I was issued a warning no info given. Thought our party finder issues were resolved?

[Jijifli]

One common situation is that player A reports player B for something, GM punishes B, but telling B what caused the punishment would let B know it was A who did the reporting, hence to protect the "privacy" of A, the GM refuses to tell B the details of the infraction.

I've heard this happen in other games as well.

It's a dilemma. You can't expect someone who wants to comply in good faith to actually change anything if you don't say what is wrong, and you can't reveal someone who made the report in good faith. So when the situation only allows one and not the other, a GM probably has to choose to side with the reporter.

Then if person B decides to harass person A over it, they can receive extremely heavy punishment in return. Heck, double down on it, skips steps if they actually do that, as it's clear they don't care at that point.

My first official warning (I have 2 hits, after 6 years of playing), I was told that I had broke "a rule" at some point. What rule? Who knew, I never got an email, and support desk wouldn't even display any details about the warning, just that I "had one." I remember I spent an entire month trying to ask gm's for any form of clarity, because if I know literally nothing of what I did wrong, how am I meant to correct it? And yes, I said a month, it took a month of tickets to actually get any information.

And what was my grave sin that they wouldn't give any details about because I might go after person A?

... I emoted too many times in Idylshire. A public space, with probably 20+ players easily in range of my /huh's. How, in the twelve, am I going to figure out who reported me there? And even if I could, what am I gonna do? Follow it up with being mean and get suspended, or even perma banned?

[Zfz]

I feel the several posts who replied to me didn't read my comment in its entirety. I know and have expressed the exact same situations you people reply:

You can't expect someone who wants to comply in good faith to actually change anything if you don't say what is wrong

So erm, yeah? I said exactly that? I'm not defending the GMs. I'm just offering a possible reason why the GMs in question (or GMs in MMOs in general) may end up behaving like tyrranical power-hungry jerks. It could be that they are having a power trip, but it's not necessarily always that. And I know your frustrations. I'm agreeing. Not disagreeing.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

This is called harrassment and is also against the ToS. With the strikes never going away, getting 2 strikes instead of one can be a pretty big deal.

The thing is, in this day of discord & social media, many people can easily harass players without ever doing it in-game and incite witch-hunts outside of the jurisdiction Square Enix controls (I've even seen cases of witch-hunts happen in discords against players for various reasons). It was the crux of a huge drama that happened to Arthars where his actions out of game caused targeted harassment & witch-hunting against a single player on the JP datacenter because all his fans knew who reported him, to the point Square made an exception to their 'no outside sources as evidence' clause just to temp ban him to quell the drama storm that occurred.

Zfz is correct in that its effectively impossible for the GMs to give information about why the report was brought forth outside of the ToS clause it violated and leave the person to speculate. Square quite clearly aims to promote people reporting bad behavior through giving reporters anonymity protection, so the system won't ever be changing, whether we like it or not.

Hence why some players simply don't speak outside of cliques/closeknit groups, or go speak in discord instead.

[rance-sama]

I just love how every time something RP related like this happens, there's always the "epic anti-ERP crusader xDDD" larping as a force of authority in the threads, yet they get BTFO every single time.
I think they are just gluttons for punishment or enjoy making a fool of themselves in front of people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SomeRandomHuman]

It's funny that people are pushing the cropped version of that chat log now as gospel. Pretty sure back when the whole thing was posted some time ago people were extremely skeptical of it. Especially given how easy it would apparently be to fabricate.

It's funny that GMs only listen to the accusing side like it's gospel. Especially when the best evidence they're given is probably just as fabricated. They don't us the benefit of the doubt, so why should we give it to them?

[rance-sama]

It's funny that GMs only listen to the accusing side like it's gospel. Especially when the best evidence they're given is probably just as fabricated. They don't us the benefit of the doubt, so why should we give it to them?

Controversial, smoking hot take, but I can see where you're going with this.

[SomeRandomHuman]

Controversial, smoking hot take, but I can see where you're going with this.

I abhor double standards and the like with a fiery passion of several thousand suns. I've enjoyed playing the "mirror game" as I call it. Many people would know it as the golden rule from everyone's favorite( /sarcasm) book.

If the GMs wanna mistreat loyal veteran players and their supervisors don't wanna address it, then we're really the only ones who can address it.

Again to the forum mods: forward this post to the community reps. More higher up internal staff need to know and investigate many mishandlings by the GM team.

[Penthea]

Square quite clearly aims to promote people reporting bad behavior through giving reporters anonymity protection, so the system won't ever be changing, whether we like it or not.

The problem is that the issue that caused the report is also anonymous. If the behaviour doesn't stop because the player doesn't know what they did wrong, then that's not protecting anyone. It can even mean the person who reported it has to deal with the same issue again. It is beyond worrying and ludicrous that professionals in community management in SE cannot understand this.

Hence why some players simply don't speak outside of cliques/closeknit groups, or go speak in discord instead.

I have to admit the more I find out about this, the more I'm glad that I tend to be the sort of person who just sticks with their buddies. I don't have to change anything about how I play to keep myself safe from an easily offended player landing me in a situation in which a GM is telling me off for some mystery crime, and somehow expects me to improve while keeping me in the dark.

[Catwho]

It's funny that GMs only listen to the accusing side like it's gospel. Especially when the best evidence they're given is probably just as fabricated. They don't us the benefit of the doubt, so why should we give it to them?

I was under the impression that before issuing a strike, a GM would verify the accusation using their access to the internal database chat logs (which are stored for at least a couple of days before being overwritten, since text is cheap to store.) This includes private conversations in tells, not just public chat channels.

[SomeRandomHuman]

I was under the impression that before issuing a strike, a GM would verify the accusation using their access to the internal database chat logs (which are stored for at least a couple of days before being overwritten, since text is cheap to store.) This includes private conversations in tells, not just public chat channels.

They're probably supposed to but how would we know if they do or don't? They say they can't even give any details about an offense being held against you after all.

With how hush and secretive they are I doubt they even do anything before pulling the accused aside. They see a report worth looking into and just steal the player from whatever they're doing to berate them.