Insufficient game moderation and competitive PvP in The Feast

[Post]

Hello. I'm a long-time player, but scarcely use the forums here. I'm hoping to make a post to shine some light on what I see as unacceptable behavior in the game and ineffectual actions by the moderation team, and hopefully many of you will agree.

I speak of what appears to be, especially in the past week, blatant disruption of other player's experience in an unavoidable way, which is directly against the current Prohibited actions list, 3. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES, 3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of Square-Enix's computers and servers.

This is under the EULA we all agree to to play the game. (https://support.na.square-enix.com/r...2&tag=users_en)

Here's a few screenshots and videos of players intentionally doing nothing so that either their opponents can win and earn rating, or so that their teammates can lose and drop rating, or to just disrupt experience alone:





The following are recorded matches. There's a lot of not very subtle details to pick apart at, and many more if you're familiar with the Feast at all.

https://youtu.be/5nX0BPaWrN4

https://youtu.be/wnr5Tu-UkrI

The second one is particularly egregious.

There can be little doubt in anyone's mind as to what is going on here. So why are the accounts associated with these players not banned for their clear violation of EULA 3.2?

It's hard to say. Does the moderation community lack the tools to check things beyond verbal harassment in chat?

Are the actions taken by them not prohibitive enough to curtail the behavior?
One of the players benefiting here just rose to rank 4 on Primal datacenter, and probably will not stop until they reach rank 1, getting the exclusive, time limited reward:



We have little transparency and it makes recommending the competitive pvp difficult to do to newer players, and frustrating for those that have to deal with this with little support from the community or staff.

I recommend allowing players to submit recordings or screenshots as evidence to enhance the moderation team, and empowering them to see more metrics such as queue times, account IDs that might enable them to more effectively investigate players abusing the duty finder system, and to take more decisive action against accounts with multiple infractions.

As it stands this competitive mode lacks both the administrative support that it needs and the communicative transparency with its community that so many other places of the game have already.

In order for The Feast to be fun, or deserving of any attention from players, this cannot continue.

[_Koneko_]

did you actually report them though? because the gm's are not all knowing also pvp has not really been a thing since like forever it will maybe change in endwalker but i doubt it most people who do pvp now just do it for the roulette

[Post]

Yes, I actually reported them, and spoke with a GM on one of the occasions after requesting to when they sent a normal 'investigation will commence, can't disclose results' reply.

In addition, this pvp mode, "The Feast", is the competitive one, it's separate from general daily roulette and is meant to be something that you have to prepare in advance to succeed, and it heavily relies on both your teammates to succeed, and on your enemy players for it to be a challenge to overcome. By its very nature, it warrants more attention to protect it from abuse, especially as rewards from doing so are at times exclusive.

It was from this discussion and my feeling of a lack of understanding on how this behavior is both addressed and what tools the moderation team is even able to employ to investigate it that I wanted to try and draw attention to it.

There are a few communities for The Feast beyond the official forums here, and many of the players there have also suffered at the hands of disruptive actors, also often feeling as though their efforts are not adequately addressed.

I've also been a huge proponent the whole time for getting any teammates (and opponents) in the matches where this happens to report those players too, stopping queuing to seek them out and let them know I intended to report the behavior.

This has had mixed results, but there have been a few occasions where other players said they would also report as they didn't consider it as an option, having before merely been just shrugging and putting up with it.

This thread is my next logical step. I need everyone's help here.

[SlamDunkelritter]

The discrepancy between communication from the development team, community staff, etc. regarding PvP and nearly any other piece of content available in-game is perplexing.

[Rae88]

This thread is my next logical step. I need everyone's help here.

The Feast is likely going away in EW anyway replaced by something else. Hopefully the mode it's replaced by doesn't evolve into "Wintrading 2021 - the video game"

[_Koneko_]

The Feast is likely going away in EW anyway replaced by something else. Hopefully the mode it's replaced by doesn't evolve into "Wintrading 2021 - the video game"

to be fair windtrading will always be a problem as long as those who are doing it don't get punished for it it will evolve into a meta that its ok as long as no one talks about it like Act if anything SE needs far stronger ToS Enforcement

[Post]

I think you make a good point regarding resources, and this is why I believe an adjustment in their strategy here may be necessary.

I recommend they allow players to submit screenshots and recordings and other such evidence to help highlight this behavior more effectively, reducing the time it would take to investigate this abuse and quickly punish those responsible.

It's not every player that's cheating or harassing every other player. I suspect it's only a portion of the community. But, when the community is already small, that number of disruptive players can have a bigger impact.

And this problem is compounds; newer players will run into this and get frustrated and want to give up, like I did. This only keeps the community small. As I see it, it is currently and unacceptable problem directly against the FFXIV EULA, and untenable, especially for a competitive mode.

My understanding is that on Japan servers, this is very uncommon due to the greater size of the playerbase.

[_Koneko_]

a lot of people have said they want gms to monitor pvp but you have to consider how many feasts are running and how many gms you'd need to do that 24/7 ff 14's budget is not amazing a lot of their income go to fund other games like FF 16

[Post]

I remember hearing in a live letter directly that they were adding a new mode, but I don't remember hearing that The Feast was utterly disappearing. It would be a shame if it did, as it has a lot of strong moments. I certainly much prefer it to WoW's deathmatch-and-only-a-few-viable-comp arenas.

Either way, supposing we move forward into the expansion and it doesn't stay, wouldn't the only way that these sort of disruptive players would be dealt with is if us players and the moderation team are more empowered to submit and use evidence?

I remember there was a twitter post showing the fly-hacking Oppressors in the 24v24 mode Rival Wings that convinced them to disallow free trial accounts from pvping whatsoever. I see that as evidence that this sort of evidence can be compelling and effective for allowing the developers and moderation teams to make changes, at least.

[Kyrj]

a lot of people have said they want gms to monitor pvp but you have to consider how many feasts are running and how many gms you'd need

\
So like 5?