Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Anselmet]

Woohoo this will be fun! Bye bye scumlords and helluu Eorzea!

I find your use of scumlord offensive. Please look forward to your ban.

[Terkhev]

Many people already explained this, so I won't even bother with long post. In short: stupid changes. I'll keep playing and see how it works out, but if it ends up making this community even more aggressively casual, I'm out.

[AxlStream]

Just yesterday I had a Ninja that just wasn't using Shadow Fang at all in Ghimlyt Dark. A problem when he was the only source of slashing debuff in the party. Not only was he gimping his own damage, he was gimping mine as DRK! Seeing that he was obviously in a premade, I obviously seeing a perspective of 1v2 or 1v3, had to hold my tongue with those new rules and I yet carried another party through content and nothing was learned. These new rules just make it impossible to engage in criticism with how thin skinned everyone is these days.

[Millybonk]

Just yesterday I had a Ninja that just wasn't using Shadow Fang at all in Ghimlyt Dark. A problem when he was the only source of slashing debuff in the party. Not only was he gimping his own damage, he was gimping mine as DRK! Seeing that he was obviously in a premade, I obviously seeing a perspective of 1v2 or 1v3, had to hold my tongue with those new rules and I yet carried another party through content and nothing was learned. These new rules just make it impossible to engage in criticism with how thin skinned everyone is these days.

Report them by default, as SE encourages you to to exactly that.

[Rokke]

Eh. While I don’t like the vagueness of some of these rules, its not too different from what we've got now- ultimately it boils down to a GMs call. I’ve reported obnoxious trolls and obvious bots on my server and they’ve yet to be banned. On the flip side there were people getting warnings in-game for what they posted on twitter. Was the GM having a good day? A bad? Did they care or not about the issue personally? These rules will be enforced at their discretion, like they always have been, for better or worse.

[AxlStream]

Report them by default, as SE encourages you to to exactly that.

Sure, but then am I any better than those thin skinned players... I am conflicted about the whole ordeal honestly.

[HyoMinPark]

Don't have time to go through the entirety of your rebuttal (though I still feel like you are continuing to prove my point that these rules can be spun any which way, applied to literally anything, and result in far more "who wins" scenarios than they should because they're so vague). I will address this though:

You should actually go and read the CoC, EULA and ToS for other online games and their involved services, both what they are and are not saying. Open ended language is common because they're not going to write a 500 page document detailing how to not be your average XBL player sending death threats because you killed them in a game.

I did just that, actually - I checked 4 games (WoW, GW2, BnS, and BDO) along with a free Korean MMO I used to play in high school. Most of these games' codes of conduct and TOS were far better worded that this game's, in my opinion, having specificity while also "reserving the right to punish other offenses deemed to be against the terms listed". There were similarities to some of FFXIV's guidelines, but I found those games to be far better worded in their lists of prohibited activities.

They also did not include asinine "rules" on how we can no longer "unilaterally reject another's opinion" or "compel a playstyle" on another player. Or even anything about "criticism" or "discriminatory remarks about thinking". There wasn't even anything about "unilaterally excluding a player from content".

No where in the new policy does it say that disagreeing with someone is "breaking the rules" and punishable.

"Expressions that unilaterally reject another's opinion."
If that's not insinuating you cannot disagree, then what is it saying?

This is a guideline I didn't find in any of the other MMO ToS or codes of conduct that I compared FFXIV's to.

[Fangorn]

In the time when their competitors lose population, in the time of the opportunities SE decide to make new scary baseless vague policies. What is wrong with their logic?

[TheCurls]

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.

It isn’t a stalemate. If neither side can compromise and both sides remain polite, then it falls to which player’s gameplay is disrupting the run. If it’s causing wipes to pull too many, then the tank is being disruptive. If, somehow, smaller pulls are causing the run to be disrupted with wipes, then the healer needs to adjust.

If no solution is agreed upon, there is a perfectly reasonable option available. Whichever of the two just can’t tolerate the other playstyle can just leave the party. You’re not going to get banned for using a function the game provides for its intended purpose.

Sorry to say that in an equal situation where nobody is breaking the “don’t be a jerk” rules and neither wants to leave, the healer wins here because the tank’s playstyle literally causes the run to fail. The healer’s does not.

[Jellybums]

We don't see people as they are. We see people as we are. So if someone doubts GMs' discernment, guess why that is. The new ToS looks to me like giving GMs teeth to penalize toxic people, like a ban won't be over some reason they made up but backed by written policy. That's about it really, so GMs can do their jobs without being scared of doing their jobs. They have to justify penalizing paying customers. Think of this issue from all angles and relax. GMs aren't out to get us.