Free trial accounts being used to obstruct zones by one guy (Weeaboo Police/CIA)

[Anonemoose]

I wouldn't waste your time talking to that Anone person anymore. I'm pretty sure they are also a botter type from things I saw in Diadem/Firmament.

I hope one day you realise, Garu, that this habit you have of calling anybody who disagrees with you a "troll", "cheater" or "botter" to try and delegitimise their perspective and sully their reputation is why nobody cares about all the good work you've done over the years helping generations of sprouts when they dogpile on you for your holier-than-thou attitude and expectation that everybody plays the game the way you personally think it should be played.

[Esja]

1) as stated before, multiple people each running around 15-20.

There is at least circumstantial evidence to the contrary here: I have witnessed this person logging on and positioning accounts at least half a dozen times in the last month and at no point has there been more than one character logging in and/or moving at once. In addition, even if it were a small collective doing this I do not see how it has any bearing on the ethics of what's happening here.

3) As defined by Square Enix "Harassment" is speech and/or behavior that inflicts deep emotional distress on another person. Being AFK with a lot of characters is not going to qualify as inflicting deep emotional distress.

There are several people I've chatted with who would disagree. One person I have chatted with last night mentioned that they felt like crying as the newest batch logged in since it finally exceeded their blacklist.

4) Circumventing the blacklist isn't against ToS. What you're looking for under Prohibited Behaviors is:
"Creating new characters to message someone who has blacklisted you, despite being asked to stop the behavior."

I'd argue that their behavior would quality under 3.2 - Disruption at the very least since people who don't want to see them are denied use of their blacklist, but as mentioned in the Prohibited activities FAQ directly linked in the ToS, the list of prohibited activities is a guideline, not an exhaustive list.

Because there's no contacting of someone who has blacklisted them, there is no violation.

I think what you're running into is called the Appeal to Law fallacy. We're arguing that something should be done, while you're arguing about how their behavior "technically doesn't fit into the traditional guidelines for actionable violations." Square Enix has clearly left themselves enough leeway to do something about this, and obviously this is a person with a clear malicious intent abusing the service to harass the playerbase.

[ObscuraFi]

I have witnessed this person
Response -> Like I said, I can guarantee you didn't see 70 characters at a time moving 1 by 1. You're going off of witnessing a few events in the last month, I'm going off years of experience with the group on a personal level during their prime years back when they used to go to NSFW Lalafell venues and were notorious in the scene. At their most "malicious" point, they never had those numbers individually. I had someone reach out on the 11th to ask why they were on Leviathan and noticed more than I remember and went back and confirmed who was there that night and for what reason because normally people were split up on various worlds. Nothing has changed over the years. Ethics wise, I don't care.

One person I have chatted with last night mentioned that they felt like crying as the newest batch logged in
Response -> Physically crying irl over AFK characters in a game => Repeating what I said previously, how would that line up if you had to tell that to a therapist or doctor with a straight face. What does that conversation look like.


I'd argue that their behavior would quality under 3.2 - Disruption at the very least since people who don't want to see them are denied use of their blacklist, but as mentioned in the Prohibited activities FAQ directly linked in the ToS, the list of prohibited activities is a guideline, not an exhaustive list.

"Use of their blacklist" => Correction, /their/ use of the blacklist. Square Enix defines the purpose of the blacklist here: https://support.na.square-enix.com/f...la=1&kid=56857 "The blacklist prevents messages from characters registered to the list from displaying in the chat log window." They mention nothing of using the blacklist just to not see characters as a general use. That was a community created functionality, not intended design. Not even a functionality consistent in other MMO's. Your personal created use of the blacklist is being disrupted, but not Square Enix's intended use.

We're arguing that something should be done
Response -> People have been saying this for over half a decade now and have gotten crickets, so, if you want to keep trying despite the idea that from every metric of what Square Enix cares about and has as a goal in general, it hurts them more than it helps, go ahead. I just don't realistically see a boss telling a GM to play whack a mole with an AFK character for hours every day, and they're being paid with our membership money during that time period. if you were to take a survey of the playerbase, vast majority aren't going to recommend their money being spent on whack a mole instead of significant problems in the community or game content.

[typing here cuz it makes me]

[Gunz_Zbestest]

They have an obsession with body dismorphia, which is why they have an army of muscle men and talk about lalafells. They also have a humiliation fetish and run to a new server to hide their shame when people get too close to the truth with them.

[Esja]

Honestly, I'm quite convinced at this point you're not even arguing in good faith.

Repeating what I said previously, how would that line up if you had to tell that to a therapist or doctor with a straight face. What does that conversation look like.

Do you think that Square Enix should set the bar of harassment to "bad enough to elicit a therapist?" Obviously we all react differently and have different frustrations in our lives, but it's clear that a great number of people are being harassed, and from their twitter replies it's equally obvious that the harassment is their intention. If that doesn't make it clear that it is indeed harassment, I am not sure what would.

That was a community created functionality, not intended design. Not even a functionality consistent in other MMO's. Your personal created use of the blacklist is being disrupted, but not Square Enix's intended use.

I doubt you're new to the game, but the language of that page was only minimally updated with the Dawntrail changes to the blacklist. If hiding other players wasn't an intended use, they wouldn't have revamped the entire blacklist system to add that functionality, advertised it as a major feature in their anniversary live letter, and create a separate "mute list" for the old functionality.

People have been saying this for over half a decade now[...]

In that same section of the live letter I linked, Yoshi-P alludes to this kind of harassment as something they were trying to address with the blacklist update, so clearly to some degree they are trying to address the issue. Ideally they eventually have more tools (or already have the tools) to address situations like this more effectively (such as hardware-level bans), but in the meantime yes, I do believe that taking action against these accounts is a good use of time. It takes significantly more time and effort for the person running these accounts to create and level them than it does to ban them. And almost as importantly, it signals to the griefer and countless players who have been complaining about this person's conduct both on and off of the game that harassment of this type won't be tolerated.

[ObscuraFi]

.

1) The only time your opinion/feelings matter, is when someone else says that they matter, someone has to GIVE you that power. In the space that we exist, Square Enix is the only entity that gets to decide that. So when Square Enix doesn't care, a health care professional would tell you in nicer terms, to suck it up and deal with it. Because you are not in a position to do anything, and going around day to day pissed off at your lack of power is only going to make your life even worse.

2) They mute list does not cover every functionality of the old blacklist. The old blacklist covered chat as well as inviting to party, showing in PF, opening trade, etc.

3) The exact wording is "in addition to", not instead of, not alternatively. That means an added benefit, not meant to become sole purpose of.

4) Square Enix already has hardware bans. You can literally find youtube videos and github explanations and step by step guides of how to get around hardware bans for ff14 specifically. There are even scripts that will change your hardware information for you and automate the process. If you're not a console player, and you have a decent bit of knowledge of computers and know how to use Google, a hardware ban is relatively nothing. The payment method/personal informations bans are normally the more devastating versions but we're talking about free trials that have fake info to begin with.

5) He doesn't even have to level them. You could be level 2 and be inside of limsa for everyone to see. If you can manually create a new account in 3-5minutes, one day of work of let's say 12 hours, is 144 accounts. 1 day of his time, and he has potentially 14 waves of 10 characters, and you're only wiping maybe 2-3 a day because a GM is not going to be on call. They have other obligations I'm not even at liberty to discuss publicly in terms of things they do every day in the office.

6) The group has already trolled GM's. I found this one in DM's, but if I had access to the group discord still, I'd be able to go back and find the screenshot where one time someone in the group had the following interaction:
GM: Give me one moment while I file the paperwork on your account.
Them: Give me one moment while I open another client.


Literally the person who ran the discord has been in shout chat in the past and called Yoshi P a "word associated with the nsfw lalafell activity" and got hardware banned for it, and still came back, and laughed about it. And still played the game for 2+ years afterward. Banned over 40 times, including hardware and personal information, and STILL had houses and a leveled account at Dawntrail launch.

The people you think will hear your emotions and ban them are the same people who send this to them in the past:


There is no win condition for you, but like I said, if you want to keep fighting, go ahead.

[0blivion]

Yo, I was down with the whole mediocre humor Roegadyn walling but racism and transphobia? Yikes.

[Rinoa_353]

hmmm im looking at that first pic and on my server it's way busier around the aetheryte, so I'm not seeing what the problem is.

I don't have your PC, they caused my PC to drop to 15 FPS and that's at 720p on my RoG Ally Z1E just to troll.

[Mawlzy]

Yo, I was down with the whole mediocre humor Roegadyn walling but racism and transphobia? Yikes.

Yeah not to mention encouraging self-harm.

[Eris249]

I know when I teleport to Limsa Lominsa with them and everyone else afk my fps goes down to the single digits. Most the time I see 30 or more of them afk in one spot. Saying rude comments about Lalas.