Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Arrius]

The times have changed as it says...so social politics should be injected into an already successful mmo that was doing just fine.
Get in line, stay in your lane.
Behave how they want you to behave and smile doing it.
Don’t express ideas, opinions, definitely do not even think them, that you know are controversial or debatable.
Don’t even talk about history.
Play how they want you to play.
Be friends with people that are like minded but make sure it’s in line with the rules and thought police
Condition yourselves to submit to any new changes.
Do these things and you will go unnoticed and be safe because times have definitely changed.

When people can't behave themselves in then game, then of course the ones responsible for running it will put a tighter grip on their rules.
And it's not like it's not happening here, given the listup SE made in a stream.

If everyone would be just excellent to each other, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

[Kaedan]

When people can't behave themselves in then game, then of course the ones responsible for running it will put a tighter grip on their rules.
And it's not like it's not happening here, given the listup SE made in a stream.

If everyone would be just excellent to each other, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

Be... EXCELLENT to each other.

...And party on dudes!

Love that movie. And good words to live by. ^_^

[Olivia0x25]

When people can't behave themselves in then game, then of course the ones responsible for running it will put a tighter grip on their rules.
And it's not like it's not happening here, given the listup SE made in a stream.

If everyone would be just excellent to each other, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

So we are taking the "Gillete" approach to this?

holding EVERYONE responsible, or treating EVERYONE like they are harassers even though its only a small fraction of the population actually doing it?

Doesn't seem fair to me Billy.

[Kaedan]

So we are taking the "Gillete" approach to this?

holding EVERYONE responsible, or treating EVERYONE like they are harassers even though its only a small fraction of the population actually doing it?

Doesn't seem fair to me Billy.

Nothing in their policy changes implies anything of that sort.

[Olivia0x25]

Nothing in their policy changes implies anything of that sort.

was more in reply to the "If everyone would be just excellent to each other, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

[Thatusernameistaken]

Isn't that no different than saying "Ignorance of the law is not a defense"? In essence, "I didn't know what I was doing" won't fly.

You're right. But societal laws require this stipulation because societal laws, for the most part, are designed to protect human life and property, and breaking a societal law typically means you've actually damaged (or endangered the well-being of) another person or their property. So when the stakes are that high, it makes perfect sense for that stipulation to exist for societal laws. Also, societal laws are very clear and almost everything is very clearly defined and pretty much everyone knows exactly how to avoid breaking a societal law. So ignorance is no excuse.

These new rules, on the other hand, are not well defined at all and players honestly have no way of knowing whether or not they are breaking the rules because they designed to be completely subjective on a person-to-person basis. Even if you conduct yourself the exact same way every single time you are in a group, one group might view your conduct as fine, and another might view it as offensive. There is absolutely no way to know how each person you play with is going to interpret your actions. So it's actually completely reasonable and even expected that people are going to have no idea how to properly follow these rules, making the "ignorance is not an excuse" clause completely irrelevant. It's impossible to know how to follow the rule, so all you have is ignorance of the rule.

EDIT: To put this another way, the difference between societal laws and these new rules is that if I always use my turn signal when turning, I will never break that law. Ever. But if I always DPS as a healer, sometimes nobody will be offended, and sometimes they will, and I have absolutely no way of knowing who will and won't be upset by that. I have no control over whether I'm in violation of the rules or not because they aren't based on my actions. They are based on other people's INTERPRETATION of my actions.

[Arrius]

So we are taking the "Gillete" approach to this?

holding EVERYONE responsible, or treating EVERYONE like they are harassers even though its only a small fraction of the population actually doing it?

Doesn't seem fair to me Billy.

If you didn't had any problem with GM's or the support, you wouldn't have any problems with them now.
And it doesn't matter 'if it's only a small fraction of the population' - Alone the fact that players get harassed is reason enough for SE to step up their game.

[MirielleLavandre]

The times have changed as it says...so social politics should be injected into an already successful mmo that was doing just fine.
Get in line, stay in your lane.
Behave how they want you to behave and smile doing it.
Don’t express ideas, opinions, definitely do not even think them, that you know are controversial or debatable.
Don’t even talk about history.
Play how they want you to play.
Be friends with people that are like minded but make sure it’s in line with the rules and thought police
Condition yourselves to submit to any new changes.
Do these things and you will go unnoticed and be safe because times have definitely changed.

I mentioned this way, way back in this, but almost all of what you wrote is exactly the way we (Japanese people) behave on a regular basis [and thus these rules seem more directed at non-JPN player base]. I think there is a huge difference in cultures, obviously, since many non-Asian countries are really individualistic vs. a more community based mindset. But in effect, it seems like all SE is doing is trying to enforce common courtesy and make the game more friendly to the casual playerbase that makes up the majority of the subscribers. We shouldn't forget that only a small portion of players even read or post on here or reddit and like someone else mentioned, many probably don't even know of the change. I guess it's the difference between "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' approach (JPN) vs "those that stick out from the crowd are special and get rewarded" maybe? But yes, just let us all be excellent to each other and it all works out in the end ^_^v

[HyoMinPark]

Unilaterally rejecting someone's opinion. That's what it means. It does not mean "to disagree". You're free to disagree as much as you want. That's not against policy (unless you disagree in an insulting way). It's when you "unilaterally reject another's opinion" that it might be grounds for a warning.

I think a big problem people are having is that SE is using poor choices of words for their translation. It's not that the translation is incorrect, but they are using words that some either don't know or mistake for other meanings. There was this exact same problem with the "compel a playstyle" point. Someone mistakenly thought "to compel" means "to convince", which is not the case at all. It means "to force".

I think if SE went back and chose better words for their translation, that would clear a lot of this up.

Very nice at just repeating the words back to me instead of trying to actually define them. The fact that players cannot figure out an adequate definition is exactly the problem here. It's not from a lack of understanding of the terms in a definition sense-- it's from us having no idea where SE is even coming from with these "rules". They could very well mean we aren't allowed to reject opinions period; the parameters are not clearly defined. And, really, why does a rule like this even matter? Because people "feel bad" if someone else doesn't agree with their opinion? It's one thing to berate someone for having it; it's another to just say, "You can't say anything to make me see things your way, sorry".

There's still literally no reason for a rule like this. No other MMO policy that I looked at has anything like it (as well as the playstyle rule), so it's far from a standard thing. Probably because anyone could claim they "felt unilaterally rejected in their opinion" or "forced to play a certain way" and there would be no way to prove otherwise since it would be based off of "feelings". And since we've established it doesn't matter whether the intention was there or not...


EDIT: Judging from a document I found discussing unilateral changes in the workplace, it's referring to making said changes without any sort of bargaining on behalf of the decision, and basically a higher-up deciding "this is so because I deem it to be so". Why does this need to be applied to opinions of all things, though? Opinions can vary between individuals; are they attempting to try and force acceptance of opinions that differ from one's own? Because you can't force every person to just accept differing opinions. Some people simply don't want to, and while that can be frustrating, I don't think it requires a rule saying "you aren't allowed to do this".

Wish I could know if that was where SE was coming from or not.

[Raiya]

If the government changes its laws we simply abide by them. Why? Because we aren't intending to break the rules.

Just be your nice self and nothing has changed. The new rules are pretty basic.

"Don't insult people, don't stalk people, don't be toxic"

To be blunt the whole problem is down to one thing: The Troll Fuel factor. There's always an idiot/emo/headcase out there that will cause bloody murder for the sake of it and GM's are human too most have cop on but there's one in every job and place that can be an overzealous eejit and cause trouble for everyone and that's what people are getting concerned about because the rule's are basically vague enough as to enable this.