[TOS Updates] It's not the updates that's important - it's whether ZOS staff will be reasonable

Dusk_Coven

TOS, like real-world law, just defines possible abusive actions and legitimizes taking action against perpetrators.
What's actually important is the WHO deciding whether to actually take action.

Let's look at mudballing in ESO for example.
Person A might say, "I got mudballed, that's griefing! Let's all file a report to get that person in trouble."
Person B might say, "It's Jesters Festival so it's legit to mudball these people for an hour or so."
Person C might say, "I know it's Jesters but he wouldn't stop mudballing me. That's griefing."

What's important here is the person investigating. They have to be reasonable and say to Person A, that's not enough to be actionable and in fact the entire mass-report is suspicious and unfounded so everyone is going to get a suspension.
And to say to Person B that they don't care about their rationalization and they don't have to answer them to award a suspension.
And maybe to Person C that it's sort of a grey area but they will tell the perpetrator to just stop targeting him because no means no, but a suspension might not be necessary.

So what we should really be concerned about is whether ZOS's crew will actually do any investigation and follow-up, and whether they are reasonable about it or not.
And the forum posts we've had about various customer service actions suggest this is actually a concern. Which makes it a concern not just for the particular changes that were added, but for everything that has been there and will be added in the future.

VaranisArano

Mudballing is probably a bad example, since ZOS has said it's a reportable action in the past, considered as griefing or harassment. People have gotten at least warnings for it before.

And unless your defense was "I'm roleplaying a jester!" I think you mean the New Life Festival. Jesters is about pelting grumpy people with cherry blossoms instead.

Gythral

If the [snip]s are an indicator
NO
...

Sgrug

Personal experience and that of some others I know here I would testify under oath, in full truth to the best of my experience. NO.

[snip] Having stated this I am honestly concerned about this post getting me banned but I have no idea how to word more politely and yet communicate my genuine concern, not out of a desire to be argumentative or spiteful but to express my honest and real feelings on this.

[edited for conspiracy theories]

idk

VaranisArano wrote: »

Mudballing is probably a bad example, since ZOS has said it's a reportable action in the past, considered as griefing or harassment. People have gotten at least warnings for it before.

And unless your defense was "I'm roleplaying a jester!" I think you mean the New Life Festival. Jesters is about pelting grumpy people with cherry blossoms instead.

And logic would suggest there is a difference between tossing a single mudball at someone vs tossing a mudball at the person over and over and over.

Tryxus

VaranisArano wrote: »

Jesters is about pelting grumpy people with cherry blossoms instead.

And pies

TwinLamps

u mud bruv

Edit.
I am joking, ofc, dont ban me

Jeremy

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

TOS, like real-world law, just defines possible abusive actions and legitimizes taking action against perpetrators.
What's actually important is the WHO deciding whether to actually take action.

Let's look at mudballing in ESO for example.
Person A might say, "I got mudballed, that's griefing! Let's all file a report to get that person in trouble."
Person B might say, "It's Jesters Festival so it's legit to mudball these people for an hour or so."
Person C might say, "I know it's Jesters but he wouldn't stop mudballing me. That's griefing."

What's important here is the person investigating. They have to be reasonable and say to Person A, that's not enough to be actionable and in fact the entire mass-report is suspicious and unfounded so everyone is going to get a suspension.
And to say to Person B that they don't care about their rationalization and they don't have to answer them to award a suspension.
And maybe to Person C that it's sort of a grey area but they will tell the perpetrator to just stop targeting him because no means no, but a suspension might not be necessary.

So what we should really be concerned about is whether ZOS's crew will actually do any investigation and follow-up, and whether they are reasonable about it or not.
And the forum posts we've had about various customer service actions suggest this is actually a concern. Which makes it a concern not just for the particular changes that were added, but for everything that has been there and will be added in the future.

Yeah that's a problem with "moderation" and rule enforcement - especially if the rules are broadly written and undefined (as this game's are). It's entirely subjective.

They should probably just rewrite the code of conduct to say this: we can ban you for what ever reason we want and by signing this you are agreeing to that stipulation. Because that is basically what it really says.

Sahidom

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

InaMoonlight

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

No.


Because i'm not playing a game with npcs, but real people.


At OP, they have, relatively been so far, this doesn't change anything they do, it just changes if people are able to sue the panties off them doing so in order to protect their game?

Dusk_Coven

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Moloch1514

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Isn't the intended use of the Mudball memento to be an infinitely re-spawning ball of mud that you throw at other people?

Minyassa

What makes it look like they're not interested in resolutions is that there are clear solutions to some of the issues like the one cited as an example. LOTRO took care of that sort of griefing years ago by implementing an opt-out toggle for forced emotes; people who didn't want to have emotes that forced animations on them could not use them on others either, so it is completely fair to all parties, and all of the people participating in the emoting were doing so because they wanted to. And LOTRO is pretty ancient compared to ESO, so it's not like that was some sort of newfangled coding that ZOS doesn't have access to. They haven't done it because they don't care to bother with it, so either they like the conflict it causes between players or they just don't think that solving the drama is worth the investment of time. I will reasonably lean toward the latter, despite the many many ways in which this game is designed to stir up interpersonal player drama.

InaMoonlight

Are anyone so dense that they can't understand if its fun throwing at wayshrine's for a while, or friends! But it's not super cool to troll someone rp'ing, or anyone else, you MUST be able to sense people stopped laughing?

InaMoonlight

InaMoonlight wrote: »

Are anyone so dense that they can't understand if its fun throwing at wayshrine's for a while, or friends! But it's not super cool to troll someone rp'ing, or anyone else, you MUST be able to sense people stopped laughing?

Sorry' I can answer my own question, yes I've seen reports of people getting stalked as an rp guild, people in it, stalked and mudballed for hours trying to rp. It CAN be harassment... If you don't know when to stop you need to go anyway!

Dusk_Coven

Moloch1514 wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Isn't the intended use of the Mudball memento to be an infinitely re-spawning ball of mud that you throw at other people?

No it is not.
Just as you can't get water balloons and just throw them at just anyone. That's assault.
Even in a context where there is implicit consent to having a water balloon thrown at you, there are civilized limits. If you all gang up on someone, or if you target someone or a group of people and keep pelting them especially when they tell you to stop, that's not just griefing in the real world. It's probably assault and you rightly deserve legal consequences.

Too many people are obtusely being unreasonable and so the TOS has to adapt to that.

idk

Minyassa wrote: »

What makes it look like they're not interested in resolutions is that there are clear solutions to some of the issues like the one cited as an example. LOTRO took care of that sort of griefing years ago by implementing an opt-out toggle for forced emotes; people who didn't want to have emotes that forced animations on them could not use them on others either, so it is completely fair to all parties, and all of the people participating in the emoting were doing so because they wanted to. And LOTRO is pretty ancient compared to ESO, so it's not like that was some sort of newfangled coding that ZOS doesn't have access to. They haven't done it because they don't care to bother with it, so either they like the conflict it causes between players or they just don't think that solving the drama is worth the investment of time. I will reasonably lean toward the latter, despite the many many ways in which this game is designed to stir up interpersonal player drama.

What emotes in ESO force animations on other players? Mudball is not an emote. If we are talking about the mudball and suggesting the emote fix would work for it, and it would, I think that is overkill for one momento.

The better solution for mudball is to put a debuff on a target so that they cannot be affected by a mudball for a short duration, like 20 seconds or a minute.

InaMoonlight

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Moloch1514 wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Isn't the intended use of the Mudball memento to be an infinitely re-spawning ball of mud that you throw at other people?

No it is not.
Just as you can't get water balloons and just throw them at just anyone. That's assault.
Even in a context where there is implicit consent to having a water balloon thrown at you, there are civilized limits. If you all gang up on someone, or if you target someone or a group of people and keep pelting them especially when they tell you to stop, that's not just griefing in the real world. It's probably assault and you rightly deserve legal consequences.

Too many people are obtusely being unreasonable and so the TOS has to adapt to that.

^
I won't event bother typing, I don't have to.

Sylvermynx

People mudball me all the time while I'm crafting on multiple alts. It's no big deal. Probably the people doing so are those who know me from here, and have issues with me for whatever reason. I don't pay any attention, I don't stop what I'm doing, and I certainly don't bother to look for who's doing the mudballing. *shrug* For me, not a problem - and if it WAS a problem I'd have already changed my in-game ID for this account. It's a juvenile thing....

It no doubt is an issue when done to interfere with RP (which is why this game needs a dedicated RP area where if griefers show up, there's something serious that can be done in short order - and yes, I know that's laughable considering, though it shouldn't be).

JKorr

Moloch1514 wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Isn't the intended use of the Mudball memento to be an infinitely re-spawning ball of mud that you throw at other people?

Yes.

Activities during the festival where it is a tradition throwing mudballs at people is okay, yes. During the festival. Possibly for guild involved guild specific restricted events to your guild only, yes.

Constantly throwing mudballs at people using the outfit station, no. Constantly throwing mudballs at people using the crafting stations, no. Constantly throwing mudballs at people attempting to turn in quests/talk to quest-givers, no. Constantly throwing mudballs at people in order to trigger the "wipe off mud" animation that can't be avoided while they're doing anything else, no.

Yes, they gave people the mudball momento. They did not give people free rein to be absolute trolls/tools/***.

redspecter23

We hear about social bans every day for reasons unknown. I don't trust ZOS at all when it comes to disciplinary action regardless of what the TOS says.

They choose to act when inappropriate and choose inaction when action should be taken. I was under the impression that it was always at their discretion and the TOS was just for our benefit so they could cite reasoning when bans happen. Since people seem to be banned with no reasons given at all, can't they just replace it all with.

"We reserve the right to take any action or inaction at our discretion."

No actual guidelines need to be given if they aren't enforced evenly and consistently.

newtinmpls

Sgrug wrote: »

[edited for conspiracy theories]

Um....THAT's not reassuring

Dusk_Coven

Moloch1514 wrote: »

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Hm. Anyonr thought of saying, ESO created the content, mud all in the example, that allowed players to grief other players. Players used allowed published content; therefore, ESO perpetuated the grieving scenario that empowered players to act accordingly, as intended.

That's like saying kitchen knives can kill people, so I'm allowed to kill people because I'm allowed to buy kitchen knives.

NO.

There are limits to what's intended use. Reasonable and civilized people know this.

Isn't the intended use of the Mudball memento to be an infinitely re-spawning ball of mud that you throw at other people?

Why don't you go do that in the privacy of your own player home at one of your NPC Assistants?
Or maybe you can start to explain why it needs to be done to another player.

Same with t-bagging. I don't see players doing it to NPCs they've killed. Why is that exactly?

LadyNalcarya

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Same with t-bagging. I don't see players doing it to NPCs they've killed. Why is that exactly?

We actually did it to saint Olms after killing him on hardmode for the first time.

Monte_Cristo

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Moloch1514 wrote: »

Same with t-bagging. I don't see players doing it to NPCs they've killed. Why is that exactly?

Seen people t-bagging world bosses a few times.

zaria

redspecter23 wrote: »

We hear about social bans every day for reasons unknown. I don't trust ZOS at all when it comes to disciplinary action regardless of what the TOS says.

They choose to act when inappropriate and choose inaction when action should be taken. I was under the impression that it was always at their discretion and the TOS was just for our benefit so they could cite reasoning when bans happen. Since people seem to be banned with no reasons given at all, can't they just replace it all with.

"We reserve the right to take any action or inaction at our discretion."

No actual guidelines need to be given if they aren't enforced evenly and consistently.

Social bans are for people spamming zone or sending too many mails
They are automated and temporary, Mostly an problem for guild admins who send out many group mails in an row.
Say one about IC event run, another about trading, then an correction to the IC runs and bam.

Else never being hit by mudballs or pies outside of events or the week after where people want to get rid of them.
The questionable meat sack is more common for pranking I say.