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.

[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.

[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.

[MeowTo]

As one of the players who usually signs up to watch the minion spots it is a chore sadly. I already have my mount so I don't mind missing the S rank (even if its my own spawn) to help the others around me but at the same time myself and the other players undertaking this shouldn't have to go to this level of extreme. Banning the offending player(s) is a temporary solution that is fixed with less than 100 USD as they can just boost a new character on a new service account. The best solution is an overhaul of this mechanic to mitigate their malicious intent.

[KageTokage]

I'm really not sure what kind of stupid excuse the GMs are making to allow these players to get away with this behavior because even though they never vocally make their malicious intent clear, the fact that they generally do this by switching to BLU, camping out at a spawn point then using Self-Destruct (The move has a massive 20 yard radius which removes the need to actually target) to instantly aggro/reset the minions if they aren't immediately tapped by another player makes it extremely obvious regardless. Even if we have people waiting at a spawn point they still manage to succeed regardless sometimes.

There is literally no logical reason for them to be doing this other then to troll people.

And as Meowto mentioned, these players specifically level-skipped alt accounts just to engage in this behavior without any risk to their main accounts, so banning them is unlikely to actually get them to stop.

I feel like both the Forbidden Rebellion minions and the ARR S ranks could use some adjustments because these players live to make hunting in general suck for the entire data center by trying to pick off as many of weaker hunts as possible and being obnoxious at the ShB hunts both by "accidentally" directing the hunt's mechanics towards other players if they manage to keep enmity on them (They've taken to doing this, then abandoning the S rank midway to troll the minions).

[MeowTo]

Unfortunately it feels as though unless they specifically say they are doing it to grief nothing will be done according to the several GMs I have talked to regarding this group the past few months. As soon as I fail to provide chat log evidence of malicious intent it feels like they can't hang up on me fast enough most of the time.

[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.

[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.