GM Responses, Roleplay Advertising, and Party Finder - Megathread

[EtherRose]

We better shut down FFXIV, then, since it's an RPG, and the very act of playing it is RPing.

I'm not sure how not allowing RP in a MMORPG would work out..

You two both know what i mean. Quit being dense.

[xxmiamorecadenza]

I think the issue lies with the cherry picking. If both are against the TOS, then both should be dealt with. The thing about the content selling PFs, though, is that they don’t directly mention that the content is being sold in exchange for real money. That is only mentioned off-site (usually via Discord DMs). And the moderation team have a history of not accepting third-party screenshots as evidence since they can be altered. They’ve broken the “no third-party evidence” before, but it’s not that common of a practice.

ERP involving minors is most definitely worse than RMT. Not saying it isn’t.

Oooo! Ok, now I can wrap my head around it. Thanks so much for the elaboration.

[Penthea]

I wouldn't call it "horrendous" per say, but I would say it is heavily money driven (outside of Crystal apparently). And people in my DC at least know that RP venues make money so there are several venues that have opened simply for the purpose of making money through 18+ content. Personally I know someone who is planning to open one in the near future simply for that purpose. I'm not sure if any other DCs experience this (particularly EU/JP) but that's the situation that I'm aware of from Aether.

I have only done a handful of rp in this game and most of it was with fc members, people I know very well. However I do know people who rp a lot and while they have some interesting stories about creeps, my impression is they're the exception not the norm. It seems for the most part the rpers they interact with are just lore junkies using the game as a creative outlet. I did a lot of rp in WoW and again while I have some interesting stories, for the most part people just wanted to create stories. The majority of my bad rp experiences have been due to people who were just bad at rp, not those who wanted to erp. EU servers in both cases. I have no clue how different or similar rp is in NA in both games.

And I'm disinclined to blindly believe that NA is just full of degenerates because many of those who criticise rp in the forums put rp and erp in the same basket. Similar to how many casual players put vocal elitist raiders and raiders who mind their own business in the same basket. Many players cannot and even refuse to see the difference.

At this point I am getting curious enough that I may make a NA alt to have a look for myself. I don't think it's as bad as many say it is, but like I said before I have no experience rping in a NA community. Maybe it is very different.

[Ammokkx]

Hmm, very ironic. Also, he is right.

Now for my explanation on the matter. I think RP shouldn't be allowed at all. None. Why? This a rated 13+ game. And with the past experiences I've had with RP'ers in FFXIV, it was very awkward, cringe and can downright spiral into 18+ ERP at any given moment. And this was in open chat years back in 2.0'ish. Now you may say "Well I don't do it", that doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that no one else does it. With the way RP is and how some people can take it off the rails pretty fast, it needs to be heavily moderated for a 13+ game. No if's and or but's. Things may have been different in the past years for RP but if people are reporting RP as it is now, it means that RP is getting out of hand.

I understand people love to RP and those who ERP ruin it for them but it really shouldn't be in a 13+ game as I said RP could easily turn into ERP. I mean, imagine you have a 13/14+ year old daughter or son who is playing with you and they start getting ERP messages from someone or even just normal RP messages which would turn into ERP or hearing it in normal chat. Would you be mad, etc?

...Y'know, RP really is more than what your narrow view of it seems to believe it is.

Something as simple as picking out a lore-friendly name and trying to walk around in reasonable glamours is already you roleplaying a character. You want to present this avatar you've created a certain way. You don't have to actively go out of your way to have a full-blown in-character conversation with someone to be RPing.

Khenda, my personal MMO avatar, isn't a strictly defined character per-say. I don't go out of my way to be the limsa thot my parents always told me I could be. Still, whenever a story cutscene comes in, I always think "how is Khenda reacting to this situation?" because I treat her as part of the world.

Why, then, is it so wrong for people to take that just the smallest step further and have conversations with other people as their characters? To really treat themselves as if they're part of the world?

And, on a more humorous note, you also have people playing joke characters, like the Kinda-Heroes of Limsa Lominsa. Whether you like it or not, this is roleplay too, and they very much keep it PG13.

This is why people get upset when you generalize all RP to be ERP or ERP-adjacent. It's simply not true. There are a lot of people just having innocent, kid-friendly fun in the game too. RP is an impossibly broad umbrella and banning all of it is banning quite a sizeable portion of the players who care about the story at all.

After all, why bother with a glamour system if you're not allowed to be a character? If you're just a ball of stats, it shouldn't matter how you look.

[LianaThorne]

I have only done a handful of rp in this game and most of it was with fc members, people I know very well. However I do know people who rp a lot and while they have some interesting stories about creeps, my impression is they're the exception not the norm. It seems for the most part the rpers they interact with are just lore junkies using the game as a creative outlet. I did a lot of rp in WoW and again while I have some interesting stories, for the most part people just wanted to create stories. The majority of my bad rp experiences have been due to people who were just bad at rp, not those who wanted to erp. EU servers in both cases. I have no clue how different or similar rp is in NA in both games.

And I'm disinclined to blindly believe that NA is just full of degenerates because many of those who criticise rp in the forums put rp and erp in the same basket. Similar to how many casual players put vocal elitist raiders and raiders who mind their own business in the same basket. Many players cannot and even refuse to see the difference.

At this point I am getting curious enough that I may make a NA alt to have a look for myself. I don't think it's as bad as many say it is, but like I said before I have no experience rping in a NA community. Maybe it is very different.

Oh yeah I'm not at all saying it's everyone. For example, I've seen a new venue pop up over the last week that's SFW and strictly for fun, not profit. However, this is not something I see very often and I more than not visit venues that expect you to pay real gil (Some are reasonable and fair while others ask for 10K+ for items that would cost 90% less on MB). Most (and by most I mean 98%) of the advertisements for venues hiring people these days that I have seen include: "Like RP? Want to get paid for it?" or "Hiring Courtesans, pay included!" (Still kind of blows my mind that people are advertising for ERP workers during this whole thing while people are getting reported like crazy for it by the witch hunt moving through Aether, but to each their own). So, I stand by what I say that it's money driven rather than people doing it simply for the love of RP. If that was the case, I wouldn't have to expect to bring gil with me when I go out with my boyfriend and could pay with pretend money (like is the case in Crystal from what I've been told).

Also, and this is again my opinion, a good handful or more of the 18+ venues I've visited do involve courtesan services. I'm not at all saying every 18+ venue does that because that's not true. I see it mostly in the nightclub scene compared to bars or other 18+ venues. On any given night (especially Th-Sun though), you'll see at least 5-10 ads of people advertising 18+ nightclubs (some not even bothering to remove Courts/Courtesans from their PF).

Feel free to come check it out though if you want.

[Bellsong]

You two both know what i mean. Quit being dense.

It ain't even dense, you literally said "No RP in a RPG."

I mean, sure they could have attacked the """common sense""" argument of "RP is a gateway to ERP!" with your barely anecdotal evidence of "It pretty much happened to me! So clearly it's true!!" When it's hard to judge a whole community based on your highly limited experience.

Or maybe the clear """Think of the children!!""" stance in this completely made up and pretty unlikely scenario of "your son/daughter being sexually harassed by a ERP'er in whispers or normal chat!" when the actual likely outcome of that is a report, and a strike/ban against the person stupid enough to whisper some weird stuff to people.

Moderation is suppose to fill that gap between "Rated T for Teen" and "Online interactions not rated by the ESRB". And they do that with reports, so if you see someone ERP in a public chat? Report them, it's easy to give a zone, time and date for the GM's to check the logs of. Get a gross whisper? Again, time, zone and date.

The truly ironic part is that you call for RP to not be allowed at all but then say because it's a teen game it should be heavily moderated.
Which is it then? Cause one is moderation the other is extremism.

[Saefinn]

I have only done a handful of rp in this game and most of it was with fc members, people I know very well. However I do know people who rp a lot and while they have some interesting stories about creeps, my impression is they're the exception not the norm. It seems for the most part the rpers they interact with are just lore junkies using the game as a creative outlet. I did a lot of rp in WoW and again while I have some interesting stories, for the most part people just wanted to create stories. The majority of my bad rp experiences have been due to people who were just bad at rp, not those who wanted to erp. EU servers in both cases. I have no clue how different or similar rp is in NA in both games.

And I'm disinclined to blindly believe that NA is just full of degenerates because many of those who criticise rp in the forums put rp and erp in the same basket. Similar to how many casual players put vocal elitist raiders and raiders who mind their own business in the same basket. Many players cannot and even refuse to see the difference.

At this point I am getting curious enough that I may make a NA alt to have a look for myself. I don't think it's as bad as many say it is, but like I said before I have no experience rping in a NA community. Maybe it is very different.

For NA, I'd say Crystal is reflective of your experiences. Other data centers, I don't know, I've only just discovered it's the norm for other data centers to charge gil for RP and sometimes with a high mark up and that they treat RP in the same mindset they'd take running a business. So it seems their idea of RP is different.

Creeps exist and I think they exist regardless of RP, as all it takes is for somebody to reveal they're female for the creepers to wet their eyebrow and be like "helloooo", but regardless seem to be in the minority in the FFXIV community. And these would be people who those in the RP community would ostracize or even report, because hey, nobody wants a creeper.

You two both know what i mean. Quit being dense.

In fairness RP in an MMORPG has been a long established and common thing to the point some games will delegate specific RP servers and in the case of FFXIV add features specifically to accommodate RP. It has as much of a place as raiding, extremes, ultimate etc.

And RP isn't a gateway to ERP as your earlier posts suggests. Maybe certain /types/ but a huge amount of RP isn't people trying to pick each other up in bars. They're more like what the poster I quoted at the top describes: lore junkies who use it as a creative outlet. It's not like it plays out as, "Woop, we saved these people from a Garlean attack, we rock, so, we're hero adventurers. So...who's up for some sex?"

Not that ERP is even bad in itself. Just obviously when it involves a minor it is. To which my advice would be, if people wanna ERP, know the person you're ERPing with and that's it's in private.

[Darkpaw]

Well this has devolved into a truly fascinating debate. RP all RP should be banned... huh where have i heard similar arguments to that?

“Mortal Kombat is teaching children to be violent! All videogames should be banned!!”

“Grand Theft Auto is training our kids to be criminals ban it!”

“Call of Duty and Battlefield is glorifying guns and shooting people and is the cause of the rise in mass shootings! Ban them”

So at what point does your censorship of what belongs and what doesn’t infringe on others rights to free speech and freedom of expression? Hmm?

Toxic raiders mock and belittle me for my dps numbers or kick me from parties cause I die too much or mock me for not raiding so we should ban raiding! Is that next?

Im not good at gold saucer stuff so ban that?

Bad at pvp ban it!

Dont agree with the msq? BAN IT!

You aint protecting no kids, kids do what kids do, responsible adults should be open if their content is not meant for young kids, telling them to stay away.

If you do not give adults a space of their own, they will make it, if you ban that, they will find another or leave and you will see this game die. So work with people to demand some clarity for all people involved rather than this veiled intolerant based censorship hiding behind a “save the kids” mentality. I have a kid and they know full well to avoid anything outside their age group and i do the responsible thing and MONITOR WHAT THEY DO ONLINE.

[Kyuuen]

I support the statement fully, and if you look up WoW’s rating and esrb it is also T for teen. Yet why is it not a problem there? The same multi-country legality extends to them as well. Sure, we can debate different devs, different ideals, different personal morality all day long, but if we’re going to hold someone to a guideline that earns strikes against them culminating in a ban....We need something other than “you are expected to behave yourself”. “Behaving yourself” is opinion based and can vary widely based on perspective.

Uhh, either your blissfully ignorant in regards to what you're talking about, or being willfully deceptive. Do a Google search of 'pornshire' and you'll find that the first 3 1/2-ish pages are dedicated to the ERP that is common place Goldshire, a small village that is in a level 1 starting area for Humans. And it has been known as such since about Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria so it's certainly not a recent development. For those that don't want that in their search history - https://www.google.com/search?client...-d&q=pornshire

The difference between the two is that WoW's community is a bit more gruff, rough, and tumble. XIV... not so much, at best it's a bunch of idealists projecting how they feel it should be, or at worst it's a bunch of sjw's finding a soapbox to stand on. And no, I'm not trying to turn this into a talking point, just firing thoughts into the void, but feel free to respond just don't expect one in return.

[Themarvin]

IT i not against roleplaying values the ToS at all to do roleplaying stuff, but if flooding or spamming the tool of Partyfinder with stuff it goes into that area as spam with or without special content.. then name itself 'partyfinder' indicates it is needed to find players for content that the game has built... pvp, fates, treasure map hunts, roulettes and much more down those lines.

I don't see why it specific has to be explained in the ToS what the use of PF is, when it say it with the name only.