support More information after submitting a ticket

[Laucianna]

I am sure there are a few people who like me have been subject to harassment or griefing in game, we submit a ticket with plenty of proof, we get the corporate reply of "We are opening an investigation", the ticket gets moved to completed.

Then we still see the person in game harassing us and griefing our content, leaving us wondering if the GMs gave them a warning, didn't find any wrong doing, or if they even did anything at all. And without knowing anything about what was done leaves us wondering if it's even worth reporting it again or just having to deal with it, however if we get a brief update of "A warning was issued" or "Nothing we found was breaking ToS" then we can know if it's worth reporting again.

And before anyone says "Just ignore them" that only works to a small degree, it doesn't stop them griefing your events, making spoof characters with offensive bios, or even just making another free account to message you. Ignoring is a tool but not a fix all tool

[Rudra]

Unfortunately, I don't think you are going to see this be implemented. The GMs have stated they have a policy of not telling others of their actions in responses to such reports.

[Super Atom]

This shouldn't happen and I'll tell you why and i have a feeling it's why they don't do it now

 

It'll be no longer than a single month for someone to use the "We gave them a temporary ban" for it to end up in general chat as a way to mock someone and in a circle the GM's will go dealing with the fallout.

[Laucianna]

11 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

This shouldn't happen and I'll tell you why and i have a feeling it's why they don't do it now

 

It'll be no longer than a single month for someone to use the "We gave them a temporary ban" for it to end up in general chat as a way to mock someone and in a circle the GM's will go dealing with the fallout.

I understand that statement, and if it gets leaked then the person who submitted the initial report should also get a warning or temp ban imo. Just at the moment it gives the impression of nothing is being done and the GM team don't care when it's a repeat offender openly bragging about it, which I am sure is not the case but it is how it feels, which is disheartening as both a player and a leader of events

[Super Atom]

6 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

I understand that statement, and if it gets leaked then the person who submitted the initial report should also get a warning or temp ban imo. Just at the moment it gives the impression of nothing is being done and the GM team don't care when it's a repeat offender openly bragging about it, which I am sure is not the case but it is how it feels, which is disheartening as both a player and a leader of events

 

I'm sure it can be frustrating, but its just better if they don't say.  I've gotten in trouble for small things, bigger things and everything in the middle over the years. They most certainly care and take action, you just have to believe them when they say they will handle it.

[kelika2]

on one hand it would give abusive people who report stuff at the drop of a hat get a little extra reason to report more

on the other hand i cant see an upside to it, i only get like 0-2 death threats a year

[Laucianna]

1 minute ago, Super Atom said:

you just have to believe them when they say they will handle it.

It is hard to do that when the people who do harass me and others are still playing daily, even after multiple reports, screenshots, and everything else we provide. I've been having faith for a while that something is going to be done, but eventually that faith starts to fade

[Troo]

23 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

It is hard to do that when the people who do harass me and others are still playing daily, even after multiple reports, screenshots, and everything else we provide. I've been having faith for a while that something is going to be done, but eventually that faith starts to fade

 

It's unfortunate when faith in a system is undermined.

There's likely just a few bad actors out there and it's a pain-in-the-butt to show what they are doing. One isolated incident might not even look so bad. As frustrating as it is the only tool we have is report them and move on.

Do some folks weaponize complaining and reporting, yes. That is up to others to recognize and deal with. This is the system we have. 

 

I support you expressing your feelings on your experience.

 

[GM Solace]

I'm going to reply to this. We DO investigate, we DO take action. We DO want to see tickets, ideally with screenshots or chat logs, as the incidents occur. Getting a ticket that says something's been happening 'for months' with no details to go on is difficult to impossible to investigate. Getting a ticket saying "This keeps happening to my friend" when the friend has never reported it is less useful. DO tell the harassing player clearly and out of character to stop, go away and leave you alone. Screenshot that. Send it to us. Give us the data we need to help you. Character names, global handles, whatever details you have will help us.

 

It may not look like we're doing anything, but we are. The ticket system closes the tickets automatically after a certain amount of time. That doesn't mean we haven't taken action. Offending players get warned, accounts get suspended, usually for a short period at first. We have perma-banned players. Some come back with new accounts, and we play whack-a-mole.  

 

Note: We also gotten tickets showing harassment taking place on private Discords or via email. Those events are out of our scope of support and should be reported to the moderators/admins of those platforms.

 

I don't want anyone to feel that reporting a problem isn't worth the effort. 

[Forager]

On 7/20/2025 at 10:36 PM, Super Atom said:

This shouldn't happen and I'll tell you why and i have a feeling it's why they don't do it now

 

It'll be no longer than a single month for someone to use the "We gave them a temporary ban" for it to end up in general chat as a way to mock someone and in a circle the GM's will go dealing with the fallout.

 

What would the fallout of that be?

[Super Atom]

2 hours ago, Forager said:

 

What would the fallout of that be?

 

If i report you, you catch a 3 day and then i spend those 3 days mocking you in public, either you or the GM's aren't gonna like me doing that. or if you managed to make any friends, they probably won't like it either.

 

Speaking of, they don't even tell you when someone gets banned and it still happens. I saw someone get banned and be mocked for it repeatedly in game by others who knew about the ban. So this isn't even a hypothetical, it's already happens. No need to encourage it more.

 

Recently someone on EL got banned and they threw a fucking party.

[Forager]

45 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

If i report you, you catch a 3 day and then i spend those 3 days mocking you in public, either you or the GM's aren't gonna like me doing that. or if you managed to make any friends, they probably won't like it either.

 

I think it's the type of thing that sorts itself out. Some people would be mortified if their mugshot was on the news, some people don't care. Some people hang out with convicts and some don't.

 

If the original victim violates a rule, ban them too, but the victim's right to know what's going on trumps an offender's right to privacy.

[Super Atom]

20 minutes ago, Forager said:

 

 but the victim's right to know what's going on trumps an offender's right to privacy.

 

is this what we're going with

[Forager]

50 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

is this what we're going with

 

It certainly should be. It's the only ethical way to enforce rules on people. If someone is harassed, victimized or hurt by someone violating the rules, then they should know what the consequences are. They shouldn't accept on blind faith that the rules are properly enforced.

 

How else would you keep the enforcers accountable? What if they're being lazy, incompetent, biaseed or are afraid of conflict? How would you know? And any person who can be trusted to enforce rules fairly should want accountability.

 

Hiding disciplinary actions from victims is unethical.

[Forager]

5 hours ago, GM Solace said:

 

I don't want anyone to feel that reporting a problem isn't worth the effort. 

 

Then you should tell them what happens.

[Bionic_Flea]

26 minutes ago, Forager said:

Then you should tell them what happens.

Can I see your Idea Police badge number, sir, please?

[golstat2003]

On 7/23/2025 at 4:36 PM, Forager said:

 

Then you should tell them what happens.

 

I don't think the GMs are ever going to agree to that. But good luck though.

[mechahamham]

On 7/23/2025 at 6:52 PM, Forager said:

but the victim's right to know what's going on trumps an offender's right to privacy.

 

Say you get sexually harassed and then report that person for sexually harassing you, including chat logs, screenshots, and whatnot.

 

You get exactly the same response as you would if you reported someone for spamming /gen chat with political rants.

 

The latter is annoying, and perhaps stressing. The former can be terrifying and can and does induce anxiety and panic attacks, especially for people who've been victimized in the past. "Is this going to blow up into another cyberstalking thing? Am I going to start getting disturbing phonecalls again? Have I accidentally said anything that would let this person find me in RL?"

 

And, yeah, it *does* happen on Homecoming. I've experienced it first-hand. And submitted the screenshots and chat logs. And got the 'For reasons of player privacy' email in response.

 

The 'For reasons of player privacy' thing goes back to the NCSoft era. In cases of harassment, it wasn't sufficient then, and it's not sufficient now.

 

The victim's right to understand what's being done to protect them ABSOLUTELY comes before the offender's right to privacy. In the worst cases, players need clear contact phone numbers and email addresses for law enforcement reasons. Victims of harassment need very clear information about what's been done on tickets like these. They need to be told things like:

 

"This account and the email address associated with it have been permanently banned from Homecoming Servers. Unfortunately, we cannot stop individuals from signing up new accounts with new email addresses. If you believe this individual is targeting you in the future, please screenshot any actions or relevant chat  and respond to this email, referencing ticket number %%%%%%."

Homecoming very desperately needs to revise their policies in this regard. Secrecy doesn't help stop harassment. Clear information helps stop harassment.

[Bionic_Flea]

Just playing devil's advocate here, so don't kill me.

 

Let's assume HC did tell you the result.  Published the result on a log even.  How would that go?

 

1.  They investigated your complaint and disagreed for whatever reason.  It didn't look enough like Superman to generic, they looked at chat logs and found that the complainer was the aggressor, or they looked at chat logs and felt that the incident could have been role play as no clear out-of-character statement to leave the complainer alone was made.   The complainer will not be satisfied and perhaps start a series of appeals.  The accused now knows the complainer (or someone) made a complaint against him.

2.  They agree with the complaint but only issue a warning or a 24 hour ban, not the permanent ban complainer was hoping for.  The complainer will not be satisfied and perhaps start a series of appeals.  The accused now knows the complainer (or someone) made a complaint against him.  The accused is also not satisfied and appeals.

3.  They agree with the complaint and issue a permanent ban.  Complainer is satisfied but accused is not.  Accused starts a series of appeals and tells his friends that complainer got him booted . . . and then creates a new account.

 

I don't see any of those outcomes as helpful or beneficial.  It creates the potential for a new series of appeals that have to be addressed on top of addressing current problems.  It creates additional animosity between players and between players and HC.  Everyone knows the outcome but what benefit is gained?  

[Seed22]

7 hours ago, mechahamham said:

"This account and the email address associated with it have been permanently banned from Homecoming Servers. Unfortunately, we cannot stop individuals from signing up new accounts with new email addresses. If you believe this individual is targeting you in the future, please screenshot any actions or relevant chat  and respond to this email, referencing ticket number %%%%%%."

This is the best way to do it if it were to be a thing I think. 

[Greycat]

On 7/20/2025 at 9:08 PM, Laucianna said:

I am sure there are a few people who like me have been subject to harassment or griefing in game, we submit a ticket with plenty of proof, we get the corporate reply of "We are opening an investigation", the ticket gets moved to completed.

 

Yeah, they're not going to do that. They're going to - I'm going to say "err" on the side of, just for lack of a better way of putting it - privacy and not potentially giving more fuel to a fire. 

 

The best I can say is to help them - yes, they can (I'm sure) pull up some server side chat log (it's been ages since I've run my copy of the COH server stuff, so I don't even recall if that's easily done.) But the more you can give showing "yes, this happened," the more they can rely on it versus going by "Mooooom billy called me a stinky doodyhead!" "No I didn't!" 

 

If you have to deal with it a lot? You can put the /screenshotui 1 into a macro button - it'll turn on the ability to capture the HUD (including chat) to capture something being said. (/screenshotui 0 to turn it off.)  Or turn on chat logging in the options - I tend to have that on anyway because I used to use it to write up missions as actual stories after the fact, and it was also helpful to capture ideas (or base codes or whatnot) ... which includes harrassing chat/tells/etc. Yes, they're messy, especially if you have something like Panacea's proc handy (where you'll have pages of "You have granted yourself X endurance!" and whatnot,) but it will get everything - local, tells, broadcast, any channel you're subscribed to, with a time/date stamp. 

 

(And if it's a regular thing, like - say - you run an RP club every Wed. night and they keep showing up? Yes, do the logging. And yes, tell a GM, give the dates it'll show up, there's a good chance they'll be there monitoring it.) 

[Forager]

5 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

1.  They investigated your complaint and disagreed for whatever reason... The complainer will not be satisfied

 

That's fine.

 

5 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

It creates the potential for a new series of appeals that have to be addressed on top of addressing current problems.

 

If the rules are enforced consistently and the decisions are made based on evidence, this is a non-problem. Anyone who is unhappy with the rules being enforced fairly is unhappy with the rules, so it's ok for them to be unhappy.

 

5 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Everyone knows the outcome but what benefit is gained?  

 

Peace of mind for the victims of harassment. Faith in the system. Transparency and accountability for the people enforcing the rules. A safe and fair environment.

[Forager]

Businesses hide the results of their internal investigations because investigating their employees is essentially investigating themselves. It's inherently unethical. If you made a complaint about Homecoming staff, it would make sense for them to do this to protect themselves.

 

But we are not employees of Homecoming. We are users, so this should be more akin to a justice system than HR policy. When you report a crime, the authorities are legally required to notify you whether the offender is charged or not, when their court date is and when they are released.

 

This is fairly basic ethics. "Offender privacy" is a laughable concept in real life, and even funnier in an anonymous online game. The only reason to avoid accountability is so that you don't have to enforce the rules consistently and fairly.

[Bionic_Flea]

30 minutes ago, Forager said:

If the rules are enforced consistently and the decisions are made based on evidence, this is a non-problem. Anyone who is unhappy with the rules being enforced fairly is unhappy with the rules, so it's ok for them to be unhappy.

 

The rule is: They don't discuss moderation actions.  If you are unhappy with that, it's OK for you to be unhappy.

 

Whether HC reveals their moderation actions or not has nothing to do with ethics.  It is neither malum in sa (inherently evil) or malum prohibitum (evil only because it is prohibited).  It is merely a preference.

 

It seems to me that some may just want ammunition to criticize HC.  Except you don't need ammunition.  People criticize HC here all the time.

[Forager]

44 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Whether HC reveals their moderation actions or not has nothing to do with ethics.

 

Yikes.

 

We are talking about fairness, accountability and a host of other ethical considerations.

 

Maybe you personally think it's ok to keep people in the dark for their own good, or your own good or a greater good... or any reason at all, but that is an ethical choice. Maybe you don't personally think it's unethical.

 

We are talking about an authority with an interest in people's safety and trust. That's... lol... sorry there's no gentle way: that just is an ethical issue. To suggest that it has "nothing to do with ethics" is objectively false.

 

Ethics is a broad and complicated subject and at a certain point it becomes open to interpretation, but like I said... this is pretty basic stuff. Good luck, buddy.

Edited 15 hours ago by Forager