Friends List & Blacklist insufficiencies.

[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.

[Swordsman]

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.

[Xirean]

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.

[Boblawblah]

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

[RitsukoSonoda]

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

[Gordita]

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

[Bonoki]

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.

[VictorSpoils]

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.

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.

[Myrany]

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.

[NonBinaryNyan]

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.