Roleplay/Partyfinder Discrepancies & Policy Enforcement by GM's

[Enla]

-snip-

Can confirm honestly. The FF14 RP community has been very good about promoting awareness and caution in regards to interacting with potential minors since it's inception. With pretty consistent campaigns amongst the community to not engage in questionable story content with people they aren't 100% sure of the age of. No one with a working brain wants to end up in a situation where they might end up exposing a minor to something nefarious. Not just for the sake of the minor but for their own peace of mind as well since it's the adult in that particular equation who could theoretically end up in a world of trouble if they don't do their due diligence. Hell most of my immediate RP circle won't even entertain the idea of RPing with anyone under 18 even for benign scenes, and certainly won't engage in any RP that has a sexual context until they know for a fact that the person they're speaking with is old enough for it. Though most, myself included, avoid sexually explicit RP to begin with and will 'fade to black' if it's absolutely called for in a story.

Are there bad apples out there? Certainly. However the RP community does go out of it's way to try and mitigate the issue already. The issue is that warning people only goes so far. Particularly when a lot of the people who do 'ERP' aren't necessarily RPers to begin with and thus don't always run in the same circles. You'd be amazed at how many 'normal', non-RP affiliated players engage in ERP. A former friend of mine back in ARR used to sell ERP as a service and there were a looooooot of non-RPers lining up for what was on offer. My FC and I can do everything to try and mitigate interaction with minors, but if Random Joe or Jane #35 decides to ERP to let off IRL steam without taking the time to vet the ages of those they're interacting with then there's nothing we can do about it.

[Silverrr]

Advertising Player Venues and Events in the PF is not against Terms of Service, nor is it the GMs M.O to make an interpretation based on their own "gut feeling". The GM overstepped the mark and acted in a manner that is both unprofessional and actually dangerous to the company.

As a Former GM myself for another studio, I can tell you straight, the GMs must act in accordance with the guidelines they are set specifically and follow the company mandated interpretation to the letter, they must conduct themselves at all times with utmost professionalism. They are not allowed to make calls like this off their own backs without authorization from a more Senior GM, whom will first ask Legal if it's alright because it would mean a written change in terms of service that would need to be then re-accepted by the entire playerbase.

One GM did this, there was no indication a senior GM had been even approached, that's a break in the command structure for a start which is overstepping the mark, why? The GM would refer the case to a Senior GM to handle because they're not allowed to handle it themselves or the Senior GM would also have to be in attendance.

In no part of the terms of service does it state that PF is not to be used to advertised events and/or venues.

Read it, it's not there.

The GM went Renegade and is very likely going to be finding themselves on a long unpaid vacation for their unprofessional conduct.

lol you'd love it but literally nothing will happened to him even if he threatened your beloved community. There have been countless instances of GMs going rogue and they've never faced consequences about it

[Jeeqbit]

To get into a fellowship it would require advertising which would be the equivalent of A spamming chat in major cities which is frowned upon and found annoying

You can setup recruitment in the Fellowship Finder and hundreds of people will usually join. No advertising is needed.

[van_arn]

I just want to toss in my two gil here and say 18+ =/= ERP.

I run a couple FCs with my mates and we list in our rules that we're 18+ for the simple fact that we do not wish for any snotty-nosed under 18s to join our communities. Usually maturity comes with age, and while I realise that this isn't always the case (I've had to deal with some pretty bratty 40+ year-olds), it does filter out most of the bratty riffraff. I would exercise caution before making assumptions about why an FC or event would be labelled as 18+ when the intention is far more innocuous than it may seem initially.

So basically, you can’t tell if it’s an erp ad or not even if they say 18+/21+.

That just means it’s best to nuke them all from pf since there’s no way for players or gms to tell them apart.

What’s so bad about word of mouth? Go to the venues your friends go to. Search for the venue tag in housing, post hours on the placard. If you’re bored, check with friends of friends for suggestions.

Don’t make the rest (more accurately, the majority) of the community suffer through your publicly-posted erp/erp-by-proxy ads. Even I straight up don’t care as long as it’s private, but advertising a place on pf pulls it straight into the public.

Sorry (not sorry) to dump everyone into one basket, but I don’t really care anymore if people are having spaghetti or textbonking. The ERP scene has gotten so brazen over this expansion I’m perfectly happy to do salted earth if it means they’ll go crawling back to the shadows.

Sorry if you like the spaghetti scene more than the lurid scene, but take it out on the lurids for going exhibitionist. They’re the ones ruining it for everyone else.

[Saefinn]

ERP is already forbidden in a way, but since there's absolutely no way to be sure that the person we are facing has the majority (in his country), the actions against thoses behaviors should be amplified even more.

In France (for example), if someone were reporting to the authorities that an ERP scene had been occured between an adult & a boy/girl (<16 years old), the adult would likely be sentenced to prison or psy therapy while being listed on the "National Register of sex offenders" (i'm not sure of that last bit, since it greatly depends of which reason is used to sentence a person)

It's not a problem about two people checking their age, it's a problem about SE not being able to. (age verification system is pointless).

ERP is extremely risky to do/manage, both users and the manager (of an erp discord for example) are risking prosecutions if they are not checking things correctly.
Which is why ERP should stay forbbiden in FF14, do that in "secret".

I don't think ERP is forbidden though. Heck the GM in question didn't tell anybody to stop doing anything ERP related, just to stop using the PF for social purposes.
The rules state "no profanity". You can write erotica without using any profanities
And they also state "no illegal activities". ERPing with a minor arguably is illegal. But an 18+ RP advertisement is not somebody seeking ERP with a minor.

But I can understand SE maybe having a stance against it to reduce the chances of somebody underaged showing up and ignoring the age warning...but that's not what I am seeing happening here. Heck nothing illegal or anything related to law, exploitation or minors or even anything remotely sexual is brought up...except in this thread and post claiming victory against ERPers after somebody filed a complaint about ERP party finders that we don't even know is linked.

Personally I'd argue that if somebody underage is dishonest and shows to something 18+ online then I feel that's a parenting issue. If somebody is acting in a way that is predatory of minors then that's different and 100% on the person exposing them to it & they should be stopped. Parents should monitor what their kids are doing on the internet because the internet is not a very child friendly place and is likely why the game's online interactions are not rated. People in online communities aren't going to be able to ask for your ID nor do adult websites, they just expect you to be honest about your age.

However, there are tools that can be added to help make things more manageable to protect children in this way that if anything could be more effective and that's giving parental control options and allow age restrictions on certain things in game. EG: you can't view a certain PF items if your account is age or parental locked and if somebody has set a flag on their PF to say it's age restricted. If they were to add a "social" option to the PF then this would be a good place to do it. This would allow communities who might not be age appropriate to better police themselves (and that's not just ERPers, some people communities just have non-children friendly subjects of discussion, non-child friendly jokes etc). It'd also be beneficial to underaged people to see what social events are safe for them to attend. Better peace of mind for the parents, better peace of mind for the players and better peace of mind for the minors. And bonus, people who don't want to see all those advertisements? They can turn on the restriction, like with the profanity filter.

[Silverrr]

Arthars ban was fair

Why?

A streamer that is partnered with Twitch for the content they stream is taken as an "ambassador of the company" and all content they stream is covered under SE intellectual property rights and the right at any time to take action against any action that may bring the company into disrepute.

He had ACT up on the screen, they had enough to ban him just from that as it's under Third Party tools and modifications.

The TEA leak was because of Datamining, again strictly forbidden in TOS.

You can't compare PF advertising of Venues/Events which are not against TOS and have a clear precedent set by Senior GMs to acts that actually broke TOS with evidence that SE easily had access to.

nah Arthars ban was not justified at all, 90% of FF streamers have their ACT layed out on the screen and SE doesn't care

[SturmChurro]

I think too many assumptions are being made.

No, actually I know for a fact they have been hitting adiult advertisements and citing profanity. I just can't get into it on the forums. For example, the advertisement in question was labeled "E/RP", and the ToS violation was "profanity" I am not assuming anything. It is actual fact. I am not even referring to that screenshot of someone reporting and speaking to a GM, nor any of the screenshots posted in the OP.

Many of the players getting hit with profanity ToS violations, aren't as innocent as they may make themselves out to be, in my opinion.

[Silverrr]

I think run sellers are incredibly annoying. I blacklist every single one I see and yet there are new names popping up constantly that i have to blacklist as well, and my blacklist isn't eternal. It makes it even worse that they have the gall to spam their garbage in the roulette section of the PF, openly abusing and miscategorizing their PFs in order to thrust their ads onto everyone who opens the party finder, and SE seems to have no intention of ever doing anything about it. It makes the game look very bad, like it is overrun with RMT and bots and nobody wants to see that.

Then I come in here and see somebody acting like some RP venue ads hidden all the way down at the end of PF in the "other" are somehow a problem that needs to be addressed. Honestly, 99% of people in this game, I'm pretty sure a large chunk of them aren't even aware of that stuff existing because they have no reason to go to the other section. But you can't just ignore the RMT run sellers because they actively force their ads to the top of PF by misusing the roulette section. If anything needs to be addressed, it's this, not the people and venues that help contribute to making the world feel alive.

Why? Who cares about run sellers lol no one uses the roulette section of PF to begin with

[Saefinn]

No, actually I know for a fact they have been banning advertisements and citing profanity. I just can't get into it on the forums. For example, the advertisement in question was labeled "E/RP", and the ToS violation was "profanity" I am not assuming anything. It is actual fact. I am not even referring to that screenshot of someone reporting and speaking to a GM.

They may well be citing profanity. But this doesn't address any of my other points. Heck the citing "profanity" in itself could be in error because "profanity" is about the language used being offensive and not what it is being used to describe. I think "profanity" is being confused with "obscenity". Nothing in the ToS prohibits obscenity.

If the advertisement was:
"18+ ERP lets get down to f***"
Then yes, I say fair enough, that's a profanity.
If the advertisement was
"18+ ERP let's have some fun"
Then no, that's not profanity.

And again, nowhere in the conversations and cases this thread is referencing are they telling people it's over the use of profanity.

And likewise for non-ERP
If you had an advertisement that said
"RP at the bar, come get p******"
That'd be profanity
"RP at the bar, come get drunk"
That's not be.

And I'm not sure why they'd target RP ones for profanity anyway, because I've seen plenty of profanity outside anything RP related.

[Kaurhz]

Why? Who cares about run sellers lol no one uses the roulette section of PF to begin with

Don't go making baseless assertions that just because you don't care, therefore, nobody else does. Whether or not anyone uses the roulette section or not is irrelevant since it still spams the Party Finder with advertisements, and many of them being to the same Discord/Service. Don't get started about Filtering it out either. I shouldn't have to use filters because some people elect to ignore basic considerations for people that actually use the Party Finder.