Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[zztoluca]

GMs aren't dumb. In all likelihood, the person making a false claim of "emotional distress" will be the one punished for abusing the report feature (which is also a punishable offense).

Who said anything about being dumb. You assume this will be automated, these are humans with emotions.

[Fyce]

Only if you do so in an offensive way.

Not exactly, the correct statement would be: "only if the other person gets offended".
You could say something in a very nice way but still get someone offended. Then all it takes is for them to write a convincing report to a GM.

These new rules are not about the way you deliver your message, but how offensive your message can be to someone.

[ElHeggunte]

Am I the only one who has at least a modicum in trust in GM’s etc to not abuse this lol?

Idk it’s rare for me to defend dev decisions lol, I usually disagree or I’m indifferent. But I feel like thinking these new rules are going to be used to ban everyone with an opinion is maybe a bit of a knee jerk reaction. [...]

So yeah, I understand why people would be worried that the new ‘rules’ can potentially abused. But I disagree that adding them will affect normal players in any way. If you do get banned, I’d like to assume there’s a reason for it lol

GMs aren't dumb. In all likelihood, the person making a false claim of "emotional distress" will be the one punished for abusing the report feature (which is also a punishable offense).

If we take what they've said as the truth, plenty of people have been banned from the forums for making relatively benign comments while other posters who've said similar or worse never received a single infraction. This cause for concern isn't without precedence.

[Kaedan]

Not exactly, the correct statement would be: "only if the other person gets offended".
You could say something in a very nice way but still get someone offended. Then all it takes is for them to write a convincing report to a GM.

These new rules are not about the way you deliver your message, but how offensive your message can be to someone.

No, it's not that simple, and it's why people are blowing this change way out of proportion.

Sure, if someone "feels" offended, they can report you, but you're not going to be punished automatically because that person said they felt offended. They'll look at the logs and they'll only punish if the language used was actually offensive enough to cause "emotional distress". These are employees, so they'll have guidelines on objective criteria for what constitutes "emotionally distressing" language. And people who abuse the system by claiming false emotional distress will have to worry about being punished instead.

If we take what they've said as the truth, plenty of people have been banned from the forums for making relatively benign comments while other posters who've said similar or worse never received a single infraction. This cause for concern isn't without precedence.

The people who police the forums are not the GMs that operate in the live game.

[cougarel]

*eating popcorn*
I see there can't be middle ground and 0 trust in the GM and with that no trust in SE.
Which it's very sad in the end because it raises a question : why pay for a service you mistrust?
It's ok anyway since activity in the thread will display the interest and worries of the players , which I presume will end in them providing a more detailed presentation of the changes made.
One can only hope....

[zztoluca]

I see there can't be middle ground and 0 trust in the GM and with that no trust in SE.
Which it's very sad in the end because it raises a question : why pay for a service you mistrust?

I pay to play the game because I find it fun and worth the cost.

The mistrust has been earned through their own actions as a company. This even extends to its official store.

Take that as you may.

[Fyce]

No, it's not that simple, and it's why people are blowing this change way out of proportion.

Sure, if someone "feels" offended, they can report you, but you're not going to be punished automatically because that person said they felt offended. They'll look at the logs and they'll only punish if the language used was actually offensive enough to cause "emotional distress". These are employees, so they'll have guidelines on objective criteria for what constitutes "emotionally distressing" language. And people who abuse the system by claiming false emotional distress will have to worry about being punished instead.

Of course it's the person who gets offended that will report you. And why would the GM think that they weren't really offended? If someone claims to be offended by something, who but that person can know if that's actually the case and how much it affected them? How can you decide if something is "offensive enough"? Everyone have different sensibilities. What might seem offensive to you might not be to someone else, and vice versa. There is no reason to think that GM will arbitrarily draw a line to say how thick of a skin people should have.

Besides, there is absolutly nothing in these rules or the official lodestone announcement that proves your claim. If anything, they literally just said that they will now get involved, and that it was the biggest change in their policy that they ever made. People have the right to express their concerns about the worst case scenario. You brushing that off so easily achieve absolutly nothing and can even be quite detrimental.

The "better be safe than sorry" approach very much applies here.

By reading the logs. They aren't just going to accept any claim of "I was offended" and automatically punish the accused. That's utterly ridiculous.

Yes, the GMs will have objective criteria by which to judge if something reported actually qualifies as "emotionally distressful".

You actually don't know that. And yes, this is ridiculous, because these rules are ridiculous.

[cougarel]

I pay to play the game because I find it fun and worth the cost.

The mistrust has been earned through their own actions as a company. This even extends to its official store.

Take that as you may.

You actually pay for a service to have access to and by doing that you accept an agreement between you and the company.
The fact that they announced the changes and left open for feedback as in not closing the post for comments, means that they want feedback and certainly some changes are prone to happen.

Feel free to let us know if there are certain topics you would like us to improve upon.

That was from the forum post.

[Nyvara]

How the heck do you even report anything? I saw a group of 5 Lalafel mages teleporting around and for the life of me could not find the report feature?

[Saradain]

So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause.