I would like the ability to hide myself from player search.

Fairly self explanatory, if we all had the ability to hide ourselves from player search results, the gil spammers would leave FFXIV within months. Gil spammers aside, the ability to hide from search results is a privacy feature that should be in the game regardless of spam.

My FC mates and friends will still be able to see if I am logged in or not through the respective interfaces. I am OK with that. However I have thought about this for some time and I believe it is the best solution to stop the gil spammers, or at the very least stop them from bothering ME.

*Edit* Removed some stuff to clear some confusion. This wasn't about removing or nerfing already in-game features like player search. This post is about more privacy options for players so that if they don't want to show up in player search, they don't have to.

No.

/10chars

This is why "busy" status exists, use it if you don't like the RMT tells. Suggesting to remove player search completely, or nerf it to the ground in an MMORPG doesn't make sense however.

Actually, you bring up another point. This is an MMO, true. Due to the online nature of MMO's and the nature of not knowing who is on the other end of the keyboard, I am surprised FFXIV doesn't have any privacy features at all for in-game characters. Many other pay-2-play MMO's offer privacy settings for players. This game offers none. BTW, the "busy" status doesn't remove your name from search results and makes it so I can't have /tell conversations with people in my FC. If it did, I would be fine setting myself to /busy while I play.

There's no reason NOT to have privacy settings for an online application, particularly for users that pay to use such application.