As a player who's never been reported, why aren't behavior penalties ever forgiven?

It's something I've been thinking about ever since reading a thread on our subreddit a couple of months ago, about a player who was reported for the vulgar slogan of their FC, but they hadn't written the slogan, and were only the leader of the FC due to the automatic promotion system that's meant to keep inactive players from leading. Despite proving all of their claims to the GM, they were issued a warning anyway. And that's a permanent strike, one of three, on their account forever now.

The thread, surprisingly, got 2581 upvotes, with 897 comments. Normally threads discussing the penalty policy don't go so well, which is partly my concern here with this thread. But I do want to be clear, I've never been reported and have no intention of breaking the rules. I enjoy being nice to people, and I'm not demonizing Square Enix or any of their employees. This is only about the penalty policy itself. In fact, I want to talk about it because I enjoy the game so much.

It's unfortunate that the user's Reddit account was deleted recently, but I locally saved the webpages of both the Reddit thread and the Imgur album containing their proof, and I can share them if people want them. But here's a screenshot of the first post, just to validate what I'm saying: https://i.imgur.com/t8nJPFL.png

The thing is, this game is nine years old now. With the current policy, you could have been an obnoxious little teenager and rightfully earned a penalty two, and as a result, you would be at risk of a permanent ban as an adult, after changing as a person. It's easy to believe that no more penalties would be issued undeserved, but that Reddit thread is proof to the contrary. The GMs have to follow the policy, and the policy is very unforgiving.

It just gets worse the longer you play. And if the aim of the system is to improve player behavior, doesn't penalty forgiveness after an extended period of good behavior make sense?

I really wish I could have put this up as a question for Toshio Murouchi when he was answering questions in the live letter XLIII, but that was in March of last year, and this FC slogan mess happened in May of this year...

How do you all feel about it?

If you want to learn more about the penalty policy, read the live letter here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4651143

Honestly I think strikes should stay on your account for upwards to a year and at that juncture should be able to be appealed or wiped entirely. Sometimes like you said it's just someone being stupid of catching blame for something they didn't do, and after a year has passed without any other incidents it is fair to assume the lesson should have been learned.

If they were made leader of the FC due to inactiveness of the previous leader why did they not change the slogan before they were reported? They had to have known it was vulgar and could have easily changed it upon becoming the new leader. Ignoring it they are just as guilty as the person who wrote it.

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Originally Posted by Enla

Honestly I think strikes should stay on your account for upwards to a year and at that juncture should be able to be appealed or wiped entirely. Sometimes like you said it's just someone being stupid of catching blame for something they didn't do, and after a year has passed without any other incidents it is fair to assume the lesson should have been learned.

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Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Like, a lot of us have a lot of friends in the game, and it would hurt to be separated from them and lose the shared hobby that we have with them. That's why I care about this so much. I almost wish I didn't, because it's a really inconvenient thing to care about. It's not like I can rewrite the ToS. But the thought of how awful that would be has stuck with me ever since I read that Reddit thread. Because it's not just banning bad people from our game, it's like...closing a door in someone's social life, potentially for something relatively minor like losing their patience with a random in a duty, two or three times over the course of six or nine years, depending on whether they played 1.0 or not. Or worse yet, something like the FC slogan issue, where it's a defensible thing, but the GMs have to act anyway.

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Originally Posted by Bixillarla

If they were made leader of the FC due to inactiveness of the previous leader why did they not change the slogan before they were reported? They had to have known it was vulgar and could have easily changed it upon becoming the new leader. Ignoring it they are just as guilty as the person who wrote it.

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It was on a character they hardly ever played, so they hadn't seen it. I have Imgur screenshots from the person in question with all the names marked out in case you want to see. That wouldn't count as sharing someone else's personal information, so I can, if you want. But yeah, no, they had no idea until the GM summoned them to the jail.

Because they're permanent I stopped talking outside of my FC chat and linkshells in-game. If I can't moderate the channel, I don't talk in it because now I'm afraid another overly sensitive snowflake is gonna report me over something stupid.

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Originally Posted by SomeRandomHuman

Because they're permanent I stopped talking outside of my FC chat and linkshells in-game. If I can't moderate the channel, I don't talk in it because now I'm afraid another overly sensitive snowflake is gonna report me over something stupid.

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In theory, yes OP I believe that there should at least be an appeals process where you can have (after a certain period of time) one infraction per certain year amount removed from your record. But, because of people like the above quoted, I say keep it like it is. If the way things are now keeps this person only in channels they can moderate (because moderating their own speech is too difficult, I guess?) and other folks who have decided to use the term snowflake to describe human beings with feelings they've hurt with their behavior are keeping to themselves because of it, I say it's working. Like, how mean are you as a person if your answer to "hey that's hurtful" is "I can't even speak around these snowflakes anymore"? I know it sucks for people like that reddit user. I don't know what to suggest to mitigate that kind of collateral damage. All I know is that WoW had millions of players calling each other snowflakes and I don't play that game anymore for reasons. One of which is that. Strict and permanent punishment for poor behavior is part of what keeps FFXIV game chat from looking like WoW's.

You probably have been reported, trust me. The forums are bad, and I try hard not to use curse words in-game after hearing the horror stories. For that matter, I hardly chat in-game, and the few times I have actually gotten mad enough to say something, I regret it afterwards. I have paranoia I'll be reported for something dumb, and more often than not they will take action against pretty much anything and everything. Their ToS, and when they take action, is so broad you literally won't be able to tell what is or isn't ban or 'warning' worthy.

Not worth chatting in-game unless you know the people, unless you are being uncharacteristically nice. Remember anything you type the GM's can pull up later at anytime, not worth it. Even if you know the people don't chat in game there will be logs.

Even if you are "nice", make sure you word it to where there is no way someone can report you, people will take offense and do that too.

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Originally Posted by Whelp

In theory, yes OP I believe that there should at least be an appeals process where you can have (after a certain period of time) one infraction per certain year amount removed from your record. But, because of people like the above quoted, I say keep it like it is. If the way things are now keeps this person only in channels they can moderate (because moderating their own speech is too difficult, I guess?) and other folks who have decided to use the term snowflake to describe human beings with feelings they've hurt with their behavior are keeping to themselves because of it, I say it's working. Like, how mean are you as a person if your answer to "hey that's hurtful" is "I can't even speak around these snowflakes anymore"? I know it sucks for people like that reddit user. I don't know what to suggest to mitigate that kind of collateral damage. All I know is that WoW had millions of players calling each other snowflakes and I don't play that game anymore for reasons. One of which is that. Strict and permanent punishment for poor behavior is part of what keeps FFXIV game chat from looking like WoW's.

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FFXIV game chat is extremely toxic, and full of what I think are entitled gatekeepers. It's just a different demon.

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Originally Posted by Whelp

In theory, yes OP I believe that there should at least be an appeals process where you can have (after a certain period of time) one infraction per certain year amount removed from your record. But, because of people like the above quoted, I say keep it like it is. If the way things are now keeps this person only in channels they can moderate (because moderating their own speech is too difficult, I guess?) and other folks who have decided to use the term snowflake to describe human beings with feelings they've hurt with their behavior are keeping to themselves because of it, I say it's working. Like, how mean are you as a person if your answer to "hey that's hurtful" is "I can't even speak around these snowflakes anymore"? I know it sucks for people like that reddit user. I don't know what to suggest to mitigate that kind of collateral damage. All I know is that WoW had millions of players calling each other snowflakes and I don't play that game anymore for reasons. One of which is that. Strict and permanent punishment for poor behavior is part of what keeps FFXIV game chat from looking like WoW's.

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Offense is taken, not given. I've seen people reported for things that only the most fragile, hyper-sensitive individual could twist into being offensive in any way. Calling such a person snowflake is both accurate and appropriate, as there are few things more fragile. This is a bad reason to have an overly harsh punishment system.

The reporting system makes it so you do have to think twice about saying something critical of another player - and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. No one is going to get reported for saying "hi hi! how are you doing?" at the start of a run. No one is going to get reported for saying, "I'm sorry I got myself killed, that was my fault" when they fail a mechanic. Or for saying, "If you get the mark above your head, go to the back to avoid popping the cages. The adds here hit really hard." No one is going to get reported for telling another player they think their glam is cute. Rather, if someone is silly enough to report you over social niceties or explaining mechanics, the GMs won't actually add the strike.

There was a story a week or so ago for someone who got reported to a GM because of "elitism" because they had advertised a learning party in PF, a SAM asked to join, and they told the SAM "sure!" But the SAM apparently did not understand how party finder worked, and expected a party invite personally... and reported the person when they didn't get it. The GM who responded re-read the chat and went "You know what? Nevermind. Have a nice day."

There is definitely fuzzy line over what people will bother to report, and what GMs will take as a serious report, but the line is a lot deeper than most people realize. Be kind, and you have little to worry about.

I have a strike on my forum account because one time I had a big typo that made it seem like I was insulting someone when I wasn't (not even swear words either, it was just kinda odd wording). I was banned for a few days and when I tried to email support about the mistake I got sent a robotic blurb with a cut of the tos... that didn't have anything to do with behavior or anything at all going on.

SE support is really bad, they set it up in the simplest manner possible then avoid having to do anything else with it is what it often feels like...