Quote Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo View Post
I'm genuinely happy to hear that's the case; sadly, it's not the case for everyone. While some of my friends are top tier, some of my friends are just barely "good enough" to do baseline content. And some of these players have literally stopping queuing for content without a pre-made or a Trust because the number of times they've been criticized or talked down to has left the enduring impression that in any group with randoms there's a non-trivial chance that someone will single them out. And that sucks a whole lot.

It's a problem that the game has, one that the devs themselves recognized in 2021 when they revised the form factor of the game's list of Prohibited Activities (which caused quite a stir as players worried they weren't even allowed to offer suggestions anymore).

Sadly, as we well know, the ToS alone doesn't prevent harmful behavior, it can only mitigate and sometimes punish it. That's why it's also beneficial to use game design itself as a means to provide solutions to problems such as these. By giving players a diverse array of options to select from, each player can find one that better suits their personal needs and playstyle.
While game design is going to strive to provide the optimal user experience, game design in and of itself is not the solution to player conflict. Aside from varying skill levels (which game design can compensate for to some degree), there will always be a range of emotional maturities, players that have varying social backgrounds, moral codes, etc. That is why every game has a TOS. I would dispute that in FFXIV there is a "non-trivial" chance of encountering TOS violations, however if your definition of "non-trivial" is zero there I would agree with you. However, I would also say that zero is a non-realistic expectation. Whether violations are followed up appropriately - that's a whole other discussion.