Sick of the christforsaken Nightclubs

[Leifei]

Welp, I have a nightclub in game.
And I read every comment here.

I run a SFW RP Club venue where my staff RP interacts in /s and /em chat.
Not super long posts and some responses (like drink orders) are macros.
We do not offer ERP services.
We do offer drinking games which are gambling, but you get at least one 'drink' out of it win or lose.
You may very well see a few afk bees knees'ers in the club but we try very hard to engage people in activities; trivia contests, minion guessing games (where you win the minion if you guess it right), dad joke-offs, etc.

We are indeed guilty of city shouts and posting in party finder (in the 'other' category).
We have a 1 per page rule (ie if there's only one page of 'other' PFs then we only have 1 post up. If there are 2 pages, then we'll have 2 up.
We -never- do more than 2 no matter how many more pages there are, because 3 is actually also against ToS.

We pay a person to advertise (shout) for us, one time per major city every hour while we are open, in rotation to reduce our spam.
We're not open 24/7. We are open Saturday and Sunday nights for 3-4 hours.
Usually one single post but if we're doing themed, there might be two lines.

Why do we do it this way?
Because we agree with what you've all said.

We want our own place to post.
We do not want to spam city shouts.
We love RP.
I love showing off my venue's builds (I redo it monthly)
Like we have a fully staffed haunted house up on Ultros right now that you can go through with haunters in it to scare you.

We try very hard to NOT be a nuisance to those who aren't into our thing.
So, I can't apologize for anyone else,
but for our venue and myself, I do apologize if we have annoyed.

As we've discussed among ourselves, we see the problem to be more that there are SO MANY venues now, all shout chat is... is venue ads.
I don't have a solution for that because we don't really have any other place to advertise aside from PF-other.

But,
You CAN report any post in PF that is not in the right category.
SE specifically said RP groups and venues were required to use the 'no category' (which is 'other' in NA).
You can also report any ads there are more than 2 identical.
We were told that was against the rules also.

The more you report those breaking the ToS, the more likely SE is to do something to address it.


As for me and my group, we don't want to upset or offend anyone, but we would love it if you came out to RP with us.
I hope we can eventually change the scene into a friendlier, less... annoying one.
We, at least, are trying.

The moment SE gives us our own place in the PF lists...we'll be there.
(but we'll probably still be doing city shouts too).

Thanks for entertaining my TEDtalk
Yira
Hyper
Ultros

Your venue sounds like a cool place to check out. Too bad I'm on a different datacenter~

[DPZ2]

Ya'll have a rep for a reason cause of Ul'Dah + the Waking Sands and what goes down in those two places. No other server has literal crowds standing around for the exact purpose of ERP in the way that Balmung does and you're more than welcome to tour the NA servers to confirm that. Nightclubs in all servers? Absolutely. Having the equivalent of a brothel in two populated areas of the game? Nah that's a you thing.

So, I assume you've been actively engaged in looking for ERP on Balmung in Ul'Dah? How else can you be so sure about it?

I have <glances down at spreadsheet> five alts on Balmung and aside from a single comment (NOT in the Quicksand ... btw the "Waking Sands" is in Vesper Bay) over the last 6 or 7 years, I've never been asked to join in an ERP session nor noted anything except random /shout chatter that disappears as soon as I leave the Ruby Road. Since I spend a bit of time coming and going through the Quicksand (free port to Ul'dah ... thank you login token) I note that the crowds are smaller than the ones by the Aetheryte in Limsa on Gilgamesh.

I suspect that the "rep" is mumbled in whispered breaths by players on every other server by those without actual knowledge.

[PirateRyanG]

I've been going to a few nightclubs in game recently, just to make more friends.

Some won't let me in (cos apparently I am a paedo as I play a Lala), but the ones that have let me in have been fun. Lots of conversations.

Cafes seem to be the prime RP for me, though. So chilled, and there are a couple of cafes on my DC that get some good foot traffic.

[rainichan]

Ya'll have a rep for a reason cause of Ul'Dah + the Waking Sands and what goes down in those two places. No other server has literal crowds standing around for the exact purpose of ERP in the way that Balmung does and you're more than welcome to tour the NA servers to confirm that. Nightclubs in all servers? Absolutely. Having the equivalent of a brothel in two populated areas of the game? Nah that's a you thing.

We have a "reputation" because reddit and the forums, in the early days of ARR, all went "haha 'roleplay', suuuuure" and it's snowballed from there because non-erp can't just HAPPEN in a game, it's always erp right?!

I've been playing since 2.0 opened, on Balmung, so if you're going to try to pin it on anyone, it's going to be pinned on everyone else for what wasn't ever a problem on my own server. It was NEVER a problem until all the other servers made alts here to MAKE the server that, and the problem has only gotten worse because of the wanderers and travelers coming here going "haha so where's the erp in shout."

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

We have a "reputation" because reddit and the forums, in the early days of ARR, all went "haha 'roleplay', suuuuure" and it's snowballed from there because non-erp can't just HAPPEN in a game, it's always erp right?!

I've been playing since 2.0 opened, on Balmung, so if you're going to try to pin it on anyone, it's going to be pinned on everyone else for what wasn't ever a problem on my own server. It was NEVER a problem until all the other servers made alts here to MAKE the server that, and the problem has only gotten worse because of the wanderers and travelers coming here going "haha so where's the erp in shout."

Pretty much this, and now no one can really say anything. Aether is infested with brothels and "clubs"

[UnrealTai]

Every day in shout chat "COME CHECK OUT OUR CLUB WITH DJ AND GAMBLING AND TOTALLY NOT BROTHEL SERVICES." Constant ads in Party Finder, sometimes the same club being advertised three times.

I get people like these, I really do. It's not my thing, and normally I would ignore it; but every time I log in and even poke my head in one of the main city states, these ads constantly pollute shout chat and party finder. Blacklisting is only a band-aid fix because the criers who are hired rotate very quickly. Turning off Shout Chat is also a bandaid because one should not be forced to turn off an in game function that can be incredibly helpful in many situations (shout calling for a Rez is one such thing.)

Don't get me started on how some clubs are openly advertising gambling, or some openly offering ERP through 'escorts' and 'dancers'.

Again, not shaming the people who go to these, that's entirely on them: I just want them to tone back just a bit and not flagrantly skirt the TOS. And maybe not have more than one ad in Party Finder?

Pretty much.
Honestly, these shouts and PF clogging are even more annoying than RMT ads
At least RMT usually keep their spam isolated in /say around a main aether in town.
I don't judge those behaviors either, but I do judge annoyances.

I'm leaving the disgustingly extroverted Mateus in 4 days to Dynamis DC because of it.
No thank you, loud annoying needy people be gone.

[CidHeiral]

I'm leaving the disgustingly extroverted Mateus in 4 days to Dynamis DC because of it.

Dynamis will have exactly the same problem the second housing opens up. Nothing is going to change unless SE cracks down on it, which is doubtful. Really all anyone can do is report the spammers and hope something comes of it.

Especially on the weekends the spam gets so bad it can become difficult to even follow a conversation in a capital city because of the constant barrage of gigantic, multi-paragraph club ads. Then there's the Other tab of PF which has been ruined for anything non-club related because the clubs all apparently need five listings each, drowning out anything else. It has really gotten out of hand.

How people get their rocks off in private is their own business but the rest of the community shouldn't have to suffer for it.

[UnrealTai]

Im sure it will but at least won't be immediate. It took Goblin a good year or 2 to get to that level. Even now anything less than what's on Mateus & Balmung should be.... fine.

All I need is one more year of a somewhat Introverted server lol. 10+ years, about time to quit :P

Also, yes, exactly, ffs lol

[LianaThorne]

Pretty much this, and now no one can really say anything. Aether is infested with brothels and "clubs"

Everywhere on NA is infested with it, check out Primal too sometime.

As far as the others and the points made, no I don't personally visit Balmung in my free time but I watch friends go on stream and see the tells that are sent to them. *shrug*

If you haven't had that experience, cool I guess. I'm glad that you've avoided being harassed. Doesn't mean others haven't and also haven't been solicited out of nowhere by random people. Hell, I was on Zalera for a few months and got hit on out of nowhere when in major cities on more than one occasion. It is what it is I guess.

[Katt_Felista]

Pretty much this, and now no one can really say anything. Aether is infested with brothels and "clubs"

Yeah, Hydaelyn might rethink what she did to the world and let Yoshi-P to enact a new sundering, into an FF 17 / 18, it must be purged !