Square Enix does not care for the US players. Got perma banned for reporting bots [Feedback]

[Maris]

Before I begin this post, I wish to specify as a disclaimer. This is not a troll or a joke to me. I was legitimately permanently banned after not breaking any rules for years for simply reporting bots and trying to assist the GM team as I would see the same set of names for months botting and not being removed from the game. I am a Global Mentor on 2 different accounts and I am also a player moderator on Runescape. I am very compassionate about FF14 and other Square Enix games and as a player of seven years I wanted to discuss what I have learned and hopefully this reaches Naoki Yoshida himself. I ask that you keep all negative comments to yourself and only listen as what I learned greatly shows the neglect to US Western players of Final Fantasy 14. I can assure you, I was on recording and broke no such rules. They refused to look at a YouTube video as evidence. Let that be a consideration of how serious of a matter I took this as both personal and professional as a content creator and streamer. I might not be a big name, but that shouldn't matter.


I have played Square and Square Enix games for years. I have enjoyed the original Final Fantasy first several games, Kingdom Hearts, and even Deus Ex to name a few. Streamed them off and on for years. Square Enix makes great single player story based games where I been supporting the company my whole life of almost 30 years old.


For the first time in 30 years, I will finally stop supporting Square Enix, I will not stream any of their games, purchase them, play them, or pay for any services that would fund Square Enix after playing Final Fantasy 14 for 7 years. I learned about how it's online gaming experience is handled behind the scenes of which many North American players do not know. It's an awful and backward system to the Western US playerbase and I will explain it here and why I have decided to do so.

The reason I write this article is to help Naoki Yoshida, the director of Final Fantasy 14 understand a huge error in their system; a cultural international error. I'm an American player who was permanently banned from Final Fantasy 14 for reporting bot farms. You read that correct. Banned for trying to report bots. Appeal rejected. Wrongfully banned and I have it all on film. Even the bots in question, but for name shaming I will not state of course. but that isn't just what I wanted to discuss. It was my findings afterward while I was appealing.

Their reporting system is a nightmare even to their own North America Square Enix Supervisor of Customer Support, as they expressed to me for hours how tied their hands are and absolutely zero communication or information from gamemasters besides a Yes or No and in addition they need permission to speak on recording. It's a recorded line and I find it very strange that there isn't any transparency and even the supervisors must feel their job security at risk, but I say this. Why should it be at risk? He's just answering customer questions and concerns. I was put on hold 5 times for the supervisor just to get permission to speak to me. Very odd, but I am getting ahead of my self and completely skipped my introduction. My apologies for this. Allow me to give you insight on my experience aswell.

My name is Maris. I created with my friends a +300 member Free Company and we're one of the top Free Companies in Cactuar called "Dreams of Light" and I've also been a Global Mentor for quite awhile across 2 accounts. My other account is not suspended, but I will be halting that subscription after I post this as that character has many ultimate clears. As a player, I usually don't have much to do in the game as I have done everything across many characters. Instead, I help teach others in my FC to grow the confidence to not be daunted by harder content like Extremes and Savage and teach said fights till they become confident in joining farms alone even. In my free time I'll farm random things like fates, happy bunnys, or maps.

During that time, 99% of the time I run into bots in current content Endwalker zones, In Eureka, and even Full Party Bots that do full party maps. I figured this expansion would have been different and moderated better however since Asmongolds arrival to Cactuar the server I play on in 2021 of May last year, I have never been able to contact a GM with as many tickets as I have sent regarding many different issues. Even asking to speak to a GM in a support desk ticket, My tickets are closed without a response. This has been going on for over a year before Endwalker. I now learned why that is. Allow me to explain the cultural error and huge mistake that I firmly believe Square Enix, Naokida Yoshida, and the Japanese team made.

When a player outside Japan makes a report to the support desk for possibly someone swearing or griefing in a duty. You would think that ticket is handled on the spot by a GM in your region. Believe it or not, That isn't the case. Your report filed in game aswell as issues sent to any Square Enix support gets sent to the Japanese GM team. They and they alone make the decisions and unlike a court, You have yourself and the individual reported obtaining no information and it's completely unknown to you what you did wrong or how their punishment system even works. Meaning. If your an American player and you typed the ticket in English. A Japanese GM MUST TRANSLATE YOUR TICKET and send that information back to the American GM team who just follow their orders. The American GMs have no decisional authority of account actions and neither does any Square Enix employee for that matter.

This is a huge cultural international issue for account security and general customer protection. A simple example of culture difference is for people in Japan, It's kosher to pick your nose in public, but sneezing is offensive as it means someone is gossiping. In America, It's considered disgusting to pick your nose in public and ok to sneeze with a tissue. Culture differences are as simple as everyday actions. A Japanese GM of Square Enix. A person with a different culture that could possibly mistranslate or misunderstand the western difference could take things much differently as a result. Even the long periods of time it takes to respond to tickets now shows and gives you an understanding as to why getting a response takes too long.

■Months even and you have no idea if they even understood you correctly.■

I was surprised to learn all this. Even more surprised that a North American Square Enix Customer Support Supervisor needed permission to simply speak on a recorded line and tell me these things. A system never listed or mentioned to the western community. Square Enix and Naoki Yoshida's main issue is they never adjusted to the community Asmongold and other MMO streamers brought to the game from other MMO's like WoW. WoW is generally a game with open swearing and parsing. That is typical behavior of a WoW player. When that influx of people signed up to Final Fantasy 14 in 2021 of May to follow their favorite streamers, The GM team was quite non-existent as their was no adjustments made to policies that would have protected the new influx of customers. The policies I will talk about after, but the Aether datacenter which is the most common US played server is typically neglected in full with bots running rampant at off hours between 2am to 7am Eastern GMT-4 in many areas including current content. So much so that the marketboard prices are affected on Aether.

Lets take a look together at how unsecure a customer must feel playing the game as I certainly did and many others that did aswell. The linked article below takes us to a list of prohibited activities with many drop down examples from the official site.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216
Some of these are quite ridiculous. Here is an example of one:
・Expressions that attempt to unilaterally exclude someone from the game or content/community, etc.
(Except when in accordance with rules set by an administrator such as a Free Company Master)
"Let's ignore them."
"Let’s leave [person] out."
"Don't join if your equipment is that bad/such a low item level."

So having a guy in a PF join, Grief the party or throw essentially. Kicking them and telling the rest of the party to ignore them if they bother the other party members from outside the PF. That is against the rules and can result in having action taken against you. Even I wasn't aware of this ruling. So Free Company Masters can "break" rules others cannot? It's absurd and preposterous to think anyone in the western community could walk on egg-shells like these risking their whole account that they pour hundreds of hours into like any other MMO.

Lets now take a look at how punishments are handled and removed via their punish point system which is not describe to the playerbase. The link down below goes to that page.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?kid=68098&id=5382&la=1&ret=rule
Reduction of Penalty Points

"If the previously issued penalty was either a Caution or Warning, accrued Penalty Points will continue to decay until it reaches 0 points in a one-to-two-year period. However, if the previously issued penalty was a Temporary Service Account Suspension, then the accrued points will not start decaying until a minimum of a three to six-year period has passed and will not reach 0 points for a minimum of seven to ten years."

I am also a player moderator for Runescape. Which is why I typically report bots in the first place since Runescape is known for MMO botting. Jagex, The creators of Runescape use a blackmark system. They show the player how long till such things "decay" and even show the evidence with the individual who reported you. The entire chatlog with one exception. Their name is censored and yours isn't. Keeping to the same No Name Shaming policy Square Enix uses. Furthermore, Jagex typically takes harsher steps toward people continued harassing if they noticed the person from the censored text and can remember their name. A much better system than this "x to x years" system that isn't specified.

Typically Square Enix will call this "Feedback". Allow me to stop you right there.


The lack of Transparency to the Customers and even Square Enix' own Support team hurts because the needed tools aren't present. Square Enix' GM Team made changes to reward players, but still choose to not reveal any information to either its players or support team to properly assist players. It's very odd and makes absolutely no sense to do so. With a system like this, You could be banned for one thing and the reason was a totally different situation and any apology for human error. They don't care for that.

What happens when your account is suspended or terminated? Well. Last time I was suspended was 2 years ago for saying "♥♥♥♥ Ya!" in Prae. The game has a profanity filter that even if your words are censored can result in a ban and I was unaware that already censored words can result in a ban. News to me as my friend did the same thing in the same place and also got suspended. His words? "So what? I guess it's just better to not talk to protect my account then huh?" Even the customers/players of FF14 are afraid to speak. Such a draconian system is an insult to the Western world that plays FF14. The Japanese GMs should have no right to judge US players. The American GM Team should have a say, but they do not.

I was told by the Customer Support Supervisor that I could appeal older account actions with a chance to be unbanned, but the new question is how? I know I can check back in emails, but if the customer support team doesn't know why or what specific instance I was punished for previously and if its been years and I can't remember. How can I possibly appeal it with no information to go on? Keep in mind the GMs will punish you for stuff you did months ago and you won't know which thing you did. You can only guess.

As a customer of seven years breaking MMO addiction is extremely hard. Getting wrongfully banned by their Japanese GM team that neglected my video appeal, refused to view it, or translate it(Which they shouldn't have to, It's more obvious to let the US team handle it as the response is faster and more accurate to native language.) was probably the best thing that happened to me. Games that I previously called lame or boring as I didn't want to buy or try them. I can now play freely with no MMO addiction. Games like Elden Ring, I tried for the first time yesterday and REALLY enjoyed the online with my FC mates.

That being said, I hope what I had to say may influence Naoki Yoshida, The director of FF14 to make major changes needed to appeal to the western playerbase as we are neglected, but not just by rules and ingame help. A few months ago they did a EU Community Stream of which the US was again neglected and yet to taunt the players. All of Aether, The main US played datacenter all got the ingame message announcing the EU stream and that message was cross datacenter. We have never gotten a US Community Stream. Further showing neglect to the US players.

My ban for reporting bots... To make sure the information I send in is valid. How exactly is a player to define and identify bot activity? The most common way its done in any game is to try and contact that player. A private message or some kind of interaction. If no response and their character is doing things in some kind of automated fashion this is the usual way to catch and report bots. Is it not? /tell, sending a party invite, trade request, triple triad request. Anything that contacts the player regardless how the command acts. Any more than 1 attempt to contact even with apology results in punishment to the reporter. In this case me.

I am ashamed that Square Enix neglected the care of its online and banned me for simply trying to help. To punish customers trying to report cheating with valid evidence is both an atrocious and disrespectful act. Customer Support can see support desk tickets made ingame as I was told on the phone, if that information is wrong. I suppose another team can look at the neglect. I reported more than just bots. Harassers, foul mouths, rescue abuse into death, and hacking. I even had people threaten me outside and inside the game and SE did not take action as those individuals harassed my entire FC for months with everyone in my FC reporting them for bothering them and not leaving them alone. That said I had great personal joy even during the pandemic playing Final Fantasy 14. My support will now end unless huge changes happen otherwise. I have proof I am in the clear and the JP GMs refuse to see it because of Square Enix' neglect on both their policies, transparency, and lack of respect to the Aether.

[Igni]

TL;DR this, we want the cliffnotes version not a novel.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

and hopefully this reaches Naoki Yoshida himself.

It won't.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

They refused to look at a YouTube video as evidence. Let that be a consideration of how serious of a matter I took this as both personal and professional as a content creator and streamer. I might not be a big name, but that shouldn't matter.

It doesn't matter, no. They don't take evidence like that because of how it can be edited.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Square Enix makes great single player story based games where I been supporting the company my whole life of almost 30 years old.


For the first time in 30 years, I will finally stop supporting Square Enix,

Were...were you supported SE since before you were born?

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

During that time, 99% of the time I run into bots in current content Endwalker zones, In Eureka, and even Full Party Bots that do full party maps.

Bots don't survive that long. Most likely you were spam reporting actual human players.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por DantesLight:

TL;DR this, we want the cliffnotes version not a novel.

He got banned for spam-reporting and harassing people he thought might be bots, tried to submit a Youtube video as evidence even though they don't accept outside evidence like that (Barring, say, a live stream, and accepting that as evidence raised a lot of eyebrows) because of how it can be manipulated. They can review chat logs, they don't need your video.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

My ban for reporting bots... To make sure the information I send in is valid. How exactly is a player to define and identify bot activity? The most common way its done in any game is to try and contact that player. A private message or some kind of interaction. If no response and their character is doing things in some kind of automated fashion this is the usual way to catch and report bots. Is it not? /tell, sending a party invite, trade request, triple triad request. Anything that contacts the player regardless how the command acts. Any more than 1 attempt to contact even with apology results in punishment to the reporter. In this case me.

This...this is exactly why you got banned though. If you think they might be bots, report them, then leave it alone. If you're sending them tells, trade requests, and TT challenges, then you're griefing them. Just because they don't respond doesn't mean they're bots. It means they don't want to interact with some rando who keeps trying to bug them.

You took the law in to your own hands and resorted to harassment to "make sure".

[GeminiEclipse]

Congrats on harassing players I guess?

[Maris]

Publicado originalmente por The Mayor of Murder Town:

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

and hopefully this reaches Naoki Yoshida himself.

It won't.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

They refused to look at a YouTube video as evidence. Let that be a consideration of how serious of a matter I took this as both personal and professional as a content creator and streamer. I might not be a big name, but that shouldn't matter.

It doesn't matter, no. They don't take evidence like that because of how it can be edited.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Square Enix makes great single player story based games where I been supporting the company my whole life of almost 30 years old.


For the first time in 30 years, I will finally stop supporting Square Enix,

Were...were you supported SE since before you were born?

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

During that time, 99% of the time I run into bots in current content Endwalker zones, In Eureka, and even Full Party Bots that do full party maps.

Bots don't survive that long. Most likely you were spam reporting actual human players.

While it might be true that Naoki won't, I'm still going to try.
The evidence was a live recording. Even if it was edited; They have logs to show. Evidence is still evidence no matter how small or possibly fake.

As for my support of 30 years. I have played Final Fantasy 1 when I was a baby, don't have the exact age, but I know its been a very long time.

As for bots that don't survive that long you say? I saw a bot farm running for 5 months in eureka with the same names in Aether. Group of 5 lalafell bots farming happy bunny eureka pyros for gil. I'd report em every few days and nothing. They use a program like miqobot which is claimed to be undetectable, but it might not even be miqobot.

[Maris]

Publicado originalmente por GeminiEclipse:

Congrats on harassing players I guess?

"Hello, Can you reply?" Even though if the player is there they can simply ignore, but if not how else does 1 100% identify a bot to assist the GMs with removing them?

Before you say ignore the bots. Stop and think about the economy of what your farming while those bots are active. They will devalue anything your farming defeating the point of even playing in the first place.

[Kiana]

It's a rare day when I say this, but... Mayor is 100% correct. You got banned for because you kept harassing people. You have no right to complain about being banned when you are harassing people. Even if directed at someone breaking the TOS, you breaking the TOS is not allowed.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

While it might be true that Naoki won't, I'm still going to try.

It won't. The devs don't read these forums. You're screaming in to the void.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

The evidence was a live recording.

Redundant statement.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Even if it was edited; They have logs to show.

Exactly. They have the logs. They don't need your video.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Evidence is still evidence no matter how small or possibly fake.

If evidence is possibly fake, then it's useless as evidence...

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

As for my support of 30 years. I have played Final Fantasy 1 when I was a baby, don't have the exact age, but I know its been a very long time.

Well it's pointless anyway, how long you've been playing SE games is completely immaterial to what's going on. Just an attempt to ramp up sympathy.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

As for bots that don't survive that long you say? I saw a bot farm running for 5 months in eureka with the same names in Aether. Group of 5 lalafell bots farming happy bunny eureka pyros for gil. I'd report em every few days and nothing. They use a program like miqobot which is claimed to be undetectable, but it might not even be miqobot.

How do you know?

[Maris]

Alot of you failed to read what this is supposed to be however. Feedback. SE doesn't explain anything.

tl'dr version for those not wanting a full detail

All North American tickets sent ingame aren't handled by customer support or the GM team. Their handled privately with no transparency to both entities by the Japanese GM team and they have to translate all of your tickets. Meaning to get a faster response to tickets, post in translated japanese. Even then they can mis-translate. Also their punishment system lack any transparency.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Publicado originalmente por GeminiEclipse:

Congrats on harassing players I guess?

"Hello, Can you reply?" Even though if the player is there they can simply ignore, but if not how else does 1 100% identify a bot to assist the GMs with removing them?

Well you sure as hell don't harass people in an attempt to play Blade Runner. If you suspect they're a bot, you report and move on.

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Before you say ignore the bots. Stop and think about the economy of what your farming while those bots are active. They will devalue anything your farming defeating the point of even playing in the first place.

That's not how it works.

[Oberon]

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Alot of you failed to read what this is supposed to be however. Feedback. SE doesn't explain anything.

tl'dr version for those not wanting a full detail

All North American tickets sent ingame aren't handled by customer support or the GM team. Their handled privately with no transparency to both entities by the Japanese GM team and they have to translate all of your tickets. Meaning to get a faster response to tickets, post in translated japanese. Even then they can mis-translate. Also their punishment system lack any transparency.

Uh...I've spoken to GMs before, they speak English just fine.

[Seera1024]

As a real person, I ignore random tells from people unless they appear to be from moderation.

Just because someone doesn't respond to a tell, doesn't make them a bot if that was the only thing you were doing to see if someone was a bot or not.

If someone sent me a tell and then sent me a random party invite or triple triad invite, yea, I can see how someone would report you back for harassment. The lack of response to a tell should tell you that they don't want to socialize with you. So maybe it wasn't your reporting that got you banned but your behavior in your attempts to figure out if someone was botting or not.

The only time purposely ignoring the fact that someone is ignoring you is valid is if there is an emergency going on such a fire, a potential emergency such as someone's shoe being untied, or the person has neglected to notice something like a cup on top of a car that's about to drive off. As none of those situations are likely the case, what you, the OP, did is clearly harassment.

If you think someone is botting, you report and move on. Let the GM's decide if they are or are not botting. They have the tools to look at what actually was happening in game. They don't necessarily need to resort to things that could have a non-botting reason for why they would fail your botting test.

[Maris]

Publicado originalmente por Kiana:

It's a rare day when I say this, but... Mayor is 100% correct. You got banned for because you kept harassing people. You have no right to complain about being banned when you are harassing people. Even if directed at someone breaking the TOS, you breaking the TOS is not allowed.

So using communication features in the game should be punished with a permanent ban? The next time you send a /tell, by your logic your breaking the TOS aswell.

As for Mayor, You're simply trying to debate with me on semantics.
You and I don't know what the devs read, how can you say they won't read this?
To requote you, Redundant statement. I'm not trying to get sympathy with this post. I'm pointing out how flawed the system they use and how customer support can't do much either as a result.

Unless either of you have an issue with me personally for posting what I heard from talking to the north american customer support supervisor, I see no benefit in reading or replying as you share hostile petty concerns for some level of self-gratification. I'm not interested in this, but that still don't turn me away from posting about what I learned.

I learned that SE refuses to adjust the online international world.

[Maris]

Publicado originalmente por The Mayor of Murder Town:

Publicado originalmente por Spamton G Backroom Salesmen:

Alot of you failed to read what this is supposed to be however. Feedback. SE doesn't explain anything.

tl'dr version for those not wanting a full detail

All North American tickets sent ingame aren't handled by customer support or the GM team. Their handled privately with no transparency to both entities by the Japanese GM team and they have to translate all of your tickets. Meaning to get a faster response to tickets, post in translated japanese. Even then they can mis-translate. Also their punishment system lack any transparency.

Uh...I've spoken to GMs before, they speak English just fine.

There is an American GM team, but they do not handle the decisions on tickets and they don't translate them either for the JP team and even if they do they may even mistranslate.

The last time I spoke to a GM in /tell was almost over a year ago. All other tickets I sent in for various reasons were closed without response. A GM of the american team probably /tell'd you for more information to provide like time and date where where issues took place, but its not for anything but that to send over. They don't make the decisions and this is why it takes forever to get a response.