I just got an account warning for "grief tactics" and I literally have no idea why

[BayanKha]

This is the big one; despite your intentions, someone can very easily read this as wanting to grief if they're not in any kind of jovial mood and just want to play a match.

Can't really say I condone or condemn here, just that it's probably wiser in a more competitive environment to not joke about deciding to lose. Text can't exactly convey the light-hearted tone you were going for and it's easy for it to be misread.

Okay, you have a point about tone. Yeah, I should probably remove that one.

But here's the thing: the email I got said the violation occurred today. I didn't say that today. Whatever it was, it wasn't that.

[TheDustyOne]

It can also be compounding evidence. When they check reports, I believe they also go through chat history to confirm if the reports are true. If that comment is recent enough (like say just over a week ago), it can still be the reason for why the report is considered valid.

[BayanKha]

It can also be compounding evidence. When they check reports, I believe they also go through chat history to confirm if the reports are true. If that comment is recent enough, it can still be the reason for why the report is considered valid.

Thank you. That might be it. If they decided to dig and found that, it might have been what got me nailed.

But again, how do I know this? How do I know that the offense wasn't something I perceive as completely innocent? How do I know that there even was an offense in the first place and the GM wasn't just lazy? This is looking more and more like a bad emotional investment on my part.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Unfortunately, the GMs in this game would rarely tell you what was the thing that gets you the warning/ban/suspension from first place.

[CidHeiral]

Of course, you might have a point. Maybe I did something worse. If only they'd actually tell me so I can avoid doing it again.

Given your tone in this thread thus far you probably said one or more abrasive things that were ToS violations and got reported. I'm sure you're well aware of what you said and did that day. Again, just act like a civil adult and you'll have nothing to worry about.

[TheDustyOne]

Unfortunately, the GMs in this game would rarely tell you what was the thing that gets you the warning/ban/suspension from first place.

This, they'll tell you what rule you broke, but not when or how.

[Jeeqbit]

19 months...

They do eventually remove strikes from your account, but it's a long-term process that was added so that people who got warned 10 years ago and have changed don't get banned for what is effectively the first offense in over 10 years. It doesn't remove serious strikes though, I believe, such as bans.

I don't even see an appeals process for this

There is an appeal form. However, it is more that they have a more senior GM review the actions of the GM to make sure they did their job correctly and went over the evidence as they were supposed to, and if they did it wrong it gets reversed.

I'm perfectly willing to correct my behavior if you'll just tell me what it is, but you can't even do that?

Common complaint, but it's also common that companies can't give details due to their Privacy Policy.

Even so much as telling you what it was or when it was could give you a clue as to who may have reported you and that could lead to them being harassed for it, and that could cause them to fear the consequences of reporting problematic behaviour. This is why they advise the reporter to blacklist, to further help prevent this subsequent harassment from happening. It might all work better if the GMs forcefully blacklist them for a temporary period so they can be more specific. The main issue is that sometimes it can extend to other platforms like Discord; as rare as that is, it does happen.

So instead they just link the rules. To me the rules are very clear because they are all just saying be polite (respectful and considerate), but to a lot of people that wasn't clear, so they eventually added blunt examples of what they meant to "spell it out" to people, which might give more of a clue as to what it could have been.

It can also be compounding evidence. When they check reports, I believe they also go through chat history to confirm if the reports are true. If that comment is recent enough (like say just over a week ago), it can still be the reason for why the report is considered valid.

I think it's only likely to be compounding evidence if the other times were reported as well or an overall log of events was documented by the reporter, since they specifically ask for time, date, world, duty, chatmode and specific chatlog line in their forms. Generally the report is likely gonna be something that happened the same day or previous day, obviously, unless they're really overwhelmed with reports or not working due to holiday.

[Ajisaii]

The GMs in this game are terrible and will give you warnings/bans for whatever they feel like even if what you did was so insignificant no normal person would report you over. If you never want to see it again I suggest never talking in any public or party chat again unless it's o/ or gg, there's a reason why everyone's nice in game but outside of it it's way different.

As you can see from the miserable losers in this thread no one will believe you if you say you were warned/banned for nothing because they haven't had it happen to them yet so don't bother trying to justify it to randoms.

[BayanKha]

The GMs in this game are terrible and will give you warnings/bans for whatever they feel like even if what you did was so insignificant no normal person would report you over. If you never want to see it again I suggest never talking in any public or party chat again unless it's o/ or gg.

Game is already uninstalled. I'm logging out of the forums after this.

[Rithy255]

The GMs in this game are terrible and will give you warnings/bans for whatever they feel like even if what you did was so insignificant no normal person would report you over. If you never want to see it again I suggest never talking in any public or party chat again unless it's o/ or gg, there's a reason why everyone's nice in game but outside of it it's way different.

As you can see from the miserable losers in this thread no one will believe you if you say you were warned/banned for nothing because they haven't had it happen to them yet so don't bother trying to justify it to randoms.

Yeah you kind of just have to just never talk or be always super nice and triple think anything you say because of how strict the rules are behind communication, even obvious jokes will be took as serious, I've seen a friend get reported for calling someone a "nasty person" and warned because some dude was crashing out in a dungeon because they weren't playing their job correctly and was being horrible to the healer when it was their fault.

FF14 isn't a "nice community" a lot of it is people just pretending to be nice. ff14 has a tendency to be very fake kind, once you join a big community or you'll see that people are just as toxic as other games, likely even more prone to lie and cause big drama's over nothing.