Extreme over correction in ToS? New ToS is going to kill pugging

[Floortank]

Its not even "its [player name]'s fault" (which is kinda a problem) its the fact that "you make alot of mistakes" is bannable. wtf were they thinking, this is the nicest way to correcting someone if they are specifically wiping a group and arent understanding the mech or just generally making alot of mistakes. "why are we wiping?" "someone keeps clipping me in light rampant" "who?" "so and so" "this is the 5th time so and so" "You make alot of mistakes" *banned* wtf?? literally in a static where we have dps fucking up on light rampant and we have been on that mech for 4 days. they know they are fucking up and we keep telling them "pay attention" "stop clipping ppl with proteans" until now they finally corrected themselves, so now we are moving on cuz we keep telling them "they are making alot of mistakes". some ppl are just slow learners or hard headed and need to have it drilled into their head. the fact you cant say it in a nice way in PF is beyond me

Linking directly from the page,

"even if you do not use direct words, blaming and attacking others, such as "It's [player name]'s fault that we wiped" or "You really make a lot of mistakes," or rephrasing insulting words into any other form is also prohibited."

It's prohibited. You might not get banned depending on how often the GMs get reports on you and how many penalties you've accrued over time. Also, why would you tell someone "you really make a lot of mistakes" or "it's your fault we wiped"? You aren't Professor Raid, you aren't going to teach anyone how to play right. Just leave the group and find new randoms to play with if you don't like how someone is handling mechanics.

[weebtext]

You use Cactpot. GG.

What does Cactpot have to do with anything? What do you have against MGP?

[Jijifli]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

Not to mention, sometimes that context... it's so important.

I had to look over every example a few times, but I believe I finally understand what gave me my recent suspension for "griefing" despite my lack of content being done for a pretty long time. You cannot threaten someone with a kick, which I had an incident of relation in Novice Network. We had a player, a mentor no less, forcing an unwanted topic in the newbie chat about whether calling people the R word is a perfectly acceptable and normal thing to do (they were arguing for it too...) and everyone was telling them to stop. I told them if they continued that behavior, because this is not the chat to argue this, and everyone is telling them to stop, they would be kicked. To which they removed me instantly since, well, they were a mentor.

But I still threatened to kick them for their behavior. To quote an example of "Don't do this" ... "I can have you kicked from this group at any time." Arguably, I fit that catagory, as I showed a threat that I could remove them from the chat at any point over what they were doing.

... Except if look at the context, I was warning them that their behavior was completely not okay. At all. And I took the punishment for it. How does that tell me to do anything different from just removing them instead of trying to communicate. You know... The POINT of these?

[ZodiacHeart42]

Linking directly from the page,

"even if you do not use direct words, blaming and attacking others, such as "It's [player name]'s fault that we wiped" or "You really make a lot of mistakes," or rephrasing insulting words into any other form is also prohibited."

It's prohibited. You might not get banned depending on how often the GMs get reports on you and how many penalties you've accrued over time. Also, why would you tell someone "you really make a lot of mistakes" or "it's your fault we wiped"? You aren't Professor Raid, you aren't going to teach anyone how to play right. Just leave the group and find new randoms to play with if you don't like how someone is handling mechanics.

Now I kinda want to make a character named Professor Raid LOL Sorry, not to take away from the meaning of your post, which I agree with...I just chuckled about that, is all! LOL

[SturmChurro]

...

Take my advice people: don't chat! Not like I haven't been saying this for years. Also, SE, bandaid fixes like DC bans aren't going to fix this, let's just remove the system (mentorship) altogether - including the NN.

[IDontPetLalas]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

Couple of points



1- Regarding the EU - that's an interesting point, there could be a concern in some cases for localization, personally I don't see that here, but I don't play on the EU servers so theer could be a very good reason to adjust the examples for them.

2-The tone of those phrases may seem a bit stilted however I also believe that many people tend to be very quick to use or interpret words like "passive aggressive" or "toxic" way too easily, which in term terrifies people to the point that they won't go beyond a simple "hi" or "/".

I believe that SE was forced to provide these example because a certain element simply does not know or care how to communicate to other people, nor would they care to correct the behaviour otherwise. Which is a pretty sad commentary on that element, however it is what it is. For many players, they are not affected .

[Somnolence]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I agree. For me as non-native English speaker direct and to the point advice sounds normal, while overly polite language sounds passive-aggressive and insincere.

[Roda]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

Not EU, but it's similar over here. Most of their "ok" examples are written in a way that states "I am in the process of starting a beef with someone." Basically the equivalent of talking behind someone's back, but not even that, talking behind someone's back while they're still in the room implying you think they're too stupid to catch on. I literally could never talk like this if I'm trying to communicate with people in good faith. It feels gross to condescend to people like that.

I really hope they do another pass at the examples to either use more localized (not translated, localized) examples (Though, with how diverse the non-japanese servers are, that would be quite* the task), or they just drop the the examples that follow strict japanese courtesy norms (talking to people directly vs about people indirectly / stating claims with certainty vs keeping things ambiguous while implying your claims) and just leave the examples at "Don't hold your party-members hostage in a duty because you're being obstinate about a strat/group comp/etc, and don't start a bully campaign, etc" Everything else should be covered by "Don't harass/swear at/name-call/aggressively berate other players" and their new stalking rules.

..and maybe have someone read over the rules pretending they're a troll that will use the language to avoid punishment and deflect it onto others.. 'cause yeah, even if a gm is smart enough to identify that a troll is doing that and won't ban someone the troll reports, that doesn't stop the reportee from having a crummy experience with an emboldened troll.

*american quite, not english quite.

[lezard21]

As other have said, the safest bet now is to just not talk at all other than with people with know. With the current twitterlike tendencies of people readily wanting to be offended by something or interpret something negatively, it's just the safest bet.

[GaleMex]

MMORPGs are inherently social environments. Suggesting to just not talk or communicate is a big ask. The market board is run by (mostly) real human beings. You need cooperation from real humans to complete most content. Unless you have a gigantic free company where everyone intimately knows everyone else, the truth of the matter is that you will eventually need to communicate with someone or some people. It's always safe to flock with your own people, but that expectation is unrealistic to maintain.