Despite having general public praise, the blacklist in Final Fantasy XIV is considered one of its lowest points. Despite applying restrictions to its added players, it still doesn’t do much against harassers and stalkers, but it seems like things are turning into a new leaf in Dawntrail as new functions will be added.
In the latest Live Letter event for 7.0, which revealed the Benchmark trailer for the next FFXIV expansion, director and producer Naoki Yoshida finally tackled the blacklist subject as he announced a major overhaul for the blocking features to protect everyone’s experiences in the game.
Blacklisted players will now have their character models hidden from those who blocked them. We also got access to the Mute List, a less harsh option in which their models are still visible, but their messages won’t appear to you at all. Up to 200 players can be blacklisted or mute-listed, and both of these lists are independent. Blacklisted users won’t be able to check your Lodestone page either.
Fortunately, these weren’t the only functions to be added. The new Term Filter helps remove spam from any desired text channels, and the Estate Expulsion feature lets house owners remove others from their proprieties. Spammers and stalkers have historically been problematic in the community, so these changes are more than welcome.
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Announcements were met with positive approval by fans, shedding an even brighter light upon the future. However, this is only the first step as other glaring issues remain with the current Blacklist iterations, and it looks like they aren’t being tackled just yet.
Strangely enough, your name will remain on another player’s friend list even if you remove them from yours/blacklist them. No mentions of changes for this were made in the announcements, hinting that it could stay the same in the next expansion.
Additionally, it was directly stated that players can still get matched up with blacklisted/muted players during Duties. Their models would be visible during these, only with their names labeled as “Unknown”. When questioned, Yoshida apologized and claimed that implementing a solution “would make the system a lot more complicated”, according to a free translation by Miuna in the Final Fantasy XIV Discord server.
Currently, the closest thing we get is that blacklisted players cannot see a Party Finder you put up, but that’s only reserved for a portion of the content available in the game. Regardless of being complicated to add, any tool that could help avoid harassment should be a priority. As long as it doesn’t completely break other systems, of course.
But alas, there might be more to these changes than we’ve seen up until now. They’ll all be hitting live servers in July, when the Dawntrail expansion finally hits. FFXIV is fortunately shaping up to be a more enjoyable experience than ever with those blacklist changes, so let’s hope things keep improving from now on.
