Best Advice to Square ever

[MsQi]

Every time you build a better mousetrap, the botters (housing, gold-farming, RMT advertising, et al.) always find a way around it.

There's really not a lot you can do about it but report them as you come across them, set up chat filters that block /say and /shout chat, and move on.

I think you meant to say "...the botters build a better mouse.", but I'll forgive you.

That's fine if you don't see any need for say and shout, but a lot of people use them for legitimate purposes. It's never a good idea to give criminals their own space.

[KayRadley]

I think you meant to say "...the botters build a better mouse.", but I'll forgive you.

That's fine if you don't see any need for say and shout, but a lot of people use them for legitimate purposes. It's never a good idea to give criminals their own space.

I'll have to remember that line in the future. X3

As for the chat filtering, that's mainly for if the spamming is really a bother. Compared to that screeny from WoW, what we have to deal with is pretty small popotos. In Mateus's Limsa, where I hang out when not doing content, we rarely get more than two bots at a time.

[gumas]

maybe for them its not a really big problem right now?

because here in tonberry i never see any bot spam, maybe1 or 2 line at best and thats like once in weeks, and i always spend most of my time standing still in either limsa, gridania and kugane.

but i agree that SE need to start look into this, considering now their f2p system for this game just got massive upgrade, i cant imagine what these spammer gonna do

[MsQi]

but i agree that SE need to start look into this, considering now their f2p system for this game just got massive upgrade, i cant imagine what these spammer gonna do

It will make absolutely no difference unless they lift some of the restrictions.

Trial Players CANNOT:
Trade
Use the mail
join a FC
purchase from the market board
hire retainers
/shout
/tell
invite to parties
send friend requests
buy anything form the cash shop or upgrade their account in any way other than to a full account, which would make them no longer trial players.

I don't know if they are specifically barred from getting housing since that is moot with the current cap being 35. I bet if it's not already in place it will be.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It will make absolutely no difference unless they lift some of the restrictions.

Trial Players CANNOT:
Trade
Use the mail
join a FC
purchase form the market board
hire retainers
/shout
/tell
invite to parties
send friend requests
buy anything form the cash shop or upgrade their account in any way other than to a full account, which would make them no longer trial players.

I don't know if they are specifically barred from getting housing since that is moot with the current cap being 35. I bet if it's not already in place it will be.

Gil cap on trial accounts would prevent it.

[Penthea]

Gil cap on trial accounts would prevent it.

I don't think a gil cap would even matter considering that they cannot trade, use the mb, use retainers or use the mailbox. There is literally no way for a low lvl character to earn enough gil to sell without it being given to them. Even with the expansion on the amount of content the trial covers gil earned from quests still isn't enough to stock up the amount players would want to buy.

From what I understand the players we see who are advertising gil selling sites are merely there for advertising. You don't buy gil directly from them. They might offer more information if you contact them but that's it. They don't do the transaction with that character. Using a different account to do the gil trade makes their activities more difficult to track, so it would be in their interest to not have the accounts that do the advertising to be the same accounts that trade the gil.

[KageTokage]

The shout spammers are using paid accounts, but literally all they do is spam.

The accounts they actually farm gil with are either those hacking, gibberish-named gil farmers you see flooding the ARR areas (And presumably HW once 5.3 allows for it) or the DoH/L bots who flood the market with crafted gear, shards, etc.

It's genuinely ridiculous how extensive their operations can be in both regards, as I recently noticed one group (Or maybe even just one person) has set up a level 80 DoL farm bot on every US/EU server; all of them being in FCs named "***HUB" (With the *** being shorthand for the server name, like CacHUB in the case of the one my server). They seem to be strictly after crystals/clusters since I only ever see them at ephemeral nodes in HW/SB zones.

[Eli85]

Let's start with this: if you have /say or /shout enabled, you're asking for headaches like this. Turn everything but FC, LS, group, and whispers off. There is no reason to have anything else enabled. I'm not defending S-E on this either, as I do think they need to do a better job of this. But you can absolutely never see /say or /shouts from gold sellers, and it doesn't take away anything meaningful from your day-to-day.

What would be nice, however, is if S-E could code in a filter for players. I'm talking something along the lines of the WoW add-on Bad Boy. I'm only providing the link for those who don't know what it is. When I was playing WoW, this one add-on got rid of all the spam and unwanted whispers for me. If it can be maintained by an add-on author, certainly S-E is more than capable of adding something similar in-game.

[MsQi]

But you can absolutely never see /say or /shouts from gold sellers, and it doesn't take away anything meaningful from your day-to-day.

If you don't use those, then that's about you. Assuming it's true for everyone is myopic. /say and /shout are important to many players. This is like if there is a squatter in your living room and I tell you just don't use your living room anymore.

[Eli85]

If you don't use those, then that's about you. Assuming it's true for everyone is myopic. /say and /shout are important to many players. This is like if there is a squatter in your living room and I tell you just don't use your living room anymore.

Awful analogy. /Say and /shout are not important. There is no meaningful interaction in them. They're relics of bygone MMO social ideology. If people insist on using them, fine, people can do whatever they want, but that does make them important.