Character name can't be hidden.

[Razushu]

"Only people with somethng to hide are worried about privacy"

That's a bulls**t argument. Always has been and always will be.

Privacy does not require justification.

When it's something sillly like a character's name in a game that thousands of people have the potential to see anyway, it does kind of require justification.

[Atomic_Skull]

When it's something sillly like a character's name in a game that thousands of people have the potential to see anyway, it does kind of require justification.

Go over to /v/ on 4chan, post a screenshot of your character without the name blacked out.

Note that this would not be a wise thing to do. Every horrible thing you've heard concerning 4chan is true.


There is a reason I keep all personal info hidden on the internet, even something as innocuous as a character name in an MMO. It's because anything can be used to track you and there are people out there that will ruin your life just for lulz.

[Runespider]

So this is a very popular thread, this is an annoying issue for quite a lot of posters (including many that never linked due to this). As as can be seen by the arguments against, there really are none.

Any chance a rep can post if there is a possibility of a character hide privacy feature?

[Runespider]

When it's something sillly like a character's name in a game that thousands of people have the potential to see anyway, it does kind of require justification.

Silly to you but not to others maybe?

There are people that post their face in their avatar pic, post the state they live in etc..they don't care. Should that be forced too since they see no problem with it? You have nothing to hide, why keep secrets?

It's not if you consider something silly or not, it's that it's something makes people uneasy or they simply don't want to and that it serves no purpose except people being nosey, there is almost no justification for it. On a forum like ffxiah it's fine, you can simply decide not to post on it but these are the official forums, that are paid for by all of our monthly fees.

[Razushu]

Silly to you but not to others maybe?

There are people that post their face in their avatar pic, post the state they live in etc..they don't care. Should that be forced too since they see no problem with it? You have nothing to hide, why keep secrets?

It's not if you consider something silly or not, it's that it's something makes people uneasy or they simply don't want to and that it serves no purpose except people being nosey, there is almost no justification for it. On a forum like ffxiah it's fine, you can simply decide not to post on it but these are the official forums, that are paid for by all of our monthly fees.

Comparing an ingame character to posting your RL info is very silly. The fact is thousands of people that you don't know already see your online persona, it's not like you're on a server with 4k+ people and they're all on your FList. It if implemented properly would have meant no one can be a tool on the forums and then run around the game with you having the chance to play with them unawares. As it stands nothing is lost by linking a character, no privacy there's already lots of people that can see your name etc. no security the information given is useless for hacking. The only thing lost is anonymity, and why is that such a big deal you need to log in anyway so anonymity is partial on the forums anyway. You can choose not to post on these too.

[Dragoy]

What I more or less left out of my first post here, is that I sort of always expected any official forum to have the users connected to their in-game account and thus, I never really saw it as a privacy issue. It's part of the game, so to speak.

I am one of the most paranoid about security and privacy, but even I don't see this as a privacy issue. If you do, then don't use the forum feature or create a secondary account to post with. That would also clear the paranoidness about the account being "hacked" via said feature though in reality, it would be granting one a false feeling of safety, since if it was possible to get "hacked" via this forum like that, then the account would probably be in danger already, no matter what. ^^;

Sure, it's not as simple to create and maintain a secondary account since it is SqEX we are talking about, but it is an option.


If they were forcing to display more information than the name of a character, job, and level which you can all select yourself (level being tied to job obviously), say your real-life location (country for example), then it would be becoming an issue. Again, I understand that the account management of SqEX is not great and that additional characters cost money, so I would be angry too, if this was an issue to me.


Keep your voices heard, but I'd say don't waste your time with pointless arguments which I see a lot here and some are quite heated up even and serve for no purpose other than draining the effort and nerves of some, fersure.

Personally I would welcome an option to hide our character name, job, and level. I have nothing against that. I would probably prefer it, actually, since I do enjoy having options with everything.


Again, just my thoughts, and none of this is towards anyone in particular, just a general view of the situation. ^^

[Scuro]

I love how the posters in this are now the "Rebels with out a cause" its not so much the fact that people have something to hide, its that the are "forced" to do something. Its like those people that rebel against the govt. because they are "forced" to pay taxes. Just ridiculous. Because as i said before, if you want something kept private..... then don't put it on the internet, or there is this really cool thing called password protection and only allow certain viewers to view your private items. Crazy concepts of protection, if an avatar that (usually, in which case you obviously don't care because you posted your RL name in a video game as your character) doesn't bare your name doesn't already give you anonymity or a dual persona by which can barely have any association with you in RL aside from the fact that you play the character.

[Tagrineth]

Er... I've seen screenshots from all manner of games with players' names not blacked out on 4chan.

Good lord, you people are paranoid.

[Runespider]

It doesn't matter what our reasons are we have them and since this forced feature doesn't even do what they wanted it to (since we are here using mules) why anger a portion of your paying subsribers pointlessly? Just add a hide feature and everyone is happy, that's all those of us with an issue have here.

We aren't saying those that want to share this information should not be allowed to, just that those of us that don't want to should not be forced to. In light of how stupid they did it there should be no argument against this at all...unless you just want something that annoys some people for no reason at all.

[ShadowHeart]

the thing that makes me really LOL is that SE / FFXI is one of the most uninformative/secretive games i ever seen and lack clear and concise disclosure of whats happening before hands. This being updates or emergency maintenance or whichever and any one who has played this game for more then a month knows exactly how frustrating this can be. Yet they try to force us to disclose information against our will. Give us the option to do so and they need to quit being so secretive... like people asking earlier in other posts how do you activate fool killer or fatality belt.... they just tell us go figure it out...