Friends List & Blacklist insufficiencies.

I do not like to use the blacklist feature. It is a last resort measure for me, and one which is or can be ineffectual, besides. I will characterise the problem as concisely as I can manage.

The Blacklist has a limit of 200 names. If you elect to add someone to your Blacklist, it adds only that character - but each Player may have as many as 40 different characters. There are two problems I have with this.

First, the limit of two hundred is too small for a critically-acclaimed MMO that boasts having millions of people who log in daily to partake of the content. Second, if a player is dead-set on harassment of you, you will end up needing to blacklist the same single person 40 times. At that point, 20% of your blacklist limit is literally one person.

To be clear, I think it is wonderful that we are allowed 40 characters. I wouldn't mind if we were allowed to have literally 8 characters on every server world in every region all across the entire game. That's not the problem. The problem is that when you blacklist someone, the feature should functionally blacklist every character on the account of that individual.

Additionally, the blacklist feature can be circumvented. I have had numerous occasions on whence someone on my blacklist ended up in the same roulette as me. The reason for this: the blacklisted person was partied up with someone who was not on my blacklist and who had similarly not blacklisted me. When this happens, I try to remain calm and friendly, and perform the role I queued up for appropriately, anyway. I don't punish someone because I happen to have a friend of theirs on my blacklist. It isn't their fault I blacklisted their pal.

In a similar vein, I would like to also mention shortcomings in the Friends List. First off, the limit of 200 names, and the failure to add the account and not individual character. Second, the inability to enter a personal note about the person so that I remember them, which would be more important if the former problem were rectified. I have one friend who has sent me a friend request four times on four separate characters on their character list. This wouldn't be needed if friendships were player-to-player, not character-to-character - which is where a player-written note would be important.

Additionally, friendships in the game can be ephemeral. It's in the nature of people to grow close or apart, particularly on a video game if you are not doing a lot of content together. As a resolution, I would like it a lot if, when I remove someone from my friends list, it would also remove me from their friends list - and vice versa. This is a pretty common feature in most social media, friend lists are rarely one-sided, and I think that's how it ought to be.

I think players in the past have raised these issues to SE many times to no avail. What you say has my support, but I wouldn't expect SE to act on it any time soon.

I agree with all of this. I would also want to add that Party Finder listings should also take black listing into account. I don't want to see listings of people that have blacklisted me or that I have blacklisted.
I've also seen people suggest that blacklisting should completely remove the character from being rendered on your screen. While this is about extreme, I would support this measure.
Also, let people who have houses have a blacklist specifically for the house. People shouldn't be required to have it all open or all closed.

We know, SE knows, they don't care enough to do anything about it.

I'm still waiting for my "Delete All" button to remove all the RMT spammers I put on it back in ARR before I decided to remove my /t chat completely

I agree with this entirely, and I might also add that 200 is far from a reasonable number due to the amount of people who shout in main cities flooding the chat with ads I care not to see. I cannot blacklist all of them, there's way too many, and I use shout chat for communicating and relaying hunts/party finders etc so turning it off is not an option. Also blacklisting 200 people would impact queue times to an extent as well. I was also just thinking today about how being able to add a note would be good, since sometimes people change names too. I was cleaning up my blacklist and trying to remember which people were the ones who were worthy of the permanent blacklist for toxicity as opposed to gil bots or shout runners

This is a topic that should be a priority , and has my full support

I just wish that if you remove a friend from your friendlist, you get removed from theirs. Yoshi P doesn't feel this is necessary though.

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Originally Posted by Xirean

I don't want to see listings of people that have blacklisted me or that I have blacklisted.
I've also seen people suggest that blacklisting should completely remove the character from being rendered on your screen. While this is about extreme, I would support this measure.

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Bold is already concealed (and has an option to show them). Wouldn't mind the other two suggestions though. Said option helps deal with the former issue.

I would add that our character ID number should not be on the website anywhere as it does not change no matter how many times you change name or server. It is a stalkers dream.

There's a specific use case for unfriending being helpful--if someone runs a venue, or is throwing an art party, the only way for sprouts to get to Empyreum or Shirogane is if they can directly estate teleport. (Or happen to have another friend *in that ward and on that world,* which is unlikely. It's basically a way to get around the limitations of the 200 cap on friends list.

I'm still not sure about the balance on that versus the other issues, but it's at least useful in that regard. If we had the *option* to tell the game to remove us from the other person's list as well or not, that'd be great.

Blacklisting definitely needs improvement though, both in effect and in list capacity.

And even a 200 character cap note box would be amaaaaazing for Friends List, but also helpful for Blacklist.

The Blacklist feature is in desperate need of attention.

When you add someone, their entire account needs to be Blacklisted so any old or new or alt characters they have are also blocked.
And it needs to stop Duty matching, access to Apartment or Room and Private Estate as well as being able to visually see the character in the game.

The Friend list needs to be updated so when you remove someone, you are also removed from the other persons friend list. It is just crazy how this isn't standard fair.
For this reason, I would think twice before adding someone.

And lastly, the Lodestone currently is a Stalkers paradise.
Why does the URL display the characters ID, this is insane. This stupidity makes it possible to Stalk any character no matter what they may do to avoid in-game harassment, such as changing a character's name to moving Worlds.

You should only be able to Search character names and in turn, we need the ability to Hide our characters from view if we want to.

You used to be able to manually add people to the blacklist. Even with world visit, it was STILL possible at least. Now, you can't even manually add someone...why? Instead of making it easier to BL someone, they made it so tedious to get someone ON there. Oh, can we just search them up-- NOPE, you have to see them talking in chat, or do it via contacts menu. I've been trying to google over ways I've missed, but coming up dry.

For a modern MMO, they sure are lacking on a basic blocking system that isn't horrible to work with. Mabinogi, an MMO from the late 2000s, has a better blacklisting system than FF14, a modern MMO in 2024. Embarrassing.

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Originally Posted by Vovovivo

Additionally, the blacklist feature can be circumvented. I have had numerous occasions on whence someone on my blacklist ended up in the same roulette as me. The reason for this: the blacklisted person was partied up with someone who was not on my blacklist and who had similarly not blacklisted me. When this happens, I try to remain calm and friendly, and perform the role I queued up for appropriately, anyway. I don't punish someone because I happen to have a friend of theirs on my blacklist. It isn't their fault I blacklisted their pal.

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Duty finder does not check ur blacklist at all. I have a lot of complains in /party, about some one blacklisted me, but still matched with me in a duty with a solo queue, like "I already blacklisted them, don't know what they are typing"

I want 1000 friends and 5000 blacklist slots *blacklists everyone*

"I do not like to use the blacklist feature", says guy with 200 blacklisted people. Lol

I think i only ever encountered one person deserving of being blacklisted, and i didnt because i didn't even know the feature existed.

For such a supposedly nice community people seem very trigger happy with black listing.

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Originally Posted by Vovovivo

The Blacklist has a limit of 200 names. If you elect to add someone to your Blacklist, it adds only that character - but each Player may have as many as 40 different characters. There are two problems I have with this.

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That's right, the BL is only a simple chat filter. But it is also very unlikely, that a player has more than one character. Because FF14 is very alt unfriendly. So the simple chat filter is not a big drawback.


Cheers

I have multiple service accounts, let alone characters. I have 3 PvE mentors, 3 omnicrafters in endwalker alone. I have alts that I use to replay the story, and alts that I use for storage.

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Originally Posted by Vovovivo

I do not like to use the blacklist feature. It is a last resort measure for me, and one which is or can be ineffectual, besides. I will characterise the problem as concisely as I can manage.

The Blacklist has a limit of 200 names. If you elect to add someone to your Blacklist, it adds only that character - but each Player may have as many as 40 different characters. There are two problems I have with this.

First, the limit of two hundred is too small for a critically-acclaimed MMO that boasts having millions of people who log in daily to partake of the content. Second, if a player is dead-set on harassment of you, you will end up needing to blacklist the same single person 40 times. At that point, 20% of your blacklist limit is literally one person.

To be clear, I think it is wonderful that we are allowed 40 characters. I wouldn't mind if we were allowed to have literally 8 characters on every server world in every region all across the entire game. That's not the problem. The problem is that when you blacklist someone, the feature should functionally blacklist every character on the account of that individual.

Additionally, the blacklist feature can be circumvented. I have had numerous occasions on whence someone on my blacklist ended up in the same roulette as me. The reason for this: the blacklisted person was partied up with someone who was not on my blacklist and who had similarly not blacklisted me. When this happens, I try to remain calm and friendly, and perform the role I queued up for appropriately, anyway. I don't punish someone because I happen to have a friend of theirs on my blacklist. It isn't their fault I blacklisted their pal.

In a similar vein, I would like to also mention shortcomings in the Friends List. First off, the limit of 200 names, and the failure to add the account and not individual character. Second, the inability to enter a personal note about the person so that I remember them, which would be more important if the former problem were rectified. I have one friend who has sent me a friend request four times on four separate characters on their character list. This wouldn't be needed if friendships were player-to-player, not character-to-character - which is where a player-written note would be important.

Additionally, friendships in the game can be ephemeral. It's in the nature of people to grow close or apart, particularly on a video game if you are not doing a lot of content together. As a resolution, I would like it a lot if, when I remove someone from my friends list, it would also remove me from their friends list - and vice versa. This is a pretty common feature in most social media, friend lists are rarely one-sided, and I think that's how it ought to be.

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at this point threatening to bl somebody is more efficient than actually bl'ing them, because theyll assume u did and leave u alone, and u can keep ur bl spot free

correct me if i'm wrong, but didnt they say that in 7.0 they're adding the feature where if you remove a friend, you'll be removed from their list?

either way, i support these features. especially the private note thing, too many people change their name and i just end up removing them lol

Something else that would be nice. If blacklist and friendlist would just auto delete entries for characters that were deleted by the owner or permabanned.

XIV needs to swap to a player ID system, you have your player ID, and your character name, when you friend someone, you only add the ID then when you block the ID you block that person. Unfriending needs to be mutual in the system so it keeps players safe and free of harassment.

The sad part here is that, XIV has looked at, and copied a lot of other MMO features but didnt actually sit down and think about why it was there. Most MMOs use a player ID system for this exact reason, and the limit is sadly most likely due to server load, another reaosn why XIV should be client side, so they can focus more on character data, and increasing limits on things. Let our systems take the brunt of the processing.

Sadly we have to suffer.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

XIV needs to swap to a player ID system, you have your player ID, and your character name, when you friend someone, you only add the ID then when you block the ID you block that person. Unfriending needs to be mutual in the system so it keeps players safe and free of harassment.

The sad part here is that, XIV has looked at, and copied a lot of other MMO features but didnt actually sit down and think about why it was there. Most MMOs use a player ID system for this exact reason, and the limit is sadly most likely due to server load, another reaosn why XIV should be client side, so they can focus more on character data, and increasing limits on things. Let our systems take the brunt of the processing.

Sadly we have to suffer.

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Everything has pro's and cons. Making more of the game client side means easier access for people to do things they shouldn't be which then results in game companies resorting to piling layers of things like DRM protection and Anti-cheat which rarely accomplish more than slowing the activities a small amount while hindering the game's performance for everyone.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Everything has pro's and cons. Making more of the game client side means easier access for people to do things they shouldn't be which then results in game companies resorting to piling layers of things like DRM protection and Anti-cheat which rarely accomplish more than slowing the activities a small amount while hindering the game's performance for everyone.

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Nah, just be harsher in bans, which is a point in which XIV could be better. Most older MMOs shamed players who got caught and made examples. XIV doesn't. It's a great tactic to keep people in check and one I'm fully for.

Literally need 10k slots just to block out the ad spam 😵