Recent Developments of TOS Actions Taken

[Gula]

Theres like a million bots running around daily, and still get RMT stuff spammed, but GMs have time to police every streamers twitch stream, thats what people should be talking about.

Go back a page and see the post about the RMT team please. Cause youve got the wrong idea about how it works.

[Rasikko]

RMT aren't running parses and calling people out for bad numbers and Bart Simponsing on a stream about it.

It's simple. Don't admit you're using it. Don't verbally abuse people over their numbers. Most of all, for crying out load don't jeopardize your accounts over something so trivial. You spend thousand upon thousands of hours on your characters, is risking a ban really worth throwing all thay time away?

[Divinemights]

Theres like a million bots running around daily, and still get RMT stuff spammed, but GMs have time to police every streamers twitch stream, thats what people should be talking about.

For one last time, GMT is under the special task force that has more authority.

[Melichoir]

Snip
Nevertheless, please actually read what I'm saying if you're going to reply to me.

Sorry I didnt use the exact vernacular. You are acting like TWITCH, a live Video broadcast site is infallible, or that the recordings from twitch are infallible. Furthermore youre not addressing the crux of my point of why they dont take player evidence - be it twitch or a guy with a 1990s camcorder recording his monitor : There is the potential for that information to not be correct or presented in a way that removes context of what actually is happening or being done (cutting the stream early, starting said stream mid action, framing the action in such a fashion you cant see everything going on - none of which requires video editing). This doesnt include self submission videos where the videos arent on or from twitch, or videos that are uploaded to twitch after being edited. They pretty much lump together player submitted information as short hand because in practicality most of it is gonna be junk or biased. Imagine being in the position of having to watch every video or screen grab submission from someone who suspects another player of hacking, then having to do follow ups for each individual case. Its a sisyphean task.

As for shadowing an accused player, how do we know this isnt the case as is? I keep seeing people say "SE has said this" but Im not finding recent examples that outlines the exact duties of what GMs do and dont do (or local teams for that matter). For all we know, GMs could be shadowing accused players via reports and kicking those cases up the totem pole to the STF.

Beyond that, no I dont agree with WoW handles it much better. Ive seen stupid botting shenanigans in WoW first hand that is just as bad as it is here. Is it always that bad? No. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Is it so drastically better than FFXIV? No, not in my opinion. It has been as bad and as good as WoW has had it on average.

Lastly, color me a bit skeptical if I take what you say that only 4 people manage the entirety of policing the player base. Where does this information directly come from and what are the specifics. Just by briefly searching around I only found a small bit of information regarding the STF and their purview - Mainly that they handle botting and third party program issues that can interfere with the game. Based on what I read (reddit posts/articles that are 3-4 years old), they arent reviewing every bot case but are are probably operating off of server data, reports, and algorithms. Furthermore it doesnt say that they alone deal with all of this by themselves with absolutely no outside support from local GMs. If anything, I found posts and reports that suggest the opposite - GMs do handle some of the local issues, at least in so far as hacking and other low level issues that require more involvement. Maybe Im wrong, but I would like to see where this came from. Cause unless you got a recent interview or article that says specifically the STF handle every single issue of botting and hacking and does it all manually and is operated by only 4 people, I am more likely to chalk up this "4 people in japan handle a few million players" as nothing by misinformation or misinterpretation of old reports. That isnt that big a stretch considering how often this player base misconstrues half of what the devs say on a regular basis.

[InfiniDragon]

The point of this whole matter keeps flying over the heads of a lot of people.

This has less to do with why a streamer was banned and more to do with the fact that SE deciding to extend their enforcement outside of the game itself has raised a grey area on what is/isn't punsihable.

This, thank you for saying it. People are so eager to pop off because "the online bully got punished" that they're not even seeing the actual concern which is that SE arbitrarily determines when using outside sources is acceptable and it should be clear.

Being punished for griefing someone isn't a concern, how they came into that knowledge outside of the game is.

[Melichoir]

This, thank you for saying it. People are so eager to pop off because "the online bully got punished" that they're not even seeing the actual concern which is that SE arbitrarily determines when using outside sources is acceptable and it should be clear.

Being punished for griefing someone isn't a concern, how they came into that knowledge outside of the game is.

As plenty of people pointed out, this isnt them going to twitter and banning a player cause they used a racial slur or are an ass in an unrelated matter. This is them watching a player belittle and berate another player by name specifically with very likely intent to impact that player in game, while trying to avoid the consequences of their actions by doing it on twitch.

What is being ignored by people who are upset with SE is that it in all likelyhood wouldnt have amounted to anything if Arthars didnt make a point of pointing out the name of the player he had issues with. In this regard, I think SE worked within its purview simply because it was an action taken to impact another player directly in game.

[QT_Melon]

This, thank you for saying it. People are so eager to pop off because "the online bully got punished" that they're not even seeing the actual concern which is that SE arbitrarily determines when using outside sources is acceptable and it should be clear.

Being punished for griefing someone isn't a concern, how they came into that knowledge outside of the game is.

Welcome to missing the posts that state multiple times that this actually has always been the case where SE CAN actually do it long before they clarified parts of their TOS. If you went to report harassment they even allowed you to link to videos SUCH AS THOSE ON TWITCH AND YOUTUBE and explain that the video singled you out and they could pull muscle to have it taken down (but won't share the results of if punitive actions were also taken against the player).

Surprise surprise the guy getting Twitch sponsorships, has a rabid fan base, links his accounts streaming the game and points out the player in question by shaming him publicly got banned. (And I'm saying this as a person that actually found some of his streams entertaining). Worse off pretending "he only had a couple beers" kind of ignorant defense pleading to the GM that "he didn't know he was making a mistake"

[InfiniDragon]

Welcome to missing the posts that state multiple times that this actually has always been the case where SE CAN actually do it long before they clarified parts of their TOS. If you went to report harassment they even allowed you to link to videos SUCH AS THOSE ON TWITCH AND YOUTUBE and explain that the video singled you out and they could pull muscle to have it taken down (but won't share the results of if punitive actions were also taken against the player).

Surprise surprise the guy getting Twitch sponsorships, has a rabid fan base, links his accounts streaming the game and points out the player in question by shaming him publicly got banned. (And I'm saying this as a person that actually found some of his streams entertaining). Worse off pretending "he only had a couple beers" kind of ignorant defense pleading to the GM that "he didn't know he was making a mistake"

My point was that if that's to be the standard as the updated TOS has tried to make more clear (I still feel it shouldn't be admissible if not in game, but that's not the point here), it should be enforced across all things, like to punish RMT.

I have no issue with the actual reason for the ban, someone being temporary banned for griefing someone by name, as it is a clear violation of service.

[QT_Melon]

My point was that if that's to be the standard as the updated TOS has tried to make more clear (I still feel it shouldn't be admissible if not in game, but that's not the point here), it should be enforced across all things, like to punish RMT..

Seems people keep missing the point about RMT too. Or did you not visit the page and notice that it's actually a Special Task force?

But I'll explain again. RMT is like dealing with an insect infestation that takes different evidence than just a video recording.

Like unless you can point out a specific example where a Twitch user who has linked his account and is selling RMT to players, then I can't see why people are using this thread as the momentum thread for their cause, it actually makes it look stupid. (Which is why disorganization of said cause is why Occupy Wall Street failed so much to many people who didn't understand).

[ForteNightshade]

snip

Sigh...

Once again, you aren't reading. I'll try this again

You keep quoting me yet don't seem to read my actual posts. I didn't say video, I said Twitch. Likewise, I never said the platform is infallible. Just that you cannot doctor a live stream because the recording is housed through Twitch, thus it's impossible for someone to re-upload it. Furthermore, I outside said a GM could shadow an accused players to see for themselves if they're cheating. This isn't a difficult concept, and many other games do it. For all WoW's faults, they handle botting and cheating MUCH better than FFXIV despite at one point having ten times the playerbase. The issue is SE relies on the STF—a team of four people housed in Japan. Four people to police an active playerbase of at least half a million. It's hardly a wonder why nothing gets done.

Notice how this suggests not taking video evidence as irrefutable, but rather using it to prompt further investigation? This is now the third time I've mentioned this yet you continuously ignore it. At no point did I say Twitch was infallible hence why I said they should do their own follow up. Considering there remain several known botters and cheaters after months if not years indicates they don't. And for reference sake, I'm not talking about the gibberish named bots but players who run scripts that are very easy to spot if you simply watch them for a short while. As for cutting away early, mid action or what have you, it's also easily noticeable when someone has done that. Regardless, it's irrelevant since further investigation would allow them to see a consistency. I specify using Twitch though because it archives everything. I get not accepting Youtube but we aren't talking about that.

What it boils down to is they accepted Twitch for Arthars when they haven't in the past—even in instances where the ToS is blatantly broken on stream. It's that inconsistency people are angry about.

As for the STF. They list the team in the credits, so you're free to verify for yourself. I did manage to find an older screencap though.