My name is not against ToS/Rules - Yet being forced to change it

[Petori]

at least it shows the true colors of people defending it, thanks for that lmao

No need to be surprised that I got that opinion when the subject is very clearly not defined as such and is perfectly legal in my country. As long as it isn't realistic or confused with real photos, all good.

But you can keep just attacking character and adding nothing to the argument I'm not expecting anything else at this point.

[SieyaM]

I think what it comes down to is that you can't say that a term which is widely know to have connotations for harmful and abusive acts to be innocent simply because you don't mean it that way.

[SieyaM]

Sidenote: It's quite telling how most of the people who are vehemently against the OP appear to be American.

Because it couldn't possible be that this is an English forum primarily for NA players in a game where there are forums for other populations to post and comment in their native language.

[Solakor]

Define "hunt down" in this context. This isn't people tracking the OP and doxing their IRL details. People saw a player in a game with a name they thought was inappropriate and reported said name that was on their screen, likely from chatting or being qued together.

I'll let the GMs decide what is hunting down since they seem to be so adept at enforcing the rules

[Avoidy]

I'll let the GMs decide what is hunting down since they seem to be so adept at enforcing the rules

I know you're being sarcastic about this, but for anyone new to this ongoing conversation about GM action: they're horrible about this. There's another thread up right now, (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Refusal-to-act) where someone has been stalked and harassed by 1 guy for 3 years. GMs haven't done anything. But if your name offends someone for any reason, you can report it and it goes right up to a GM who can make a subjective judgment call.
The implications of this are honestly kind of scary, because we've seen in the past as well that GMs don't care so much about the harm being inflicted as they do about the fact that someone could have been offended. In one example that I read about a couple of years ago, two friends queued leveling roulette together. A tank and a healer. They had been friends for a while, and liked to joke with each other in the chat. At one point, the tank died and jokingly blamed the healer, saying some stereotypical noob stuff like "grrr stupid healer, u let me die >" and the healer, who, again, was friends with the tank and was not offended by this at all, just sorta laughed and went like "fku lmao" and they kept going and eventually cleared. Now, neither of these 2 involved in the interaction were offended by what the other was saying. But a DPS in the group did not know the tank and healer were friends, so he filed a report against (iirc) the tank for being mean to the healer. The tank was then disciplined over his rudeness and given a strike on his account. When the GM refused to explain what the ban was about, the tank took a wild guess and told the GM in the gaol like, "hey if it's about what I said to a healer, that was banter with a friend of mine, he knows I didn't mean that stuff" and the GM basically said that it didn't matter that they were friends, it didn't matter that nobody was actually harmed; all that mattered was that somebody else in the group who wasn't even involved in the conversation felt bothered enough on behalf of the healer (who wasn't offended) to send in the report. I wish I could find the damn thread; it's been years.

Going off of that precedent and this one though, the door's basically open for me to report any name I want, for any stupid reason, and it's basically a cointoss on whether or not a GM decides my feelings warrant you changing a name that you've had for years. All the people in here talking about reporting the OP have names similar to real people I can google. I am free to report that because their real life name references "break my immersion and I'm also offended on behalf of the people they're referencing, who never asked to be used in such a way." You might think I'm being ridiculous to say something like that. You might even say that I'm misinterpreting your name. But none of that matters if we examine the precedent already set in this instance, and in other instances. All that matters is I'm upset, I'm blaming you for it, and now we'll see if a GM agrees or not. They might say it doesn't even matter that your name's harmless; since it offends me, that's enough. Now, I wouldn't do that because I'm not a rat snitch, but the precedent is there now. Congratulations. This is your game.

Just one more reason to never interact with any of the brittle people playing it.

[Xirean]

The implications of this are honestly kind of scary, because we've seen in the past as well that GMs don't care so much about the harm being inflicted as they do about the fact that someone could have been offended. In one example that I read about a couple of years ago, two friends queued leveling roulette together. A tank and a healer. They had been friends for a while, and liked to joke with each other in the chat. At one point, the tank died and jokingly blamed the healer, saying some stereotypical noob stuff like "grrr stupid healer, u let me die >" and the healer, who, again, was friends with the tank and was not offended by this at all, just sorta laughed and went like "fku lmao" and they kept going and eventually cleared. Now, neither of these 2 involved in the interaction were offended by what the other was saying. But a DPS in the group did not know the tank and healer were friends, so he filed a report against (iirc) the tank for being mean to the healer. The tank was then disciplined over his rudeness and given a strike on his account. When the GM refused to explain what the ban was about, the tank took a wild guess and told the GM in the gaol like, "hey if it's about what I said to a healer, that was banter with a friend of mine, he knows I didn't mean that stuff" and the GM basically said that it didn't matter that they were friends, it didn't matter that nobody was actually harmed; all that mattered was that somebody else in the group who wasn't even involved in the conversation felt bothered enough to send in the report. I wish I could find the damn thread; it's been years.

Going off of that precedent and this one though, the door's basically open for me to report any name I want, for any stupid reason, and it's basically a cointoss on whether or not a GM decides my feelings warrant you changing a name that you've had for years. All the people in here talking about reporting the OP have names similar to real people I can google. I am free to report that because their real life name references "break my immersion and I'm also offended on behalf of the people they're referencing, who never asked to be used in such a way." You might think I'm being ridiculous to say something like that. You might even say that I'm misinterpreting your name. But none of that matters if we examine the precedent already set in this instance, and in other instances. All that matters is I'm upset, I'm blaming you for it, and now we'll see if a GM agrees or not. They might say it doesn't even matter that your name's harmless; since it offends me, that's enough. Now, I wouldn't do that because I'm not a rat snitch, but the precedent is there now. Congratulations. This is your game.

Just one more reason to never interact with any of the brittle people playing it.

While I do think it's stupid to not inform the person of their alleged wrong doings; to be taken to the actual GM jail requires more than just one bad incident (unless it was an insanely bad incident). If this pair were playing together for a while and had this banter the entire time and only now is the tank being reprimanded for it then they were likely accruing reports for a while. The action taken in that instance is because of a noticed pattern of reported chat behavior. Depending on how much they banter back and forth it wouldn't surprise me if the healer also had collected a good number of reports as well.

As frustrating as that situation can be, you do need to take into account that other people often cannot tell the difference between a random person being rude to another and friends joking with each other in an online space.

[Avoidy]

While I do think it's stupid to not inform the person of their alleged wrong doings; to be taken to the actual GM jail requires more than just one bad incident (unless it was an insanely bad incident). If this pair were playing together for a while and had this banter the entire time and only now is the tank being reprimanded for it then they were likely accruing reports for a while. The action taken in that instance is because of a noticed pattern of reported chat behavior. Depending on how much they banter back and forth it wouldn't surprise me if the healer also had collected a good number of reports as well.

As frustrating as that situation can be, you do need to take into account that other people often cannot tell the difference between a random person being rude to another and friends joking with each other in an online space.

Gonna be real with you, I was paraphrasing most of that since I read it years ago. He could've been replying to an email about the strike or something. My main point was when he tried to communicate with the team about it, they slapped him with "it doesn't matter that no real harm occurred, what matters is someone was offended enough on behalf of somebody else to report you in the first place." This is the crux of the issue. And when it comes to usernames, it leaves the door wide open for anyone to get butthurt about something wholly unrelated and then just report a person's name to get back at them or something. It's baffling to me how the whole system's ripe for abuse, while simultaneously useless where it's actually needed.

[Themarvin]

Why is it difficult to understand the problems with the name in the first place baffles me, it is wrong, I don't know why we need 13 pages of this and I don't know why af Moderator does not simply shut this one down, because it is pointless, likewise it will ask many questions about people that think it is ok, and can't see it for themself as it is.

And it also makes me want to dodge those people at any cost and keep my family members away from them as it is.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The gms have done things for that stalking thread. The person is using trial accounts and fake info to continue doing it.


There isn't much that can be done by SE to stop that from an administrative pov. IPs change, so an IP block won't work. MAC filtering also wouldn't work, as that changes with each hop in a route.

They need to either make changes to housing to allow block lists to function, which stormy hates because venues, or make it so trial accounts can't access even more, like search info and housing districts at all.

[Xirean]

Gonna be real with you, I was paraphrasing most of that since I read it years ago. He could've been replying to an email about the strike or something. My main point was when he tried to communicate with the team about it, they slapped him with "it doesn't matter that no real harm occurred, what matters is someone was offended enough on behalf of somebody else to report you in the first place." This is the crux of the issue. And when it comes to usernames, it leaves the door wide open for anyone to get butthurt about something wholly unrelated and then just report a person's name to get back at them or something. It's baffling to me how the whole system's ripe for abuse, while simultaneously useless where it's actually needed.

I see your point, however that is the same flaw of any report led enforcement. I always encourage people to file a report if someone did something bothersome, because without reports it is a near certainty that nothing will be done at all. It's also not likely that the reporter will get any notification that their report did something in the first place. You just send it and hope for the best. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it does serve a purpose and in this case as well as your hypothetical I would agree that it worked as intended.

The gms have done things for that stalking thread. The person is using trial accounts and fake info to continue doing it.
There isn't much that can be done by SE to stop that from an administrative pov. IPs change, so an IP block won't work. MAC filtering also wouldn't work, as that changes with each hop in a route.
They need to either make changes to housing to allow block lists to function, which stormy hates because venues, or make it so trial accounts can't access even more, like search info and housing districts at all.

Resolving the stalking issue requires a rework of many systems for this game. At present it doesn't seem like SE wants to do that, but hopefully if people keep making noise about it we may some day see change.