February 2023 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Sp1cyryan]

Nope, this doesn't block normal communication in any way (except maybe some weird edge case where someone actually wants to say something like "Dynamis, 2hr/run; Sortie, 1hr/run.")

The letters I used in that filter aren't the ones you get typing with your keyboard. I doubt they're what anyone gets just typing with their keyboard. The Ｃ one specifically is "fullwidth latin capital letter c", unicode 0xFF23; in comparison, the C that you get typing normally is just "latin capital letter c", unicode 0x43. A computer isn't going to mistake the two, no matter how similar they look. This is why they get used in shouts - you can block any of the normal Latin character set you want, and it's never going to catch that fullwidth Latin set.

As to the specific letter choices, I'm assuming any gil seller is going to want to say "FFXI", "gil", "gold", or ".com" in their shout; it would be possible to just use all 52 of these fullwidth characters and guarantee a catch, but that's a very wide net to cast and I prefer not to waste the space right now.

Any non-Latin character shaped like an F, a G, or a C will still bypass this filter, but those shouldn't be all that common; if you see it happening, you can always use the newly-added in-game copy to clipboard feature to grab the offending characters and add them to your filter if they do slip by. (And if that happens, maybe post that text somewhere on the boards here so we can keep pace with the bots?)

EDIT: ... well, okay, actually, I say all that, then look at FFXIAH and just immediately see a shout where someone's using the fullwidth characters instead of the standard ones to shout for Sortie. Kind of thought Japanese players were using the usual ascii character set when they typed in English but I guess not. So... I guess you can hit false positives, but... well, it's a trade-off. You could consider using ＦＦ and ＦＩ in place of just Ｆ, ＣＯ in place of just Ｃ, and ＧＩ and ＧＯ in place of Ｇ; ｃ, ｆ, and ｇ shouldn't see any normal use and are likely fine to use as-is. There's more risk of a nuisance shout slipping by though, decide which you're more comfortable with.

Amended lower-loss version, then:

ＦＦ
ＦＩ
ＣＯ
ＧＩ
ＧＯ
ｃ
ｆ
ｇ
hr/

Ah, nice. The Unicode on mobile looks very close to the latin characters compared to how it's noticable in game.

Other than copying the message to add. There's no way a player will be able to identify which one to block without a third party tool though.

[Zenion]

Ah, nice. The Unicode on mobile looks very close to the latin characters compared to how it's noticable in game.

Other than copying the message to add. There's no way a player will be able to identify which one to block without a third party tool though.

Basically, yeah. That's why I wanted to provide that example for people to to copy and paste, to save them that trial and error and discovery process.

(Looking at the couple of ads in circulation on Fenrir though, just "★" would cover everything except the exp bots... I wonder how long that would be viable.)

[Alhanelem]

The Ｃ one specifically is "fullwidth latin capital letter c", unicode 0xFF23; in comparison, the C that you get typing normally is just "latin capital letter c", unicode 0x43. A computer isn't going to mistake the two, no matter how similar they look. This is why they get used in shouts - you can block any of the normal Latin character set you want, and it's never going to catch that fullwidth Latin set.

Japanese do use the fullwidth characters sometimes, when they input non-japanese characters with the IME, they get these. However, it won't have much impact beyond that.

[Dragoy]

I think all I can say about Ambuscade this month is: I miss the moogles.

As usual, the difficulty seems to be very different compared to last month.

I could beat the moogles (intense ambuscade, volume 1) easily alone as a samurai, with alter egos, in about 5 minutes on easy difficulty.

The volume 1 intense ambuscade this month seems somewhat impossible for me to do the same.

I do appreciate it and understand that not all months might be the same, but for these lower levels, I think it would be fair to have them at least somewhat consistent.

Regular Ambuscade seems pretty much like always as well. Similar or more time spent to Intense Very Easy in common settings for the same points.

Thank you!

[Dragoy]

Having to remove everything else in a Mog House for the Prismatic Chest effect does not seem like a good idea.

(Sure there are ways to kind get around that, but it is not a fix for the issue.)

Please reconsider this implementation.

Thank you!

[Dihlyte]

[snipped quote]

Ambuscade this month is:

the difficulty seems to be very different.

intense ambuscade, volume 1 easy difficulty.

The volume 1 intense ambuscade this month seems somewhat impossible for me to do the same.

I also agree 100%

This month, and even last month, the difficulty from Very Easy, to Easy was extremely steep.

Suggestion:
Remove the single target charm.

Last month, add 1-2 more “Moogle” (the “safe” ones.)

Or any possible adjustment to easy so it doesn’t go from extremely easy to nearly impossible.

[Dragoy]

The feature to copy chat log lines to the clipboard is nice, and something I've been hoping for... well, since 2005.

That said, I imagine the main (or only) purpose for this is for users to be able to copy messages they want to filter out, which is not a use-case for me personally, since I tend to filter /yell altogether. Of course there are uses such as being able to copy a URL to the official forums for example, but one would still need to input it manually.

I hope it could be adjusted so that copying /any/ chat log messages is possible (that is, battle related messages as well as NPC chatter and such).

I also hope some day we will finally be able to also input (paste) text to the in-game chat as well.

Thank you!