The GM team is completely ineffective.

[Kazmarek]

When it comes to spammers, we're back to subjective opinion. The game's definition for spammer seems to be someone who fills the chat window completely with rapid repetition of a specific message so that others are unable to converse. Repeating the same message once every 5-10 minutes isn't going to be considered spam under that definition.

RMT activity is handled by the Special Task Force and not the GMs as a rule. The ad spambots do get banned on a weekly basis. But there's no way to stop RMT from making new accounts and characters to continue the spam.


What terrible policy are you referring to? That they don't immediately ban someone just on your personal say so?

Just because you want something to be done does not mean that it should be done.

Adding someone to a blacklist doesn't mean you're living in ignorance. You should know that with your personal extensive use of the blacklist to the point you don't have room to add this one character to it.

Learn which battles are worth fighting and which aren't. You may not agree with this other player and the message they're sharing but nothing you've said makes it sound like it's mean-spirited or damaging in any way, only that it could be annoying.

And yes, my life did improve immensely once I taught myself what battles are worth fighting and what can be safely ignored. I wouldn't say I'm very happy but I'm a lot happier than I was when I was obsessed with petty stuff and things that can't be changed. People will be people. Some will end up an annoyance depending on your personal preferences but they're rarely causing any actual harm to anyone.

Instead of investing your energy into trying to fight this particular battle, put the player on ignore and invest the energy into playing the game. Or don't and stay angry because you can't get others to see things your way. Your life, your choice.


Sorry you felt that you had to delete your character. With the improved blacklist coming in Dawntrail, hopefully no one will feel that's a necessary step ever again.

But your situation was very different from what the OP's situation is. The OP is way overreacting here and refuses to use a simple tool that would remove what's annoying them from their chat.


Venue ads might be spam or might not be. Are they annoying to those not interested in the venues? Sure, but they're also easily ignored if you're actively playing the game instead of using all your time to hang out in Limsa.

The OP's complaint doesn't seem to really be about venues, though. They seem to be about one particular player who has posted a message with a religious overtone in shout chat on multiple occasions (they had mentioned this is in a bit more detail in the other thread they mention was deleted by the moderators).

People tend to skim past the following statement in the Prohibited Activities policy:



While discussion of topics that tend to prompt sensitive reactions are discouraged, they are not outright prohibited. What is prohibited is discriminatory speech that is intolerant of differing points of view or intended to begin arguments between players.

As an example, someone saying "Remember Jesus loves you, I hope you have a great day!" isn't prohibited. Unless other things were said to give it a different context, it comes across as friendly and caring. Regardless of your personal spiritual beliefs, there's not really anything offensive to be found in what the player said. The GMs have no reason to take action against that player.

If what they had said was "If you don't love Jesus, you're damned to Hell", that would be considered discriminatory and inflammatory. The GMs probably would choose to take action against the player at that point.

Are some players going to be sensitive to religious references for any number of reasons? Yes. But all they have to do is put that player on their blacklist, along with any other players that might choose to turn that into a discussion, and they won't have to listen to it anymore. Personal issue, simple solution.

So the OP reports the other player for putting a religious reference into shout chat, GMs review what's said against what's in the Prohibited Activties policy, finds it's not actually prohibited and so don't take action against the player. OP gets mad that the other player can continue to post a religious reference into shout chat and decides to try to get them silenced for "spam" or "nuisance behavior". They refuse to put the player on their blacklist because They Must Know! what the other player says so they can report it. Again, GMs review and don't find what the other player is doing to be prohibited under the policy. OP starts to rage and takes it to the forums, where they get very little sympathy because few people like someone trying to shut down another person's ability to express a non-discriminatory opinion.

It's really not worth it to engage with you either, we're both clearly set in our own thoughts. You think the GM team is infallible, I think they're terrible and need to change to be better.

So lets start with this misunderstanding you have: I'm not referring to someone posting messages with "religious overtones." I wasn't even aware that was a thread at some point. So I'm not really sure where you got that from and why you're attributing it to me. If you read my original post clearly (which you did not) I stated it was multiple people. Now, to give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you mistook me saying "the same names (yes, it's always the same character)" as meaning one individual. What I meant was, it's the same names and worlds for each person, not the same name but a different world. So your whole assumption with your last paragraph is... it's just wrong. You're wrong. I don't know what else to say about it other than you're flat out wrong.

The pf venue spam is absurd and I genuinely think something should be done about it. I'm personally not holding out hope for Dawntrail's filters to actually work. They said there will be chat filters, which is great, that's a step in the right direction, but knowing SQenix's history, I highly doubt these filters will apply to party finder. I will be shocked if I am wrong about this and will happily declare that I was wrong. I want to be wrong about this because it means they're actually taking a step in the right direction.

Now, to go back to the pf venue spam, because I know some people are going to come out and say "lmao this person wants to ban rpers" kind of like what you're doing in saying "OP wants to silence others," I'm not actually against ads. I'm not. I think it's great that there's such a large community around this scene. I don't personally interact with it, but more power to them. My issue is when there's too many of the same listing. I don't understand what's so hard about being courteous and stopping to think for a second "do we really need 8 different posts for this" and coming to the conclusion that no, we actually don't need this many. This leads me back to my first interaction with you on this thread when I told you the blacklist isn't infinite. I shouldn't have to blacklist 8 new names every two weeks to keep that section somewhat readable. It shouldn't be an issue in the first place, it should've been shut down ages ago. This is not how it's always been, this is something that's new to Endwalker. I remember when having as many as 3 listings for the same thing was considered, politely, "rude."

So now that I've gone through that, let me repeat my points for at least the sixth or seventh time on this particular thread. I believe the GM team should communicate more. I believe the GM team should be able to tell you "we don't think this is against Terms of Service." I believe the GM team should be able to give you a solid answer on that. I don't believe the GM should rely on "Although we cannot inform you of the outcome due to privacy reasons..." excuse because frankly, it's crap. How is it that so many other games are able to let you know "hey someone you reported had action taken against them" but yet the infallible Square Enix can't? It's crap, that's why.

On top of that, I have no idea what sort of thread you're reading because there's definitely a good mix of people here going "yeah the GM team is great" and "yeah the GM team kind of sucks." You're obviously in the former camp, I'm in the latter camp.

I reiterate. They're ineffective. I don't know if it's the team or the policies, but once again, it's ineffective. I don't believe that someone should get banned for "killing too many mobs" when they were trying to spawn an S rank. Remember that thread? What about back in October, the guy who streamed himself hacking in PvP and got banned from 4 or 5 different streaming sites before getting suspended from XIV? What about the people who get banned for using mods, only to have the devs turn around and put them into the game? What about the blatant disregard for the ToS by some people from the venue community? You walk into a club, you see a yell chat and ooooooh they're crafty. "My sink is named X and my sink's password is Y" as if someone's going to look at that and think "Oh, that person must have a smart sink." It's ridiculous. It's a clown show.

Now that you've built your argument around mistaking me for someone else, please move the goalposts.

[Jojoya]

It's really not worth it to engage with you either, we're both clearly set in our own thoughts. You think the GM team is infallible, I think they're terrible and need to change to be better.

I don't think they're infallible. They're human just as you and I are.

If you're going to come to a discussion forum where opposing opinions should be expected then refuse to engage with those that disagree with you, you're just showing how much of a Karen you are.

You referred to a different thread that ended up deleted and I felt I knew which one you're talking about. I thought you were the one that brought up the "Jesus spammer" but evidently misremembered. My apologies.

If your issue is the venue advertising, my comments still apply. Learn to fight your battles. Learn what is or isn't allowed. Venue advertisements in shout chat are allowed. Venue advertisements in PF are allowed. I've never seen venue ads reach the level of repetition by a single player that is required to be considered spam under the Prohibited Activities policy. The GM hands are tied on the matter. It's up to the development team to change the policy on venue advertising but opening tickets with the GMs isn't going to accomplish that. Your best bet is to submit a request once that the venue ad policy be reconsidered through Suggestions in the Support Desk.

The last thing the GM team needs to do is communicate more. That takes up their time that could be getting used to investigate and close tickets.

The GMs are not allowed to state the outcome of any report or whether action was taken period. This is not something that is discretionary on SE's part. It is mandatory due to online privacy laws in many countries. They cannot divulge information about specific players, which is what you want. The closest they can get are the weekly reports that get posted on Lodestone which display number of accounts banned for RMT/botting but not which accounts. They could add a section for bans due to social ToS violations and list the numbers but that probably still isn't going to give you the information you want.

Just what other games have told you "hey, we took action against that player you reported"? WoW never did when I was playing WoW. RIFT never did when I was playing RIFT. LotRO never did when I was playing LotRO. I didn't play DDO long enough to run into someone I needed to report so I don't know if they do or not and I haven't played any other MMOs. The response I always got, outside of one situation in WoW involving some fairly serious harassment, was "we've received your report and will investigate and take action in accordance with our policies" - which was not saying they actually took action, only that they would if it was appropriate.

There is no Prohibited Activity policy that address venue advertising frequency. You refuse to offer your personal definition of spam but based on what you say, it does not match the definition the GMs have been given to enforce the policy on chat spam.

I'm in the "GM team is generally good" camp because my interactions with the GM team have been positive though not perfect. There was one occasion where I did have to re-open my ticket to get to a GM that fully read and understood the actual issue (which I have to admit was a bit complicated).

I remember the thread about the person who claimed they were banned because they were killing too many mobs to spawn a S rank and pointed out that there's something fishy about that story because 1) other spawners aren't getting banned for doing the same thing and 2) notices of bans do not go into that much detail about the violation, nor do GMs offer additional clarification.

I don't remember the story about the PvP hacker so I can't comment because I don't know the details of exactly what happened.

The developers have been very clear about the policy on mod use. Don't use them because you'll be banned if caught by SE. If there is a game play problem that needs to be addressed, submit a Suggestion but it's still at the developers' discretion on whether the feature will be added to the game later. You're still subject to the ToS if you're using a mod to access the feature regardless of the feature being added at a later date because it was not part of the game at the time you were using the mod, thus giving you an unfair game advantage.

I have no clue what you're talking about when you say you go into venues and someone says "My sink is named X and my sink's password is Y". I don't go to venues and I ignore venue ads. Are you saying some venues are doxxing player account information or that they're trying to trick players into revealing their own? SE can't prevent player stupidity. Venues are a situation where you enter at your own risk because SE isn't responsible for online interactions between players if the situation doesn't clearly fall under prohibited policies.

You sounds like another of those players that thinks that SE is Mommy and Daddy and have to be responsible for protecting you from yourself and your own poor decision making.

They're not. You're presumably an adult. It's up to you to make decisions that are in your best interest and protect yourself.

There's no need to move goal posts here when you're still obsessing over petty stuff. The same advice still stands. Use blacklist and clear it out on a regular basis. Unless you can come up with better evidence that the venue advertising you're seeing is violating the Prohibited Activities policy, the GMs aren't going to do anything because such advertising is allowed as long as it is not sexually explicit and is not repeated in chat by one player frequently enough to reach their definition of spam.

Spamming
Refers to using chat (including Quick Chat in PvP content and emotes) to obstruct the gameplay of others.
Key Points
The key point to consider is whether or not the behavior is obstructing another person's gameplay. While the intention may have not been to cause an obstruction, if the situation interferes with the communication of other players then it can be determined as a prohibited activity. If a report has been filed and the prohibited activity is confirmed, a penalty will be issued.

Are you unable to play the game because someone is putting a venue advertisement in shout chat? Are you prevented from chatting with other players?

As for things being a clown show, welcome to the human race. There are a lot of fools out there but it's also easy to deal with the majority of them without any need to involve others.

[Kazmarek]

I don't think they're infallible. They're human just as you and I are.

If you're going to come to a discussion forum where opposing opinions should be expected then refuse to engage with those that disagree with you, you're just showing how much of a Karen you are.

Look, I'm gonna be honest with you, after you called me a Karen again I stopped reading your post. You're not arguing in good faith and you've moved the goalposts, just as I said you would.

So let me be crystal clear. If I'm paying monthly to play a game, there needs to be good service. I don't see that in the GM team right now. I'm saying "the community needs better and needs to be better." You're sitting over there eating crap and trying to pass it off as german chocolate. If that's what you want to do, by all means that's your right as a human being. But don't come in here and tell me to try it too, because I'm gonna call it what it is. Complete and utter crap. I'm done engaging with you.

[Jojoya]

Look, I'm gonna be honest with you, after you called me a Karen again I stopped reading your post. You're not arguing in good faith and you've moved the goalposts, just as I said you would.

So let me be crystal clear. If I'm paying monthly to play a game, there needs to be good service. I don't see that in the GM team right now. I'm saying "the community needs better and needs to be better." You're sitting over there eating crap and trying to pass it off as german chocolate. If that's what you want to do, by all means that's your right as a human being. But don't come in here and tell me to try it too, because I'm gonna call it what it is. Complete and utter crap. I'm done engaging with you.

I'm not eating crap. I'm enjoying the game. It's rare that I run into other players that are engaging in action that constitutes violation of the ToS and need to be reported.

Sorry that you're not having the same experience. Good luck to you.