Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Celef]

This has literally happened to me twice in DF parties since Stormblood released. Even using "hello" was met with a very harsh response both times. I reported and blacklisted both of them. With these new rules, now we're at fault instead of them.

I think I'll make a maccro with something like :
"Hello, regarding SE's new policy about controlling interaction between players this message is the only one you'll get from me during this run in order to avoid any risk of offense. Have a nice day " mark the use of a smiley to make it more friendly

[HyoMinPark]

If it is that post i copy pasted that you were referring to, you interpreted as weasel words/sly, and it's not. Please refer to: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/いたちごっこ to see the idiomatic meaning.

Impasse suggests there is an ultimate ending to it where neither side wins, maybe a better translation is "Arms race" as in, a situation where it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger ad infinitum?

The poster was saying (paraphrasing even more then I did before): Make the rules 100% invariable and people will sneak their way around them, so more 100% invariable rules need to be added, and people will sneak their way around them, so more 100% invariable rules need to added.

Okay, but now you need to consider the other hand: we have vague and broad guidelines that insinuate anything and everything can be reported if a person considers it “offensive” or “emotionally distressing” enough (which, in this day, is not an uncommon practice, unfortunately), and they can be manipulated in anyone’s favor for anything. (Too many “anything’s” here.)

Why do we need a this wide of an umbrella? You can still be specific in examples while adding a footnote of “We also reserve the right to take action against anything else we consider to be excessively offensive that may not be listed here” (in far more poetic wording). That covers this fear of “constantly having to add more and more rules”.

Leaving rules up to such a wide array of interpretations isn’t good design, in my opinion. Too much gray area is not a good thing. If there were only a few people that had concerns about the vagueness, then I would understand comments about how this isn’t that big of a deal, but I don’t think it’s just a few people who are questioning what the guidelines actually mean. Unfortunately, without clarification, we have to just wait and see what happens. I would like to think there isn’t going to be a sudden increase in draconian rule enforcement.

Legislating Playstyle is weird. I said that in my post. Please re-read and check. I strongly think SE need to clarify just this one a bit, all the rest are quite clearly "being excellent to each other" but this legislation of playstyle isn't and is very weird. (Note that it's the same wording and meaning in the JP version, weird)

We are in agreement on this point, yes?

The example was not about me misunderstanding that we are in agreement, nor about misreading your post. It was to show you that broad and poorly thought-out rules can be twisted to fit any scenario, no matter how benign (and to also illustrate how you end up with a scenario where there is absolutely no way to determine who should “win” despite both parties having an argument under these new rules). And to also have you consider the question of how you would legislate them in a fair manner for these scenarios.


Speaking personally, that is not the only guideline that I think should be looked at and amended. None of the other MMO code of conduct pages I looked at had anything about “unilaterally rejecting another’s opinion” or punishing for “contravening morals” in their lists of prohibited or “nuisance” behavior. I also disagree with the clause declaring that, even if it was not the intention of someone to hurt another player’s feelings, they may still get a mark on their account if the other party feels the need to report over it.

There are other guidelines that I read and understood where they were coming from (and I addressed them several pages back in this thread with individual thoughts on them). But there are others that are so vague that I found myself wondering what they really meant when I first read through them (and still question how some are even going to be enforced even now after several hours of trying to parse them).

Forgive my imprecise use of "American", it was not means as a slight, just to describe this side of the forums when I didn't know better. I will refer to this side as the NA forums not the American ones. Sorry.

I did not mean to infer that you meant it as a slight. I was merely saying that it’s not just Americans who post here.

[LunaProtege]

This kind of interventionalist approach is just going to create an environment of internal isolation within the game. People will avoid what little banter there is in Duty Roulettes, they will avoid reaching out to find like minded people while in the game itself, and will resort to forming guilds with people they've found in off game sites and IRL.

… At that point, you may as well be playing on private servers for all the interaction with others you're having.

Duty Finder will eventually fall to the wayside as people are driven to play with only their friends from outside the game. The wait times will extend... Not sure by how much. Players will actively avoid open world and "open duty" content like Eureka, and PvP will become scarce for fear that someone may abuse the system to weed out the winners.

How well founded will their fears be? It won't matter. The mere possibility that this policy might be abused will cause fear regardless. It could turn out that nobody will end up trying to abuse the policy, and yet everyone is going to be afraid they might. And that fear will drive the game into an age of the gated community.

The funny thing is that this may actually cause a surge in Savage raiding, as the people forced to have a consistent play group OUTSIDE of Savage realize that they can just use that same group for the next stage.

[linay]

Multi-pulls are possible. More people are capable of doing that than you would think in most dungeons. Though there are some particular groups of mobs that are absolutely not recommended to mix without really good gear, most can be safely grouped up.

In that situation, one could say that the healer is "obstructing the gameplay" of the others if they fail to fully utilize their kit to heal thus "causing wipes". By being bad they make it impossible to play efficiently. For many AoE's in this game it is pretty much necessary to pack two groups because at three mobs their potency just isn't high enough to make them better than single target attacks. And that's without taking into account the cooldowns sharp decrease in efficiency.

I highly doubt SE would equate not being good to being obstructive. Obstructive behaviors are behaviors that are made by choice, not due to inability to do something.

In the end, whenever we are talking about anything remotely "playstyle"...we are talking about either everyone being in the wrong or no one. There's ALWAYS going to be someone that needs to cave in...or the party will just need to quit. And there's really no way to decide this fairly as an outsider. The party members can vote to do it one way or another, but at four party members it's possible to get a tie. And someone's still going to "get distressed".

I disagree. A non-tank who consistently pulls ahead of the party and brings in more than the party can handle is clearly in the wrong regardless if that person simply likes that fast playstyle without having any malicious intent toward the rest of the party.

[Katinahoodie]

"Creating, Distributing, Using or Promoting Utilities that interact with the game" this is a blanket statement that discord falls under. Does the use and link distribution of the communication program Discord go against ToS.

[linay]

"Creating, Distributing, Using or Promoting Utilities that interact with the game" this is a blanket statement that discord falls under. Does the use and link distribution of the communication program Discord go against ToS.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Discord is considered "tools that permit automated or “absentee” play."

[SDaemon]

"Creating, Distributing, Using or Promoting Utilities that interact with the game" this is a blanket statement that discord falls under. Does the use and link distribution of the communication program Discord go against ToS.

Out of curiosity, how does Discord interact with the game that you believe causes it to fall into this category of offense?

[Sigma-Astra]

"Creating, Distributing, Using or Promoting Utilities that interact with the game" this is a blanket statement that discord falls under. Does the use and link distribution of the communication program Discord go against ToS.

Discord....cannot control your character and play the game for you. It also can't tell you when mechanics are happening. It's a completely separate and stand alone communications program that does not interact with the software or data meant to run the game with. You also can't use Discord to replace the in-game chatting method completely either. Discord doesn't really interact with the game at all as you can still play the game just fine with or without it.

[Iscah]

Re. rules against disclosing real-world information: this may well be to protect Square Enix from being legally responsible for any consequences of people revealing their personal information - especially if it somehow got intercepted, or accidentally displayed in a public channel, or something. If anything happens, they just say "we said they shouldn't, so it's not our responsibility that they did."

Nobody is actually going to report their friend for giving them requested contact details, after all!

Someone earlier mentioned with the new rules how someone could be banned for saying "Hi" and here is an example how.
One player "Hi"
Other player "I was deeply offended at another player's use of the word " Hi". The way they spoke to me was far too informal, considering the fact we had not even met before. Their familiarity was deeply unsettling for me. Not only that, but everybody knows that "Hi" is an acronym for "Huge Idiot" so [the player] was being incredibly rude and belittling. "

You can get penalised for offending another player, even if it wasn't your intention, under these new rules, so trolls could exploit it by reporting in the manner seen above.

There is a very critical factor that you're overlooking in this scenario.

The rules say that you may (ie: if the GM judges it appropriate) get penalised if the other person took offence where you didn't mean it. Not that you will.

The GM still has to decide whether this is a valid complaint or not. It's not automatically in the reporter's favour just because they claim they were offended.

Even if the GM "accepts" that the reporter feels offended, they are not required to take any action against you because it is not required. It is only an option that is open to them if the case calls for it.

And any sort of "GM having a bad day" scenario would surely be taken out against the reporter rather than their target. Seriously, how vindictive and petty would someone be to choose to uphold a report like that and go through the process of punishing someone and logging a caution against their account because they said 'hi'?

Would be helpful if they clarified that [it's aimed at MSQ cutscene skipping], 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.

So how exactly do they intend to implement the part of this revision to the tos regarding “intentional” disconnects? I 90k maybe three times a week on average because our net is weak sauce, but the thought of possibly getting reprimanded in game for my isp is absolutely ludicrous.

I assume, if you got investigated for that, they'd see it's genuinely random - dropping suddenly mid-battle, coming back and trying again, etc.

Deliberate disconnecting is going to be a very different pattern - repeatedly "disconnecting" just as they load into certain dungeons, or every time a cutscene starts in a MSQ roulette dungeon. (Plus what they do once they reconnect - a genuine disconnect during a cutscene would *hopefully* be polite and wait for the rest of the party to be released from the cutscene lock.

■Nuisance behaviour
"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.

This flat out states that your intention doesn't matter, only someone elses feelings. This means that someone can just accuse someone of being hurt by their words for any reasons and get them banned.

Again: a penalty may, not will, be imposed.

Also there are cautions and warnings (not required to escalate each time) before someone gets even a temporary ban for a minor issue.

Please refer to my post on page 44 if you want more info.

Side note on forum function: "page 44" isn't a useful reference because people can change the number of posts displayed per page. (This is still only a 14-page thread for me.)

If you want to point to a specific post, you need to refer to the post number in the upper-right corner of the individual post - and this is actually a hyperlink from which you can copy the URL and use it to directly link to the post from anywhere.

[Naryoril]

My take on the new rules is: they made them sound stricter than they will actually be policed, just to be on the safe side so nobody will be able to complain "but that dick thing i did doesn't violate the rules, so you are not allowed to ban me". It doesn't mean that they will ban everyone who has a different opinion than somebody else. It will also most likely come down to HOW you say stuff. Just don't be a dick and i doubt you'll ever have problems.