Lamentations on Linguistic Limitations
Shakespeare once wrote, "Brevity is the soul of wit," but some Final Fantasy XIV players are at their wits' end when it comes to character limitations in chat. Apparently, adventurers are given but 85 characters an entry with which to express themselves (minus their name length), which is particularly constricting for would-be role players. I also imagine German players might have a tough time talking about how they mined some Teichmuschelschale with a Gefiederte Bronzespitzhacke.
Admittedly, this is a minor complaint, and perhaps just something Square Enix has overlooked. Japanese is written with ideograms and phonetic symbols -- both of which can convey more information per character than your standard alphabet soup. Just following the official English and Japanese Twitter accounts for FFXIV provides a perfect example:
On September 2nd, there was a notice about congestion on the Beta Tester Site. In one post, consisting of 129 characters, the Japanese account was able to
- Identify the problem: (ç¾åœ¨ã€βテスターサイトãŒã‚¢ã‚¯ã‚»ã‚¹é›†ä¸ã«ã‚ˆã‚Šæ£å¸¸ã«é–²è¦§ã§ããªã„状態ã«ãªã£ã¦ã„ã¾ã™ã€‚)
- Note that there was a related notice posted (ã“ã®ãŸã‚ã€ãŠçŸ¥ã‚‰ã›ã¯ã‚µãƒãƒ¼ãƒˆã‚»ãƒ³ã‚¿ãƒ¼ã«ã‚‚掲載ã„ãŸã—ã¾ã™ã€‚)
- Post a full link (plus label) for users (スクウェア・エニックス サãƒãƒ¼ãƒˆã‚»ãƒ³ã‚¿ãƒ¼ http://support.jp.square-enix.com/ffxiv/)
The English account, however, had to spread these three points into three separate tweets, which contained 120, 89 and 81 characters, respectively. Given that adventurers have first and last names this time around, most chat entries are restricted to half the size of a Twitter post; none of these would have made it through.
Legitimate complaint, or fussing over nothing? Let us know in the ZAM Forums