Crime & Punishment. Why have GM's that are unable or unwilling to suspend accounts?

[Alleo]

When I first read the thread title I thought that this would truly be about a crime and not one single kick from a dungeon. First we dont know the whole story and only one perspective. Its kinda telling though how you write in this thread and that you somehow had to mention DPS and stuff like that. Maybe your comment after the wipe came over as rude to them? There are so many reason why you can be kicked and maybe it was not just to get a FC mate in there but maybe something else.

Suspending an account just for one kick would be way too harsh and I am quite sure that you would think that too if you make a mistake in the game, get reported for it and maybe have a suspended account for something relatively small. Also You write it as it was a horrible crime (like stalking and things like that) and which happens more than once and the GM did not do anything against it..yet it was just one kick from a dungeon and on top of that you just got the standard mail from them. How do you know that they were not punished? Maybe they did get a warning, maybe they did get a 1-day ban. Just because they dont tell you that wont mean that they did not do that and honestly a abused vote kick with evidence should still not give that big amount of punishment.

[Melichoir]

Is it weird that Ive never been vote kicked? Maybe its a DPS thing. Except my friends who are just DPS people have never been vote kicked randomly either. Not saying it dont happen, just saying Ive never experienced it.

When people do vote kick, its usually cause someone is a jerk. Just what Ive noticed in my time playing.

[Musashidon]

Yes, but not from early pulling.

actually head gm ezk said if you find a hunt and someone pulls it before your team arrives that is a valid early pull, but only the finder can claim its a early pull.
i will see if i can refind the exact qoute.

found it, i was alittle off but yea. it's very rare but possible.

course this is from 2014 so its nearly 4 years old xD

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

In general, any monster in the world that is able to be attacked can be attacked at any time. There is no user agreement section that details the proper time to wait before attacking a hunt mark, at this time. That being said, actions determined to be taken with the intent of disrupting the game play of others can be reported as a grief tactic. This disruption applies to the people actually at the hunt mark, and convoluting the "disruption" to apply because not enough people were present for you to get full credit misses the actual impact of the disruption. And because nothing is black and white, this does not mean that pulling the hunt mark will not result in a grief tactics violation. The circumstances that would cause it are rarer, but not impossible. A GM would make that determination after investigating a report on potential grief tactics.

As in several of my posts, as a player, I appreciate the players who can get people to wait a bit to give more people a chance to participate. However, unless the hunt mark is pulled in a manner that a GM finds to be intentionally disruptive, waiting is a social behaviour, not an edict within the rules.

[Shouko]

Is it weird that Ive never been vote kicked? Maybe its a DPS thing. Except my friends who are just DPS people have never been vote kicked randomly either. Not saying it dont happen, just saying Ive never experienced it.

When people do vote kick, its usually cause someone is a jerk. Just what Ive noticed in my time playing.

I've seen vote kicks for everything, lack of dps, to get a friend in instead of said player, lousy healing/tanking, afk, someone even initiated a kick once because they didn't like the person's glam, it didn't go through but needless to say people do it for the dumbest of reasons.


What I don't get is why bother having a report option for kick abuse if they don't care? It seems counterproductive.

[Penthea]

I quit

The reason why is simple, SE policies are bad, contradictory and the players happily support SE's policies as is. If the majority of the player-base is happy with this, there's no reason to change at all.

I hope you mean you're going to stop playing mmos then, because SE's policy on harassment is pretty standard. Even Blizzard, who are known to have an excellent GM service, would have given you the same experience you had with the incident that lead you to make this thread.

[Divinemights]

ngs Pearl Abyss has to offer.

I really dont see why you are quitting over this.
Compares to other mmorpg, FF14 GM has fastest reponse time over player harrassment (usually within 10 mins).
Do you know how long does it take for WoW GM to respond to your ticket? It is more than 24 hours.

[The_Promised]

If we should't be allowed to join on dungeons/raids with blacklisted people, alot of problems would be solved on this kick thing.

[Dzian]

even if GM's did take action they are rule bound not to tell you what, if any, their actions were against the offending parties. That is just a part of the guidelines they follow. Never ever expect to be told if they took action or what those actions were. Sorry you had a bad day :/

This stuff never makes sense to me. If someone's been punished for harrasment or something the victim should generally be told.. (due process)

The silence policy is just strange and wrong. It's like someone murdering your mother and you never being told by the police or courts if they were arrested or convicted for the crime.it just doesn't work that way.

Likewise if I reported my neighbour for harassment the police would tell me what actions if any were taken. They have to

[Penthea]

This stuff never makes sense to me. If someone's been punished for harrasment or something the victim should generally be told.. (due process)

The silence policy is just strange and wrong. It's like someone murdering your mother and you never being told by the police or courts if they were arrested or convicted for the crime.it just doesn't work that way.

Likewise if I reported my neighbour for harassment the police would tell me what actions if any were taken. They have to

If players got told exactly what happened or didn't happen to who they reported then GMs would get harassed because the punishment isn't enough or because of the absence of one.

For example lets say player A is a serial offender of minor trolling and player B was extremely rude to a player but only once. Player A is more likely to get punishment than B because A is frequently causing grief. However to a person who doesn't know how often A and B commit offences, they would complain to a GM that B got off lightly while A got a harsh punishment.

It's a GMs job to deal with various issues, but justifying the sort of punishment they dish out is not one of them. This would frankly waste GM time and would draw attention away from players who actually need their help.

[Awha]

I've seen vote kicks for everything, lack of dps, to get a friend in instead of said player, lousy healing/tanking, afk, someone even initiated a kick once because they didn't like the person's glam, it didn't go through but needless to say people do it for the dumbest of reasons.


What I don't get is why bother having a report option for kick abuse if they don't care? It seems counterproductive.

lol I have seen some silly votes pass. For shits and giggles I initiated a vote on someone not being a Lala, and it passed. Honestly I do not think many people look at the reason and just click yes.