Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[HyoMinPark]

If so, that's not "weasel words". I think it's more... "cat and mouse game". I read this more as (I am very heavily paraphrasing this) "If the rules are to the letter it becomes a cat and mouse game with new rules needed each time a new bad behavior appears".

So the opposite to what some on the American forums seem to be wanting - all the i's dotted and t's crossed.

You’re interpreting this far different from myself. “Cat and mouse game”, in my interpretation, is literally a stalemate where neither side ends up winning. Both parties arrive at an impasse, and that’s a problem.

Take the following scenario: You have a random matched party in an Expert dungeon. The tank decides to do large pulls, and the healer dissents, saying that large pulls are “stressful to them” and that the tank is “being inconsiderate by trying to force the large pulls on them”. This would fall under “emotional distress” caused by “compelling a playstyle”. Conversely, the tank becomes frustrated because the healer now wants to dictate that they do small pulls over large ones, thereby “compelling a playstyle” on the tank. So, who wins here? Under these current guidelines, both can be spun into “emotionally distressing” situations of “compelling a playstyle”, but who gets punished? The one who does a better job of wording their argument? The one who reports first? How do we know? How can we determine it? It’s a stalemate.


There is very little clarity with these statements, and that is what the NA forums (not “American forums”) want. As well as players that are from other regions (e.g., EU) that post here (the guidelines were not posted in either the French or German subforums, from what I saw).

Even with only a handful of posts on the JP side, them asking for examples comes off as synonymous with asking for clarification, in my opinion. I never said they were outright dissenting the implementation (I’m already well aware that Japanese tend to not outright disagree with things even if they do disagree with them), but that they were asking for clarifications. The poster I responded to said that they “don’t give a crap”, but I don’t think they’d be asking for clarifications/examples if they “didn’t give a crap”.

Edit: I would classify the code of conduct quite simply as "Be awesome to one another". The play style one is really weird, but all the rest seem to be quite in line with "Be awesome". IMHO the more precise the rules, the more often they need to be revised. Keep them vague and on broad principles without going into precise detail, then give the GMs the ability to move depending on the severity of the infraction.

“Be awesome to one another” means different things to different people.

These guidelines give full autonomy, but that can lead to inconsistencies in moderation because now the GMs don’t have exact guidelines to follow. It seems like it will fall more upon the whims of whatever the particular GM that gets your ticket has. As I said before, some of the guidelines posted are downright unenforceable in a game that has so many different cultures, each with differing values and “morals”.