Forum posting restrictions

Those restrictions are horrible.

Honestly, I thought the restrictions were in place for the sake of the servers and website not getting too congested. I could be wrong.

Hopefully they upgrade their stuff so there is no limitations. I really dislike 3 post a day. Communism..

I have to agree with the restrictions, at least for now. These forums aren't just paying customers yet. SE can't start that restriction until we enter our FFXIV registration numbers, around launch day at the earliest. Until then, or whenever, these forums could be very much like the beta forums.

Also, too many posts is part of the problem. Making posting a limited privilege is helpful to the readers (and moderators), too. A lot of people skip over long topics and post the same opinions/questions posted previously, compounding the problem. For people who like to help others, it gets very tiresome answering the same question that was already answered on the first pages of a topic, and especially when already answered on the current page. (<750char :))

Hopefully these restrictions are just a temporary measure to contain the release/pre-release hype because in the long-term they're just going to drive people to external sites for community interaction.

Not sure why I can't start a thread....I'm not high enough level maybe? At the max level I could get in the beta? What level do you need to be to start a thread?

Anyway, I wanted to create a thread to perhaps suggest a link in the header that leads back to the actual game site. The only links I'm seeing are for the forums themselves and back to SE main site. It's not a huge issue, but seems like something that may have been overlooked?

Wasting 1 of my 3 posts just to say how horrible these restrictions are. I very much hope they are only temporary so that we don't crash the site into oblivion, otherwise in a couple weeks these forums will be a ghost town as people go to fan sites.

There is nothing worse then writing a detailed post, and to be denied right after clicking the Submit Reply button with a character limit notice. That is the only restriction I have a problem with.

Not sure why you couldn't just make a thread asking for lighter forum restrictions, without making it divisive and elitist. Many newcomers are eager to participate constructively, whereas a number of legacy/1.0 members have already proven they have nothing to contribute. In-game progress should have nothing to do with your real-life forum privileges. We all paid for the game, and are paying a monthly sub -- that should be enough of a qualification for being allowed to speak your mind. No reason to "prove" anything beyond that.

I'm 100% for increasing the per-post character limit, if not eliminating it entirely. It's an absolute joke, considering you can just edit a post to go above the limit. All it does is make the forum experience a painful chore for anyone who needs to flesh out their points a bit more.

I agree that there needs to be some restrictions, but these are just absurd! And this is coming from somebody who will probably never hit the limit.

I see them slowly easing up on the restrictions as the game goes past launch. For now though it will have to do.

The 1000 character limit and 10/15 minute cooldown between posts is completely unacceptable. Once a monthly subscription is required to post, I can't see any valid reason to retain these limitations.

I think something they may have to reconsider is the 1000 character limit for non-Japanese forums. 1000 characters in Japanese with kanji allows you to say alot more than in 1000 letters in English, French or German.

In terms of the posting and thread creation I'm conflicted, it may be necessary to prevent rampant posting with out thinking or searching but it limiting productive conversations and prevents the ability to follow up effectively.

*sigh*
I have two issues with the restrictions. 1) they are really, really harsh. 2) they are disproportionately harsh on new players(customers), basically Legacy players are the only ones that will be able to use the forum fully for the short/mid-term future because of the main character level restrictions. I understand that the beta forums were horrible, but paying customers are paying customers, treating one group differently doesn't seem quite right. Looser restrictions on new players would help, but still...

I personally never heard of something like this in any game community based forum. I think it's rather ridiculous, especially coming from a respectable corporation like Square-Enix. Please remove any limitations to have the community prosper, it's just silly.

Count my vote for removing the 1,000 character limit per post and 15 minute increments between posts restrictions.

I would say, though, that I can see where SE is coming from: They (and we) are all optimistic that Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 will be a huge success (as in Hundreds of Percent Increases in the number of 1.0 regular players we had). During the launch period, I can see the possibility of:

* Countless Threads on the Same Topic by Newbies. For example, "Stuck on Level 15 Quest - Help!" "L15 Quest - Where to go???" etc. etc. Seeing 100 Threads on the same topic could be overwhelming to everyone.
* Haters / Spammers: Perhaps we'll get inundated with Griefers from WOW or Guild Wars 2, who come in here to hate on Final Fantasy XIV for the first few weeks (spreading negativity in countless threads to try and make newbies think the game sucks, etc.).
* And it forces newbies to get into the habit of "Searching" for a Thread (or looking at the first few pages at least, and replying to a pre-existing thread instead of starting a new one).

BUT, in general (and I hope after the launch period), I sincerely hope Square relaxes these restrictions for all the loyal customers who stick around. If they lift the restrictions earlier and can manage the above issues with more aggressive Community Rep Moderation (closing / locking threads faster, merging threads), then even better. :)

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New thread cannot be created due to either you have reached to your daily limit or your main character's level is not high enough.

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The trouble is many of us will be in this situation, and that's particulary shame when you have an important thread to open, a thread relaying an important decision for a community took in commun in an other forum: http://ffxivrealm.com/threads/eu-rol...er.2267/page-3.

So we're stuck I guess.

This is the only company i have even heard of who creates community forums that deliberately inhibit forming a community within them. It's the kind of move i might expect from total rookies, with this is friggin Square-Enix for crying out loud!

I mean cripes, Square-Enix is openly stating that people who have low level characters are worth less to them! How did these restrictions get past a single management meeting? Is this kind of disrespect standard procedure on Japanese forums?

Do they want us to use a third party forum to build the game's community?

I am a Legacy character and I have multiple 50s, been around since first beta and blah blah you get the idea. Due to their system it doesnt show my level 50 and prevents me from posting in the forums of a game I have supported for 3 years and supported when the majority of its players/fans left it. I want to make an FC recruitment post, which I am really working hard to get off the ground etc and even though other people are able to do this I am left frustrated at just how powerless I am.

I am absolutely disgusted by the way I am being treated, Square have basically said that my posts are not worth their time, but my money is!

(side not if anyone wants to make me post for me I would be ever so grateful)

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Originally Posted by Kaichiro

I can do that for you, Edit your post with a title for the tread and your FC name or w/e

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Thanks man you're a legend. Ill check my legacy guys server come launch and see if i can repay your kindness.
Post is

"Chocobo Knights Free Company ODIN SERVER inviting all adventurers"
Here at Chocobo Knights we are dedicated to enjoying the game with the people who choose to play with and that is why any and all play styles are accepted.

As the game progresses we will evolve with it. As more content comes out in the forms of FATES, dungeons and raids, we will conquer it. We will be giving all our members the opportunity to take place in everything we do.

Setting up times and dates to do this is acceptable but not necessary as I am hoping to be in a position where we can go any time we the players decide.

Only want to gather/craft? That's great, here at Chocobo Knights no doubt we will have plenty of gatherers and crafters, maybe you can arrange some form of trade/deal with them to benefit you both.

The first mile stone as a Free Company is to acquire our Guild Home. In order to do this, when the game is out and we are able to see how much they are and how to get them we can devise a plan with the end result being us obtaining one.

As we march on so will are goals, ride safe Choco Knights!

http://chocoknights.enjin.com/home"

again thanks a million

I agree that the restrictions are far too, well, restricting. Putting limits on very low level people is fine, there are plenty of forums out there where you have to get your first 5 posts approved by a moderator before you can actually post freely, so having to be slightly restricted until you have proven yourself to not just be here to spam and bitch about silly things.

However, once you have shown to be a dedicated player, who is here to contribute to the community, then you should have no restrictions at all. The only thing restrictions this harsh will do, is force people to other forums where they can debate, discuss, share stories etc. Forums are known as "discussion boards" because that's what they are. As soon as you try and limit people's right to discussion, then these forums have no purpose.

In honesty whats preventing people from making all these new post they want in the feedback and help forums and wasting the forum admin time as they delete lock or move all the threads?

(Shortened because of character cap..) This is about the cap for posts by character level.

I understand that this system is to "protect" the users and forums from trolls and dumb threads, but that comes with every game, that is why you HAVE a staff of forum moderators and can pool good members of the community to monitor and control these sort of things, instead of just creating a system that limits EVERYONE. With this system you're letting the bad apples of the MMO community effect players who are respectful and just want to be active in the forums and with their fellow players. I come from a background where if I can't play the game currently due to maintenance or whatever I want to be active in the forums having productive conversations with other players and generally conversing within the community, and limiting 20 posts per day to me is nothing considering I used to make well over 50-100 posts a day in other forum based sites.

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Originally Posted by Abrasumente

The restrictions in place do not allow you to actually fully articulate on things.

Example: I'm posting about a dps rotation thread and ideal statistics etc for said class. You want me to limit that to 1000 characters? Best of luck.

You wouldn't get anything useful out of it. You'd only get maybe half or a quarter, or even an 8th of the information I could be trying to give to help others out.

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Indeed. These restrictions make it nigh on impossible to nurture any meaningful discussion on game mechanics, let alone just a simple forum chat. These are not the beta forums; they are supposed to be a community hub.

If Squeenix wants to crack down on spam posts, then that's exactly what they should do. Punish the offenders; don't punish your paying customers who haven't done anything wrong.

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Originally Posted by ArcAurora

You have made suggestions about posting and character limits, primarily. You haven't followed the forum guidelines which ask for topics to each have their own thread. We would have much more concise feedback if this thread was dedicated to one or the other, not both, and definitely not the broad spectrum of "Forum posting restrictions".

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Really. >_> Forum posting restrictions is specific enough. All of the restrictions are overblown.

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Originally Posted by Terofyin

I come from a background where if I can't play the game currently due to maintenance or whatever I want to be active in the forums having productive conversations with other players and generally conversing within the community, and limiting 20 posts per day to me is nothing considering I used to make well over 50-100 posts a day in other forum based sites.

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I did that in a previous MMO. I couldn't play the game for a little while, so I became more involved in the forums. When I got back in the game, I felt like I enjoyed it more because I was part of the community. I was not level-capped at that time, either.

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Originally Posted by Duuude007

Some people still don't seem to get why beta forums restricted forum post size.

If you cannot say it within 1000 characters, it is very often either:

• Not worth saying.
• Too verbose and full of fluff to be worth reading.

This made it important for people to get to the point, else rethink the need of said post. (re:duplicate topics)

^the above post used 355 characters.

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Yes, god forbid anyone tries discuss lore and game mechanic or for that matter any topic that would most likely require more than 1000 characters to have a meaningful discussion, and who in their right mind would ever attempt to do any sort of creative writing on these forums. Seriously, just because you don't need more than 1000 characters to "get the point across" doesn't mean others would feel the same way especially when there's such a diversity of sub-forum here. While the restriction makes sense on the beta forum I find it absolutely ridiculous to use the same restriction here.

I honestly feel these restrictions will kill the community here before it even gets a chance to thrive. Please reconsider them entirely or at least loosen them a bit.

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Originally Posted by Siricosirus

I am a Legacy character and I have multiple 50s, been around since first beta and blah blah you get the idea. Due to their system it doesnt show my level 50 and prevents me from posting in the forums of a game I have supported for 3 years and supported when the majority of its players/fans left it. I want to make an FC recruitment post, which I am really working hard to get off the ground etc and even though other people are able to do this I am left frustrated at just how powerless I am.

I am absolutely disgusted by the way I am being treated, Square have basically said that my posts are not worth their time, but my money is!

(side not if anyone wants to make me post for me I would be ever so grateful)

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I can do that for you, Edit your post with a title for the thread and your FC name or w/e

So after trying to quote you i ran into the 1000 char limit lol, i removed one of the lines hopefully thats alright
Also I was thinking my quote of you would change and it didnt so sorry it took me so long to notice your edit

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Originally Posted by Valnen

I honestly feel these restrictions will kill the community here before it even gets a chance to thrive. Please reconsider them entirely or at least loosen them a bit.

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No, it won't kill the community, it will slow it down a bit until we are better established in the game. However for me the point is that if the forum is limited to actual paying customers, applying such strict limitations on posting is quite harsh on new customers in particular. As someone above said, when i can't play I may discuss, but not if I have more than 3 thoughts or need to use more than 1000 characters.

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Originally Posted by Valnen

I honestly feel these restrictions will kill the community here before it even gets a chance to thrive. Please reconsider them entirely or at least loosen them a bit.

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You can't kill what can't be born..

All these lovely forum sections are going to be neglected so very hard..
When everyone's budgeting their post count, people will be saving their posts like it's an epic weapon in a survival horror game..

Why would I use my 1/3 on a lore speculation thread when I might need it to protest suffocating forum restrictions?
And even when I do post on that speculation thread, how can I have an engaging back-and-forth when it would take me an hour to respond four times?
You can't expect me to communicate through edits..

I would say that these forum restrictions are crazy but then again, go look at the WOW forums and how full of trolls they are. These restrictions, while very limiting, (I mean 1,000 characters? That is basically asking us to post in Japanese where they can say more with less characters) are for the most part worth it because if you looked at the beta forums, you'd see a lot of trolling. I will sign to remove posting limit and relax posting limit/thread creation limit

They can keep the restrictions if they want. But if they do I'll just stop going here and use Reddit instead. I'd rather deal with their trolls than the restrictions placed here.

>wizisi2k

I'd invite you to look at any entertainment based forum, and tell me that they don't have trolls. Most often trolls even in the biggest forums don't have that much of a presence, more often than not casual trolls actually become legitimate members.

I honestly think that when the game goes live, my payment should be enough to warrant my ability to post to a reasonable end. Once every 15 minutes is absolutely ludicrous, sometimes I make a habit of taking it on myself to help other members, and with a constant frequency of threads popping up (If square intends this to be a popular game) I won't be able to keep up, and the fact I'm paying for a Subscription, and the copy of it would make it almost insulting.

The restrictions shouldn't exist to preemptively banish trolls, instead it should re-actively be taken care of. There's nothing worse than being treated like you're the enemy when you're actually trying to be supportive.

(Continued from Teppie)

It seems square has settled with a great game here, it's fantastic and I fell in love with it, but looking at Origin, GFWL, and Uplay I realize how easily a great game can be completely ruined by bad service, support, or arbitrary restrictions. It's really up to square what they do with their game and their associated websites but I hope they adjust their policy on this, because while this alone won't stop me from playing it just seems like a wholly bad direction to be taking before the game is even out.

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Originally Posted by Valnen

(Continued from Teppie)

It seems square has settled with a great game here, it's fantastic and I fell in love with it, but looking at Origin, GFWL, and Uplay I realize how easily a great game can be completely ruined by bad service, support, or arbitrary restrictions. It's really up to square what they do with their game and their associated websites but I hope they adjust their policy on this, because while this alone won't stop me from playing it just seems like a wholly bad direction to be taking before the game is even out.

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Fantastic post. The restrictions are archaic and completely unnecessary; paying customers should not be prevented from posting when they choose, period. This is a huge issue which I hope is rectified quickly.

Get rid of the posting limits. This is not a communist world. Its freaking year 2013. We are not living in a dark age where you can't speak or voice up.

If you keeping the posting limitation. I am sure you are going to lose a lot of subscribers, don't believe it? Keep the posting limitation and you shall see.

I'm fine with a character limit, but 1000 is too low. Why is the limit the same for the Japanese and English forums? You can say a lot more in 1000 Japanese characters than you can in 1000 English characters.

In 1.0 the forums were fairly civilized. Only the beta where non-paying 'customers' were able to spam, were restrictions really NECESSARY. I enjoy putting my 2 cents into many various topics on top of participating regularly with the 'fun activity' threads, and I think being limited to only 20 posts a day severely stifles my enjoyment here. I think any player with an active subscription should not have their daily posts limited. There IS and always has been an excess of new topics being created, so I won't actually speak against that restriction...but the 1000 character limit as well as the 20 post per day limit is way too restrictive, and doesn't allow people to be truly active in the community.

I agree with your post here. A lot of the times people will write a wall of text, and then TL;DR it at the end in a succinct paragraph or two. Why not just post the TL;DR and call it good?

Finally able to post today, so yes, I will gladly add one of my 3 posts I am allowed to voice my dissatisfaction of these horrid posting regulations.

Look, I am all for strict measures to combat those that abuse and do not follow the forum rules and regulations. But I believe SE is killing it's forum community by being so strict. Remove the level restrictions. Increase the character count for the English posts. Don't assume we are all horrible forum trolls, and do your job as forum moderators to remove those that willingly abuse the forum rules and guidelines.

I'd love to be able to sit and discuss this game fully, using all the sub categories SE set up on this forum. But now I find myself having to venture outside this forum to do so on a fansite.

I completely agree with the OP. I'm not going to reuse his arguments because that would be a waste of my precious characters :p
I understand the use of those limits, but somehow i just can't agree with this system.
I think that stopping unnecessary flood is a good thing, but here, with such strict time and messages limitations, most players will either :
- Stop creating fun threads or posting in them because they don't want to spend their messages on that (which i find kind of sad because to me a forum is also a place where we can have a lot of social exchanges).
- Stop using the forum because they can't answer as much threads as they want to, and even if they could, they'd have to wait fifteen minutes between every post (and let's be honest, that's really discouraging).

Anyway, i think that since we pay for the game, we deserve to have more freedom on the forum. I don't think anybody who spends dozens of dollars on a game would want to get banned from it.

I really do not like how these restrictions have been put on the forums because it just makes me not want to use them at all and mostly just stick to making friends on the Cactuar server. I believe these restrictions need to be removed since people are paying customers and should be able to post as much as they want and to be able to communicate with others and that's the point of communities right? Is to make ties with others and become friends.