[PiNG]

Here's a quote from Sage Sundi, the Global Online Producer:

Originally Posted by Sage Sundi

New Policies

We are proud to announce that we are making our GM policies public and accessible to everyone. This decision was arrived at after much deliberation between our development team, global branches and other departments using input we received from players through Premier Sites and numerous GM calls. As a result, we decided to make the GM policies public, and in order to provide an even higher standard of GM service, to reassess what it is that GMs do.

Now that the GM Policies and Online Conduct are public, we’d like to point out major changes and clarify parts that may have caused confusion in the past.

What are Game Masters (GMs) for?

GMs are customer service professionals in FINAL FANTASY XI that possess a rich knowledge of our games. Their goal is to directly connect players within the game to our services, acting as the first line in our service front. They aim to help you achieve the best gaming environment possible and to help solve any problems that you may have. Only people with passion and an understanding of these goals can become GMs.

Lofty it may sound, but every GM in FINAL FANTASY XI shares these goals. And to foster better understanding, we have decided to release our Online Conduct and GM Policies to the public.

Restoring Items

We often receive calls about lost items. After investigating, sometimes we find user error was the cause of the loss. Regrettably, we could not return lost items to their owners.

While some lost items are of extremely high value, we realized that many players had a great sentimental attachment to items of relatively low worth. The value of those memories is unique to each player, and we cannot attach a price tag to make up for such a loss. Taking this into account, we sat down and thought about what our GMs could do to help in this situation.

We are happy to announce that we have decided to empower our GMs with the ability to restore items, regardless of reason, so long as we are able to confirm that they were indeed lost.

However, as written in our GM policies, players can only take advantage of this feature a limited number of times. This is necessary to prevent abuse of the system and to maintain fair game play. Currently there is a limit of one reimbursement ticket per account.

As outlined above, if you lose something important to you, you have the option of using this ticket to get your item back. However, we ask that you act immediately. If you delay for more than a week, we will become unable to confirm the item loss and restore your item.

Also, we intentionally left the number of tickets ambiguous (“limited number”), since we feel that in the months and years to follow, there may be a need to increase this number at some point in time. This decision was made to allow changes as needed in the future without having to announce them. If you ever lose an item that is important to you, please report the issue to a GM immediately.

Restoring Lost Experience Points Due to Technical Difficulties

Since we provide service throughout the year (24/7, 365 days a year), sometimes the servers for FINAL FANTASY XI encounter technical difficulties. This is our responsibility, and our number one concern has always been restoring service, as soon as possible. In addition, we have decided to start reimbursing players who have lost experience once an area is up and running again.

We’re sure that some of you have come back to the game after a server problem, and after logging in, find yourself in front of an “Incredibly Tough” enemy and then KO’d. A GM will broadcast an area-wide message asking for players who need their assistance. If you are one of these players, send the GM a tell and wait in your KO’d state. A GM should arrive shortly to move you to a safe place and revive your character. We will then restore your lost experience points.

Of course, you can always choose to forgo this option if you would rather quickly return to your home point, or have another player raise you instead. However, please be aware that we will be unable to compensate any lost experience once the above happens.

We plan to implement this policy in the next update because the GM functions have to be upgraded to accommodate this feature.

Will This Really Improve the GMs’ Standing?

“GMs don’t listen to what we have to say,” “All they’re good for is getting us out of a stuck situation,” and “It’s not worth it to call it in, you’ll just get punished instead” are just several examples of opinions we’ve heard voiced on the forums.

Our team’s primary goal is to change the perception of our GMs by helping our players understand what our GMs do. Some have said that making our policy public would cause great harm to our support staff. Even within our team, there was much opposition to allowing GMs to make themselves visible. However, we believe that unless this and other policy changes happen, we would be unable to demonstrate that we are here to support you, our players. Without these changes. our GMs’ reputation would remain poor, and we could no longer take pride in our service.

We are aware that GMs are held in low regard because, their role in handing out punishment clashes with the image they project in other support tasks. Punishment is unfortunately necessary to protect our players in Vana‘diel. Indeed, the image of meting out punishment for harassment and improper behavior contrasts sharply with the friendly, accessible GM that you normally encounter. Furthermore, GMs must keep confidential the results of our investigations in order to maintain the privacy of both parties involved. This adds to mistrust in GMs.

Since this is the perfect time for us to discuss this, I’d like to make the following clear. The support staff are here to support you in the role-playing game that you, the players, enjoy. They (the GM staff) will never mix support and role-playing. Part of the reason we decided that our GM staff should make themselves visible was to make this distinction clear.

Though it may seem to some of you that there is a misunderstanding within the Japanese MMO market as to what MMOs are about, special cases aside, GMs are never in a position to role-play. GMs who role-play during weddings only do so as a specific task. After their task at the event is complete, they still have other responsibilities which can include punishing players. Oftentimes this may come immediately after the event in which they were previously role-playing. One thing we would like to make clear is that we feel any role-playing that coincides with normal support tasks is inappropriate. Unfortunately, not everyone who provides service in this industry shares this view, and some services choose a different standard. These services unfortunately tarnish the professional image that GMs deserve.

In order to ensure a positive image within FINAL FANTASY XI,our valued players will always receive the following service from our GMs.

・Our GMs will make themselves visible as much as possible
・While we will not role-play, we will be as friendly as possible and never be rude
・We will ALWAYS give you an answer in some form to your questions
・We place the satisfaction of you, our players above everything else
・We will take a much harsher stance against disruptive game play

In other words, you will never be punished when making a call, no matter how trivial it may be. But if a call is intended to obstruct our service, then our GMs will have no choice but to take action against the caller, because it prevents us from giving other players the support they need. As long as nothing inappropriate is done, our GMs will always be friendly and forthcoming when communicating with you.


Global Online Producer
Sage Sundi

[Kirsteena]

Does this mean they will actually learn something about the game, or am I hoping for too much?

[Likibiki]

Interesting.

I've never had a bad experience with them myself, but then again I don't shout abuse at them either.

Quite surprised they didn't mention the handling of RMT though as that's what a lot of people would be looking for in a statement like this.

[Jei]

holy hell.

When reading about lost item restoration I'm really curious about their stance for stolen accounts which lost all items and not just 1.

[Nazo]

If they're going to have a public code of conduct then there needs to be a formalised method for us to report instances where this code is not being met. At the moment this statement seems more like one of denial of any kind of problem rather than a move towards addressing concerns players do have.
Personally I've never had the need to have any kind of interaction with the GMs but what I've read doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, and a statement from SE basically saying 'all our GMs are caring, wonderful individuals committed to serving you' doesn't really increase it any.

[seq]

In other words, you will never be punished when making a call

glad they said this, got jailed for calling on a claim bot --;

they need to detect super computer players that claim mobs as soon as they are up even if they are miles away from it.

[Jei]

Originally Posted by seq

glad they said this, got jailed for calling on a claim bot --;

How did that happen? What was their reason?

[Jarre]

Looks like they are trying to get rid of their Tarnished reputation and be more uder friendly and not like GM Dave.

[Mhurron]

Originally Posted by Nazo

what I've read doesn't exactly fill me with confidence

Don't believe everything you read.

[Wise Donkey]

I hope they are ready for a flood of useless GM calls. You can bet the farm that a good portion of players will stop reading after:

We are happy to announce that we have decided to empower our GMs with the ability to restore items, regardless of reason, so long as we are able to confirm that they were indeed lost.

Also, they better brace for a flood of players asking for free XP after maintenance because it was during their regular XP time.







I'm such a pessimist...

[Kurb]

glad they said this, got jailed for calling on a claim bot --;

I never uses GM option because of this insane fear of unjust retribution...
but can FF11 players become GM's and still play or is the mentor system the closest thing to that.

[bikkebakke]

I think S-E just unleashed a world of hurt on themselves. The GM's are going to be receiving so many bogus calls that they are going to be stretched very thin. However it is nice to finally get to see what they are supposed to be following.

[Kurb]

Bahh there all a bunch of layabouts I say

[John Doe III]

Originally Posted by bikkebakke

I think S-E just unleashed a world of hurt on themselves. The GM's are going to be receiving so many bogus calls that they are going to be stretched very thin. However it is nice to finally get to see what they are supposed to be following.

Doubtful, if they are going to be "hanging around" more often then more than likely there may be less. People will be doing less calling because they know GM's stand around more often now (hopefully). I hope that if that is true they will reconize the bots/gil sellers standing in some locations (ex: whatever/whatever) and hopefully do something about it.

[Kurb]

yea right they will do sweet nothing....about RMT's instead they'll pick on things like windower users.
RMT:Hi I'm an RMT ruining the game for all on this server by jacking up prices & stealing items.
Windower guy:Hi I use windower I log on and keep my mule selling all that I painstakingly farm while I type up some lab reports..

GM: Windower guy your off to jail. /GM ignores the RMT