Let's talk about a ToS Grey Area

[Burningskull]

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.

[Seraphor]

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.

[NessaWyvern]

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.

[Alestorm]

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.

[LauraAdalena]

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?

[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.

[Jojoya]

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.

[Dustytome]

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.

[Penthea]

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.

[KageTokage]

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.