The 3-Strikes Policy - Is it really a good thing?

[Kuya420]

That's also a good suggestion. Having frequent "minor" infractions add-up to an actual strike instead of just counting them outright would be a good addition.

While I've never been warned or jailed, I do understand that humans are humans and we cannot always be completely TOS compliant especially when the terms are so vague. I hear a lot of people complain about how when they do get strikes they have no idea why and while I understand the reason for not being able to reference the exact infractions, when you have such nebulous guidelines to work from, you should get a few chances to refine your behavior as well as forgiveness if you manage to comply for an extended amount of time.



People grow but there are infractions out there that have no excuse. They are blatant and easily distinguishable from "passionate" or "accidental" infractions. Hatespeech, Targeted sexual harassment, hacking/cheating/exploiting.

i agree with the targeted harassment (doesnt have to be sexual), hacking/cheaitng/exploiting, for the rest, who decides what is hatespeech? who dictates what can and cant be said? thats the only issue i have, the game itself has suggestive dialogue, its not a kids game, dont get me wrong that doesnt mean people should have a free license tp be as offensive as they want to be, but also theres no way to report in game currently, other than RMT, as i just came on to figure out how to report someone who sent me a scam msg with a url link thats designed to steal peoples accounts, i feel stuff like that should take a slightly higher priority, since it does make it so people cant play the game until they go through customer support, if its even active atm, meanwhile if someone is being offensive, you can just block them (granted shouldnt have to, but not everyones gonna be nice, gotta learn to deal with the people that arent so pleasant to deal with

also i was hearing that people were getting banned for RP Party finder stuff, like too many people cluttering up the PF with RP groups, i dont know how it is on other servers, but ive only seen them on non-selected groups and its usually at the bottom of the list anyway, so i really dont get what the big deal is

[Kuroka]

Honestly, it should be 3 strikes per subbed year or smt, with two kinds of strikes, one for being a di## and one for actually harming others, chasing em, hacking rmt etc.... i only got one silly forum ban so far but still, everyone has a bad day and might say things he didnt mean to, or could get framed by ppl ganging up against him... to think id loose my 600+ hours playtime for insulting someone 3 times makes me turn off chat lol

[Krotoan]

Except for the fact I was only painfully lucky that he re-looked at it, as I technically was asking for information on what occurred which is a no go.

I also know it would be a strike, and I know it would be a 3 day (As I got a 3 day for saying F word after this, oops to me, but imagine what it could have been if instead of 1 F it was 30 C's.)

I also can only assume that this was my report being taken in reverse, which isn't even a confirmation, because of the line "Regarding another case" Which, if I wanna sit and think on that, would mean a ticket with 0 relation to me marked me as the culprit. Imagine if I didn't question it, as 99% of the time it's just a waste to ask them to re-look at it?

That could have been a permanent mark on my account. I already gotta deal with having 2 (the first was like 5 1/2 years ago, for emoting too many times, where I also apologized and stopped but nobody cares about that </3) so having another where I couldn't have done anything wrong permanently sitting on me is not a very welcoming adventure.

Lucky? Or exactly what the review process is for? They don't just take reports and boom, action. They stick you in the Gaol till you actually get to talk to a GM. A person. An actual living breathing person reviews your infraction and makes sure you understand what's happening. And what happened? You showed confusion and then they reviewed and hey.. this wasn't you.
You were never in danger of being marked for something you didn't do because the process worked in your favor as it should when you're innocent.

I'm not gonna say I love the system, or even that it's close to what it should be. But It's miles ahead of a lot of other games where bing-bang you get enough reports and you're auto silenced/banned and you have to try your dangdest to get customer service or whomever to review your case after the fact. Errors happen in the world especially when you involve humans, but in this case it's nice that they do because humans can review these cases and react to the supposed rule breakers questions and replies.

It's not really about innocence, it's about the fact that if the strictest interpretation employed by GMs was used as the standard uniformly, literally 100% of the community would be guilty.

So it becomes a question of having your report get handled by the right GM on the right day, which means any and all rules are arbitrary since there's no reason to believe they will or won't apply to you for a given case. How much information you even get isn't even consistent.

Is it? Or did they actually question what was happening when a possibly new or uninformed GM started handing out warnings left and right and panicked the forums? When one (or more, there are 100+ pages of that thread and no, I'm not reading them all) of their team applied the rules non-standardly they retracted those actions. For years and years people understood the rules and as long as they followed what was said were fine.

I know "bootlicker" or some such is going to be thrown around.. but seeing how SE actually reacted to a GM giving non-standard warnings and actions out, was pretty reassuring that they're not only trying to keep standards, but willing to act when one of their own misinterprets or acts out of line.

i agree with the targeted harassment (doesnt have to be sexual), hacking/cheaitng/exploiting, for the rest, who decides what is hatespeech? who dictates what can and cant be said? thats the only issue i have, the game itself has suggestive dialogue, its not a kids game, dont get me wrong that doesnt mean people should have a free license tp be as offensive as they want to be, but also theres no way to report in game currently, other than RMT, as i just came on to figure out how to report someone who sent me a scam msg with a url link thats designed to steal peoples accounts, i feel stuff like that should take a slightly higher priority, since it does make it so people cant play the game until they go through customer support, if its even active atm, meanwhile if someone is being offensive, you can just block them (granted shouldnt have to, but not everyones gonna be nice, gotta learn to deal with the people that arent so pleasant to deal with

also i was hearing that people were getting banned for RP Party finder stuff, like too many people cluttering up the PF with RP groups, i dont know how it is on other servers, but ive only seen them on non-selected groups and its usually at the bottom of the list anyway, so i really dont get what the big deal is

Sexual being pretty undisputably definable .. and hatespeech is pretty easy to define as targeting a particular demographic with hateful language. Calling someone a girl isn't , but calling someone say.. " a weak.. *insert derogatory word for female*" is most certainly hatespeech.

There is reporting in game, it's in the support section. There's no one button click, but as long as you can remember or track their name and server, you can report someone. In the menus under system: Support desk - Contact us- then pick a category. Honestly either type will get sent to the team and be looked at. Especially if someone is spamming bait URLS. I have rarely gone more than 10 minutes without a GM contacting me about any submitted tickets. Last one I sent was a month ago, so it's not like they're AWOL during the pandemic.


People were being warned for RP party finder stuff, possibly actioned (didn't see any, but again.. LOTS of pages), the forum had a thread that shot up in replies, the GM's responded and said that the warnings were in error and the responsible parties had been advised.
direct quote"

Thank you for your patience while we reviewed the situation. In short, there was an internal miscommunication which led to account actions being issued incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for the concern that this has caused the community. There has not been any change to our existing policy, and we want to assure players that our focus is on taking action against inappropriate advertisements/listings.

The thread is here:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...31#post5512931
and an interesting read.. but the first few pages and then the GM replies are really the only useful info, the rest is kinda.. bickery.

[TurtlesAWD]

i agree with the targeted harassment (doesnt have to be sexual), hacking/cheaitng/exploiting, for the rest, who decides what is hatespeech? who dictates what can and cant be said? thats the only issue i have, the game itself has suggestive dialogue, its not a kids game, dont get me wrong that doesnt mean people should have a free license tp be as offensive as they want to be, but also theres no way to report in game currently, other than RMT, as i just came on to figure out how to report someone who sent me a scam msg with a url link thats designed to steal peoples accounts, i feel stuff like that should take a slightly higher priority, since it does make it so people cant play the game until they go through customer support, if its even active atm, meanwhile if someone is being offensive, you can just block them (granted shouldnt have to, but not everyones gonna be nice, gotta learn to deal with the people that arent so pleasant to deal with

also i was hearing that people were getting banned for RP Party finder stuff, like too many people cluttering up the PF with RP groups, i dont know how it is on other servers, but ive only seen them on non-selected groups and its usually at the bottom of the list anyway, so i really dont get what the big deal is

I mean there definitely are things that unambiguously count as hatespeech, and for dubious cases they could defer to something like a list from the SPLC or something along those lines. There are experts who work in that field and track language like that as it changes and shifts.

But, A) there's no way to know that a specific instance of hate speech is actually going to get punished, and B) there is reason to think that far tamer language would be punished in the same way, at the same rate, with the same consequences which undermines their capability to effectively fight against more severe infractions.

[technole]

Current game has been around 7+ years, it's not going to change. This game is just like social media. You can get cancelled permanently if you drift too far of the edge. YoshiP isn't going to lose sleep over losing your sub if you are just too toxic and end up costing a lot more people wanting to sub.

People's behavior generally changes for the better after a strike, not to do said behavior again. Stop cursing like a sailor, stop being mean to other people.

Plus the GMs for the ERP knew they made a mistake and removed as-applicable.

[TurtlesAWD]

People's behavior generally changes for the better after a strike, not to do said behavior again.

I would say I'm skeptical about this. If you happen to have anything to support it I'd be interested in seeing it.

[Jijifli]

Lucky? Or exactly what the review process is for? They don't just take reports and boom, action. They stick you in the Gaol till you actually get to talk to a GM. A person. An actual living breathing person reviews your infraction and makes sure you understand what's happening. And what happened? You showed confusion and then they reviewed and hey.. this wasn't you.
You were never in danger of being marked for something you didn't do because the process worked in your favor as it should when you're innocent.

I'm not gonna say I love the system, or even that it's close to what it should be. But It's miles ahead of a lot of other games where bing-bang you get enough reports and you're auto silenced/banned and you have to try your dangdest to get customer service or whomever to review your case after the fact. Errors happen in the world especially when you involve humans, but in this case it's nice that they do because humans can review these cases and react to the supposed rule breakers questions and replies.

You mean like on WoW where that's a thing people have mentioned? Though, I find it strange I never had so much as a warning over there with Blizzard, and I'd argue I've said worse on Blizzard's systems.

Speaking of saying worse things, There was a small group of players repeatedly harassing me and anyone they found out I was friends with, repeatedly going for months, while the GM's did nothing to stop it (And, as context, this was public slander, accusations of things like being a r*****, etc, pretty arguably worse than the F word).

Square already proved to me last year with that they don't care about hostility or toxicity or drama or any of that, they only care if you said a swear word. It's somewhat funny, because when I did get my 3 day for swearing, the GM confirmed to me when I gave him (with his permission) copy pasted examples from those times and he admitted himself they should be punishable offenses, yet months of it happened without so much as a warning, far as I could tell by their actions. It only stopped because I jumped ship to WoW to stop getting harassed for a while.

They can certainly, 100%, do better.

[TurtlesAWD]

Yeah world of warcraft has no moderation system, like there literally isn't one at all.

Which is not to say that's good, it's actually awful and they can and should do a lot better, but the system over on the better end of the MMO spectrum (this one) has room for improvement.

[Krotoan]

You mean like on WoW where that's a thing people have mentioned? Though, I find it strange I never had so much as a warning over there with Blizzard, and I'd argue I've said worse on Blizzard's systems.

Speaking of saying worse things, There was a small group of players repeatedly harassing me and anyone they found out I was friends with, repeatedly going for months, while the GM's did nothing to stop it (And, as context, this was public slander, accusations of things like being a r*****, etc, pretty arguably worse than the F word).

Square already proved to me last year with that they don't care about hostility or toxicity or drama or any of that, they only care if you said a swear word. It's somewhat funny, because when I did get my 3 day for swearing, the GM confirmed to me when I gave him (with his permission) copy pasted examples from those times and he admitted himself they should be punishable offenses, yet months of it happened without so much as a warning, far as I could tell by their actions. It only stopped because I jumped ship to WoW to stop getting harassed for a while.

They can certainly, 100%, do better.

I was more thinking of another Blizzard game I play where recently there was a ban wave that quickly turned into the forums being spammed with "I did nothing but I got banned today" threads. These people got no details, their accounts might even still be suspended, and they never got to actually talk to someone about it. All they could do was sit there and submit tickets, hoping that someone would actually look at them.

I'd take "oops I put you in jail for a bit and then found out you didn't actually do anything" over that any day.

Did you submit ANY reports about harassment? If you did I'm surprised that nothing ever happened. My last ticket was someone who started spouting (non swearing) abuse and basically hindering progress during a roulette. Immediately after submitting that ticket a GM contacted me and asked for details.

[Jijifli]

Did you submit ANY reports about harassment? If you did I'm surprised that nothing ever happened. My last ticket was someone who started spouting (non swearing) abuse and basically hindering progress during a roulette. Immediately after submitting that ticket a GM contacted me and asked for details.

I did. And I did get a GM response pretty quickly.

In fact, while talking to the GM, the player I had been reporting was straight humping my face with emotes, as another form of harassment because I wasn't responding anymore due to talking to the GM. I even told the GM, "He is currently humping my face."

I also submitted plenty of reports as it continued, to see no effect. Considering this had gone for months you'd think if this did have punishments for them it'd be permament by the end of the first month, not take half a year where it only stopped because I dropped off the face of the game for 3.

Oh, also editing in for future readers, they went after my friends too when I wouldn't respond. Blacklisting does nothing for that, blocking the ability to see their chat doesn't prevent them from telling friends/fc members the same crap over it (Some of whom I KNOW also reported it.)