Beware Scammers Obohh And Absurd

We have drastically different definitions of "significantly" if you think the NPC trade window does not look similar to the PC trade window. When I say significantly, I do mean significantly, like perhaps recoloring the PC trade window red and making the NPC window a wholly new type of UI rather than reusing assets for both.

Regardless, I was responding as to what SE could to do combat trade scams such as Odoro. These would be "simple" changes (well the confirmation change may not be simple but we all know SE is not above multiple confirmations... looking at you basement sortie blitzers and trashing items from your inventory) that would help players not make a costly mistake..

A whole extra window showing the traded items from the other PC that doesnt exist on a trade to NPC is pretty significant to me.

Maybe you want extra confirmations, but I really dont. There are already enough extra confirmations.

They could prioritize NPC trade if one is the intended trade target. I cant confirm this right now, but I'm 99% sure if someone initiates trade with you (as is the case when Odoro would initiate trade on approaching players), and you target a NPC to initiate a trade, it will open the trade with the PC instead of the NPC.

Might depend on whether you use the main menu or the target menu.

Regardless, people really just need to pay attention. I don't want to live in a world where everything is child-proof because people can't be bothered to raise their children. Not just that I'm a cantankerous old man, but there are any number of better additions/changes they could make to the UI to improve the game for everyone. Not just those who are aloof.

They could include a pop up box when a trade request is initiated/received from a PC "Do you really want to trade with <player>?". Call it Player Trade Confirmation. Add it to configurable settings so players who don't want the annoyance can turn it off, while others can enable it if they want to be extra cautious are alerted to the incoming transaction. They won't, though.

I agree, about the child proofing thing.

I just tested the trade priority though. Had one char trade me, I went to initiate trade on a NPC, and it opened up the trade window with my other char. I would change it so that trading to NPC will open the trade-to-NPC window and decline the trade to the other PC.

Of course, theres also a 2 second delay on that PC-to-PC trade window opening up, vs a trade to npc window being instantaneous.


Also, in doing this, I realized another thing:
You can trade literally anything to NPC, with the only exception being anything equipped. If you dont notice all your rare/ex stuff not greyed out as you scroll to the bottom of your inventory, thats on you.

I dont think childproofing would do anything. People already operating on auto-pilot will proceed on auto-pilot. They're already ignoring multiple signs of "this is not a PC-to-NPC trade", whats to say they wont ignore any additional signs?

Which is also why I suggested said confirmations would be a toggle.


It is obviously not enough for some players. There is basically no downside in the changes I have suggested.


Does it matter? Even if it only stops one player from making an errant trade, I would call it win. This isn't about eliminating the ability to make a errant trade but making it much more noticeable. The UI changes would be the "easy fix". The trade confirmation would likely be the much better fix.

That's kinda his point, that it doesn't matter. If you weren't paying attention to your chat log, you wouldn't pay attention to the opt-in confirmation. The same confirmation people have been skipping through for years on the AH, accidentally buying things for ten times the price or bidding on the wrong items.

Boulder price is up because SE banned quite a few HTBC bots and there is still an immense supply of hmp/cinder/dross coming from ambuscade. If HMP/dross/cinder outpaces the amount of people making emps, price drops until people are tempted to make more emps. If someone has a lv99 emp and no boulders, most of them will pay whatever they need to because stopping to farm 10k is not realistic to the average player.

Inflation is up because there are up to 36 chinese bots per server sitting in gustaberg and ronfaure from thursday afternoon until sunday morning every week. 576 characters * 2m/dump * (72hr / 3h dump = 24 dumps) = 27bil for each week they're out in full force. To match that from Odyssey, you'd need the equivalent of 2,571 full clears of C daily. I doubt there's more than 3bil a week coming from odyssey.

However, even with that, you see 10-20% inflation on most things. Beitetsu and Boulders spiked because the bots farming them were banned(or chose to stop), not because of inflation.

Boulders started go up in price much later than Beitetsu though, and coincidentially after the two recent ban waves Thorny is referring to.
His explanation makes perfect sense but for Beitetsu specifically I think there's something more in addition to what he said.

Its price was already much higher than usual (if I recall something like 700k on Asura) before the ban waves.
The price started to steadily go up after Prime Weapons were released.

Now this could be completely wrong but my hypothesis is that a lot of people kinda put their Mythics on hold and/or decided to start a Mythic after they saw how much grind the Primes were.
As in "*** primes, I'm gonna do one or more Mythic".
Again, I could be completely wrong but thought the coincidence had a peculiar timing, so to say.

If they were banned, they would be back already. It takes a day to make a 99 master bst to do garuda or master monk for leviathan.

(speaking of, its the weekend and there are no gustaberg bots or ronfaure bots)

I understand. It's not fair you want the fantasy but there is no justice and it is what it is. They aren't out there actually policing and terminating any real amount of paying customers. (in current year)

I check every zone damn near every day keeping tabs on every bot and they rarely disappear. And I know they're quitting because I'm questioning quitting due to oversaturation and racing to the bottom (16 cents per mil? idiot!) Plus there's literally nothing TO spend gil on. If I'm thinking about it, other people are thinking it too.

Making a new HTBC bot doesn't replace the years of stock an existing one had accumulated. It's a much higher bar to farm as much as demand needs in real time than it is to bank enough over years to keep a bazaar stocked, especially when you factor in HTBC campaigns and periods of slow demand.

Beit have always been the most in demand of the options, because multiboxers can do a different mythic on all characters at once for next to zero additional effort. You can save a little bit on trials for relics or emps if you make the same exact weapon, but nothing like the convenience of doing multiple mythics at once(not to mention the fact that mythics are much more game changing than relics or emps).

The collectors aren't the sellers.

The replaceable bots give all the stockpile to sellers that are for all intents and purposes unbannable. They literally never move.

You know this. Bots aren't banks, banks are untouchable. Bots are replaceable.

If the sellers are gone, it's because the banks logged out, not because their collectors ran out and/or got banned.

You don't get to choose what SE considers bannable, and I find it extremely hard to believe someone is sitting on a stock mule logged out in port jeuno with 8000 beitetsu boxes and a script to use/bazaar them, but doesn't care to log it on because 'muh price too low'.

It's much easier to believe that SE banned the HTBC bots, realized they trade literally everything they farm to the same few bazaar bots(likely on the same IP, maybe even the same SE account if they're really stupid), and banned the bazaar bots with them.

They literally never ban associated accounts. (*)If you're afk in a party that's botting, that's different. That "can" happen.

*** around on any number of alts, trade to your main, don't *** around on main, it's untouchable. Everyone knows this. That's why "bank characters" exist. They're invulnerable.

This is a great idea -- They have a similar process like this for Final Fantasy 14 and SE regularly regulates and monitors transactions up the wazoo. They're even conducting RMT sweeps randomly -- like every two weeks to at least once a month. Used to be the case here in Final Fantasy 11 also back in the day but SE and the community are waaaay past the point of policing a lot of the infrastructure. Player base just has to be mindful [and thankful for these posts so you know what to pay attention to and look out for] and watch your wallet otherwise you'll end up clutching your pearls...or losing them altogether in this case.

If you do jump ship, please... please come and just dump all the leftover ill gotten gil on me.

I have plenty of stuff to buy still!

1 mil per stack of beitetsu is "too low"

lmaooooo

That logic just doesn't make any sense. The AH confirmation has likely prevented people from accidentally buying something than not working at all. The goal here is to make it harder to be scammed. It doesn't matter if some people are still going to get scammed with the suggested changes. If you are arguing against my purposed changes because they wont be a 100% fix, then your expectations are unrealistic.

Even a 3rd party made an addon for this: https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/55769/safeoboro-get-rid-of-scammers-around-oboro/ though I would prefer SE actually doing something on their end for a much wider reach.

The only real solution here is for people to pay attention. You're crossing the street? Look both ways twice. That is what saves lives, not a flashing crosswalk sign or a machine telling you the 'walk' sign is on.


I'm not against your idea. I would just prioritize changes that affect everyone, or at least everyone who played [job] or [content] being adjusted. Anything opt-in would be lower prio.