GM Warning for 'Offensive Language', No actual reason given

[KageTokage]

No offense, but this is just crazy. Are you incapable of speaking civilly when amongst strangers?

People will honestly try to rile others up just so they'll have a reason to report them.

I've seen them doing it in NN by feigning stupidity to provoke aggressive responses from the other players, afterwhich they'll kick them then immediately leave NN themselves so they can't get a retaliatory kick from the mentors who realized what they were doing.

[AnnaRosa]

Alright, so let's start this with the logs of the conversation I had between the GM and myself;

Did you use offensive language while role playing?
Just speculating here could it be the case you did use a less friendly expression while role playing and someone took it out of context and got offended?

[KuroMaboroshi]

My main reason for disliking the 'no reason given' policy is that 'offensive' is not a static concept. Even if we limit it to just using curse words, this is a problem.

Language shifts over time, words fall in and out of favour and are deemed unacceptable or acceptable. The word 'bloody' was (according to Wikipedia) fine until the midst of the 18th century, when it stopped being so. These days, after a long time, it has lost most of that shock value again and is apparently considered "a mild expletive and is used more freely". It also was apparently never offensive outside the UK.
Personally, I use it quite a lot, having picked it up from some British friends. I have never gotten into trouble for it so far, so the 'shift' towards being fine is probably pretty far.

But it's impossible to agree where during such a 'shift' we are in regards to some words. Looking at the third of the "Seven Dirty Words", it is not only used as a swear word, but also an intensifier in everyday language during informal conversations. As such it's easy to imagine how it might sneak into the speech of someone even just on accident, when it was not meant to be offensive at all. The word is undergoing a shift where its increased new use might render it less objectionable over time.
But with no clear guidelines, it is impossible to tell where along that line we are in FF XIV. Is the third dirty word fine when used to strengthen an adjective? Is 'bloody' only fine on NA servers, but not on EU? Whose standards apply when the language is spoken in multiple countries and they don't consider the same words to be offensive?

This becomes especially unpleasant when English is not your first language, as it is for me. I know from experience how much easier swearing comes in a non-native language, and it can be quite difficult to judge how crass a word is when you're missing the social context of living in a place where it is spoken all the time. I play on the NA servers cause that's where most of my friends are, but even though I am confident in my English, that doesn't magically give me the ability to know just which words are currently 'acceptable' in NA.
This can be especially tricky if a word is suddenly shifting the other way, being deemed offensive when it previously was not. You might end up stepping on people's toes even if you'd be completely fine with not using the word if only someone told you before.

Now, I'd like to give the GM team the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these things. I want to believe they look at the context and wouldn't ban someone for e.g. the third dirty word if just used as an intensifier.
But the lack of accountability and especially feedback means that even if the GM team is doing a stellar job in this regard, we'd have no way of knowing. The same applies if they were doing an awful job in this regard. We simply have no way of knowing anything at all and that is sad.

[ForteNightshade]

Someone can't just make up anything and say they were offended to get you in trouble, it has to pass a reasonable person standard. It doesn't really matter if the person who reported you was really offended or not, if you used profanity or said something really out of line that an outside observer could interpret as offensive then you broke the rules.

What is a reasonable standard though? I have been apart of several games and forums where they have a similar ToS about profanity yet it only pertains to things like the F word. Some don't even mind if you swear, provided it isn't excessive or directed towards anyone. On the opposite end, are we supposed to use darn and heck because their equivalents are "curse words" to some people?

The point is... why can't the GMs simply quote the offending post made? They do it on the forums. If you receive a ban, they literally email you your own post. But in game they can't say anything to you? How ridiculous is this?

[HyoMinPark]

Whatever you said it was against the ToS. That is all you need to know. Be careful what you say. It can come back to haunt you very quickly in this game. It isn't WoW.

"You said bad words. We can't tell you what those bad words were. And you may not even remember this conversation that could have been so far as a couple days ago - perhaps even more - when you said these bad words that we can't tell you what they were. But just don't say them again. K? K."

That doesn't sound convoluted as heck to you?

[van_arn]

Utterly useless GM. But at least they're polite.

If they're not going to communicate like a human, or provide details on the incident in question, then fire them all and replace them with bots.

[Jaywalker]

Just want to say to OP after reading the exchange, I appreciate how polite, reasonable, and articulate you were with the GM. I do think better clarity on rules is needed because the current setup seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but the GMs didn't set that situation up and can just try to enforce policy as appropriately as possible. I do really hope this subject gets serious consideration.

[BunnyChain]

Might have not given a warning at all. What's a warning without a reason? A waste of everyone's time.

[Anselmet]

Hello? Excuse me, GM. But uh- what's the point of making the profanity filter default on all new players if we're gonna then punish people bc they saw bad words by turning it off??


Also I kinda find it sad that when the new ToS rules were announced I said things like what happened to op would happen. Then a bunch of nay sayers said it wouldn't I am overreacting. Glad I went with my gut and more or less stopped talking in pf/df. Also I don't see any harm in letting people know what they did wrong. If they went out and harassed the person do you know how easy that will be to prove something like that? Do you think that then a person would just get a slap on the wrist?

[dragonkyn20]

I've played for almost 6 years and I've been pretty chatty in shout most of the time in group content. I've even used some "offensive" language like cursing yet I've never been pulled into the gaol by the GMs. Guess I've been incredibly lucky to be grouped with people who appreciate my bullshit.