Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Ssmiley_Bjakkzz]

I find your use of scumlord offensive. Please look forward to your ban.

I find your reply offensive look forward for your ban.

[Iscah]

Of course we won't all be banned or punished for minor stuff.

But given how the new rules are worded it will be almost impossible not to break some of them at some point, unwittingly or not.
If you then get punished for that rulebreaking depends first of all on if someone reports you, and then on the subjective judgement of a GM. Subjective, because objectively a break of the rules is a break of the rules.

That the rules are worded such that many people, as evidenced by discussions here, are still not quite sure what some of the rules actually mean does not exactly improve anything.

SE could just have replaced all the text of the new rules with "Don't do anything bad" without anything really changing.

So, if people see issues with the rules, they should make a simple post outlining those issues. Not extreme examples, claims that SE are deliberately out to ban us all (or at least not care if their GMs do), and umpteen posts with nothing to add except “this post would get you banned according to rules X, Y and Z, lol”.

If the forum, collectively, wants their actual concerns made visible to the devs, then the subdued Japanese approach is going to be massively more successful than this torrent of hyperbole with a few repeated concerns mixed in.


And you can say “of course we won’t be banned” but I’ve been trying to say that all along, and yet people keep misreading the rules and claiming that it says we’ll be punished for anything that someone claims offended them, even if we didn’t mean to offend.

Yes, it could be clarified to sound less ominous, but it still doesn’t say what people are interpreting it as.

[WaterShield]

So, if people see issues with the rules, they should make a simple post outlining those issues. Not extreme examples, claims that SE are deliberately out to ban us all (or at least not care if their GMs do), and umpteen posts with nothing to add except “this post would get you banned according to rules X, Y and Z, lol”.

If the forum, collectively, wants their actual concerns made visible to the devs, then the subdued Japanese approach is going to be massively more successful than this torrent of hyperbole with a few repeated concerns mixed in.


And you can say “of course we won’t be banned” but I’ve been trying to say that all along, and yet people keep misreading the rules and claiming that it says we’ll be punished for anything that someone claims offended them, even if we didn’t mean to offend.

Yes, it could be clarified to sound less ominous, but it still doesn’t say what people are interpreting it as.

I truly hope you are correct. However at this point I (and likely most others on my side of the argument) will not calm down, until we receive clarification from Square Enix. Nothing else will cut it.

[LunaProtege]

If any of that worked we wouldn't have the tightening of the current rules in the first place. People seem to forget this. The players DON'T police themselves as a whole, mostly cause you run into the big issue when issues happen, the whole " Not my problem." And noone acts. Too many times I've seen people get into issues and everyone just watches like it's a car wreck and do nothing.

The way I see it, the way you're describing it doesn't go far enough to describe what's going on. People refuse to help themselves even when it happens to them; instead they feign helplessness and run to an authority figure, and ask THEM to do something about it, as if they're entitled to their assistance even when they can solve their own problems.

I suppose FFXIV doesn't have to be the one that chooses not to indulge this kind of learned helplessness, but it would be nice if there was any games that took the stance of "help yourself" rather than letting people indulge in "my problems are not my problem".

[MistakeNot]

And you can say “of course we won’t be banned” but I’ve been trying to say that all along, and yet people keep misreading the rules and claiming that it says we’ll be punished for anything that someone claims offended them, even if we didn’t mean to offend.

The rules do say that we can be punished for just that. If we will be punished or not depends on if someone reports it, and on if a GM thinks it is serious enough or not - and we do not know what the GMs will base their judgements on.

[Jaywalker]

Honestly at this point this seems less a way of communicating with game staff and more a place where everyone runs around like headless chickens in a panic.

I kind of wish there was a forum for panicking, what if's, and debate then a separate forum for questions.

The big worries I've seen are that:

1) GMs could use ambiguous phrasing in the rules to abuse authority and punish players for minor or non-existent offenses.

2) There is no means to appeal in such incidents/it could be done casually.

3) The GMs might be people who are more interested in controlling others than maintaining a fun, healthy community with varied individuals.

4) People might break rules by accident due to ambiguous phrasing.

Four relatively straightforward points. They're not unreasonable and there's no cause to think SE would have a problem addressing them... if they weren't being drowned out. We don't need to keep repeating fears and hypotheticals over and over if they fall under these umbrellas.

Frankly, this game is a luxury. Players are being given the privilege of helping shape not just their own experience, but the experiences of other players. People could have cried "censorship" for SE not allowing players to use mods of their game to push explicit content. It's not. This is their creation. It's a T rated MMO. What one player does can affect the experience of another player on many levels. This might mean mechanics and it might mean forcing players to see or interact with things that make them deeply uncomfortable, didn't sign on for, and weren't warned about.

SE is allowed to have some rules here. If the rules are so strict that they ruin the game for a significant number of players, that's a wrecked game. Other games out there will receive business SE could have had.

This game includes stuff like assassination, prostitution, drugs, insanity, the works. You can run around in some pretty damn skimpy glamours. We can be fairly edgy already. Extreme restrictions don't make sense here.

Relax guys. Things haven't gotten bad at this stage and SE was reluctant to do these rules at all. This isn't the end of Eorzea. Bahamut has been and gone already lol.

[Freyt]

Frankly it's baffling how those who criticize us for our differing views somehow think that GM's are just not at all cut from the same cloth. GM's don't come from some holy land where they've only learned to think the way you do, at the very least a certain amount of division is likely to exist that at least somewhat reflects our differences here.

At this point it's obvious that they either will not give us any communication regarding this, or they're deliberating how best to approach this. If we've waited all this time for "we'll do our best not to disappoint!" then I have to say it sure took a hell of a long time to try to give us any reassurances. So there's at least a decent chance that some amount of revisions will come along the way, even if it's only a clarification or two.

I love XIV. I respect Yoshida and the devs. I respect the position that GM's hold.

There's a certain atmosphere that projects "the closest we are to any staff of XIV is the GM's", but this simply isn't true.

Yoshida talks to us all the time through Live letters.

The Devs bring us stories and other content.

The GM's only communicate to us if we've been bad. (I haven't, so I've had zero communication with them)

The GM's are the furthest away from us. This isn't a criticism, I think it might actually be the correct choice generally speaking. Players don't want to have an oppressive big brother watching their every move, as is demonstrated within this very thread. At the same time no one should be expecting the same kind of relationship that players have with anyone else associated.

I respect their position, but have no reason to have any feelings one way or the other over the individual that holds the position. When you tell me to trust that individual, I simply cannot. It's not distrust I feel either, but a lack of faith in the rules that bind us.

If a GM were to walk up to you and simply say to you "I hold authority to ban you if you behave incorrectly or hurt anyone's feelings", you would naturally feel uncomfortable, no? They may have the greatest of intentions, but it's not that individual that we have no faith in.

[Iscah]

The rules do say that we can be punished for just that. If we will be punished or not depends on if someone reports it, and on if a GM thinks it is serious enough or not - and we do not know what the GMs will base their judgements on.

That's also what I've been saying, and yes, that much can be a genuine concern. But that can be covered by saying "this wording is unclear, and I feel like it could be too easily abused. Can it be rewritten to be more clear, and are there additional checks and balances to make sure this isn't left to one person's decision?"

What we've had in this discussion over and over is people reading it like it's an absolute fact that anyone can get you banned just by claiming to be offended, because (they have interpreted the rules to mean) SE will immediately take their side.

That fear seems to be driving a lot of this debate - a scenario that isn't even what the rules indicate, and is unlikely to be the intent behind the wording, even if it could be interpreted that way.

And then the debate and the negativity gets aimed towards SE for something they didn't actually say.

The rules do need discussion, but instead people are discussing a caricature of the rules, and it's drowning out the actual debate.

If a GM were to walk up to you and simply say to you "I hold authority to ban you if you behave incorrectly or hurt anyone's feelings", you would naturally feel uncomfortable, no? They may have the greatest of intentions, but it's not that individual that we have no faith in.

I feel like that's an unfair analogy, because an individual person coming up and saying that to you is a lot more threatening than having those rules (even poorly) laid out in a document like this.

Consider the real-world equivalent. I'm fortunate to be in a country where the police are largely "good", and I have no fear or concern that as a whole they will not act responsibly and keep law and order. But if a policeman came up to me and said "I hold authority to arrest you if you do anything I deem a threat" then I would feel threatened - not because they have the power to do so (because of course they all do, and it would be written in law) but because that particular person decided to make a point of it in an ominous way.



I guess I feel like the "bad GM" argument relies on so many hypotheticals. A GM who would rather take the side of the petty complainer than the unaware "offender". A lack of supervision or review that means this GM can give out these unfair warnings or bans, and not have to worry about being disciplined for them.

I also find it hard to believe that the GMs wouldn't have a more detailed and clear-cut version of rules and procedures that they have to follow, that would set out the circumstances where giving a punishment (not necessarily a ban) to an "unaware" offender is appropriate.

[StarRosie]

The guy in the video who uses the term SJW says the he thinks ffxiv is a good game in his previous videos. You rejecting his opinion means that you don't accept ffxiv is a good game. I hope you can see the problem in your argument.

...That's not how things work. Like, at all. You can disagree with someone on one thing and agree with them on another and even then, if they reject everything that person says, they could agree with another person who says FFXIV is a good game therefore, think FFXIV is a good game. I hope you can see the problem in your argument.

[Wolf_Heartnet]

...That's not how things work. Like, at all. You can disagree with someone on one thing and agree with them on another and even then, if they reject everything that person says, they could agree with another person who says FFXIV is a good game therefore, think FFXIV is a good game. I hope you can see the problem in your argument.

This person disagrees with anyone who uses the term SJW. The wording suggests that it doesn't matter what he says, he uses SJW so the opinion is rejected no matter what. It's not a matter of disagreeing this one time. It's a matter of complete dismissal of opinion based on the fact that this person uses the term and not a rejection of opinion based on the argument itself.