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: (現在、βテスターサイトがアクセス集中により正常に閲覧できない状態になっています。)
  • Note that there was a related notice posted (このため、お知らせはサポートセンターにも掲載いたします。)
  • Post a full link (plus label) for users (スクウェア・エニックス サポートセンター 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

Comments

Post Comment
K.I.S.S.
# Oct 13 2010 at 11:09 PM Rating: Decent
**
676 posts
People will always find a way to best utilise the space they're given to chat with, but im in agreement that it's unnecessary in modern MMO games. Games like City of Heroes allow you to write exhaustive paragraphs if you so pleased, and Guild Wars allows substantial room for chatting as well. With Guild Wars 2 on the horizon, SE needs FFXIV to be their big guns in the upcoming MMO war and that means it needs to perform well in many areas.

It may be addressed in time, but here's hoping its sooner rather than later or FFXIV doesn't stand a chance.

Edited, Oct 14th 2010 1:10am by Glitterhands
語
# Sep 27 2010 at 11:22 AM Rating: Excellent
$title{308642}
*****
0X317B posts
Ich hatte* aus die Ganglagerstätte mit meiner Gefiederte Bronzespitzhacke die Teichmuschelschale Bergbau betrieben. (I had out of the mineral vein with my plumed bronze pickaxe the Sunrise Tellin mountain-retrieved (mined).)

Linguistically, some interesting stuff is happening. Emoticons mean we're saying more with symbols. Various forms of netspeak and such do the same thing. Fun to see what's happening there.

Also, for those speakers of foreign languages, all of the database and list pages have a 'report translation error' link for non-English sites. Please feel free to help out!

____________________________
Since 1 March 2004

[riftsig]308642[/riftsig]
Chat, abreviated? Yes, amusing, No.
# Sep 27 2010 at 10:18 AM Rating: Default
I too have been frustrated with how few characters are allowed into one chat message.

To ask about anything, or talk about almost any subject requires your subject be broken up into at least 2 chats, many times even 3 or more, depending on the complexity of the subject and what is being related.

You also have to deal with 2-3 separated chats being blown into the winds of the chat screen, possibly never to be connected together into a coherent question/answer/statement by your target audience.

When asked by many friends who are interested in FFXIV, but...having been burned by Aion, how it is to play it- I have told them it is great fun so far! But I have also told them it's lonely out there in Eorzea at times. I have told them about stretches where I have played for 8hrs and never ONCE saw a player chat...period. (even while in cities crafting for an hour or so)

I wonder if people...after having experimented with the very restrictive chat limit, just don't bother afterward?

Who knows? [/shrug]



Take care out there,
-Prometheus.
Post Comment

Free account required to post

You must log in or create an account to post messages.