The New Chat Restriction in The Feast

[OskarXCI]

So, having to possibly blacklist 1 or 2 people who go too far or say too much holds more weight

1 person on average after every match? Yes it is.

entire community and game mode having the ability to communicate and strategize in a competitive environment?

And the majority of this community is toxic and hostile towards anyone that doesn't live up their expectations. You really think they disabled the chat without any reason? They have the data and I take their word over anything else.

We're all adults here. Do we really need to be told to behave ourselves and mind our manners?

Define "we". And yes, some need to be told to behave themselves.

Worse still, do we all need to pay for those that don't do so?

Sadly, yes. As you said, it's a community.

[MixZ]

And the majority of this community is toxic and hostile towards anyone that doesn't live up their expectations. You really think they disabled the chat without any reason? They have the data and I take their word over anything else.

If anything I will give SE credit with holding the community as a whole responsible for their actions that lead to the restrictions placed on chat. Not many companies will do that now in the PC world. Even with the quick chat now, players still try to find ways to grieve one another with "Nice Job" spam and other ways to be an example.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

So then, if we lived and drove in the same community, I should get a ticket if you run a red light?

I get really tired of these statements trying to justify what was a really bad move on SE's part. Read this thread, at least the first 39 pages (before they ever responded). They decided this and ignored all feedback from the community on it. When we suggested it could be implemented as a light punishment for offenders, that too was ignored. When we noted that it could cause more problems by stopping players that ARE decent and willing to give helpful advice to newer players, THAT TOO WAS IGNORED. We even called it on things like "Nice Job" being spammed sarcastically. Would that be an issue if it weren't forced on the community as a whole? No. Would there still be bad apples? Yes, but the bunch would hardly be spoiled by them. That is, unless you would agree that because there are bad apples even within the various PvE communities, they too deserve restricted chat?

I've had this debate many times now here, and I haven't changed my stance one bit: the chat restriction was a lazy, unnecessary fix to a small problem that created bigger problems and never solved the original one.

[Korihu]

If anything I will give SE credit with holding the community as a whole responsible for their actions that lead to the restrictions placed on chat. Not many companies will do that now in the PC world. Even with the quick chat now, players still try to find ways to grieve one another with "Nice Job" spam and other ways to be an example.

The entire class got punished for the actions of 1 or 2 students? Because that's what happened. Why am I and a majority of the community being punished for the actions of a very small few? SE is quick and ruthless with harassment/toxicity reports in chat in the first place.

[MixZ]

The entire class got punished for the actions of 1 or 2 students? Because that's what happened. Why am I and a majority of the community being punished for the actions of a very small few? SE is quick and ruthless with harassment/toxicity reports in chat in the first place.

As Oskar said, they likely have the data to justify it and it is highly unlikely they will never share that data.

[MixZ]

So then, if we lived and drove in the same community, I should get a ticket if you run a red light?

Nope but if it is hurting the community as a whole then restrictions would be put in place for the safety of others so that this behavior is not encouraged in the future. While there are a number of pages on this they also look at the data they have from the game that they have to take into consideration as that is also evidence to justify the decision. The community outweighs the individual concerns in this case as they try to figure out what is the proper means to resolve this issue of the pvp community being very toxic in this game. Before Stormblood, it seemed to me that it is a small community that didn't want to grow to keep it for themselves so they can be the big fish in a little pond and giving new players a hard time. SE naturally wants the pond to be a lake.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

As Oskar said, they likely have the data to justify it and it is highly unlikely they will never share that data.

Sorry, but when you put it like that, it really makes that data suspect.

When they first announced they were going to do this, they could've said "Based on data collected, X% of players have harrassed or been generally negative toward other player in the Feast, therefore we've decided to restrict the use of chat, and implement a quick chat system" and that would've been hard to dispute. But they didn't do that. They simply said it was going to happen, as if it had already been decided, and no amount of player feedback would affect that. Seriously, go back to the start of this and really take a look at what happened. Don't simply buy into the idea that it was justified due to internally collected data that we can/can't even verify might have actually been collected.

Nope but if it is hurting the community as a whole then restrictions would be put in place for the safety of others so that this behavior is not encouraged in the future. While there are a number of pages on this they also look at the data they have from the game that they have to take into consideration as that is also evidence to justify the decision. The community outweighs the individual concerns in this case as they try to figure out what is the proper means to resolve this issue of the pvp community being very toxic in this game. Before Stormblood, it seemed to me that it is a small community that didn't want to grow to keep it for themselves so they can be the big fish in a little pond and giving new players a hard time. SE naturally wants the pond to be a lake.

I was waiting for this, actually. So then, with the LARGER majority of the XIV community being more interested in PvE, and thus a larger representation of both good and bad players would be reasonable to assume, why then is chat not restricted for PvE? Aren't people toxic in dungeons and raids? Or even in towns? How about all those Novice Network complaints? Where are the restictions there? I can say that - at least within the Aether data center's PvP community - people were rather decent BECAUSE our numbers were small. Who wants to be that guy no one likes or wants to party with because he's just that toxic? Not only that, it's safe to say many want to win more than they want to verbally abuse others - and how helpful would it be to trash someone, then wind up on the same team again next match?

And as far as trying to play the small community card, the PvP community has ALWAYS wanted to grow. But popular misconceptions and - actually, I noted everything I'm about to say in the "Well done, SE" thread. Read my first post there to know why the PvP community was small. It DEFINITELY wasn't by choice. Not only that, but if this is so acceptable to be done to the PvP community simply because of its size, who's next? Raiders?

[MixZ]

Then that is the fault of the community manager of putting it out to the community in that way. Does that mean I have to blindly rage and not look at the situation from all corners and make a conclusion for myself? I have been in positions in my life that I have had to do similar things (not restricting chat in a game) but not put out the source to the public because of certain restrictions to them. That would just cause more drama and do more harm than good. I remember when they came out and it was pretty much the parent punishing the child. Having seen how toxic the community was during season 1 from my own personal experience I was not surprised that SE took this route. Was I surprised they did it? Yup. Are you telling me that most of the chat you've seen during that time was not toxic? Each individual player only has a small percent of view of the community.

[MixZ]

In the end, (in my view) PvP probably should have never been included in the game in the first place as it was treated as an after thought. The time, money, and resources to make that could have been used to make the game a stand out of PvE content or made the Gold Saucer an even better place for player to compete friendly with each other in games like Triple Triad, Chocobo Racing, etc.

[Theodric]

Punishing everybody for the actions of a select few is not a good decision to make. It simply serves to breed contempt and the problematic individuals will find other ways to cause trouble. I remember one of my tutors back at a private school who taught Latin. If someone dared to speak up in her class then everybody would be given a detention regardless of their innocence. It did not work. If somebody had a disagreement with another person in that class they'd just deliberately speak up or be a nuisance so that everybody, including their rival, would end up being punished for it.

We're seeing something similar play out in PvP. Everybody has ridiculous restrictions in place that prevent them from speaking up but they're still exposed to unpleasant players. The difference now is that those unpleasant players simply spam chat commands and deliberately get themselves killed in an attempt to throw a match. Implementing a system to report problematic players and punishing the excessively toxic players would have made much more sense. Though that would require hiring a few more people to the support team and result in people getting banned which would result in a loss of income for Square Enix.

The cynical part of me believes that potential loss of income is precisely why such an awkward 'solution' was implemented in the first place in an attempt to try and sweep the toxicity beneath the rug rather than address the root cause. I may be mistaken, of course, but it's definitely frustrating.