A rational proposal to reduce blind FC invite spam

[Sonikku13]

Unfortunately, there isn't a way in game to just auto-decline FC invites while allowing everything else, like party invites and tells.

However, there still are problems with blind FC invites. I think there's a very easy fix, removing the Player Search feature. This is the intro screen.



Once you go through that intro screen, and search results come, you can literally send FC invites to everyone without a FC.



As you can see, it is way too easy for a mass recruiter to send spam blind FC invites by right clicking on characters who don't have a FC.

So there's two fixes. One fix is to get rid of the player search feature. The second idea is to remove "Invite to Company" when right-clicking on a character found using player search.

Lemme hear your ideas.

Edit: A solution I like that someone here suggested is a cooldown on FC invites. The cooldown would end either when the person invited accepts the FC invite, or five minutes, which is how long a FC invite lasts before it expires.

[Matrinka]

I'd rather just have an FC recruitment board in each of the main cities. Post an ad for your FC. If someone likes what you say, they can elect to join or send an application.

[Doozer]

I'd rather just have an FC recruitment board in each of the main cities. Post an ad for your FC. If someone likes what you say, they can elect to join or send an application.

That makes way more sense than some rando spamming Ildyllshire or some other popular afk place with their FC promo every 5 minutes. Half of my blacklist is people like that because I just don't want to see it anymore. And since people use the party finder as a recruitment board anyway, it would solve multiple problems.

[Vanitas]

Also a cooldown timer would be nice if no meaningful fix is added.

[BillyKaplan]

Your suggested solution is backward. Player Search, and the ability to invite players into FCs, linkshells and the likes, are very strong, legitimate tools. Not always the person who does the recruiting have the permissions to actually invite the recruit into the FC, and so they have to ask someone to do it, and they do it through Player Search. That's fine, works as intended, I believe.
The fact they're misused doesn't mean you should take them away. If you're already asking for a system change, how about addressing this:

Unfortunately, there isn't a way in game to just auto-decline FC invites while allowing everything else, like party invites and tells.

Ask for this to be changed. A sub-status of Busy, or a custom Busy that lets you decide what you want to block. This will protect anyone who doesn't want the blind fc invites while leaving the rest of us free to use those functionalities the ways they were intended.

I'd rather just have an FC recruitment board in each of the main cities. Post an ad for your FC. If someone likes what you say, they can elect to join or send an application.

I like it. This shouldn't be the only way to get people into an FC ("hey, we just ran this together and you're pretty cool, now please go to the FC board and look us up and submit an application---" hassle. Let me just invite them) but it'll be a really good tool for people who want an fc but don't know where to look.

[Vhailor]

I like it. This shouldn't be the only way to get people into an FC ("hey, we just ran this together and you're pretty cool, now please go to the FC board and look us up and submit an application---" hassle. Let me just invite them) but it'll be a really good tool for people who want an fc but don't know where to look.

Or, alternately, make any person-to-person direct request be initiated by the applicant, not the FC member. I should have the ability to right-click someone's name and request to join their FC (assuming the FC is recruiting). They ideally shouldn't have the ability to send a ping to me unsolicited or, if SE really wants to leave that functionality in, I should have a client-side option to disable unsolicited FC invites completely.

[Sonikku13]

I mean, there are outside tools to find a player. Like the Lodestone's player search function. What I'm railing against is blind FC invite spam.

I am not saying take away FC invites, not at all. I'm saying if you have the Player Search menu open, you shouldn't be able to right-click on a name in there and send a FC invite, and then one second later, another name, another right-click, another FC invite, rinse and repeat. I don't know how to fix private tell spam though.

Maybe you're right, an invite cooldown sounds like a great idea, and a player-configurable chat filter would help things tremendously. Ideally, perhaps a cooldown would consist of this: if you send a FC invite, the cooldown for another invite ends in five minutes, or if the person invited accepts the FC invite, whatever is sooner.

Anyway, here's said player search function on the Lodestone. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/

[BillyKaplan]

I mean, there are outside tools to find a player. Like the Lodestone's player search function.

You completely missed the point. The lodestone doesn't let me right-click and invite that player to my linkshell or FC. Very often people in my hunt linkshell will run into people asking for invites and then the easiest way for me to invite them is through the in-game player search. I have also invited friends of friends into my fc because that particular member didn't have invite permissions. Again, this was done by the in-game search option.
The very thing you're complaining about is useful and should not be taken away just because it's being misused. Doing that will hurt a lot of people and likely won't solve the problem as much as you'd like it to.

[Ameela]

I mean, there are outside tools to find a player. Like the Lodestone's player search function.

Only a tiny fraction of the playerbase actually bothers with things outside the game itself, an FC recruitment board in the game itself would be a great idea, especially if it operated like the current market board where you have to put the ad up and check on it every couple of weeks, to ensure there aren't any inactive FC's taking up space.

[KisaiTenshi]

As a recipient of a handful of these every so often (Yes they are frequent and annoying, ranging from 2-3 per hour to once every 2 days, depending on the time of day.)

1) Remove it from player search, there is no reason for it to be here, and invites abuse. If we don't allow RMT to spam players, we should not allow any players to spam anyone with anything.
2) Leave it on the right-click menu, but grey it out unless the player joined the party for at least 10 minutes. If you can't even do this, you have no right to have a FC. I don't know why anyone would accept an invite to a FC you haven't even met or played with. Do not permit "party as advertisement" spam either however.
3) Only one person may be invited at a time, and apply longer cooldowns for declines that persist at an account level. eg 1 minute, 3 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes.

While we're at it, disband all self-FC's. Players should not be able to have more than one character per account in the same FC, and you typically see this or people begging you to join for a few minutes so they can do this.