Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Melichoir]

Ive seen teh opposite where broad ToS were implemented. Overtime, the toxicity and abuse ramped up, not down, as the player base turned into a "gotta pull the trigger first lest I be banned" or people were less likely to associate with people they didnt know. Rules like these tend to push for the race to the bottom, not clear up the issues.

[Xtrasweettea]

That won't happen. You and many others posting here are running to the worst possible places with this. Contrary to what you guys think, no one cares about you or what you say. The vast majority of players are only concerned with whatever it is they're doing.

If you never had a problem before, you won't have one now.

We are able to go the distance with this because the rules and lack of definitions of words give me that breadth. There is no fence around the playground to stop the kids from running into the street. SE need to build the fence.

I am not trying to convince SE anything on these boards. I know they don't care about subscriber#940342 in the USA posting something on the forums. If anything, I am trying to bring to attention to my fellow players the risk of these rules.

The vast majority of players only concerned with whatever they are doing, until they cannot do what they want to do because of an unknown.

It honestly doesn't matter if I never had a problem before. Before had its own set of rules and guidelines versus now.

[Khanscott]

And if not mistaken, SE..... more specifically, Yoshi-P and the ffxiv crew, have a history of this mindset in expectations during the creation and development of content, but has ended up bitting in the backside each time.

History repeating itself once again, yet this time people are calling them out on it, especially those of us whom work in the field of CSR and Field Services, whom can see just what the implications with their wording will cause.

The only implication I see resulting from this, is the kind of "self-policing" that got the Stanford Prison Experiment shut down.

[Nedkel]

This is simply not true. SE clearly told us that they want to take things in their own hands from now, because their previous stance on the matter -ie: "let the community regulate itself"- isn't working anymore. SE will regulate cases that they wouldn't review before. It's a full on 180° turn from what they have done until now. Brushing that off as easily as you do is simply being either ignorant or careless.

What does "isnt working anymore" exactly means, because as far as i know FFXIV has the most kind community in the entire mmo genre.

[Thatusernameistaken]

It's not optimism, it's realism. I can bet you my next month's sub fee that your account will be fine. I can promise you my account will be completely okay going forward. I (sort of) understand where many of you are coming from with the concerns about the vagueness of the new rules, but I really think this is just hyperbole. People just freaking out for no reason.

Just look at the posts in this thread. "Welp. Guess I can't talk to anyone anymore." "If I tell a healer to DPS a little I can get banned now!" Just no. No you are not. Posters have already tried to tell me that some of the things I've said in this thread are violations under the new rules. One guy/gal even said they were going to report me.

Guess what? I'm fine. You will be, too. I cannot stress enough how little people care about you. And I'm not saying that in a bad way. People are just more concerned about what they're doing. (Myself included.) And for the odd person that does report you for something that seems like a non-issue, the GMs can look at chat logs. They can see what's going on. I can promise you they won't take action on a scenario like what I described above. And by the way, I'm basing my opinions on many other MP games I've played that have had similar rules changes.

People freaked out in those games, too. Nothing happened.

Anyone who has played Heroes of the Storm will be very worried about these changes. Blizzard implemented an automated report system where you could report someone just for picking a Hero you didn't like...AND THEY WOULD ACTUALLY GET SUSPENDED. The forums were flooded with people who got banned with absolutely no reason given as to why, and most of them were legitimate players legitimately playing the game the way they thought was best for the team. But someone disagreed with them and reported them...and they were actually suspended. I played for a while after they made this policy, and the voice chat in my games was absolutely silent after this because we were all scared of getting banned. This, combined with a few other major problems with the game, eventually led to it being so unpopular Blizzard pulled the plug on it.

People have every right to be worried about this.

[Melichoir]

Yeah, you do need to cater to the groups skill level. It's part of the group play dynamic. This is not an advanced concept. If pushing them past their limits causes wipes, it's only going to waste more time. That's the only retribution you're going to see, wasting more of your own time by not cooperating because you're better. If you don't like this, don't consent to be matched with anyone of any skill level by using roulette. Roulette is not and never has been the "Match me with players of equal skill button". The only ones causing problems is the ones bullying randoms for not meeting their standards that belong in a premade.

Ive literally played with players who choose which skill to use based solely on the animation and how pretty it looks. Ive literally played with healers who are doing nothing but spamming the same heal. Not different heals. The exact same one, in EX content. It lead to toxicity, and group dynamics falling apart. This is also part of your lowest common denominator. No, you do not cater to your lowest player base, you cater to average and (usually) above, and push lower skilled players to be better, not dumb down the system to meet their needs at everyone elses expense. People do not find that fun. They find it frustrating and unfair. It again is punishing better skilled players just to satisfy lower skilled players. That mentality is not good for the games health overall. As I pointed out, youll just start seeing more people being kicked in the end. Itll be "Youre slowing us down, bye." and vote kicking. Whats SE going to say? "No, you cant kick someone whos impeding your ability to run the dungeon the way that the party majority wants?"

Lets consider this: Do you think people would play basketball if the rules were then changes so that the nets were a foot or two off hte ground, no one was allowed to run, and you had to give every player a 2 foot distance, all so the lowest skilled people could 'play it too'. Most people wouldnt, and would not invite nor play with people who wanted those kind of changes. You dont cater to the lowest skilled when it comes to group dynamics.

[TheCurls]

Well, I can tell you right now it had nothing to do with him. While he was attacking a single enemy, the healer accidentally aggro'd 4 more while tank wasn't looking. Not like a GM is able to review the moment of the crime in the future.
PS. it was nothing serious, there were no wipes, I was BLM so I just used Sleep on the mobs and that was that.

I don’t want you to think I was accusing you of anything because I wasn’t! I was just using your post as an example to that other guy that we can’t and shouldn’t believe everything we read on the internet.

The forums and reddit are going to be inundated with posts where people got banned and they’re going to look for sympathy and outrage from the playerbase against SE by giving only a portion of the facts or a small sample screenshot that paints them in a totally innocent light.

[Tiraelina]

Ive literally played with players who choose which skill to use based solely on the animation and how pretty it looks. Ive literally played with healers who are doing nothing but spamming the same heal. Not different heals. The exact same one, in EX content. It lead to toxicity, and group dynamics falling apart. This is also part of your lowest common denominator. No, you do not cater to your lowest player base, you cater to average and (usually) above, and push lower skilled players to be better, not dumb down the system to meet their needs at everyone elses expense. People do not find that fun. They find it frustrating and unfair. It again is punishing better skilled players just to satisfy lower skilled players. That mentality is not good for the games health overall. As I pointed out, youll just start seeing more people being kicked in the end. Itll be "Youre slowing us down, bye." and vote kicking. Whats SE going to say? "No, you cant kick someone whos impeding your ability to run the dungeon the way that the party majority wants?"

Lets consider this: Do you think people would play basketball if the rules were then changes so that the nets were a foot or two off hte ground, no one was allowed to run, and you had to give every player a 2 foot distance, all so the lowest skilled people could 'play it too'. Most people wouldnt, and would not invite nor play with people who wanted those kind of changes. You dont cater to the lowest skilled when it comes to group dynamics.

If they're actually obstructing the group from doing anything. You're not going to get actioned against for kicking them. This isn't changing. Abusing them while doing it on the other hand is.

If they only made it more difficult and it was still very much doable, that's roulette?

I really don't care if I have to carry someone, I preferred it when games had some slack for it because then it doesn't make the entire game fall apart otherwise.

[Coltvoyance]

Some of this seems rather scary. Demolition Man comes to mind... "Only express happy, joy-joy feelings towards others or get banned."

But, how am I supposed to correct someone who is playing poorly without causing "emotional distress"? Some people can have emotional turmoil from someone just saying hello. How am I supposed to know if my criticism of someones playing will have that effect? Should I just let them spam Cure 3, run out of mana, continually wipe the party and sit quietly for 90 minutes? How do I confront them? Can Square include an emotional sensitivity tutorial in the game that can teach me? Since it's now required to play the game?

Maybe I should set aside the first 10 minutes of each Duty Finder run to get to know each player. But what if other players get upset that I'm holding the run back for 10 minutes in an attempt to get to know them so I don't offend them accidentally and get banned? What if I get upset that they're upset at me because I'm trying to calibrate my comments to their emotional sensitivities? Do we all get banned?

Should I just not talk? Maybe I just shouldn't play with others. Or maybe not play at all? Would that be better?

I think that's the solution. No one's feelings can get hurt if no one plays.

It's time to shut FFXIV down. There's too much risk of human interaction in this MMO; which studies suggest is a leading cause of emotional distress. Even if you ban people afterwards, the emotional scar is still there. You can't take back the words. Exposing people to that kind of trauma is too dangerous. Shame on you Square Enix. How dare you profit from an online game where people talk to other people and risk having their feelings hurt!

You should be ashamed!

[Freyt]

A while back ago in an instance of Shisui I was healing. I was DPS'ing as a healer. I was keeping everyone alive. In the middle of the first boss, another player started going off about how I should stick to healing. They hadn't died by this point, or anyone else, I simply hadn't brought them to 100% HP. They were clearly under emotional distress, despite me performing my absolute best for the party and not having said ANYTHING by then other than possibly "hello" at the beginning of the instance.

So how is that resolved under these rules?