Account warning with almost no information.

[LittleArrow]

I just wanted to add to this. What the majority of players here have said is true; we all stopped talking in game b/c the first big general / vague harassment policy change back at the end of stormblood / beginning of shadowbringers. This caused us all to realize we could be reported for literally giving advice to a new player.

Btw, we warned in many forum posts this would kill community within the game, and it did. Of course, this was before the big wave of taverns / Rp venues. This was known... as the big quiet - I'm kidding, I'm just calling it that LOL. I've played since 2nd beta 1.0, and this game was never this quiet. We were very chatty like other MMO's, we just weren't as rude / abrassive. Many of us tried to fight back on the forums but were essentially told we don't know what we're talking about and nothing would change - LOL. Yep, everyone stopped helping / talking / interacting.

The second big policy change that occurred was when the streamers were playing. This was actually an improvement to the first one - SE changed the punishments to actually have a cooldown, before they were permanent. SE also said they would be more specific with which policy you broke - before, I could be wrong about this, they wouldn't even tell you which rule you broke let alone what you actually said.

I know it's easy to just blame SE, and rightfully we should ask for more lenient punishment considering some GM's can escalate a single first time offense to level 2 / 3 and bypass the warning all together, giving you an outright ban on a first offense if they deem it too intense (again, I don't have personal experience with this, but I've read posts of banned accounts recounting their side saying this happened to them /grainofsalt). However, the community at large doesn't know how absolutely brutal the punishment system is in this game and rarely come to the forums to find out, so there isn't enough of an outcry.

The advice I can give you is, if you have friends - only speak to them through discord, even free company chat is dangerous b/c you never know when a member starts to feel a certain way about you and decide to try to ruin your entire game. If you don't have friends, like me XD, it's just a pretty quiet game. It's still very enjoyable, but I suggest a lot of youtube in the background / family to speak with outside of the game <3