How often do people use the player search

How often do you guys actually use the player search function that the RMTs use to find and spam us?

All the people that I care about finding are in my fc, linkshells and friends list. Would anyone be sad to see it gone?

I imagine the people who mass-blind invite people to FC's use it quite often.

They're worst than gilsellers when you don't have an FC.

Eliminating the search function to stop RMT? That's not remotely close to a decent solution. That would be like eliminating public education to stop bullying.

What they need to do is make reporting easier. The way it is now is so convoluted no one uses it. Make it simple like right clicking a name in the chat log and having a report option. I can't think of another game that handles reporting as poorly as this one. For all the flaws SWTOR had, rmt bots lasted for like 10 minutes before being banned because of the way they reporting worked.

I use it all the time..

I use it quite often myself.

I've used it to contact someone that wasn't in my linkshell/fc, or friends list. Pretty common thing with recruiting for LS/FC's, or recruiting for a static outside the game.

Oh okay. Wasn't sure if it was really used, which is why I didn't outright say "hey let's remove this and fix all our problems!".

If I have a good or bad df party, I use it once I am out to find the person or persons and either say hi or /blist them.

I also use it often

I use it often.

If I have a DF run with amazing people, I check just in case I can say hi.
If I have a bad run, I always check in hope that the rude player is not on my server.

I use it almost daily to find specific people, especially on my alt with an empty friendslist. Getting rid of it is a terrible idea.

I use it regularily, to add people I've met in DF to friend list, for example.

I use it when I am asked to invite someone I don't have added because I can't for the life of me ever remember the manual command.

I use it a lot to find people. And I have had a few people use it to find me. ^^ It would be a bad idea to get rid of it.

Gil sellers.

And given how frequently they must be running those heavy queries against the servers, this function is probably a huge reason why the servers are under so much stress (not to mention how much stress is added by the sending of hundreds/thousands of /tells at a time).

Honestly, there are really two things they'd need to do to cut back on Gil spam:

1. Restrict how frequently a player can search and/or how many results can be returned.
2. Ban anyone who sends mass-tells/invites and/or restrict the frequency at which /tell messages and FC invites can be sent out.

I wouldn't say removing it would be worthwhile, because there are use cases that would require it, but it is probably putting more stress on their servers than they'd like to admit.

Would be nice to have the option to disable myself as a result on the search list without having to resort to using busy. Not only because of the RMT abuse of the system but also just for privacy sake.

I use it quite often. Sometimes I just gotta track someone down.

I know some players will use it to scout for FC-less people to /tell them for FC invites.

Oh another note, there's some people that I've player searched standing right next to them, and they don't show up at all in the player search. Don't know how that happens. (would have to guess a third party app is most likely the cause).

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

Oh another note, there's some people that I've player searched standing right next to them, and they don't show up at all in the player search. Don't know how that happens. (would have to guess a third party app is most likely the cause).

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I do not believe there's any way a third party app would be able to stop SE's list of players from populating like that.
My only suggestion would be either they made their character minutes prior to your search and the list takes a short time to update, or you've mistyped the name. Be it confusing an I and a l or vv for w or something silly like that.

I use it all the time to read everybody at the area's search info when I'm bored.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vivi_Bushido

I know some players will use it to scout for FC-less people to /tell them for FC invites.

Oh another note, there's some people that I've player searched standing right next to them, and they don't show up at all in the player search. Don't know how that happens. (would have to guess a third party app is most likely the cause).

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Did you have every language checked?

I occasionaly use it when putting together parties and someone wants to add a friend, and I can't/won't promote him for one reason or another

Would that really stop it though? I'm not sure they are using search. Are they? They're sending a tell message to every player on the server and unless I'm using player search wrong, you can't do that. Player search can give you general results based on class or level you are looking for, but I don't think you can simply get a list of all active players on the server at any given moment, let alone mass message all of the them. They're using some sort of script.

I didn't even know it existed.

Remove it. Other MMOs don't have it and they do just fine (and whispers aren't spammed by anything! Just some bots talking out loud in a couple towns). If you want to find a player you can look them up by name.

I have more normal players on blacklist than gil sellers. Most of them are ''females'' miquotes.

I'd like to use it more often, but it's such a pain to use x.x
I wish they just gave us a field to only type in a name / part of a name and have that person pop up then (even when offline, just shown as offline like they are shown in LS lists).
But no, I have to check like 5 million parameters and if they apply or not just to find someone, so...I use it about once or twice a year and end up still not finding what I was searching for.
They could remove that broken thing for all I care...

twice in 2.0....after that .....never , if only we coul use commands like FFXI /sea rdm 40-50 all :D , but for what purpouse ? :S

The in game search is so inefficient compared to a lodestone search for their purposes i would be surprised if that was their only means to find names. more likely they only run the player searches on the starter towns occasionally to catch new players that will not show up elsewhere yet.

I too use it fairly often.

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Originally Posted by AeraLure

Would that really stop it though? I'm not sure they are using search. Are they? They're sending a tell message to every player on the server and unless I'm using player search wrong, you can't do that. Player search can give you general results based on class or level you are looking for, but I don't think you can simply get a list of all active players on the server at any given moment, let alone mass message all of the them. They're using some sort of script.

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Yup you can, leave the name part blank and use world search and dont add any criteria and you can get a list of 200 people that are online.