Even the best communities in gaming aren’t always actually great, which is why Final Fantasy 14 will be strengthening its blacklist features. As announced last night during a Live Letter from the Producer, when the 7.0 expansion Dawntrail arrives this July, the game’s blacklisting will be strengthened, adding model removal, muting and estate expulsion—all of which will be applied more broadly than ever.
The best part is that the following features will apply to all characters on the account of any blacklisted, muted, or “evicted” player. Prior, any other characters on the account could still interact if you had blocked one, meaning a paid account could make several other “alts” in order to come back and harass a player. The account-wide blocking means there’s no whack-a-mole, which also takes up valuable blacklist space (as there’ll still only be 200 spots).
Firstly, traditional “blacklisting” will now be a “mute list.” This means that muted players will simply be muted: still present in spaces, but with no chat coming through.
FFXIV’s new actual “blacklist” feature will be far more powerful, meanwhile. Any player on the full-fledged blacklist will not only be muted, but have their entire character removed from in-game visibility. Prior, the only way to do so was through unofficial third-party modding features, which was a popular option for players who were being harassed.
A long-asked-for “estate expulsion” ability will be added now, too. This not only removes an offender from the estate, but automatically forces them off the estate each time they attempt to enter. Unfortunately, it’ll only last 10 days per go, but it’s a much-welcome feature.
The only frustrating catch? You can still be queued into duties with the offending parties. However, the game will block the name and chat, giving you the option to temporarily unhide the character’s chat in case anything essential is missing (but likely not). Still a start.
If you’re sick of certain topics in chat, especially certain shout chat spam types, there’ll also be new word muting features. I know plenty of fellow Crystal players eager to block certain venue descriptions. Also, Lodestone privacy settings will be expanded so that players can have visibility available to certain groups of players.
The new blacklisting capabilities will arrive with Dawntrail, FFXIV’s new expansion which officially releases July 2nd along with a massive graphics update, two new classes, the female Hrothgar race, and more.
Do you like these new features, or do you think they’re too much? Either way, at least it’s not the Xbox’s AI-powered auto-banning for Free Company adds.
