Measures to counter botting

[frostmagemari]

Keep in mind WoW also has the WoW token system which is basically legalized RMT through official Blizzard channels. Not that I would necessarily be opposed to SE implementing a similar system in FF14.

First, it is not legalized RMT, if you think that, you don't know how the system works...
Second, i said years. The tokens have only been in since legion, and i hadn't seen a gold advertisement in several years before that. The last gold advertisement i've seen in game was at the end of vanilla (or there abouts); since then they have actually made a good filtration system.
So it's not the token system that kept it out of people's hair, it was actually actively working on the issue.. finding keywords and filtering the chat when they would attempt to spam their advertisements, etc. Whether its bots or real people, advertisements get caught in the net and filtered out so people don't hear them. It doesn't matter how many people are selling if no one hears them.

So we don't need some fancy solution like teleporting people with repetitive play style to mini dungeons, or spyware or getting GMs to talk to each and every person after a report is filed. All SQEX needs to do is stop people from hearing the advertisements, all this requires is a more robust chat system; and when no one hears their advertisements and it impacts their bottom line, the gil sellers will interact less with the market because less customers mean less profitability. After that, then SQEX can start going after the large currency trades as well.

[Jojoya]

First, it is not legalized RMT, if you think that, you don't know how the system works...
Second, i said years. The tokens have only been in since legion, and i hadn't seen a gold advertisement in several years before that. The last gold advertisement i've seen in game was at the end of vanilla (or there abouts); since then they have actually made a good filtration system.
So it's not the token system that kept it out of people's hair, it was actually actively working on the issue.. finding keywords and filtering the chat when they would attempt to spam their advertisements, etc. Whether its bots or real people, advertisements get caught in the net and filtered out so people don't hear them. It doesn't matter how many people are selling if no one hears them.

So we don't need some fancy solution like teleporting people with repetitive play style to mini dungeons, or spyware or getting GMs to talk to each and every person after a report is filed. All SQEX needs to do is stop people from hearing the advertisements, all this requires is a more robust chat system; and when no one hears their advertisements and it impacts their bottom line, the gil sellers will interact less with the market because less customers mean less profitability. After that, then SQEX can start going after the large currency trades as well.

I'm guessing you didn't hang around the main AH in SW or Org much because the spam bot problem never went away, it was just reduced (at least as of when I quit WoW at the end of Legion). What got it under control was the chat restrictions on trial accounts plus auto-squelch if enough players reported the character for chat issues. I had fun visiting the cities, seeing the obvious spam bots, reporting them if they weren't already squelched then hitting them with my Turkey Shooter to make them the turkeys they are.

The bot operators continue to get creative with their messages, making it hard for SE to keep up with which text strings should result in the message blocked. What SE needs to do is implement am auto-squelch like WoW has so the character is muted after a certain number of RMT reports are submitted by other players. Let the squelched characters stay muted so their operators don't get alerted and send in a new bot to replace them. If a legitimate player is falsely reported, a GM can be contacted to lift the squelch then squelch the players making the false report.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The bot operators continue to get creative with their messages, making it hard for SE to keep up with which text strings should result in the message blocked. What SE needs to do is implement am auto-squelch like WoW has so the character is muted after a certain number of RMT reports are submitted by other players. Let the squelched characters stay muted so their operators don't get alerted and send in a new bot to replace them. If a legitimate player is falsely reported, a GM can be contacted to lift the squelch then squelch the players making the false report.

If I remember right the RMT report function does do that if a user is reported enough. The RMTs just learned to cycle the Adbot characters regularly and players seem to have started reporting less and less. The current amount of RMT advertising is far less than it was pre-right click to RMT report.