Roleplay/Partyfinder Discrepancies & Policy Enforcement by GM's

[kinglyonheart]

Definitely woke up to people reporting being released from suspensions with apologies, so it is shaping up that a GM or two went off the handle.

Also woke up to news of a hotfix. Wonder if they're related. Hmmm.

[Kaurhz]

it fills a section of party finder no one ever uses with advertisement... so what? Looking at the picture of Crystal PF it's the exact same with their club advertisements lmao

Never even defended that in the first place, in fact, I've argued several times that such things should be contained elsewhere. It's not about whether it fills an unused section or not. By default, you will see all sections of the PF, and right at the top are the advertisements. People shouldn't need to filter these out just to stop themselves from seeing people take up their advertisement crusade, which I would argue is blatantly against Terms of Service. It's simply that much open to interpretation that you can realistically ban someone under categories 2.3, 2.8, and 3.9. Yes, spam and unsolicited advertisements through the use of the Party Finder service would be considered Harassment if spam in the way they have. Arguably if they did some investigating then you'd find most are also in breach of categories 2.2, and 3.1.

If you're going to start banning Roleplayers, then you should equally start banning everything that is an unsolicited advertisement, especially selling runs. You don't just apply 1 ruleset for one group of people, then apply another ruleset to another group simply cuz "Lol nobody cares it's done through Roulette which nobody uses".

[YukinoAmidala]

RPers need to move to Fellowship Finder like that GM said. Sorry, but that's where you guys belong. If an ad is up 24/7, it doesn't need to be in party finder. If it's like a flash event, fine. But the fact that there are ads for brothels and clubs 24/7 is way over the line of acceptable behavior. I don't think anyone should get banned, just get their listing removed though.

I don't rp but even I know this is bs. People use roulettes to post their ads on selling content via gil or RMT 24/7 and on top of that it appears at the top of party finder. The other tab filters to the bottom and if it cant be used to setup a gathering of people to hang out in game then why does it exist at all? There are already tabs for all battle related content in game.

[Blackweaver]

So looking like from some of the recent postings since my last post on page 28, that the GM in question, went rogue. And the fact that people got responses back that the higher ups are going to be looking into this particular GM's conduct and overstepping his authority, and undoing the strikes he's issued, is the right move. As for the ERP stuff. Well the proof is in the one GM's conversation that was posted as a screenshot. ERP apparently IS allowed. Me, when I goto PF looking for an RP venue to visit. Usually I see 1 maybe 2 labeled 18+ and the rest are just basic tea houses, taverns, bars, etc. So I can mostly just roll my eyes as the "brothels" and continue my search. And honestly, for the content portion of this rogue GM's arguement, of finding parties for dungeons, raids, hunts, maps, etc, each of the cited content has its own party finder category. The other tab is meant for, and has always been used for content that doesn't fall into the official group content of the game. It's meant for player driven content. So yes, I definitely felt this particular GM was overstepping bounds and had gone rogue especially since they were targeting all RP venues not just the ERP ones. And in this, they were in the wrong and that needs to be addressed.

As for RMT stuff, I've seen a few listings of those in party finder but they are never in the other tab. They often are in the dungeon and raid tabs. And I do wish the GM's would also monitor the city aetherytes far more than going rogue and targeting roleplay venues in party finder. I can teleport right now into Ul'dah and the first thing I will see, is bots that are thaumaturges, all dressed exactly the same, appearing, then popping out as they are teleport hacking to their quest turn ins or whatever it is they are doing. It's very unnerving seeing so many bots teleport hacking in every starting zone and city. Reporting them is very difficult as the bots appear for a second then disappear, leaving no time to grab their names for reporting and their names usually are long strings of random letters regardless. Those I feel, should be higher priority than targeting roleplay venue ads in party finder as RP Venues are not against the rules. In fact SE themselves supplied us with housing features that promote such venues. FC's can build special venue exterior looks for their houses. There's market stalls, Bars. Hell even an interactive ale tap! This game was clearly built with RP in mind and that is a good thing. Because we roleplayers, when we run out of content will often stay subscribed just to make our own stories and content.

[Bellsong]

The only people who suggest RP'ers move to the fellowship system exclusively are people who only glanced at it or worse, haven't looked at it at all.

The system is pretty neat for keeping large groups of players up to speed on things, minus any kind of chat abilities. But for advertising and actually bringing new people in? It's beyond worthless, your listing just gets swallowed by a million other listings that start to all just bleed together with how cluttered the Fellowship finder window is.

PF is and always will be the better system and is exactly why the new messages people have been getting from SE support say that your listings are fine so long as they don't violate their TOS on language.

[LianaThorne]

Hiya! So my response might be a bit outdated since there's 87 pages and I got to like 28 before giving up. If any of what I say has been confirmed/denied by SE, feel free to correct me since I'm just out of the loop a little lol.

I am a very casual RPer, as in I go to events once a month. I also was a bard at an 18+ venue for a couple of weeks. My stance on this is simple and I'm gonna try to not offend anyone but, of course, can't please everyone.

Do I believe that SFW RP venues should be removed? Absolutely not.

Do I believe that 18+ RP venues (like bars without courtesans for example) should be removed? Absolutely not.

Do I believe that NSFW RP venues should be removed? Yes and no.

My reason being is that, ultimately, regardless of whether or not Square has responsibility for online chats, you may be interacting with a child who is disguising their age. I've had that happen to several friends of mine across multiple games and the child has gone on to reveal their age and then not online ruin their friendships and reputation in those games, but would also scare them into thinking that they were going to send them to jail or ruin their real life over it as well.

I get that we all want to cozy up to someone special on the weekends, but unless there is a way to fully determine how old someone is, you run the risk of engaging in sexual activities with a minor. I also am aware that teenagers are exposed to a lot more than they used to be, but that also doesn't make it okay to purposefully engage with them as an adult. Ya know what I mean? I know that it will be a lot harder to figure out how old someone is, but I kind of think that if you are running a NSFW establishment, you should be caring about who walks in your door.

I think that there is a place for venues that are NSFW based, however I think it should be not really advertised directly on the PF. Or at least more discreet than "[18+][NSFW]Come meet our lovely courtesans for a night in heaven at the *insert club here*"

Like come on...we all know what that means. XD

If this was a rogue GM, then I hope SE handles them appropriately so this situation can end. If, however, it's not, it's something we all will have to adjust to. Ya'll can choose to abandon the game or you can adjust. It's entirely your choice.

Last thing I want to say is that, for the people saying "Oh, people should just click off and ignore it", we both know that wont happen and this will most likely happen again in another form. People will choose to react first rather than think about what consequences their actions will have. Demanding that an entire population ignore something is about as useful as asking a rock to explode into confetti.

Like I said above, feel free to correct me if SE has confirmed/denied anything I've said. 80+ pages to read through is a lot x_x

[LianaThorne]

My reason being is that, ultimately, regardless of whether or not Square has responsibility for online chats, you may be interacting with a child who is disguising their age.

Just clarifying, when I say child, I do mean either children or teenagers because children can also fake their age and claim to be 13+ to play the game.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

I don’t even RP so I have no horse in this race but you know you could just not click the “other” tab in PF if it offends you so much. Why are you even spending so much time and effort posting in this thread over and over? Did you lose gil in a player-run casino run by girls in bunny outfits or are you on a crusade to remove lewds from your clean and proper server?

The alternative would be having to hear more shouts than there are already for these events and having to go through the effort of blacklisting people.

I’m personally fine with the way PFs were, and if nothing else it provides both intentional and unintentional comedy.

[Ashemmi]

Agreed about Occam's Razor, as I too am a fan of using it.

Occam's Razor tells me that it's one GM who's got it wrong.
- GM went after RP and ERP advertisers
- Their reasoning didn't mention ERP
- Their reasoning was that PF is not for social events
- They said it's fine to use Fellowship Finder or even /sh
- This is the first in years this has been an issue
- Evidence is showing it's only 1 GM
- Evidence shows other GM's saying it's fine to use the PF this way just make sure it abides by ToS
- Evidence from another GM suggests its okay to use PF for ERP but keep the ERP private

The leap to "ERP" seems to come from people's imaginations or from that Reddit post showing somebody reporting ERP advertisements to a GM. None of the GM's actions suggest anything to do with ERP.

Cutting all the assumptions down to one:
The GM is taking action against players using the PF in this way in error.

What that error could be could range from misunderstanding their ruling on PF to a vendetta against RPer's but neither is known.

You're missing an important fact in your statement regarding the GM's intent. They skipped the top 4-5 with a link to discord with the promise of "selling" something. The swath was in fact selective, and that selection was based on what? You haven't changed my mind based on that mere fact. They were going for something and accidentally grabbed a few extra.

[Ammokkx]

if we keep this rate of posting up, it'll only take us 70 days to pass the tales from the duty finder thread and just 1 day over a month for male viera

keep the momentum going lads