RP Party finders being reported AGAIN without so much as a reason.

[Julisia]

Alright I'm going to lay some truth on this whole forum. The folks decrying this stuff are hypocrites in the highest form. You can't tell me that you haven't had a deviant thought run through your mind or looked a nsfw picture. It's called the human condition. None of us are able to escape it. So shut up with your sanctimonious virtue signaling - it's really gross and inappropriate. You want to wash your cups from the outside to give the appearance of "holier than thou" but the inside of your cups are just as dirty, just as smelly and nasty as anyone else. You do not have the moral high ground, so stop pretending that you do, objective people know this, and all you are doing is outing yourselves as gross hypocrites every time this subject manner is broached as a negative.

Also, where are the PARENTS at?, and why you letting YOUR CHILDREN stay up and go to these venues (if that's happening)? That is on YOU!!! Bad parenting.

[TheDowager]

This is tiring.

Do all of you know why people open venues, no matter the flavor? Because they want to create spaces for other players to have fun. That's it. Whether it's a carbuncle-themed cafe or a raunchy pillow-house, the person (or people) who created that venue have no malicious intent. They put their own time, gil, and effort into this act because they love their fellow players, and they love this game.

I've seen this happen enough times over different communities that I'm not buying the pearl-clutching I'm seeing from some members of this community. You don't care about "the children," you're just Jack Thompsons. "Think of the children!" is merely a timeless reason to go on a witch hunt. By the time I was 10, I was exposed to far worse than anything I've seen in XIV RP, and that was before I had ready access to the internet. Based on memes I've seen shared with people my age, that is hardly a unique childhood experience.

But sure, go ahead and spread hate and report people who are just trying to have fun. Spin it in any kind of way you want, but that's what you're doing -- trampling on people just trying to have fun.

[Theodric]

Alright I'm going to lay some truth on this whole forum. The folks decrying this stuff are hypocrites in the highest form. You can't tell me that you haven't had a deviant thought run through your mind or looked a nsfw picture. It's called the human condition. None of us are able to escape it. So shut up with your sanctimonious virtue signaling - it's really gross and inappropriate. You want to wash your cups from the outside to give the appearance of "holier than thou" but the inside of your cups are just as dirty, just as smelly and nasty as anyone else. You do not have the moral high ground, so stop pretending that you do, objective people know this, and all you are doing is outing yourselves as gross hypocrites every time this subject manner is broached as a negative.

Also, where are the PARENTS at?, and why you letting YOUR CHILDREN stay up and go to these venues (if that's happening)? That is on YOU!!! Bad parenting.

That's...a rather strange stance to take. Plenty of people have dirty thoughts...but they also have self restraint and recognise when and where it is appropriate to embrace and announce those things.

Furthermore, it isn't reasonable to expect any parent to watch what their child is doing every minute of every single day. That's also very arguably a case of victim blaming.

If a child is put in a position where they're being harassed and abused, the lack of presence of their parents does not suddenly mean it's their fault. The blame lies firmly with the predator.

[Penthea]

Alright I'm going to lay some truth on this whole forum. The folks decrying this stuff are hypocrites in the highest form. You can't tell me that you haven't had a deviant thought run through your mind or looked a nsfw picture. It's called the human condition.

Engaging in these activities alone or when you know for sure that the other participant is an adult is not the same as advertising it in a game rated for minors and engaging in it with anonymous people whose age you have no way of verifying.

Also, where are the PARENTS at?, and why you letting YOUR CHILDREN stay up and go to these venues (if that's happening)? That is on YOU!!! Bad parenting.

You seriously expect parents to watch their children in every waking moment? I'm an only child and my parents didn't have time to watch me all the time. It's not as if when you're a parent your entire life stops so you can be constantly watching your children.

Also erp doesn't only take place late at night. And even if an erp venue is at night...haven't you heard of timezones? There is no region restriction in this game.

[Kaurhz]

Alright I'm going to lay some truth on this whole forum. The folks decrying this stuff are hypocrites in the highest form. You can't tell me that you haven't had a deviant thought run through your mind or looked a nsfw picture. It's called the human condition. None of us are able to escape it. So shut up with your sanctimonious virtue signaling - it's really gross and inappropriate. You want to wash your cups from the outside to give the appearance of "holier than thou" but the inside of your cups are just as dirty, just as smelly and nasty as anyone else. You do not have the moral high ground, so stop pretending that you do, objective people know this, and all you are doing is outing yourselves as gross hypocrites every time this subject manner is broached as a negative.

Also, where are the PARENTS at?, and why you letting YOUR CHILDREN stay up and go to these venues (if that's happening)? That is on YOU!!! Bad parenting.

Yes, people have deviant thoughts on a regular basis, as they do ERP from time to time. But many that do just have enough common sense to understand why you don't do it in a public place, and why you don't do it with complete strangers you have only known for 5 minutes. Hardly hypocrisy, and more just having the common sense to not do it on a public platform, or advertise it on a public platform like party finder.

Let's talk gross and inappropriate? Advertising mature content on a party finder; which need I might add is a very public place where people not of appropriate age are more than likely to hang, objective people know this is a bad idea because it opens an avenue for people to break the law and have a serious detriment to all parties involved.

If we want to talk about parenting, then let's talk about how everyone in some form of gravity has a responsibility in any given situation to take into account the audience. It is the parent's responsibility to make sure to the best of the ability they don't step into a venue; now I'm not sure if you know how curious and rebellious children are but they will more than likely ignore any warning, including that which you slap on your advertisement. At the point you interact with them it is YOUR responsibility not to do inappropriate things with that child.

If you want to slap virtue signally, sanctimony, and more high grounding, then in return I'm going to tell you not to ignore the real-world consequences and dangers that can occur when you advertise mature and potentially explicit content to a minor, or at the very least where you open up very accessible avenues for such things to take place even on accident.

I for one am glad I have a moral compass, apparently some people aren't though

[HyperiusUltima]

I think the main issue to be had here is merely how the RP Community is conducting itself as of late. More and more 18+ tags have been showing up and I've been playing a bit more on Crystal as of late to gear up an alt for a friend I want to play with since I brought him into FFXIV.

The things that happen behind closed doors? It still violates the ToS no matter how you put it. I've made an argument about the PF before, but I'm starting to realize a bit more after seeing the content of the discussion had here. It may sound like I'm 'both sides-ing' it, but the point is this:

Full stop, you want to remove any and all content that breaks ToS that is related to your venue.

The 'white knights' of the ToS that come around and check the venue are players either looking to harass explicitly merely to try and expose what happens in an establishment. I don't find this right by any means, but it's the way they've been going about it on the player side. On the GM Side however, I do believe that they should do a direct inference to which guideline you have broken with that link to the ToS so people can understand what rules have been broken.

As for retaliation? That crap's already against ToS. If they try to retaliate on you in-game, then that's already reportable; but again it depends on what they do. If they're in your FC and they steal everything in the chest because of privileges? Then the GMs can't do anything about stolen possessions. I've seen other threads a long time back where people complained about it not being handled correctly, but it's outside of the GM's power to restore such things and hold the player accountable.

However, any actions they do in retaliation such as harassing you in Tells and the like, the referral to blacklist is still there; but any form of harassment is still upheld by the ToS, even if it is something stupid like spamming an emote and filling the damn chat log when there's a button to turn that logging off.

So in this regard, the RP community needs to fix themselves as a whole and adhere to what's acceptable in venues, which obviously is not the brothels that I've seen put in Carrds when they brazenly post it in PF with the carrd without considering the content of said Carrd.

That's my two gil - have a nice day and be ready for 5.5. It's gonna be a big one.

[BunniEclair]

It’s not a matter of pearl clutching or being holier than thou.

I think people are just tired of seeing y’all act like you’re being personally persecuted by the GMs when you get a slap on the wrist for doing something that you have been told not to do. In some cases several times. Nobody is saying you can’t ERP. Just stop publicly posting your adult venues in PF and thinking you’re being slick when anyone (even a GM) with a brain can figure out what kind of venue you’re advertising, especially if you’ve linked a carrd going into explicit detail.

I get wanting to have adult spaces. But FFXIV has made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in being the place for that. You will have to advertise elsewhere, and/or cut the adult content from your publicly advertised PF. Not even a little wink/nudge “maybe we have other services ” sort of thing.

Don’t ask me why they haven’t gone after sellers the same way. I assume it’s because you have to DM them on discord for details, which would be a major overstepping of personal boundaries between GM and player. Even then though...seems pretty obvious that they aren’t selling the content for gil.

[TheDowager]

@HyperiusUltima - Thank you for your well-reasoned and thoughtful post. I'm clearly on the side of "let people/venues have their fun," but I appreciate that you're engaging in the discussion without trying to make yourself look morally superior. We need more players like you.

[KeshLives]

I think there's definitely situations where more elaboration would be useful in regards to specific breaches of the game rules. With that said, no respectable business really wants to go into intimate detail to explain why adult content between players in a game rated for young teenagers and above is highly inappropriate. It's already something people have agreed to acknowledge and accept already when they first signed up to the game itself.

Pretty much.

In the end, the game owner owns the game, and pays for the bandwidth, and free speech is whatever they say it is, and if you don't like what they're doing, you're free to leave. It's really that simple. Just because you're paying a subscription, that means nothing. If they decide that you don't get to do X in their game, they can root it out blatantly, or more quietly. Their game, their rules, whatever they may be.

I'm not really 'on a side' here. What they're doing doesn't really bother me, but, that's completely irrelevant. What the game owners want is what will happen. End of story.

[TheDowager]

It’s not a matter of pearl clutching or being holier than thou.

Even a cursory glance at this thread would dispel the illusion that this isn't "a matter of pearl clutching or being holier than thou."