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

[Esrain]

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[ThirdKeyOfSun]

If there crime but no punishment, what's preventing criminals from doing crime in the first place?

Unless they verbally harassed you, called you out on your numbers or otherwise talked amongst themselves on another channel about you that the GM can check there is nothing the GM's can do. Kicking for differences in playstyle (which is exceptionally broad but that was the intent) is a safety zone given to parties who don't like the way another player is performing, acting, or really anything else D: doesn't make it right but that is the reality of it.
Also 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 :/

[SigmaOZ]

Those players are idiots for sure, I wish GMs would punish them badly but most likely they don't do anything at all!...

I've been vote kicked before for no apparent reason other that they were a pre-made party which has total control of whom is kicked or not, maybe they wanted a friend to join at the last boss or they were "teaching" the new member of their FC, whatever the reason there are times when it's just unfair!...

Sadly, the only thing to do is to black-list them and hope to never have to play with them again!...

[Penthea]

Also 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 :/

You will almost never be told by a GM what action they took or if they will take any. Likely this is for the sake of privacy for all parties involved, and also so GMs won't get bombarded by demands from players who know a lot about what other GMs did to discipline others. The GM could have given the people OP met a temporary ban and he'd never know about it unless those players told OP. And if they did that is considered harrassment and is a punishable offence, likely offenders are warned about this.

So in short, for various reasons, it is incredibly unlikely for anyone reporting anything to hear what punishment took place from a reliable source.

[HyoMinPark]

Unless there is chat log evidence of harassment, the GMs cannot just dish out punishment. You need evidence before you can punish someone; without evidence, there is no proof of anything “wrong” happening. And it sucks, but you can try to see it this way: maybe you ended up dodging a bullet in the end. The one time I was vote dismissed in this game was after a very nasty confrontation with a tank about standing in things/not dodging mechanics (I was the healer, and they were making my job nigh impossible short of spamming Cure II on them), and I was glad to be dismissed from that group (I was going to leave it anyways; would have rather eaten the penalty). Try to think of it that way. Try not to give those three another thought.

[Penthea]

I am aware of this, while it doesn't apply in this case, in the past when I've reported someone i know on my own server, i'd know if nothing was done to them, and I'd still see them around as if nothing happened.

That doesn't mean a GM did nothing. They do give warnings. Bans only happen if the offence is severe or if the player is a repeat offender of something more minor.

[HyoMinPark]

If you put it that way, I think i'll agree with you that it could have been a good thing that I got out of the group. They were performing poorly anyway.
About the chat log, there is always a server side chat log available, that's why they ask for timestamps and they can even check actions.
However, the reason I posted this in general, despite my issue today, is to raise awareness or have a general talk of how GMs often cannot or do not want to suspend accounts. (abuse, harassment, teleporting)

I agree that there are issues of the GMs dismissing rampant cheating, especially when it comes to things like botting (PvP is a nightmare, and I am aware of a few crafting/gathering bots on my server that have been reported multiple times, and nothing has been done about them because they’re still there botting away all day). I agree that there are also a lot of issues with the kinds of evidence GMs will accept when reporting players (e.g., it has to all be in-game; they won’t accept video evidence of botting players, etc.).

It could very well be that there was FC chat evidence (or LS chat evidence) of the three planning to kick you to bring in a friend, or what have you. And the GMs will see that, when they go back and investigate. They just cannot tell you of any action, and trust me, it sucks thinking the harassers or cheaters got off scot-free. But all it takes is more reports of similar actions, and the GMs will move from warnings to suspensions to banning. There’s just no outward way of knowing, unless you track their Lodestones and notice: “It...doesn’t seem like they’ve logged in in about a month”, or they come out and say they were banned on some form of social media.

Personally, I go back and forth on the hush-hush way GMs won’t tell you if they took action or not. I understand why they do it, but I also understand how crappy it feels to think your complaints fall on deaf ears.

I just try not to waste too much time on people like the three you met. They put me in a foul mood, and I’d rather not let them ruin the time I get to play. It’s hard sometimes, but if you can do it, it makes things so much easier.

[Penthea]

My opinion right now is that the main problem with the reporting feature is the amount of loopholes when it comes to being unable to suspend bad players

GMs need evidence. For all you know absolutely nothing in the chat logs referred to kicking you because it was instead discussed in voice chat, which SE have no access to.

Also while kicking you for seemingly no reason is definitely a crappy move by them, it's not exactly a horrible offence. They didn't insult you, they didn't try to trick you into getting ddosed by asking you to copy paste a link, they didn't tell lies about you to your fc mates behind your back. You were only removed from an instance. It's crap but it's hardly on the spectrum of criminal.

It is okay to abuse the Ungarmax Limit Break bug if you didn't know it was a bug but thought it was feature."

Sometimes it's unclear if something is a bug, a feature or unintended use. An experienced raider would know that the Ungarmax LB was definitely not intended and most likely a bug, but a newer player might just think it's a cool and useful tool they figured out.

Whereas something like players somehow figuring out how to make an arena you should be able to fall off of have invisible walls, thus becoming unable to fall off, would obviously appear to be a bug to most players as it's literally breaking the instance.

[Penthea]

Giving feedback is the only way Square Enix knows what it's doing wrong and unless you speak up things will not change for the better.

While I agree with this, if this exact thing happened in WoW you would have had literally the same result. Even though Blizzard has a much larger and more efficient support team.

Simply put, your issue is very minor and without hard evidence that it happened as a result of harassment, no GM in any game can do anything about it.

[Penthea]

Let's say they were using voice chat, so nothing was written, it would still fall under abusing the vote kick for no reason.

No it wouldn't. If players absolutely had to provide a reason for kicking then there would be a textbox or a drop-down menu for that in the vote kick window, and you wouldn't be able to kick unless a reason was given. But no such things exist, so being given a reason isn't mandatory.

By your logic a group who removes a bad player without stating why in-game is abusing the system. That doesn't make sense. That is not how this works.