Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Stereomix]

Rules should be clear and concise enough that you know exactly when you commit an offence. Murphy's law is the reasoning. "If something can go wrong, it will."

[Lium]

You realise NA includes all of North and South America, Caribbeans and many OCE and EU players that play. This isnt an "American" thing.

Your post is quite offensive to exclude others according to the new revisions to policy.

And players from Europe, the Caribbean, etc. are - in general - not nearly as boorish as we are. (We being Americans.) As another poster pointed out, these rules seem mostly aimed directly at players in the United States.

[SixtyLove]

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.

Then, with all due respect to you, you shouldn't have a problem with this policy because it's essentially only changing the way you approach this. Since the launch of the game in 2013 it has always, and always will be, possible to ask for a 'basic level of contribution' from another player. What ISN'T acceptable is the oft-seen-on-reddit, in-game (and in the tales from the duty finder thread) approach to asking for this basic level of contribution which essentially boils down to someone in the party saying a variant of "omg learn to play/dodge/dps/your rotation" followed by an expletive insult or something such as "douche".

If you can't ask someone to pull their weight or to look up a stat/rotation without using a derogatory term or an insult then it says more about you than it does about the player who allegedly 'sucks'. No one can, or will have an issue with constructive advice and/or politeness, and those on the receiving end do not have to take your advice either. That is, essentially, how it has always been in this game.

I'd say; to everyone here; stop looking for reasons and/or excuses for why you don't need to try to foster improvement in others within the community because that is basically what this embittered attitude boils down to here. I think a little self-reflection wouldn't go amiss here.

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!

This is essentially the problem here, SE are finally going to address some of the toxicity within the community, and the first to take issue with that, it could be said, are those who foster and create toxicity. There's no way or knowing, or proving that for certain.... but it is somewhat concerning that people are so incensed by the idea of SE actively doing something in respect of harassment and abuse. No one, no matter how badly they play, deserves to be abused in game. "I'm not going to help new players/others because I can't be a jerk*** while doing so" is the underlying theme to some of the posts here, and I've seen a few comments about it while I was in the new Eureka today. I agree with you, it's a good thing for the community and about time Square did something. I say good on them for moving into 2019.

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.

I haven't seen any posts by ElazuHP in this thread where they are being 'disrespectful to people they disagree with'. What ElazuHP HAS questioned is whether there is a correlation between negative behaviour and the new consequences of being held accountable for your actions fostering all of the posts here where people have their backs up. Under the new rules both your (!!!) post and mine (oh, the irony!) could be bannable offences since there's some accusational language and passive-aggressive responding in yours with the "please refer" statement and I'm here breaking stuff down in the hope that you will see what is actually happening here with these changes. Where do we draw a line on what is bannable and how we should behave? I think we should ALL be thinking about this and that many here need to put their "I'm right" hats away now.


If you havent done anything wrong then, realistically, you have nothing to worry about.

[blackcitadel9]

I think all the people who aren't skeptical of these changes are not properly applying the veil of ignorance on these rules. They operate under the assumption "I won't ever fall afoul of them because (In their own opinion) I'm a nice, respectful person."
The problem is it doesn't matter who you are. It only matters who the offended party is and the person deciding if you need to be punished. The rules as they are, are too vague and too easily weaponized.
Vagueness doesn't make rules better, it just makes them more powerful.

One thing read out of proper context and you are now hit with a caution or a warning. This then makes further action taken against you easier if it's malicious in nature or even if you're just unlucky enough to meet a few people who think what you're
saying is worthy of reporting and a few GMs who agree with them, either just because lack of context, or time or energy to properly investigate. This is assuming you're innocent ofc. If you think all the GMs can apply 100% attention and energy to every report that will be made...it's just not going to happen.

I'd like to believe that the people in charge of enforcing these rules are decent people with a fair sense of right and wrong, unfortunately we don't know that.
We also don't know what actually IS an offense or an infraction because they are so subjective, doubly so, the subjective interpretation of whoever puts in the report and then the GM who has to deal with it.
I'd also like to fall back on common sense and general courtesy being enough, but honestly the way the world is today...common sense is vanishingly rare and courtesy is subjective.

[frostmagemari]

These new rules are pretty darn clear to me (with the exception of the "intentionally leaving" part, but another poster clarified that). And I think this is 46 pages of cultural freakout. Americans don't like ANYTHING that can be seen as restricting freedom of speech, even if no real restriction exists. We just like to over react because that's what Americans do.

For example. If I was running a PUG dungeon and I noticed the SMN wasn't using any DOTs, and I said to them "Hey summoner, use your dots lol" and the SMN responded with "Don't tell me how to play my job! Reported!" (This actually happened once, but it was the tank who told the SMN to use their dots.), I could guarantee you nothing would happen to me. Because the GM would look at the chat logs and see I wasn't being snarky or antagonistic. If I had said something along the lines of what you would see in WoW or LoL, then yes, I'd get in trouble. And rightfully so.

There is a clear distinction here.

There isn't a clear distinction, because as i said.. it is all up the discretion of the GM dealing with the case because the rule are so open ended, and you're lobbing softball situations to aid your argument, just like some are going overboard to aid theirs.

I can guarantee one thing will come out of this; ticket overload. GMs will be over taxed by the increase in tickets, which will mean SQE has to do one of two things; The first will be spending more money to hire more GMs (which.. c'mon now.. c'mon..) or two, they will insist that GMs deal with cases quicker (which is the more likely option). As seen with other companies(both game and non game), when it's demanded that you resolve situations quickly, it is much more common to not take the time needed to give an impartial ruling or take all the facts of a situation into account.

You will get snap rulings, you will get unneeded or undeserved punishments or situations where punishments should be put out won't be; and if you don't think we will, that's naive.

[zztoluca]

And players from Europe, the Caribbean, etc. are - in general - not nearly as boorish as we are. (We being Americans.) As another poster pointed out, these rules seem mostly aimed directly at players in the United States.

As I said before this isnt an American thing. This doesn't fly with any of my Latino friends or Canadians, they arent American and can see the flaws in these policies.

A boorsih person isnt confined to one region in the world, a very narrow view to have.

[Zanos]

I don't understand the mentality permeating this thread that this won't change the way anything is enforced. Why would SE grant GMs powers and then not use them? If what they're actually going to enforce is different, why not write that down instead?

And players from Europe, the Caribbean, etc. are - in general - not nearly as boorish as we are. (We being Americans.) As another poster pointed out, these rules seem mostly aimed directly at players in the United States.

Are you saying Americans are boorish? That's a rules violation there friend, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

[Shuuchi]

Also, in response to someone who posted that the rules need to be exact and much more focused, they actually need to be subtle so that individual context can be considered. If they were exact, people would carefully scrutinize them to find the best way to get around them using the 'letter of the law' rather then intent. Being vague allows the GMs more leeway to truly examine each situation and apply the rules as needed.

That's the conclusion I came to as well.
The new rules seem to be meant to give GMs unlimited power in order to resolve/react to the variety of situations that may occur in game.

However, power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. I for one don't trust every GM to be unbiased and adhere to professionalism in every situation.
Also, if SE gets swarmed by tickets, we may end up with a system similar to WoW where if enough people spam report against someone, the system automatically bans him/her until the ticket is resolved, which can take days if not weeks.

It's a problem I'd rather not have to deal with a year or two down the line.

[Shuuchi]

I haven't seen any posts by ElazuHP in this thread where they are being 'disrespectful to people they disagree with'.

This is precisely my issue with this whole kerfuffle.
Toxicity is subjective. You will not see someone who agrees with you as toxic no matter what he/she does. It's a part of being human.
GMs are not machines - they are humans too.

[Mizunoko]

And players from Europe, the Caribbean, etc. are - in general - not nearly as boorish as we are. (We being Americans.) As another poster pointed out, these rules seem mostly aimed directly at players in the United States.

You're being racist....to say that just because i am a american that i am a boorish person? That is generalizing an entire group of people and then insulting them based them being a part of that group. It's an extremely childish thing to say and is only counterproductive in the sense that you claim that more respect is what we need while at the same time hypocritically stating such things as this. I am reporting you for harassing me based on racist generalized statements. No seriously i'm reporting you.