So resetting's against the rules now?

[Ooshima]

I don't believe this is absolutely black-and-white, as is with the reluctance of our posting GM to directly state that it is with a single-sentence [as you have interpreted it

In GM's reply:

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

It is all about GM having to investigate about intent.

I have bolded the crux of the GM's post that may be related to marks reset. Resetting a mark can be considered as grieving. Note the word, can. So that goes back to what is the intention of grieving.

In GM's hypothetical example: Mob A is required by Player A to complete a questline, while the same Mob is required by Player B for items. Both A and B thinks that the opposite side is interfering with them, but instead, it could be just a fair game.

In fact, this classic example happened to me once - I needed to kill Apkallus to complete my hunting log during leveling up a class, but at the same time there is this player who kept AoE killed them before I could deal enough damage to claim credit. I could not complete my log if this goes on, I talked to him but he did not respond at all.

Could I say he is grieving? That depends. I suspected that he is a bot because he doesn't respond at all. Of course he could chosen not to reply me. But eventually, I could not do anything to him because as explained by GM, in this situation, he has no intent to interfere with my gameplay. He just wanted the Apkallu Eggs.

HOWEVER, if a GM found that he was actually stalking me and intentionally kill all the required mobs that I needed to complete my hunting log (despite him claiming that is actually farming), he could be infracted by the GM. The GM will investigate and determine if the said player had the malicious intention to prevent me from completing my hunting log.

Now let's get back to Marks. Is resetting the Mark an act of grieving? It DEPENDS. Player A and his full team is there and they decided to pull (so called "early pull"), while Player B have a couple of members still on their way. Player B decided to reset the mob to delay the time a little for them to arrive. Does player B have the malicious intent to interfere with Player A's side? At surface level, NO. Because just like the above example, Player B's side too wanted to kill this mob for the rewards. Player A views Player B's reset as interference, while at the same time Player B thinks that Player A, by "pulling early", is interfering him. Eventually, like the above example, it doesn't constitute interference at surface level. Both of them are doing what they could to receive their rewards. At surface level, that's the end of the story.

Noted the reason why I emphasized on surface level is because as the GM stated, this is a hypothetical example which what he said is in italics:

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 behavior or assumption of another customer's guilt.

Using back the Marks example: if later a GM found that Player B was actually stalking Player A (eg. they might have a beef before) and maybe in FC or another chat, Player B stated his intent to stalk Player A and troll him by resetting whichever Mark Player A is hunting, or even troll him on something else outside hunts, then it will be GM's decision to see if Player B should be determined as grieving and infracting him or not.

I believe that this should be the interpretation.

[ispano]

I-snip-

Nope. Once a mob is claimed, it "belongs" to the person who claimed it. Helping kill it is one thing, resetting it is completely different. With your Mark example, Both group A and B had some members there at minimum, either side could have claimed or waited. However once one side claimed, it's theirs and resetting it is disruption. This was one of the clearest things he said.

What it comes down to, is intent, but NOT the intent people are thinking of. People think it's something like their intent was to help their friends or LS who wasn't there yet or not. It's intent to reset. If you intended to reset it, for whatever reason, and it's not your claim, and the GMs agree on this, you will likely have something happen to you or your account.

If the reset itself was found to be non intentional, then nothing would happen. Like say you were tanking it, and something came up and you needed to drop combat quickly to be elsewhere or whatnot, so you run off and leash it and then be on your way. You didn't want to reset it, so much as you needed to drop combat to go elsewhere.

[Krr]

What it comes down to, is intent, but NOT the intent people are thinking of. People think it's something like their intent was to help their friends or LS who wasn't there yet or not. It's intent to reset. If you intended to reset it, for whatever reason, and it's not your claim, and the GMs agree on this, you will likely have something happen to you or your account.

A common thread of misunderstanding here does seem to be that players are intentful but their actions are not. Circumstances and material results, more than anything, drive intent, not an inherent goodness or badness of what the player is trying to do. You can do what you perceive as a good thing while intentfully disrupting another player's gameplay through mechanics.

I think the old 'road to hell' saying is applicable here.

[Alukah]

@Ooshima, that example you're giving was discussed quite a few pages ago (though I don't blame you for not following the whole thread).

I'd suggest special attention to the first paragraph of post #77, post #99 and post #243.

[RaineMagus]

Nope. Once a mob is claimed, it "belongs" to the person who claimed it. Helping kill it is one thing, resetting it is completely different. With your Mark example, Both group A and B had some members there at minimum, either side could have claimed or waited. However once one side claimed, it's theirs and resetting it is disruption. This was one of the clearest things he said.

What it comes down to, is intent, but NOT the intent people are thinking of. People think it's something like their intent was to help their friends or LS who wasn't there yet or not. It's intent to reset. If you intended to reset it, for whatever reason, and it's not your claim, and the GMs agree on this, you will likely have something happen to you or your account.

If the reset itself was found to be non intentional, then nothing would happen. Like say you were tanking it, and something came up and you needed to drop combat quickly to be elsewhere or whatnot, so you run off and leash it and then be on your way. You didn't want to reset it, so much as you needed to drop combat to go elsewhere.

The infraction may be clear perhaps: yet the consequence, dispute, and resolution probably are not. In one example of 'how not', I'm sure that if noone was offended, noone said anything, and noone filed reports, then there's no problem and therefore no action would possibly be taken (Clarification: Even if a GM was aware, as no players have a dispute).. Eg, just like the example of a joke that a person makes that often doesn't offend others, it's probably OK "so long as noone takes offense". The intention of players and their understanding is likely extremely important here in whether or not a player simply has a talk, a warning, a suspension, or otherwise.

Obviously I'm not working for SquareEnix and cannot speak for them, yet I'd like to think that if they simply spoke with a player who did-not understand what they were doing and who agreed to 'stop' .. That would be the end of the issue (problem resolved / player dispute settled).

[Ooshima]

@Ooshima, that example you're giving was discussed quite a few pages ago (though I don't blame you for not following the whole thread).

I'd suggest special attention to the first paragraph of post #77, post #99 and post #243.

Thanks for the info - indeed I haven't been following this thread after a certain point, partially because I've already retired from hunt