Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[CatsWithShoes]

I’m all for a positive environment, but getting in trouble because you’re asking for a basic level of contribution from someone who may be underperforming seems odd.

They just make me want to interact with people less often because it’s easier to drop them and never tell them that they could get better.
I’d now sooner ghost a player than help them improve. And I’ve never been abrasive when doing this. People have regularly been resistant to help since the start for whatever reason, and it’s for that reason there is now just a “risk” involved with nearly any interaction.

I actually had a random encounter with a guy that asked me to help him get glower for his blue mage quest.. he'd been playing for a year, didn't have any 70s and had never run Aurum Vale before, i ran it unsync with him as DRK and helped him snag his ability and we got to chat a bit and i explained some of the mechanics before fights etc. it was interesting to help this stranger that had such a limited experience with the game after playing for such a time, but who got up the nerve to ask a stranger for help and ( i like to think ) was rewarded for it.

Policies like this make me feel like i need to be wary, and might make people like him feel less safe to ask a stranger for help.
Not everyone comes to an MMORPG with a group of friends ready to go, some folks need to meet people. This feels like a discouraging step.

[ElazulHP]

I can't believe there are 45 pages of people freaking out about essentially nothing. Use common sense and don't be disrespectful to people and you'll be fine. Or perhaps that is the problem? At some fundamental level these people know they're doing something wrong and don't want to be held accountable for their actions or don't want to reign in their behavior? I personally think these are good changes. Thank you Square!

[Ceallach]

I can't believe there are 45 pages of people freaking out about essentially nothing. Use common sense and don't be disrespectful to people and you'll be fine. Or perhaps that is the problem? At some fundamental level these people know they're doing something wrong and don't want to be held accountable for their actions or don't want to reign in their behavior? I personally think these are good changes. Thank you Square!

I've personally been eschewed by communities for stating, and I quote, "I'm sorry, I do not believe you're using your class to its fullest potential. Would you like some advice?" But by all means, tell me how we're "freaking out about essentially nothing" again.

[Shuuchi]

Japanese people, and Eastern ethnicities in general, tend to be more respectful. A lot of it plays on religion/spirituality involving the spirit/soul of a person or a influence of a deity. And A LOT of it is enforced through upbringing by parents and tradition. Their whole culture revolves around those kinds of ideals and it is embedded into everything they do. Go to work, gotta do the whole spiel before you can actually begin your work. Enter a restaurant, gotta do the whole spiel again before you can begin to consult the host/hostess. Need to change lanes before a upcoming traffic light, yeah let me first to the whole cultural spiel before I wrong someone by mistake/happenstance.

Like Japanese culture, Korean culture practice many of the similar mannerisms. Although, Korean culture is more subdivided due to increased poverty compared to Japan. Varying distribution of wealth and opportunities.

I'm eastern Asian and I grew up with Asian parents. Religion and spirituality have been dead for decades, the orient is not a mystical land anymore. To quote a certain someone from my family: "money is the new god".
Living in eastern Asia is all about keeping your head down and don't do anything out of the ordinary. In other words, it's a collectivist's wet dream.
My family moved to the west specifically because its more free.

I can't believe there are 45 pages of people freaking out about essentially nothing. Use common sense and don't be disrespectful to people and you'll be fine. Or perhaps that is the problem? At some fundamental level these people know they're doing something wrong and don't want to be held accountable for their actions or don't want to reign in their behavior? I personally think these are good changes. Thank you Square!

You are strawmaning and disrespecting people you disagree with. You can be banned under these new rules.
Even people in JP are saying the new rules are unclear and uses many weasel words.
Please refer to my post on page 44 if you want more info.

[Lium]

The intentional disconnect thing is aimed squarely at the players who are doing it to skip the cut scenes in the MSQ roulette.

Would be helpful if they clarified that, because I have TERRIBLE internet service that causes me to frequently lag out and disconnect. Sometimes the best thing for me to do for the sake of the group is leave or shut the game down so they can get someone else in there.

[NocturniaUzuki]

・Expressions that unilaterally reject another person's opinion
・Expressions that compel a playing style

Out of all of it, these two points are of the most concern to me, though the whole section suffers from a subjectivity issue. Though I understand that the rules were simply translated from the JP rules? Which in that case it makes sense that it clashes with NA culture.

The main issue I have is with rejecting another's opinion and/or compelling a playstyle.

These two rules seem to be designed to protect minority views and playstyles. However, they are more likely to be used against them. Let's say I'm trying to play the game in my way. One of the things I like to do is challenge myself to do content without healers or tanks. Often, in random dungeon runs, I will not follow the mainstream tacit rules that say a tank must have aggro, that the healer must heal, and that only the tank should pull. Am I now "compelling" a playing style" because I'm not conforming to the mainstream? Or is the mainstream compelling their playing style when they try to force me to do it their way?

Rejecting an opinion spawns from this. If players get mad at me for that, am I rejecting their opinion, or are they rejecting mine? All that's really happening is that a group of random players is trying to play together, each doing their own thing. Except one player's "thing" list further removed from everyone else's opinion. However, I am quite concerned that such things will be bannable. I'm quite sure I have been and will continue to be reported for non-conformity. If conformity becomes the global SQEX ruleset (instead of just Japan's, given how conformist its culture is already), then I think there's an issue.

The other concern I have is with "gameplay disruption". FFXIV's duty finder system is woefully limited and consequently unable to handle several of the kinds of things I like to do. For example, doing synced undersized content (i.e. 4-player Synced T5, or 3-player Synced TitanEX). In order to launch these challenges, I have to get "volunteer" launch helpers. While doing this, I do make it obvious that remaining slots are for launch help only, with PF descriptions like "Seeking 5 players to help launch 3-player TitanEX. Feel free to spectate, afk for clear*, etc". However, as we all know, reading PF descriptions is not commonplace. In fact, even if I confirm with everyone again in chat before the launch, I will quite often have people who think it was an unsynced WT party. My only options in these situations is to either have all the players leave the party and then boot the guy who didn't get what was going on, or force that player to leave by having the group repeatedly wipe the raid until he/she leaves.

I often have people upset at me over "tricking" them into "troll" parties. But from my point of view, they are the ones trolling me by getting in the way of my playing style.

In this case, who is going to get punished?

[Freyt]

SE has forgotten an extremely basic principle. Rules need to be trusted by both those who enforce the rules, and those who are to follow the rules (which rule enforcers should also be following). There is a very grave error within these rules. It relies on GM's to be good people, and for "rule breakers" to be bad people. Neither of which does the community believe in at large.

・Discriminatory expressions based on race/nationality/thinking/gender/sexual orientation/gender identity

For example, what qualifies? Most expressions when they started were acceptable at the time they were brought to popularity. The "ok" hand sign for example is now associated with white supremacy, even though 4-chan memed that into reality, could it still qualify as a discriminatory expression?There are no examples listed, and so that means that any rule enforcer at any time can judge anything to be discriminatory if they ever heard at any point that it was.

・Discriminatory expressions about a state/religion/occupation/organisation, etc.

This should be readily obvious. You could say "I don't think your job would be any fun", and you've just discriminated about it. How is this rule allowed? Someone could even perceive that the person they're talking to doesn't even like their own job, and try to sympathize, and get banned for it.

・Obscene/indecent expressions

There are very clear examples that could have been made here. Without any examples, literally anything could be seen as obscene. Many people in powerful positions have openly called various political factions as obscene, even when many others who did not sympathize did not think it was obscene. Having an unpopular opinion hardly constitutes a ban, and yet this rule can apply to an unpopular opinion.

Again, this is about what it "can" apply to. The question isn't "what will GM's do with it", but "what can GM's do with it". We can't assume that any GM is going to automatically be a good person.

・Actions that inflict emotional distress using content related to historical events or crimes

This is just hilarious. Just about anything qualifies. An action can qualify as a statement, or a discussion. In fact given that most of the infractions here will be because of text, that's what this rule likely will be targeting.

・Disclosing or indicating personal information such as contact details with the aim of meeting up in the real world
・Disclosing or indicating another person's real world personal information without permission

This is the most reasonable thing on the entire page. This is a very good example of a good rule. It doesn't rely on the rule breaker being a "bad" person". Anyone who breaks this rule is either going to be "bad" either in the moment or consistently. Similarly any GM who enforces this rule in just about any capacity is not relied on to be "good".

・Other actions that are generally regarded as actions that inflict deep emotional distress on another person


And immediately we go right back to terrible rules. PTSD is deep emotional stress, and can easily by triggered by anything you do. We can't all go walking around assuming responsibility for every person's emotions that we walk by, because we can't know each and every action that can hurt somebody.

■Real Money Trading (RMT)

How about you actually enforce this already? People can't believe in the rules, because the rules don't work for them. At this point just about any player feels they're worth less than botters, because they pay for more subscriptions. This could be met with "but we ban RMT users all the time", but it's clear you're using a butter knife on a boulder.

■Misuse of flaws

This is actually one I specifically support. So how about you get all those people squatting on tons of houses and bring them down to just 1 personal and 1 FC house?

[Fliss]

These revisions are absolutely ridiculous. Personally, I feel like I'm not really allowed to do ANYTHING anymore under the new regime; people are offended by absolutely everything these days, hell, some people look for reasons to be offended, and these are most often the same people who are trigger-happy with reporting people as well.

And what happens when someone decides to stick their nose in where it doesn't belong? My friends and I, both within our FC and without, joke and talk to each other in ways that, to an outside observer, might look like we're just being awful people - we tease by playful name-calling and poking fun at each others' performance in instances, for example, and there's a fair bit of innuendo thrown around as well - when in reality, we're thick as thieves and don't mean a word of it. To someone who doesn't know us, it would look report-worthy; are we going to end up getting our accounts suspended for joking around with people who know and share our sense of humour, because someone just had to be a SJW and "protect" people who didn't actually need protecting?

Not to mention the whole "dismissing another person's opinion" thing. I'm sorry, but if someone is being completely inane and spouting off general stupidity ("lol BLM worst class" or "X thing sucks and no one should use it" or other foolishness followed up with "But that's just, like, my opinion, man") I'm not going to want to give them the time of day, and I'm not the only one. Some opinions just aren't worth listening to; am I going to get suspended for not listening to the ridiculous nattering of someone who's driving me up the bloody wall and just generally making an arse of themselves?

With these new rules, people basically aren't allowed to say anything at all. Big Brother has come to Eorzea, and things are going to be worse under his rule than the Garleans'.

[Lium]

If nothing's changed, then why roll out these new policies that is dividing the playerbase?

Correction. It is only dividing the American playerbase. The Japanese playerbase, from what others have said, don't seem to give a crap.

Shocking that Americans are freaking out that they can't be dicks to others now. Whatever will they do?!

[frostmagemari]

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what SQE intends to happen with these new rules, or how they hope GMs will act in following them. The rules are vague, and vague rules can mean abuse of the system that's dependent of the outlook and sensibilities of the person handing out the ruling. It won't matter what seven out of eight GMs thought was an appropriate resolution to a situation, it only matters what the one particular GM that's dealing with the case believes about how the situation needs to be resolved; and personal feelings and outlook are not separated from those decisions.

There needs to be clear rules, clear boundaries of behavior and conduct.
The problem is.. very few of the majority player base will care until they're affected by these vague rules for something they think they shouldn't be.