Discussion on rule 3.3 on offensive behavior (ToS)

Good morning/evening/afternoon to all

This post is separated in different messages because of the character limit, I apologize if it's not proper, this is my first post :)

Recently I got in contact with a GM, whose name will be hidden to avoid any personal attacks. They teleported me to a different area and the following conversation unfold:

Mordred Tenae: uh hello :) did I do anything wrong?
[GM]Gm ***: Greetings Mordred, this is GM ***. I'm sorry for interrupting you, I sent you here regarding your recent behaviour.
[GM]Gm ***: After investigation, we confirmed an incident where your language was considered offensive, which is against our Terms of Service.
[GM]Gm ***: Due to our privacy policy to protect our players, I'm afraid I'm not allowed to disclose details regarding the incident in question.
[GM]Gm ***: As a result of this violation, it has been decided to issue an official Warning on your Square Enix account.
[GM]Gm ***: You will receive an official email to the email address registered on your Square Enix account with more information.
[GM]Gm ***: Please note that further breaches will result in a more severe punishment such as a temporary or permanent suspension of your account.
[GM]Gm ***: To avoid any penalty in the future, I'd ask you to please always remain polite and courteous when playing with others. If you feel that another player is misbehaving, it's best to avoid any retaliation and report it to the GM Team directly instead.
[GM]Gm ***: As long as you remain respectful with other players and you don't breach the Terms of Service, there is no reason for you to end up in this jail again.
Mordred Tenae: Could I ask exactly what I said? I'm honestly not sure what situation might be mentioned, I apologize for that. If it's not possible it's fine as well
[GM]Gm ***: I am really sorry but I cannot disclose more information about that incident.
[GM]Gm ***: If you don't have any question, I won't hold you any longer and will now send you back to your home point.
Mordred Tenae: No, it's fine. Thank you for letting me know, I will be careful in the future
[GM]Gm ***: I thank you for your understanding and wish you a nice day.

First of all I do not condone any kind of violent behavior nor personal attacks towards anyone. Particularly this GM adressed the situation in a very polite way and I do really appreciate it. While I may not be in the same side as this resolution, I wanted to thank this GM for the way I was treated during a situation that could very well trigger aggressive and defensive behavior.

After that I contacted customer support requesting for further explanations about this issue with this message:

"That was the full conversation. At that moment I was confused as to why my behavior was considered offensive and even more by the fact that I wasn't informed exactly of what I said, which probably is to avoid offenders to chase the denouncer, and I understand that, but it doesn't allow me to understand fully the issue at hand and why was I reported and investigated and, therefore, I feel my account to be endangered for that particular reason, since I might unwillingly cause the same issue again. I do understand that some language is offensive and generally if I use it is in a closed group context with people I know personally, thus why the issue at hand is particularly worrying for me. I do understand that
the Game Master was doing his job and I understand, I don't mean to chase him/her for it and I do appreciate their cordial approach to this issue, but I would like to request more information because, again, I do feel my account endangered without knowing exactly why. Offensive language can be difficult to define as such and depends many times on personal repercussions of such language on every individual, which causes me at the moment to fear for the integrity of my account because of some accident I may unwillingly cause in the future. I would like to request feedback on this issue if possible.

Hopefully we can clear this up, since I dont want to cause any problems to the community nor be a toxic player. I hope this doesn't cause any issue and again I appreciate the GM's approach to letting me know. Again, my apologies for the hustle."
, to which I got replied that "as explained by the Game Master that has talked to you in game, we will be unable to disclose any other information than what has been written in the mail sent to you earlier.

After reviewing your case, we can confirm that you have used an inappropriate language. If you have any feedback, we would be very grateful if you could submit any suggestions or comments on our official forums. Your feedback will then be forwarded to the appropriate department by our Community Representatives.", and as a result I decided to discuss it here publicly in hopes to address the situation.

That said, I wanted to discuss this situation which I believe gets out of hand.

First of all posts about this have been made already and people discussed it in the past. For reference I take the following posts and discussions:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Penalty-Policy
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l-reason-given
http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...2&tag=users_en
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards...7060061?page=1
https://steamcommunity.com/app/39210...5556492588920/

I will try to talk about the points in discussion separately, them being the age of 13 and cusswords, the usage of the warning system for offenses and the lack of information for the offender.

For the first point, given that the game is for the age of 13 and older according to the ToS, and includes itself a filter for cusswords, I do believe that this penalty is not really related to this possible situation. The removal of that filter and exposure to such content is in the hands of the player and therefore the system allows the player to be responsible for that exposure. That said, many people comment on how the game itself uses cusswords occasionally for the scenario and quests in the text, something I'm personally unable to recall aside of some friendly variants based on the regional differences of each region, as how lominsans would use different terms than gridanians. Still, given that the ToS include this specific paragraph for their point 3.3, it is surprising that the rules have not been updated whilst the steam page for instance shows it to be a game for 16+, probably because of the content. Said rules are on a previously linked page with last update being on 2013, so if I'm wrong on this part I'd appreciate to be let known. In any case I do consider that the exposure to possible profanity is in the hands of the player.

About the offense system, I haven't found anything that shows how to differenciate an offense worth a warning and a caution. I faintly remember a possibly year old Live Letter that addressed this, but in any case, it does not explain which offenses are to be considered a warning or a caution in such an ambiguous scenario. For instance, the usage of profanities during a heated argument (not directed insults) are worthy of a caution or already a warning? When does a caution stop being one and becoming a warning? Obviously direct insults and attacks are to be treated with higher care for they mean to directly harass a player instead. I do believe that in cases a player is becoming directly target of rage and insults a warning could be issued, but that just leaves it as a matter to discuss and always in an ambiguous zone, given that other cases such as the one in the steam link have received bans for this reason, while in my case it was a mere warning.

That brings me to the third point. I do not know what I have done. In the past two weeks I have almost not connected at all and the last interactions I personally remember were just a discussion with a fellow tank about if we had or not to use the LB3 for a part of the Omega 11 raid normal mode, which in the end ended with me leaving the instance and suffering a (well deserved) 30 minute cooldown from the duty finder and posting a couple text memes on some houses (which I do personally believe to be the reason for this situation). Aside of that I do not remember to having 1: insulted any player, 2: used harassing words to attack any group or ideas. At this point all I have left to believe is that the language I used was offensive and not profane, which would mean something as "I said something that upset someone". That's the grey area left for the offender to understand what has he done without any context. In this case I'm confused about what should I do next, since I need to deduce what kind of situation led to the warning. If I ended up not seeing what could have caused this, the offense could happen again for a reason unable to be explained to me. I do believe that it's a bad idea to not say exactly what caused it since 1: if the offense was indeed unintentional, knowing exactly what would make the person actually reflect on the action and possibly apologize to the affected individual, 2: if the person was not happy with the result, they will still control themselves better to avoid further reactions and 3: if the person wants to retaliate, the result will be an even greater punishment that could affect their account (and losing a toxic player is not such a terrible thing). I would find these reasons enough to consider the possibility of showing the offender the reason for the warning so that the situation can be adressed in depth and not left in a cloud of wonders. I personally feel lucky for knowing exactly what I did... hours later. But there may be people who get this situation onto themselves without even knowing exactly why, which leaves them with possible fear and uneasiness for their safety in the account.

In my case the warning has been applied and I do believe I know exactly why, and what's more, I will try to personally message the affected player who I believe reported me because I do think I owe an apology at least. But the way in which this offense is addressed gives doubts and allows for the uneasiness of players. I would like to ask for opinions on the matter and pray this reaches someone (dreaming is free!), because I believe the way in which the matter is treated does not allow always for the player to understand the severity of one's actions.

If anything I shown was wrong or changed I would also appreciate to be let known for corrections and to avoid misunderstandings. There's always a dangerous grey area born of speaking about offensive language and I would like to avoid giving the impression that I defend harassment.

Lastly, I wanted again to thank the GMs for their work and for facing these decisions, surely we all have an enormous amount of different opinions and they consider many possibilities interpreting the ToS the best possible. Thanks as well to this particular GM.


PD: I got called to the jail during Ixion fate, that still stings! Never getting the mount, crap

XIV has some of the most ridiculous ToS enforcement policies I've ever seen on a MMO, TBH.

Literally every other MMO I've played will elaborate on the nature of an offense to ensure it isn't repeated. Here, they just expect you somehow know what you did wrong (Which is almost never the case from how many repeated incidents like this I've seen) and to not do it again, all for the sake of "protecting" the ones who filed the report.

If they want the community to improve its behavior, they need to know how to improve, not just receive vague punishments that make them reluctant to speak in the first place.