The new treatment of ''harassment'' in the ToS.

[Lambdafish]

Except that isn't the case. Intent isn't taken out of the equation. In fact, it's now more of a factor.

""Nuisance behaviour" means speech or behaviour that hurts others or obstructs game play, but which is not classified as harassment. Even if it was not the intention, a penalty may be imposed if the end result was that another person was hurt or obstructed."

In other words, you can be banned regardless of intent.

[Lucerna]

""Nuisance behaviour" means speech or behaviour that hurts others or obstructs game play, but which is not classified as harassment. Even if it was not the intention, a penalty may be imposed if the end result was that another person was hurt or obstructed."

In other words, you can be banned regardless of intent.

Not quite. Nuisance behavior is not listed as harassment, and is not a banning offense by itself. Also- please note that the wording you quoted says that behavior “may” be punishable. A GM is under no obligation to punish anyone in grey area cases. This just looks like a cover-all against griefers who keep trying new ways to skirt the rules of common social decency.

[HyoMinPark]

Not quite. Nuisance behavior is not listed as harassment, and is not a banning offense by itself. Also- please note that the wording you quoted says that behavior “may” be punishable. A GM is under no obligation to punish anyone in grey area cases. This just looks like a cover-all against griefers who keep trying new ways to skirt the rules of common social decency.

Except it’s still saying that you can earn penalties on your account for “nuisance behavior”, which do add up over time. Especially since these strikes never go away. Get enough strikes and you are eventually banned for them.


Several of the new guidelines are grey areas in and of themselves. What is meant by “unilaterally rejecting another player’s opinion”? What about “compelling a playstyle”? What are these “morals” that we aren’t allowed to contravene? There’s no definition for what these mean. There’s nothing that explains what actually falls under them.

[AeroXaia]

By now when I see terms like "offensive" and "harassment" thrown around (especially without clarification), and phrases like "it's not hard to act respectfully toward people", it's become painfully clear it has nothing to do with actually being a good person, but rather imposing one's beliefs on others.

Whether it's on purpose or not, a phrase like that is completely sidestepping, trivializing, and ignoring the actual issues being raised, and disingenuously paints the other person as somebody who just wants to cause trouble and harm. It's a way to shut down other peoples' opinions and make them look illegitimate and not worth listening to.

It's become way too often that things are mislabeled "offensive" or "harmful" as a way of forcing people to fall in line with their political beliefs.


Seeing people smile only because they have to doesn't really make me happy. A smile that's forced is not genuine...

[negiman4]

This thread needs to blow up. Seriously not a fan of the new Prohibited Activities and Penalties.

Square, you've already given us the tools to deal with a lot of these things by ourselves. It's not YOUR responsibility to play mommy and make sure nobody's feelings get hurt. That's their problem, not yours. I believe this sets a pretty dangerous precedent for the community. The fact that you even thought of going this route cost you a lot of my respect.

If I ever get sent to a GM for "harassment" because someone took offense to something benign I said, I will not play this game anymore. That's a promise. And no, I don't trust you to be objective. The GMs' hands-off approach to dealing with issues concerning harassment, unlike other MMORPGs, is one of the primary reasons I play this game. I don't have to worry about watching what I say in fear of offending someone and getting punished for it. I play this game because we live in a victimhood society now where everyone wants to be a victim, and I liked that FFXIV didn't cave into that social pressure. It was refreshing. But if you decide to police people's opinions in fear of those opinions hurting peoples' feelings (let's be honest, that's exactly what you're doing, you even stated it in the ToS), you become no different from any other corporation out there who believe its their duty to push an agenda "for the greater good".

Do yourself a favor, Square. Stay out of it, and revert the ToS.

[Jaywalker]

I truly think that while it's okay to have harassment rules, there need to be degrees in consequences appropriate to the degrees of offense. Further, I do think having some kind of appeal is essential in the event of dishonest player reports, dishonest GMs, or discrimination based on different views.

I figure most players and most GMs are probably fine, but especially in today's environment there is huge intolerance toward those with different opinions. One player described having an unpleasant experience being reported for not viewing Omega as trans when another player did. My impression from the account was that the reporting player was not ridiculed or shamed for having that interpretation, the penalized player simply didn't see things the same way and said so.

I know for me, I don't think it's a relevant question for Omega because it's a robot lacking feelings on the matter. There are characters in other media where that interpretation makes more sense to me. I also think if someone imagines Omega as trans, it's their right. But no one should be compelled to agree or remain silent for fear of a ban. Given the severity of bigotry accusations, I don't know that every GM or even most would be secure enough to give the accused a fair hearing under such circumstances. When it comes to authoritarians, anyone who disagrees for whatever reason can be accused as well.

Situations like that make me think checks to GM power/protection for players are important. I don't think it's currently an issue, but there's real danger there.

[Kuukyo]

Something aside from the topic above.

I have played the game long enough to have heard of some fanfest throughout the recent months talking about changes to content and a bit of gameplay, but seriously. Some changes like ToS change are really sudden. No announcements, no notifications. You close your game, go do something else and rest. Next day, bam - new ToS announced.

Is there even something called roadmap?

[Xeero]

Well was going to write a proper breakdown for why this ToS update is a horrible sordid mess, but apparently it was too long. Guess I'll have to do something shorter... Nah! Wall-o-text go!

As is I've already closed out my subscription over these TOS terms (yay for my sub re-upping just before the news broke). There's a lot of good that's in the new TOS (RMTs, certain, properly defined griefing behaviors, etc.). However when it comes to nebulous things like offending someone that's where it gets awfully troublesome and I sincerely doubt their CSR team is properly equipped to deal with this mess they've got brewing.

I've been with 14 since 1.0 and frankly our community has by and large been pretty decent with any noteworthy instances of harassment/abuse/etc. being so few and far between that it hardly warrants any kind of coded crackdown, much less one so broad that it is rife with the potential to be abused.

[Xeero]

Seriously just looking at the Harassment and Nuisance behavior sections is enough to make my skin crawl:

・Discriminatory expressions based on race/nationality/thinking/gender/sexual orientation/gender identity - Please note the "thinking" in there. You can now get your sub potentially cancelled for wrongthink.
・Discriminatory expressions about a state/religion/occupation/organisation, etc. - Sortof okay, still a bit nebulous but we probably don't need an exhaustive list here/
・Obscene/indecent expressions - Subjective. One person's obscene and indecent is another person's hilarious and not a terribly frequent occurrence in my experience
・Actions that inflict emotional distress using content related to historical events or crimes - How does this even make the list and what's the context? As it is, this could be someone reporting you for having the ability to actually back up your statement with facts regarding an incident.
・Stalking - Yes, this is actual harassment and was probably on the list prior to this update.
・Disclosing or indicating personal information such as contact details with the aim of meeting up in the real world - To use a bit of hyperbole: Doesn't this make Fan Fest a bannable offense? This is indicating consensual disclosure of info, the only point where THIS should be an issue is if it's someone soliciting a minor, the broad reach of this statement is baffling.
・Disclosing or indicating another person's real world personal information without permission - So doxxing, agreed this is bad and easily defined. Good one to have.
・Other actions that are generally regarded as actions that inflict deep emotional distress on another person - Such as the existence of this new TOS? Can I get the guy who drew these up to face account penalties? After all it caused me enough distress I felt the need to cancel my subscription to make a statement. "Generally regarded" by whom? Who gets to decide this? The player base? We can't even agree if these rules are good or bad if this thread is any indication, so how can we even hope to properly define what would be 'generally regarded to inflict deep emotional distress'.

[Xeero]

And then Offensive Behavior:
・Aggressive expressions such as violent language/slander/insult/threat. -threats I get, violent language again as written this indicates any violent language so long as it upsets me regardless of if I'm the target or not. Also this is a text medium, it's not "slander" it's "libel" please get your terms right.
・Expressions that provoke or belittle another person, such as excessive criticism, negation/ridicule - Subjective given everyone reacts differently barring some VERY overt examples. Know how you handle this? Blacklist and/or votekick.
・Expressions that significantly lack consideration for another person - Consideration how? There's a lot of things I can cite as someone being significantly inconsiderate but that's subjective to myself alone and to someone else it doesn't matter.
・Expressions that unilaterally reject another person's opinion - Like our opinions were rejected/not solicited on these changes?
・Expressions that any reasonable person would find offensive - Please define "reasonable". As was pointed out above someone was demonstrably quite unreasonable but a GM still intervened
・Expressions that compel a playing style - Compel how? Some people take very well to criticism when they're doing a poor job, others get incredibly defensive. Do you seriously want your GMs sifting through all of this? Again, blacklist and votekick has worked wonders for quite some time now
・Expressions that attempt to unilaterally exclude someone from the game or content/community, etc. - So if I and a group of friends do not want to play with someone that's bad, but the FC can make the "Club of no Homers" and that's okay. Gotcha.
(Except when in accordance with rules set by an administrator such as a Free Company Master)
・Expressions that contravene public order and morals - Again: Defined as what and by whom? If 99 people are okay with it but one person isn't is that enough? Or what if 50 people like it, 20 people don't and 30 people don't care? Where does the line get drawn please and thank-you.
・Other expressions that are offensive to another person - Holeee heck, can you possibly make this any more broad reaching? No, wait, please don't try I don't want to see the results. Sorry, but no. Just because you can't police your emotions means that I have to pay the price. I have no idea what may offend you personally, much less what will get you running crying to the GM over.

Most of the other stuff in the TOS update is fine and good, but these two lists, man. This is just absurd and disingenuous to have this mess foisted on us as if we're a bunch of kindergartners. In trying to define outliers for which we've had the tools to deal with for YEARS it's only going to serve to make the game more divisive by emboldening terrible players to do terrible things because now they're well within the letter of the law to do so, and I'm sorry in these situations it's the letter, not the spirit that has to be scrutinized.