Quote Originally Posted by Rinhi View Post
all I'm saying is that knowingly not helping someone is clearly defined as going against the TOS, just as someone who would repeatedly pull the boss over and over and over without waiting
Okay, but I really don't agree that the quote of the ToS you provided is as clear-cut as you seem to think it is. What is "necessary gameplay required of the situation"? When I read that, I think they are talking in a general sense of playing the role you signed up as -- if you're a tank, you tank -- if you're a healer, you heal, that sort of thing. If I pop into a dungeon on my WHM and just cast Stone over and over and let the Tank and DPS die, refusing to do any healing, then I'm not fulfilling my role for the dungeon and I suppose that would be against the ToS. Or if, as you also quoted, I simply refuse to heal a particular player out of spite because I don't like them, then yeah that's a problem too. It's more about player behaviour, attitude, and cooperation over the course of the dungeon experience.

But I don't think "necessary gameplay" is something that gets dynamically toggled on and off between pulls, or spontaneously created at the whim of any individual player, which trumps the wishes of others in the group. If somebody says "Excuse me, but I have to step away from the computer for a moment I will be right back," and then you pull anyway and wipe, that AFK player did not breach any terms of service. They did not "let you die." You got yourself killed. Likewise, if a player is in a cutscene they are not breaking any rules for not participating in combat with you, and neither do I think I would be if before the boss I said "I see the new player is still in a cutscene, I would like to wait for them" and then did so. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to do, within the context of the game rules. And I don't think the rules magically change depending on whether you're a Tank, Healer, or DPS. It's not that I'm unwilling to cooperate or perform my role, it's that I will perform my role at the appropriate time, when the group is ready.

Again, the game has a "Ready Check" function built in, which explicitly offers players the opportunity to say they are not ready to continue, for any reason. If you proceed to pull when others are not ready, you can't blame them for that.

Let's be real, we're basically only talking about those few dungeons that have significantly longer story cutscenes -- not those brief boss intros where a chimera roars at you for a moment. These scenes are more important to the game's story, and engaging in combat bombards that player with annoying pop-up messages and battle noises, not to mention unfairly peer-pressures them into rushing and speed-reading the dialogue or skipping altogether. In the case of Toto-Rak, it's possible to kill the end boss before the newbie is even out of the cutscene. This is not what Square Enix wants, and they did not design their Terms of Service to be a bludgeon for impatient players to wield and twist how they like.

Also, dungeons are group content, not partial group content and certainly not content for first-timers to sit out on while the experienced folks go on without them. In a 4-player party, if one player is in a cutscene and another player wishes to wait for them, that's already 50% of the group who is not ready to plow ahead. Anyone who pulls under that circumstance, in my opinion, is being uncooperative and is in spirit "not performing the necessary gameplay required of the situation." And they certainly are not the one who decides "necessary gameplay begins now, do what I say or else you're breaking the ToS."

if it's acted upon or not, that's a whole nother matter
Well, I have to disagree there too, because I don't think a GM would look at a player waiting for someone in a cutscene and think "Well, before someone got impatient and pulled the boss, no one was breaking any rules. But then as soon as that one person got impatient, that's when everybody else had to obey what they wanted, so they suddenly all violated the Terms of Service." And I don't think it's even a matter of "It was a minor violation, I'll let it slide this time," I think it's a matter of "Why is this even being reported?" I almost would expect that if the same player repeatedly reported players for this often enough, they might get a warning about abusing the Report system.

Either way, none of us are GMs, and I guess it's not our job to interpret what the ToS says as it is very vaguely worded and can mean basically whatever you want it to mean. But I would be curious, have there been any interviews or articles where Yoshi-P or some other dev has talked about these situations specifically? I would be extremely surprised if they flat-out said that we're breaking the ToS if we wait for people in cutscenes -- especially if they said something like "if you haven't disabled repeated cutscenes, it's fine to sit there for 3 minutes and not participate in combat... but if you instead just voluntarily wait for someone else in a cutscene, then you broke the rules."