Players Purposefully Despawning Forgiven Gossips Are Not Being Punished

[My_Wet_Rooster]

As of the last 24 hours of this post, there has been a total of two botched attempts to spawn Forgiven Rebellion on the Aether datacenter. All of them were purposefully done - by the same player - with the sole intent of preventing players from spawning the SS rank. The first one happened yesterday on the Cactuar server after defeating Tarchia in Ahm Araeng; the second and most recent one happened on the Faerie server with the defeat of Tyger in Lakeland. I can't stress this enough again, but all of this was done by a single player on multiple occasions. To make matters worse, this has been going on for months, yet nothing has been done to punish those who are ruining the playing experience for players who want to participate.

Currently, the only method of preventing these despawnings has been to have 4 tanks hit the S rank (so that they get credit for the kill), leave the S rank while others whittle it down, and have each of the 4 tanks plant themselves on the spots where the minions spawn from. This is what must be done in order for players to participate in and enjoy this content.

It is very clear that the current way of handling a "failed" spawn attempt of Forgiven Rebellion is not working. I propose an alternate way that the game should handle a "failed" spawn attempt of Forgiven Rebellion: Instead of how it works now where if a Forgiven Gossip "resets" after all players in the mob's vicinity die, it instead is treated as a "failed" spawn if the Gossips are not killed after a given length of time. This way, it prevents players from intentionally ruining the spawn attempt while giving those who are making an effort to spawn Forgiven Rebellion a chance to achieve it.

[KoishiKomeiji]

IIRC, people have also contacted the GMs about this individual and nothing has been done, even though they are clearly griefing the whole DC.

[frostmagemari]

IIRC, people have also contacted the GMs about this individual and nothing has been done, even though they are clearly griefing the whole DC.

Issue with doing something about the individual is, without something to corroborate him doing this thing to intentionally grief people, there's nothing to be done. Is it reasonable that he's griefing? Sure.. but it's bad CR to just start punishing players for what could be them just playing the game.

[KageTokage]

Issue with doing something about the individual is, without something to corroborate him doing this thing to intentionally grief people, there's nothing to be done. Is it reasonable that he's griefing? Sure.. but it's bad CR to just start punishing players for what could be them just playing the game.

I don't think people who are just "playing the game" would be killing themselves on a mob repeatedly for weeks/months on end when it serves no purpose other then to deprive people of rewards and if they were simply unaware of the harm they were causing they should've caught on after having people call them out for it after the first few instances.

There's a point it becomes unreasonable to continue giving someone benefit of the doubt and these guys have gone way past that.

It's just a pity they don't take Discord as evidence as they actually left a threat to one of the Aether DC hunt discords saying they'd continue doing this if we don't let them have their way with the ARR S ranks.

[frostmagemari]

I don't think people who are just "playing the game" would be killing themselves on a mob repeatedly for weeks/months on end when it serves no purpose other then to deprive people of rewards.

That's why i said that it's reasonable to assume he's griefing, but it's also bad customer relations if they just start handing out punishments because of the way he's playing unless there is some provable malicious intent. So yeah, it should be investigated by a GM, but just handing out punishments isn't the answer.
And, while i don't want to say you're exaggerating, i find it hard to believe that he's been at this for weeks, let alone months.

[KageTokage]

That's why i said that it's reasonable to assume he's griefing, but it's also bad customer relations if they just start handing out punishments because of the way he's playing unless there is some provable malicious intent. So yeah, it should be investigated by a GM, but just handing out punishments isn't the answer.
And, while i don't want to say you're exaggerating, i find it hard to believe that he's been at this for weeks, let alone months.

You'd be amazed at how spiteful/petty some of the people in the hunt community can be.

These guys regularly spent 18+ hours a day just hitting spawn triggers across the DC in a near-constant effort to kill off the S ranks before they can be relayed or just to sow chaos by having multiple hunts spawned at the same time. It's basically a spit of defiance towards the organized hunting the majority of the populace tries to follow and the minion trolling is just the tip of the iceberg. They also know the names of all the people who regularly spawn hunts on each server and are not above stalking me and others if they think we're trying to spawn something.

The two I'm talking about first showed up back before Shadowbringers released and shortly after cross-world was introduced so they clearly just want to cause trouble.

[NaiaLalita]

I was present for the post-Tarchia sabotage, and I was en-route to the Tyger today when I was informed a Gossip had already been deliberately reset.
The devs really do just need to remove the "reset = de-spawn" element to these enemies. It is not functioning as intended - it is not establishing player failure to kill the enemy in time, but is instead providing an exploit by which malicious player(s) can grief and harass everyone present by knowingly preventing them from experiencing this content. Which includes players from the entire data center, as OP and Koishi both have stated.
One player should not be able to negatively impact so many others in this way. Meting out fitting consequence aside, future-proofing this exploit is the better action to pursue.

Although it would also be nice to see someone face consequences for these months of repeat ToS-breaking offenses.

[Vahlnir]

This sounds like a really big oversight on SE's part. Why they would design them this way intentionally is beyond me.

[Alucard135]

This sounds like a really big oversight on SE's part. Why they would design them this way intentionally is beyond me.

They should just give them the Ovni portal treatment and let them spawn after 3-4min of the S rank dying. That way players would already be at the minions' spawn locations.

[Vain_X]

A lot of players have yet to fight Forgiven Rebellion due to this player de-spawning the Gossips, and are missing out on game content, affecting their overall gaming experience, this is an issue that needs to be adresssed asap, and as it stands, we've been dealing with this for months, with something so exploitable there needs to be a change, don't let the adds despawn after someone pulls and purposely dies, let the 5 minute timer it already has run its time,please. Square has changed many things in the past to adjust it for the players, hopefully this is something that they can see,adress and fix! Thank you.