or two and then takes what she can snag, and runs. She then takes those items, and goes back to her main FC and funds her FC with the stolen loot. And that is how she plays FF14. We can't even report her, because she is working within the ToS.

So, now with a sour taste in our mouths, we have locked down applications, we will no longer be taking any more, because we won't know what her new name is, unless we stalk her. We have locked down our chest, and how we are going to explain to sprouts how to use any of the stuff that they should have been allowed to use, right out the gate, I don't know. That krakka root was for them to feed their stabled birds and to get their achievements. And the dyes were for them to color their birds! Ugh.

One person has destroyed the fun for hundreds of us on our server. We have quietly been putting out feelers, and been discovering that MANY FCs have been affected by her greed. Yet...WE CAN NOT REPORT HER OR PUBLICLY WARN OTHER POTENTIAL VICTIMS! This is a grey area, and one that should be addressed.

First, report them for disruption of gameplay. Talk to a GM and explain the situation. While they will not return your items (you did give permission), anyone doing this does so with a purpose of malcontent. Their only reason for joining fcs is to swipe things and the GMs need to shut that down. The only other thing you can do is set rules for items in the chest that someone must agree to in game, make note of the time/date of the agreement and reference that in future if you don't want to lock down permissions. I've no idea if it will work, but gms tend to side with agreements made in game.

We've had it happen to us as well (twice). The first time they wiped out the company chest, we've since locked that down. The second time they wiped out all the interactive housing items (fish tank, food, pictures) because for some reason those weren't created to work with housing permissions. Unfortunately other than just not inviting anyone to the fc, there's nothing we can do about the second part. :(

You don't need to lock down applications. Much as it might put a bad taste in your mouth, you need to put newer players into a 'time out' rank for the first week after they join. They should have no access to the FC chest or furniture within the house, and personally when our FC was more active we locked new players out of making rooms as well just in case the person decided to leave and was suddenly down 300k before they knew it. Once they've survived the initial week, potentially two, with more trustworthy members of the FC picking things out of the chest for them when requested, then you move them into a rank that can access the first tab on their own. You'd be surprised at how many scammers this prevents.

Personally I'd ask around for her lodestone name from the FC's she's affected. I can guarantee at least one has kept a record of it. From there, bookmark it on your browser of choice and check in on it every time you have a new applicant. While she might change her name on the regular, the lodestone ID will never change, allowing you to keep tabs on and at the very least protect your FC from her going forward. It's not a fun thing to do. Believe me, I was the person who maintained the black list for my FC before the majority of us went on hiatus, but it kept us from accidentally accepting bad apples and was well worth the headache.

Sadly, you're likely not going to get SE to change their mind on this matter because there are steps that can be taken to prevent it from happening. In their eyes your lack of taking those steps puts you in just as much fault as the thief. Yet there are steps you can take. You saw it yourself when you reached out to other FC's to find out about this person after the fact. Since SE refuses to allow you to report the person, you need to turn to the broader FC community for protection. That black list I mentioned? The majority of it were names complied from talking with other FC's who would pass along the lodestones of thieves and other people skirting the TOS that they had encountered. Not so we could harass the people in question, but so that if they ever applied to our FC we could turn them away for our own protection.

While you can't publicly shame them, encouraging other FC's to keep in touch with each other going forward will likely help a good deal in mitigating the issue on top of that 'time out' rank that I mentioned.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Enla

Personally I'd ask around for her lodestone name from the FC's she's affected. I can guarantee at least one has kept a record of it. From there, bookmark it on your browser of choice and check in on it every time you have a new applicant. While she might change her name on the regular, the lodestone ID will never change, allowing you to keep tabs on and at the very least protect your FC from her going forward. It's not a fun thing to do. Believe me, I was the person who maintained the black list for my FC before the majority of us went on hiatus, but it kept us from accidentally accepting bad apples and was well worth the headache.

---

That might work if they're using name changes or name consistency, but if they're sending disposable alts out to do the dirty work and then head back to their drop-off fc you're not likely to be able to track them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dustytome

That might work if they're using name changes or name consistency, but if they're sending disposable alts out to do the dirty work and then head back to their drop-off fc you're not likely to be able to track them.

---

Very true sadly, I forgot that that was a possibility.

The best I can offer is reporting for ruining player's experience, rather than reporting for theft.

Do you have the date/time she said "No, good luck reporting me! ToS works all in my favor!"? I ask because the player is obviously doing this with bad intentions.

Specifically, to quote section 3.2 of the user agreement: "You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other a user." While it's uh... feeling poor english at the end, that's from my own received report, for emoting too much in public.

Hey, if I can get a warning for doing /huh too many times, they're bound to at least get a strike for stealing from fc's with the intention of ruining player experience, specially if they took it from the newbie spot.

2 solutions for the future:

1) Put only a few of those items of each in your tab#1 of your chest and simply replenish them as they're used once every few days.

2) Or, make tab#2 for items that can be requested by sprouts, but they need to request from a leader and THEN a leader will move a specific# of requested items to the tab#1 to be used by the sprout.

It takes time, sure, but it also limits abuse.

I wish there was more control over the FC chests. Like, "tab one is open to people of X-rank and lower but people with Y rank can only withdrawn 6 items per day and people with Z rank can only withdraw 3," or something along those lines.

But yes, I would still report her. While you can't do much about the theft, you might be able to nail her for purposefully and maliciously disrupting your game experience. Her response certainly shows premeditation.

She's just roleplaying as a thief! She pays for her sub too! (Unless she's stealing that...)

Seriously though, people need to utilize permissions and those tabs better in their FC chest. Even go as far as to have trusted players manually hand out certain items to people. As much as it stings (to the OP), sprouts don't really need Chocobo stable items. They should be moved up a tier. >.>

Its not a ToS grey area, shes right its totally legal. You should in future just lock the company chest to deposits for people who aren't leaders

Perhaps if when you blacklisted someone it blocked that person's account from you? Meaning you couldn't see or hear from ANY of their characters, see their items for sale on the Market Board, get tells from any of their characters, be invited to parties where some one has that account blocked? Tho if that's even possible I doubt it.

As others have said, youd be better off making a new rank so new members dont immediately gain access to the chest.
In order to help out sprouts, just offer help and if there's anything they need, send it to them in the mail, the hands on approach is more likely to make them feel included and therefore stick around.

There was one person who stayed an entire year in the FC I was in on odin, pretending to be everyone's friend, just so they could get ranked up enough to steal all the crystals (they weren't ranked high enough to steal everything else) . Their name is forever burned in my head.

There should be an official rule against FC item swiping imo, since you can't really guard against someone like that, besides having the leader have permissions only.

If you want a sprout tan best to fill it with potions, ether and maybe a few starter mats for crafting. While it's nice to offer dyes and prisms; they swap their gear so often it's almost pointless.

This should be counted as griefing. Especially because a character they create can be deleted or taken to friends and emptied much like a container. It's essentially using legal means to enter private properties and access them to steal items from other players and either sell or trade them off to other characters. The character right now (afaik), if for some reason they do get reported and the GM punishes the character, they can just as easily delete the character and start a new one. Griefing in this way should have punishment on the account. If the GMs can't actually tell if it's someone's account, then they need to have that fixed and given access.

This is the same thing as someone getting permission to enter your house and taking your game consoles, a pack of coke, and a bunch of games when you are not home. This is punished in real life, and if it's not immediately it is through court cases, this should be punished in game. It's thievery, and a betrayal of trust in the players and is griefing or just stealing. No matter what, this kind of behavior is punished in many other games, why is this not punished in FFXIV?

I would still report this player, with the screenshot of her saying that line, then file it under griefing/disruptions. Furthermore, it might help if you rally any fc that have been affected to launch your reports altogether. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

GMs are human too. Just because someone's taking advantage of a loophole in the ToS doesn't mean they can't recognize someone with ill intentions.

Fortunately it's a very small number of players who do that sort of thing. Don't shut your FC down to new applicants if your purpose is to be helpful to new players just because you had one bad incident.

Instead, have a separate rank for new members that doesn't give chest access. They can always ask someone with access for items they need. Once they've been in the FC for a few weeks and you feel you can trust them, move them into a different rank that does have access.

People who hop from FC to FC intending to steal aren't going to wait around a month or two to get access to the chest. They're going to find a new FC to rob.

The one thing I wish SE would do is give FCs the ability to limit the total number of items a player can remove from the FC chest per day or per week based on their FC rank. It wouldn't prevent theft but it would greatly reduce it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SenorPatty

I would still report this player, with the screenshot of her saying that line, then file it under griefing/disruptions. Furthermore, it might help if you rally any fc that have been affected to launch your reports altogether. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

GMs are human too. Just because someone's taking advantage of a loophole in the ToS doesn't mean they can't recognize someone with ill intentions.

---

They don't take screenshots/videos as proof of anything, but if you have a time/direct quote for something such as that ToS line, they can look over the conversation. As this user is showing a pattern of disruption, I hope they not only take action against offending account, but track down the account(s) that they're likely feeding.

A simple way for SE to help with this is to allow fc leaders to put a cap on how much members can withdraw a day, and allow them to set a number based on rank. That way trusted members could have a high or no cap, while new members' withdrawals can be controlled without having to withdraw on their behalf all the time.

This won't completely prevent theft but a lot of people will lose the incentive for it if it means they need to stay in the fc for a long while before they can attempt taking a lot of items at once.

Also you can track people if you have their lodestone page bookmarked. No matter if they change race, name, server or data centre, their lodestone page link will not change. It might sound extreme but it can really grant fc leaders peace of mind if they know what new faces and names troublesome people are using.

The ToS really should be more of a general guideline for the GMs to follow, not something so strict that people can easily exploit loopholes and gray areas like this.

As previously stated, you would not be able to get away with scummy behavior like this in a lot of other MMOs.

Yep, definitely report it for griefing. If you can cite the time/date of that comment the person made afterward too, it would help your case.

Whoever she is... I wanna marry her.

You should be locking your permissions where people have to make requests to the the assigned quartermaster or officer for an item to be retrieved from the FC Chest as its much more secure and prevents things like this from happening.

Honestly, Its not even a grey area.

This person joined an FC with the explicit intent to disrupt or negatively affect the gameplay of the members of that FC. In this case, the disruption is theft.
They have negatively affected the gameplay experience of others on purpose and should be punished as such. And since they stood to gain material rewards for doing so, those material rewards should be stripped and returned to affected party and then get account banned.

This happens so often because Square Enix just lets it happen.

It's funny how stuff like this gets a free pass when standing on someone's lawn is considered an actionable offense by some GMs.

There's really no consistency with what they'll actually punish if it falls into a more vague ToS category like griefing, which is also probably why bots almost never get punished because red flags they exhibit are generally things that can explained with leaps in logic like "Maybe some players really do play for 24+ hours without stopping on a regular basis". The RMT bots likely only get banned because they're either using painfully obvious warp hacks or shouting advertisements in cities, both of which are easily traceable and irrefutably violating the ToS.

sad that someone would be so bad at making money their only option is to steal soot black dye and glamor dispellers lol

>sets ranks to allow new people (aka: strangers) to access company chest

>stranger takes items from company chest

>pikachu_open_mouth.jpg

This is the equivalent of letting a homeless person stay in your house and give them free run of it, then getting surprised when they steal all your food and defecate in your shoes.

There is absolutely no excuse for not having an entry level rank that prohibits access to the FC chest, but enables them to benefit from everything else, like buffs, stables, gardening, etc.

Consider it a relatively inexpensive lesson learned.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 24spencer

sad that someone would be so bad at making money their only option is to steal soot black dye and glamor dispellers lol

---

IMO the odd thing is a lot of those items aren't worth much. Fishmeal can easily be made and dispellers can be bought from NPC, and glamour prisms can easily be made as well. They may make something but I'm sure it won't be big amount.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

Whoever she is... I wanna marry her.

---

Well, as they say “birds of a feather...”

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SerLuke

Well, as they say “birds of a feather...”

---

I'm pretty much thinking of a Spy vs. Spy scenario, where you have two clearly devious characters each in a neverending battle to outwit the other.

The biggest issue is the thief is actually correct. The ToS encourages this and will defend them if they do so. It also practically prohibits giving new members access to helpful items the FC chest, technically you can do it but absolutely shouldn't and can be punished for it. In fact you can be punished for giving any member access to the company chest (an officer can clear you out and leave after an argument) or even joining a FC (the leader can lock access to FC rooms and hint that a 2m donation will give permission rank). The ToS allows all of this.

Being rigid to this degree on ToS creates an exploitable game environment. The GM's should be free to act with rational common sense in situations like this.

Another thing that would help too is if you could set a max number of chest withdrawls per day for each rank. For example, you can set that new members can withdraw 5 stacks a day. This cuts losses drastically in the case of theft.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Being rigid to this degree on ToS creates an exploitable game environment. The GM's should be free to act with rational common sense in situations like this.

---

I doubt it IS this rigid.

Report this person. One FC complaining of theft might be brushed under the rug, but if she's a serial thief and enough FCs complain, those black marks will pile up over time. Even if every individual action is technically legal, the composite of them all paints a picture of an individual who is disruptive and harms the enjoyment of people playing this game - and THAT is something GMs can act upon.

GMs are allowed to ban a player for any reason or no reason at all. They don't, generally, as that's obviously bad business practice, but if they find someone who's obviously a bad egg, and they can justify it to their superiors, there's nothing stopping them. From the ToS:

Quote:

---

SQUARE ENIX MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE FFXIV SERVICE ACCOUNTS, CHARACTERS, VIRTUAL GOODS, OR THE SERVICE ALTOGETHER, AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE OR LIABILITY TO YOU.

---

*EVE Online PTSD intensifies*

Report and add another rank so new players can't immediately access the chest. That will deter all but the most patient thieves.

I haven't dealt much with the guild system in this game, but why would you make everything available, or at least that much, to a new member? :confused:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fynlar

I'm pretty much thinking of a Spy vs. Spy scenario, where you have two clearly devious characters each in a neverending battle to outwit the other.

---

This made my day, thank you.

I keep forgetting you can’t edit a post on mobile lol. I would still report the person while its true you won’t get your items back, maybe a GM will still look into it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

Whoever she is... I wanna marry her.

---

This is why everyone on Mateus despises you.


OP:

Gather all info and stuff, get other FCs like people say, and mass report with all information you have.


This is harming the gameplay of others and bragging about how she can't be reported because the ToS is on her side. That quite honestly is against the spirit of the rules.