Square Enix is finally making improvements to the Final Fantasy XIV blacklist when Dawntrail releases. After many years of players reporting unending harassment that has ended in them moving servers, quitting the game, or in extreme cases, getting law enforcement involved.
During the FFXIV Live Letter from the Producer 80, director and producer Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida told fans that the blacklist was finally being addressed. In Dawntrail, players will have more control over their privacy both inside and outside of the game via the Lodestone.
Harassment in FFXIV has been a topic players have been asking Square Enix to address for years. Stories from players who have suffered from harassment have had little to no relief from it, and most of them end up taking breaks or quitting the game completely to avoid it. In a recent extreme case, a man in Japan was arrested for stalking someone in and out of FFXIV. Every few months a new social media post would pop up and the community would call for enhanced anti-harassment tools. Today, Yoshi-P finally answered players' pleas.
In case you missed the broadcast, here's a breakdown of every blacklist change that was announced during the Live Letter and how the features will work in Dawntrail.
Enhanced Blacklist Functionality
The one thing players have wished would change the most is for the blacklisted character to disappear from your screen. Currently, blacklisted players can still be seen on your screen unless a third-party tool is used. Yoshi-P has told fans that this will now be built into the game for Dawntrail. Blacklisted players will no longer appear on your screen after you blacklist them, with very few exceptions.
"In addition to the blacklisted character's messages, their character model will now also be hidden," the slideshow stated.
Not only that, but another huge change players will see is that the blacklist will now affect all characters tied to their service account, making it far harder for harassers to get around the flimsy pre-Dawntrail blacklist, and will now require them to make totally new service accounts if they want to continue their crusade.
Blacklisted players will still appear if you happen to match with them in Duties, but their character name will be listed as "Unknown" in the party list and on their nameplate. Additionally, if that player speaks during Duties, players will be able to choose to either keep hidden or view what they've written with a subcommand menu.
It is unclear if characters blacklisted before Dawntrail will employ all of the features the post-Dawntrail blacklist is implementing. A vague statement on the slides said, "the blacklist will distinguish between characters blacklisted before and after 7.0," with no additional explanation. Fanbyte has reached out to Square Enix for clarification on what this means.
Mute List
The new mute list will effectively function as the blacklist does pre-Dawntrail. Players who add someone to their mute list will have their chat messages hidden. Unlike the pre-Dawntrail blacklist, this will apply to all characters on that person's service account. The same feature will apply when a muted character speaks up in a Duty, and players will be able to choose whether or not to view what they've said in chat.
Muted players will still have their name displayed as normal, as opposed to the blacklist which hides the names.
The blacklist and mute list can each have 200 people on their respective lists, meaning if your blacklist is full, you can still add less pesky players to your mute list.
Term Filter
A new filter will be implemented in Dawntrail to allow users to filter out messages containing specified terms. This will apply to Say, Tell, Yell, Shout, and /emote in all circumstances except for Duties. The term filters won't affect party chat, Free Company chat, Linkshells or cross-world Linkshells.
This term filter will essentially allow players to curate their experience as they venture through the different areas of the game, and will likely be most useful in the starting cities.
Estate Expulsion
Don't want someone in your house? Now you can kick them out of it. If you have privileges in an estate, no one you have blacklisted can enter the house, and they will be expelled from the house the moment they are added to the blacklist. Additionally, you can just choose to expel someone from your estate and they will be disallowed from entering it for 10 days. Not only that, but this feature also extends to the expelled person's other characters as well.
Free Company masters and estate owners will have access to the function, and can designate up to four free company members or housemates that will also have access to it. Those who have access to the function will see any person they have blacklisted immediately expelled from the estate when they attempt to enter.
Enhanced Lodestone Privacy
Square Enix also addressed Lodestone privacy, which can make it easy for harassers to follow their targets in order to continue their harassment. Greater privacy control will be added, allowing players to limit who can be certain parts of your Lodestone character page, such as your profile, achievements, and friends. Increased visibility settings will also be added, making it so that only friends, Free Company members, Linkshell members, and more can access your Lodestone details.
Additionally, you can choose to completely remove the ability for your character to appear in searches on the Lodestone. If you don't choose to completely hide your character from Lodestone searches or limit who can see it, blacklisted players are automatically blocked on Lodestone, disallowing those players from seeing your Lodestone activity. A block list has been added to the Lodestone to manually add people in order to block them from seeing your Lodestone activity.
What's missing?
All of these additions to the harassment tools in the game are exactly what players have been asking for, but one glaring thing Western players have been requesting is that when you remove a friend from your friends list, it also removes you from theirs. If it wasn't included in this round of changes, it's unlikely the change will ever be made. Luckily, being able to add players to the mute list or blacklist will probably solve the harassment issues most players are facing. There are still likely to be exceptions where harassment persists, but with these improved tools, hopefully the Game Masters will be a little less flooded with help tickets, thus allowing them to focus on victims who have issues the blacklist can't fix.
In a perfect world, blacklisted players would be unable to match with you in Duties, however Yoshi-P stated that enabling this would make the matching system much harder. The changes made to blacklisted players inside a Duty are likely to solve most people's problems, and create a far more pleasant experience for those who have dealt with harassment. As a whole, the changes are very welcomed by the community, and many hope that the new tools will allow for a safer space for gamers to play without the threat of harassment forcing them from the game and community they love.
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