Official XIV forums are up, with ridiculous posting limits!Follow

To quote myself:



A Realm Reborn's Beta forums was by far the worst I've experienced, and I've done several Betas. I even ghost the League of Legends boards and they've been better. The post restrictions are to keep the flood volume of completely unnecessary posts down, and it is us, the community that are responsible for that sort of lockdown. We couldn't be have like adults, so we're being treated like children.

Again, I would have done much worse, given I was in that sort of position. Like, Salvage-dupe level purge. The forums would be littered with bodies impaled by my Ban-lance and left to bleed and rot as examples of whoever else decides to be liberal in their interpretation of the rules - and this would be litterally represented by their avatars in game, as there would be zone dedicated to seeing these banned accounts. (And yes that means forum bans carry over to your character. Can't condone yourself in the forums with civility, there's no reason you can be trusted in the game to do so.) Post at your own peril... Muwahahahahahaaha!

*ahem*

Yeah. So, be kind with your criticism of the forum standards. We earned those restrictions.

Certainly seems like a system rooted in curbing trolling and harassment, which I can't entirely blame them for. On the other hand, I don't think automation makes good moderation in this case. Quality is otherwise subjective with detractors often being a part of a problem either literally or through apathy.

Edit: Catching up the tail end of the thread...

Sometimes one must fight fire with fire, especially when the trolls try their damnedest to elude moderation by hitting thesaurus or vaguely commenting on a hot button issue. In this particular case, however, it carries a bit of that "backseat mod" feel with the individual who got suspended actually trying to defend SE from what is quite obviously a troll-bait subject and outright denigrating the integrity of the product they're aiming to put out with implications of failure. This, in turn, is where context is important and moderation having to do more than just reading an individual post that got reported for problematic behavior.

I never got a suspension on the XI boards when I played, and while some folks basically wore it as a badge of honor for bragging rights, I had two instances of posts being removed in confronting habitual asshats within the RDM forums and even calling out a guy for stalking my posts (A good reason to not allow extensive post history searching) and being blatantly antagonistic about it. Pretty much any time there was a post from anyone they disagreed with, they'd link it on another site and you see a number of them swoop in to try and prove themselves "right" on what was ultimately opinion. In our case, it was basically, "RDM melee sucks and needs help, here's why, please fix it." and even if they agreed for our reasons why it sucked, they'd make up the most absolute batsh*t excuses for why it shouldn't be done or why certain ideas wouldn't work (This gets especially funny when our ideas wound up on future jobs). And certainly when they were wrong on a game mechanic, they would never admit to it or continue to insist everyone was just a "stupid n00b" or other more colorful rhetoric. Call me draconic, iron-fisted, or whatever, but I would've banned those guys very early into their shenanigans and not simply because we had our own disagreements. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm also a big proponent of the philosophy of doing unto others as you'd have others do unto you. The gloves simply come off when they choose to abandon civility and I have no qualms in simply persisting until they're either run out or get bored. I'm sure they'll consider it a victory of its own, but I'm just too much of a white knight personality to really condone what's basically cyber bullying within the MMO sphere.

More to the subject, however, taking in the broader context would've yielded a simple removal of thread were I ruling on it with a warning to the OP (unless he had priors) with the individual who got suspended really facing no penalty other than the post poofing with the thread. People are sick of trolling and the seeming advocating of hostility on the net through inaction or even tricking out-of-touch moderation. And so, the individual now wishes to never return there. A win for the community or a win for the trolls? Man, @#%^ that.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2013 2:45am by Seriha

Zam has a better interface and community imo. Those restrictions seem like they will keep trash out of official forums though.

BTW onionthief that video is priceless I cant believe you actually got banned for that in a unicorn thread lol.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2013 2:14am by Waffleswagon

Edited, Aug 23rd 2013 2:19am by Waffleswagon

So I just registered here and it looks like I'm going to be staying here. I was reading the official forums earlier and wondering why it looked so utterly deserted, then when i tried to register it seems I couldn't because I don't have a character! I'm assuming I won't need to pay $30 and a $15 monthly sub to use these forums, correct? ;) I can't believe they're hitting new customers so hard with the stick though. "Be careful about what you post, young one. You sit down and be quiet when adults are around."

Are the official forums really as bad as everyone says? I mean this is the internet, one expects trolls and crybabies and such. Then again I only go on forums when I have no game to play, so I doubt I will be there to post much outside of the usual newb questions thing.

The purpose of the account-required lock-down in the forums is to keep feedback focused to those who are actually playing the game. It is also a courtesy for those playing the game not to have to argue with say, an armchair critic from the outside looking in intentionally antagonizing their player base.

It also presents free sight bots from abusing the site outright.

Of course, you always have the problem that, if they ever institute a free trial, or during the free period for those who sign up, but have not yet paid, that they simply come in and become incredibly negative on the onset without actually playing with any depth and dedication to the game. Massive amounts of negative feedback about 'shallow gameplay'. was being generated from accounts that had sub level 15 characters in the earlier stages of beta when the level cap was 35.

There's no mistaking it, the lockdowns on posting is strict. But Square Enix is not the villain here. This situation was created by the player base who could not behave themselves and the growing concern about being able to create a quality community enviroment in an increasingly hostile internet culture.

You've not looked much at FFXI's official boards. Face it, we love drama. Some people just maintain a subscription and never really get too deep in the game, and still criticize venomously.

I put nothing past the internet on account of common sense. It doesn't exist in the dark recesses of the community. Rokien is the ultimate example of that. Payed for a game he hated, criticized it for months on end, posted a grand total of nearly two hundred threads, the vast majority of them was naught more than an unsubstantiated opinion expressing his doubts over every single mechanic and feature feasible. And he had to pay for that access in the official boards where the majority of his threads where created.

And his case is not unique, just the most extreme.

@zosimo good point about the legacy status players, I didn't think about that. Hopefully it all evens out as the rest of the community levels and is able to post more. As far as I can see, Zam>official forums in many ways!

The thing is, I've already paid SE, I bought the game. I still can't use the forums. Couldn't they just detect if you had FFXIV or something? Either way, it helped me find better forums, so whatever.

Also, the main problem I see with the post cooldown is most people don't spend 15 minutes just waiting to post on a forum. I know if I couldn't post when I saw something I wanted to post on, I wouldn't wait. I'd just leave.

The time limit + the posting restriction is actually crazy. If I have someone I want to help, I can post an answer for them. Then, I'm limited to participating in less threads for the rest of the day. So silly.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2013 1:13pm by GreyPowervan

This leaves a bad first impression, in my opinion.

You may be a stranger to the way Square Enix's forums system's work, so let me be clear. If you haven't logged into the game, you haven't played the game. Therefire, even if you are a purchaser of the game, you are not a player. When you log in, the forum servers get flagged to say you've played, then you earn your rights to post depending on your max character's level.

First restriction's always been in place since FFXI's official boards came up. Nothing new there. Online a single purchase game, FFXIV is an online title that changes with each patch, so opinions are going to shift and change as well.



And that's what they want you to do. Instead of knee-jerking a post at every opportunity, they want you to premeditate what you are saying, think on it first, then post. If you don't have 15 minutes to do that between posts, then you probably don't have anything unique past another person who could just as easily blow their 15 minute cooldown saying for you.

It's forcing you (because the majority of the populace doesn't seem to have the self control to do it themselves) to invest in your posts, with time, and with thought.

You think it's silly, and that's fine. I happen to disagree, because I think it's more silly, more crazy, more stupid for people to have free reign to act the way they do on the internet. Restrictions aren't new, just new to the field, and honestly I'm interested to see if it helps any.

The first couple of generations of the internet were too passive when it came to regulating conduct, because we were all relishing the 'true freedom' banter we shot back and forth at each other. Sadly, doing that now has made the newer generations take such things to the extreme. There's almost no civility, no pretext of actually having a constructive discussion. Just screaming opposing opinions at each other... kinda like how politics have dissolved into here in the US.

It's a sad state of affairs, really, and a far larger problem than being forced to consider yourself before you post.



I bet. But they're aware of it, they mentioned they wouldn't be able to address it before the old forums went down. Some people I know have the issue as well.

I'm more of the opinion they should have kept the Beta Forums open until about a week after launch, then change up the restrictions.

Yoshida and the development staff of the game itself are ahead of the company when it comes to getting their act together. I wish Yoshida's ideals would brush off on the rest of Square Enix sooner, rather than later.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2013 3:33pm by Hyrist

Obviously getting aggressive and fighting back isn't my first preference, but I view it as better than just rolling over and doing nothing in absence of a legitimate moderating presence. When I see someone who perpetually goes around treating others like garbage, I will have zero inclination to treat them as a saint worthy of patience and understanding. This isn't actual speaking where the slip of the tongue might lead to some misinterpretation. It's text we can pause, review, and edit to convey our thoughts. I won't deny sometimes being lazy about that due to fatigue or hurrying on to other things, but in a situation where someone might have a legit question and your response is something like, "God, just read the sticky!" or "There are a hundred other threads on this, read one of those!" instead of just answering the question without being an ***, then you're being one of those types that's ultimately worsening a community instead of strengthening it. This type of restraint can also be exercised in simply not viewing posts you know won't interest you (Don't want to help a newbie? Don't enter a newbie question thread..), to wit I'd also posit that it's good posting manner to subject a topic accurately to your actual post. Something not everyone does, often quite deliberately. Even this is something moderation can help improve.

Zam isn't perfect. I've had my share of snafus with people here, quite often doing what I mentioned in the last paragraph. For those who frequented XI in the past, Rog stands out as a good example of the wrong type of poster to be left unchained with karma meaning zilch. Sadly, it took him harassing Catwho over an RL pic before he finally got the ban stick, but I honestly can't imagine how many people he scared off with his bad attitude, misdirection, and occasional misinformation. Yet some people thought he was Jesus, too.

There ARE official site that have a lack of restrictions and still work well.

Edited, Aug 24th 2013 3:32am by GreyPowervan