Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[dotsforlife]

The new ToS is basically just the modern version of society now. Full snowflake protection mode. You can bet your ass this will be abused by both sides. I mean hell you can be banned now for “wrong think” at this point lol... God forbid we ever criticize another player now, regardless of intent or tone. Disappointed SE.

[Risvertasashi]

So this morning I watched a newbie, who made a mistake in a level 50 alliance, get griefed (mostly by one person but a few others joined in) to the point where he said he would delete his character. He logged out, but apparently had to log in again as a character cannot be deleted while it's in an instance.

GM reply:


All these broad new powers and you still won't stop heavily abusive chat in public logs because it wasn't directed at me, huh.

[TheCurls]

In this thread- Common sense, not so common.

[HyoMinPark]

I believe what this means is if someone says or does something that is an objective nuisance, but not with the -intent- to be a nuisance, they can be punished. Of course, the first punishment isn't an immediate ban, just a cautionary statement, so most of it will stop at that. If they weren't doing it with intent, they likely didn't realize it was causing problems. Being told it's problematic will -probably- be enough.

Your example aside, this still begs the question of “What is considered ‘nuisance behavior’?”. There’s too much variation and no definition, so it will make people wonder what’s okay and what’s not.

Honestly, rules like this should be very cut-and-dry, with very little room for varying interpretations. Not only does this give the community examples to go by, but it also gives the people who are responsible for reviews and dishing out punishments specific guidelines to go by. As it is now, this is all up to the interpretation of the specific GM who gets a case, which may vary from the interpretation of another GM (and I think action will be dependent on that GM’s particular mood that day—we are human, so we aren’t infallible when it comes to making decisions while in a sour mood). That variation has the ability to lead to inconsisitency, which, as I stated in a previous post, leads to frustration because people get confused on what is punishable and what is not.

Some of the guidelines make sense and I find relatively self-explanatory. But some have a wide array of interpretation, and then others are just downright strange (like the one on prohibiting discriminatory remarks made towards thinking... at least the others in that list make sense, but that one I still can’t figure out what they mean... perhaps I should look at the Japanese and see if there’s any kanji to give me an idea of what it could be...).

EDIT: Okay, the Japanese is a little more clear (yet still kind of broad, in my opinion)— they say 思想, which can mean “thought, idea, or ideology”. So, I guess they’re saying you cannot discriminate based on another individual’s particular ideology? If this is the case, the English guidelines should be amended to make that more clear. “Discriminatory expressions made towards thinking” sounds strange and makes very little sense.

[Vanitas]

A little clarification on the disconnect penalty would be nice. I can't count the number of times I've had to leave a dungeon because something irl comes up mid dungeon or literally as a queue in and needs my attention for more than 5 minutes. If it's more for MSQ roulette dcers ok I get it but if its more board than that then anyone with a family will just end up being afraid to queue lol. Also I'm of the stance if you don't wanna do a dungeon for whatever reason weather its at the start of a run or the middle and take a 30 min ban, I HOPE we aren't in a position to be punished for it because then you might as well be held hostage.

[Moshantu]

Your example aside, this still begs the question of “What is considered ‘nuisance behavior’?”. There’s too much variation and no definition, so it will make people wonder what’s okay and what’s not.

I actually think for some of the categories, the imprecise nature is intentional just so they can have a ToS line prepared to rebut problem players who try to escape punishment via loopholes. I realize anecdotal evidence is useless in a real discussion, but I do have some experience moderating a large group of people. I was a moderator and GM for a private World of Warcraft RP server that at one point had around 10,000 active accounts (although admittedly only around 500 to 1000 daily active users) and one of the most infuriating things to deal with were people who were reported for saying or doing something that was -clearly- a problem, but not having a real way to do anything about it because the specific thing they did wasn't covered in the forum or game rules. ("You can't punish me, there's no rule, so I couldn't have known what I did was wrong!") Luckily because we were small (in comparison to a real MMO), we could just add new rules any time we needed to and go from there. But for a game as big as FFXIV, where changing the ToS is a huge deal (as we're seeing now), having a broad umbrella by which to combat loopholes is -probably- more a precaution for the benefit of the player-base than it is a weapon to oppress them.

There -is- always the problem of things being left up to a human, all of whom experience moments of imperfect judgment, but we also see flaws in the other side with games that are primarily moderated by an automated system. And I think it's easier to abuse an automated system to the detriment of the player-base than it is to trick a human GM into letting you abuse new ToS rules to the detriment of the player-base. Sure, there's a chance the GM will have a bad day and take it out on a reportee, but with how many warning steps there are before there's real punishment, I don't see too many unfair bannings coming about. But I've been wrong before!

[Gralna]

A little clarification on the disconnect penalty would be nice. I can't count the number of times I've had to leave a dungeon because something irl comes up mid dungeon or literally as a queue in and needs my attention for more than 5 minutes. If it's more for MSQ roulette dcers ok I get it but if its more board than that then anyone with a family will just end up being afraid to queue lol. Also I'm of the stance if you don't wanna do a dungeon for whatever reason weather its at the start of a run or the middle and take a 30 min ban, I HOPE we aren't in a position to be punished for it because then you might as well be held hostage.

From what I gathered from it, it's aimed at punishing people who use disconnects to either skip cutscenes (obstructing new players experience), and people that will intentionally disconnect to get a vote kick (holding the party hostage till they remove them).

[Ilyrian]

When are you guys running into situations where these could apply?
I can go days without any interaction in PuGs (aside from the obligatory o/ or hi).

Even in Eureka the chat is usually the bare minimum.

[Vanitas]

From what I gathered from it, it's aimed at punishing people who use disconnects to either skip cutscenes (obstructing new players experience), and people that will intentionally disconnect to get a vote kick (holding the party hostage till they remove them).

The first reason is fair but the second you can't really prove because what are the off chances that someones internet poops out in the perfect amout of time to look like they left on purpose?

[Alrown]

Well I'm not going to give a company that doesn't support free speech any money, I've unsubbed from you're wonderful game. If someone doesn't like what someone else has to say they can blacklist them. Forcing censorship on people is not healthy for society.