Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

[Nazo]

As someone who has a reasonable grasp of the Japanese language it is frustrating not to be able to communicate with Japanese players in hiragana / kanji as they often ignore / fail to recognise messages typed in Romaji. As SE has chosen (rightly in my opinion) to mix players from different countries together on the same server, surely it is counter-productive to have this artificial barrier to communication in place.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Seconded. I have 3 semesters of Japanese so I can put together moderately complicated sentences, and know a handful of Kanji. FFXI is about the only place I have contact with Japanese speakers at the moment, but it's difficult to stay in practice over FFXI when using romaji, due not only to the difficulty of reading romaji for some Japanese speakers, but also due to the fact that most will assume if you type only in romaji you can't read kana, and certainly not kanji.

I am aware that there is some Sony licensing issue regarding the IME on PS2, but as this becomes more of a legacy system, breaking interface conformity between PS2 and other versions becomes worth more consideration.

[neighbortaru]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

I believe SE last said it would not be financially worth it to license IME in NA/EU.

[Nazo]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

I wasn't aware there was a licensing issue but this wouldn't affect the PC version would it?

[neighbortaru]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

yes it does. that's why IME is not available for PC either (and why they will suspend you if they find you with JP characters on a NA client).

[Nazo]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Drat. Damn Sony and their capitalistic shenanigans. Guess you can strike this question off the list then

[Feba]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

How about offering us the ability to buy the license for our client, so those of us that want to type in JP can, legally, and those who don't don't cost anyone any extra cash?



seems like a win-win, except for the minor cost of the person who wants it.

[Mhurron]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Because SE would have to buy a license just to use the library.

[Ellipses]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Well, there would be the cost of developing two more versions of POL: NA and EU with IME on/off flags that aren't easily crackable. Though I suppose that cost could be covered by the licensing fee, I can't imagine it making a lot of financial sense (for SE) without that fee being so steep that it wouldn't be worth paying.

[kuu]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Only a minority of NA/EU would speak directly in japanese, most people just want fun symbols which isn't enough reason to dish out a licensing cash.

Still it's a legit question. A monetary problem, as the clients are built for it already.

Perhaps a different question would be to give NA/EU users access to symbol set...though how to implement without crossing the licensing line is hard, since the kaomoji is the JIS.

Perhaps a way to get around it would be to make an "International limited install of Pol". Sold in Japanese currency, but shippable anywhere in the world. That's one way to get around the region issue, but will get lawyers hot and fast on you...

[Feba]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

Well, you could make it possible to set JP POL to English displays.


FFXI already has JP in it, it's just not unlocked when you use NA POL, unless you use certain programs or windower plugins

[Susurrus]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

IME is already in every version of FFXI...it is just disabled/locked out. That's why the Windower IME plugin works so well, it basically just reenables it.

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

IME is already in every version of FFXI...it is just disabled/locked out. That's why the Windower IME plugin works so well, it basically just reenables it.

My understanding of the Windower IME is that it does not use the FFXI IME that had liscenesing issues, but rather, it allowed use of the Windows XP IME. And in fact, if you do not have the Windows XP IME installed you cannot use windower's IME.

It would bey very awesome if SE could at least allow native use of the windows IME -without support- (and if they said that from the get go, they wouldn't have to support it). I can garuntee the community itself would be more than happy to support other players in this regard.

[Bricklayer]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

My understanding of the Windower IME is that it does not use the FFXI IME that had liscenesing issues, but rather, it allowed use of the Windows XP IME. And in fact, if you do not have the Windows XP IME installed you cannot use windower's IME.

It would bey very awesome if SE could at least allow native use of the windows IME -without support- (and if they said that from the get go, they wouldn't have to support it). I can garuntee the community itself would be more than happy to support other players in this regard.

I agree. Allowing use of the XP IME would be very reasonable. I've used it in another *coughwowcough* MMO, albeit for Chinese, and it works great.

[tazirai]

Re: Will you consider enabling IME on Western clients?

once again witness the limits of the PS(piece of sh$#)2.