Calling out auction house scammers !!!

grrouper

Well one trick that has always been going on for some time yet with the flood of lesser bondings at auction house you see more players that attempt to deceive others. What they do is post a item lets say a lesser bonding just a tad lower than the cost for a greater bonding in hopes someone will buy it by mistake and fall victim to the scam. I see attempting to do this just the same as theft and they should be called out for trying to do such things. Maybe a simple pm asking of their intention in posting like that does not hurt or maybe even talking with their guild how dishonest it is . Just sad because the players that fall victim will be newer players most of the time and all ready have hard enough time making AD without some jerks attempts to swindle them. GUESS I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH SURE BUYER BEWARE YET PLAYERS POST LIKE THIS ARE JUST SO DECEITFUL AND DISHONEST TO FEEL THE NEED TO EARN THEIR AD BY PRAYING ON YOUNG CHILDREN OR NEW PLAYERS THAT DO NOT LOOK CLOSE ENOUGH AT WHAT THEY BUY.

dupeks

Whereas I'm all for combating scammers, I'm not sure I would consider this scamming per se. This is more like taking advantage of people who don't spend any time shopping around before making a purchase and are willing to pay an atrocious price anyway.

Posting items at higher prices than their value is a problem since VIP removed posting fees. As much as I enjoy not having to pay posting fees, I think they should be reinstated to discourage people for posting items at atrociously high prices. There is no downside to posting stuff for more, and there's a chance that someone will bite.

But if someone is willing to buy my widget at way above market value, why should they be prevented from doing so? Maybe they desperately need it right now and have more money than sense.

Besides, how would you determine who is guilty of this type of behavior? What if the prices of the higher level item drop after I already posted my lower level one? What if people purposefully undercut the higher level item just to make it appear that I'm trying to scam people?

sandukutupu

Not much can be done. I don't see any solution. This sort of "scam" has been around since the concept of the game and exists in other games too. We can't "name and shame" here in the forums either. I appreciate your desire to make new players aware, but they seldom come here. I feel the biggest rip off to this day is "bag of holes". To the best of my knowledge it only exists in this game as a joke. Yet people still sell them at outlandish prices fully aware it is an unusable object.

dupeks

grrouper said:

go right from a Less"er" to a great"er

I see, that is a bit sneaky and I can see how it can catch someone off guard. I think the best thing you can do is try to warn newer folks to be weary.

I guess I always type out the full name of an item when I'm searching for stuff on the AH so I don't see these shady postings often myself.

thefabricant

This is why when searching on the auction house, you type the word, "greater" before the words, "bonding runestone."

beckylunatic

thefabricant said:

This is why when searching on the auction house, you type the word, "greater" before the words, "bonding runestone."

I just type "bond" to look at prices on everything, but I'm really careful about reading ranks prior to buying anything, ever.

regenerde

The Bag of Holes can be placed in an empty bag slot, and therefore it can prevent a bag bought from the ZEN shop from directly binding to that character, which is pretty usefull, when you have a discount coupon on one character, but you want the bag on another.

Just saying, those bags might come in handy at some point...
But i'm not sure, if they have changed that ZEN shop bag binding behaviour in the meantime.

And about buying/selling Bonding Runestones over the AH...
The lesser and the greater have different names, different icons, and if you search with the full name, you only see the right ones.

litaaers

This is not scamming. There is no 'price' that an object 'should' be. And to assign (or cause to have to explain) motive to an item posted is NOT in your jusrisdiction.

Prices fluctuate, and just because there is a flood of items now to drop a price, does not mean anyone has to post for that price. If you assume someone is posting to 'jump price brackets' (which is an unreal construct), then its incumbent on the buyer to actually type in what they are looking for. The AH will only give them listings that they ask for, so its the buyer who must be careful.

I will say that the AH UI needs some reprogramming. During 2X refinement, I cannot search for regular (blue) marks or stones, as a search for 'resonance stone' will call up minor, lesser, normal, and greater stones, with pretty crummy sorting capabilities. The stones should either be given an internal rarity (to use the rarity filter) or called Normal or Standard stone....

beckylunatic

regenerde said:

The Bag of Holes can be placed in an empty bag slot, and therefore it can prevent a bag bought from the ZEN shop from directly binding to that character, which is pretty usefull, when you have a discount coupon on one character, but you want the bag on another.

Just saying, those bags might come in handy at some point...
But i'm not sure, if they have changed that ZEN shop bag binding behaviour in the meantime.

Bags no longer automatically equip themselves even if you have an open slot. I think this was patched very shortly after the change to make bought bags BoE, after the initial registry of complaints from PO'd customers.

The bag of holes really serves no purpose except to be a little dev joke which certain players have been using to cheat and troll others since 2013.

litaaers said:

I will say that the AH UI needs some reprogramming. During 2X refinement, I cannot search for regular (blue) marks or stones, as a search for 'resonance stone' will call up minor, lesser, normal, and greater stones, with pretty crummy sorting capabilities. The stones should either be given an internal rarity (to use the rarity filter) or called Normal or Standard stone....

Filter by quality. It is incumbent on the buyer to actually know how to find what they want.

tripsofthrymr

dupeks said:

I guess I always type out the full name of an item when I'm searching for stuff on the AH so I don't see these shady postings often myself.

If you type out "mark of potency", it will also match lessers and greaters in the AH.

I do agree that not much can be done about people trying to take advantage of new players. The best thing a new player can do is find a good guild or other group (e.g. a good custom channel) and ask around before making a significant purchase.

litaaers

beckylunatic said:

litaaers said:

I will say that the AH UI needs some reprogramming. During 2X refinement, I cannot search for regular (blue) marks or stones, as a search for 'resonance stone' will call up minor, lesser, normal, and greater stones, with pretty crummy sorting capabilities. The stones should either be given an internal rarity (to use the rarity filter) or called Normal or Standard stone....

Filter by quality. It is incumbent on the buyer to actually know how to find what they want.

Excellent riposte, but faulty. Classic false equivalence and deflection argument. Even so, I hope you worked off a little of that scorn feeling with the attempted jibe.
They do not respond to the quality filter. Mounts do, but not resonance, thaumatugic, nor the power/stability/union trio.

EDIT: They DO respond if you drill down to the refinement stone sub-sub-category. What a WONDERFUL discovery. Maybe you will take the lead on telling everyone in-game how to get to that solution?

beckylunatic

Searching the AH without choosing a category doesn't work worth a hamster anyway. It never occurs to me that anyone would bother.

litaaers

Most people would, since not all items are eay to categorize. Especially new people, which is what the OP was looking out for.

As a matter of fact, there are some instances where you get MORE results when you do not choose a category.

I'd call it a valid scenario. 'Worth' is dependent on the individual, which is part of the point here.

dupeks

tripsofthrymr said:

dupeks said:

I guess I always type out the full name of an item when I'm searching for stuff on the AH so I don't see these shady postings often myself.

If you type out "mark of potency", it will also match lessers and greaters in the AH.

I do agree that not much can be done about people trying to take advantage of new players. The best thing a new player can do is find a good guild or other group (e.g. a good custom channel) and ask around before making a significant purchase.

As has been mentioned in this thread, you can filter by rarity if you are in a sub-category. I always do that, so am not exposed to the quirks often.

Again, I see how this is un-intuitive and punishingly restrictive, especially for newcomers, for seemingly no reason. But, after years of working with a hilariously broken AH UI, I routinely drill in to subcategories and type full names only. I recommend all others do the same, otherwise you run into all sorts of potential pitfalls (including the OP's concern).

litaaers said:

Most people would, since not all items are eay to categorize.

If you need help finding categories for things like packs and other less common items, I recommend:
https://two30.github.io/neverwinter-auction/

@two30 thank you your tools are essentially a mandatory supplement to this game

litaaers

grrouper said:

Well if you intentionally place an item in a bracket and a location to deceive others into buying it by mistake. Then yes that is a con or scam tactic and yes many do that and i have listen to some brag about how it has worked and also heard of players go WTF just happened. ofcourse you can say buyer beware but as we all know there are so many ages and mindsets to players and the ones that think it is ok to trick others into buying the wrong item by doing this is just scum.

So, if I price a Greater Cloak of the Seldarine (green) at a price that is just under or within the 'current' range of a Greater Cloak of the Seldarine (blue), for whatever reason, then I am trying to 'trick someone into buying it'?

namelesshero347

People mis-price items all the time. They have the same item type of different rankings in their inventory. They drag and drop in a lesser item and price it as a normal item. You going to label them scammer?

The better thing to do is to bring back posting fee for VIPs in some form. Maybe refund the posting fee if the item sells in less than one day. A half the fee if the item sells after that time. Full fee for expired and recalled listings. Serious sellers pay no or little posting fee. And people will be encouraged to post at reasonable prices. They will pay if they try to fish for suckers.

tripsofthrymr

namelesshero347 said:

The better thing to do is to bring back posting fee for VIPs in some form. Maybe refund the posting fee if the item sells in less than one day. A half the fee if the item sells after that time. Full fee for expired and recalled listings. Serious sellers pay no or little posting fee. And people will be encouraged to post at reasonable prices. They will pay if they try to fish for suckers.

That's a very good suggestion... no/lowered posting fee if the item sells in a reasonable time. I would add: Pay the max posting fee if you cancel the auction (to prevent canceling and re-posting that epic mount that is "worth" 25 million AD before incurring the fee).

litaaers

Then you would have to deal with all of the VIP people who bought it, based on the clause of no posting fees. And remember, this would all be to prevent something preventable by looking before you press Buy Out. Twice I might add....

tripsofthrymr

litaaers said:

Then you would have to deal with all of the VIP people who bought it, based on the clause of no posting fees. And remember, this would all be to prevent something preventable by looking before you press Buy Out. Twice I might add....

Any change to VIP should be announced fairly far in advance (though 12 months isn't really practical). People hardly buy VIP just for this feature, but it would probably be fair to refund unwanted VIP months (for Zen) if someone really wanted their money back over a change to this one feature.

The issue isn't one person placing a high price on one item. The issue is a fairly small number of players controlling a fairly large slice of the trade for high-value items (e.g. legendary mounts). Watch the AH listings for such items for a while and you'll see the same @handle repeated, for different items (sometimes with 2-3 legendary mounts listed under one @handle). Legendary mounts went up from 5-7 million when my mains got theirs (after the mount rework) to 20-25 million we see today. There isn't an obvious, market-based driver for that price increase.

Real-world economies always have some cost to participate in a market (retail space, website development, staff, advertising, ...) that makes it unprofitable to list products at unrealistic prices. Neverwinter's economy has no such cost. As a result, a fairly small number of players are able to create the illusion that in-demand items are worth more than they should be. They're perfectly content to re-list that same item over and over until just the right buyer comes along.

Those players are doing nothing wrong. They're playing by the rules. The rules, though, are disadvantageous to the vast majority of players.

litaaers

I understand that. But if only one person has 3 copies of the item in question, then they can ask what they want for it. If they truly want to sell it, they will reduce the price til someone buys it. It they want to turn a high profit, they can sit on it forever.

And if there are only 3 of the items available, it might be because they are (very) rare. Perhaps the high pricetag is justified.
If they offered Legendary moounts in the Zen store, then there would be a ceiling to the price, as it would only be worth the AD/Zen exchange of the store cost (as is the case with Flawless Sapphires and Pearls where they are available in stores).

What the OP suggests is just plain assumption. And even if someone were to be doing it, its totally within the rules. When people cross a busy street while looking at their phone, if they get hurt, its a shame, but it is totally on them. There is an expectation of responsibility when operating the 'heavy machinery' of the AH.

katamaster81899

dupeks said:

Whereas I'm all for combating scammers, I'm not sure I would consider this scamming per se. This is more like taking advantage of people who don't spend any time shopping around before making a purchase and are willing to pay an atrocious price anyway.

Posting items at higher prices than their value is a problem since VIP removed posting fees. As much as I enjoy not having to pay posting fees, I think they should be reinstated to discourage people for posting items at atrociously high prices. There is no downside to posting stuff for more, and there's a chance that someone will bite.

But if someone is willing to buy my widget at way above market value, why should they be prevented from doing so? Maybe they desperately need it right now and have more money than sense.

Besides, how would you determine who is guilty of this type of behavior? What if the prices of the higher level item drop after I already posted my lower level one? What if people purposefully undercut the higher level item just to make it appear that I'm trying to scam people?

I would rather not remove the VIP posting fee benefit - as someone who has had to sell extremely rare and expensive items that can take a WHILE to sell, having no posting fee has made a huge difference for me. It took months to sell off all my old HP gear, and when they costed 4-10m a piece, the posting fee would have been atrocious just to post it once, let alone 5-10 times per piece.

reg1981

It's on the seller to read what they are buying. Plain and simple. It's not as if someone can fool the AH into a false posting. Sure it sucks that people will try this and get away with it and I would never do it but imo it's still the buyers fault for making the purchase.

mamalion1234

About greater bondings and perfect bonding scenario. EACH item list different rank. I will say this:
NEW OR old player who reads description of each enchantment will not get the greater at the price of perfect.
NOW if are players cannot read rank 9 and rank 10 on the enchant is its his fault and not the seller .

THE word scam is wrong here. POsting a mount for 100m we have the right to do that.
SCAM is when: i want to trade a vorpal for soulforge and i give a peridot instead the vorpal.
SCAM in other game i have played lineage when crafter classes set shop in the town selling the craft for 100k adena and when you were pressing was 1m the click.

SO explain me how someone will confuse when the greater enchant is rank 9 and the perfect is rank 10?

cerberusxll

grrouper said:

mamalion1234 said:

About greater bondings and perfect bonding scenario. EACH item list different rank. I will say this:
NEW OR old player who reads description of each enchantment will not get the greater at the price of perfect.
NOW if are players cannot read rank 9 and rank 10 on the enchant is its his fault and not the seller .

THE word scam is wrong here. POsting a mount for 100m we have the right to do that.
SCAM is when: i want to trade a vorpal for soulforge and i give a peridot instead the vorpal.
SCAM in other game i have played lineage when crafter classes set shop in the town selling the craft for 100k adena and when you were pressing was 1m the click.

SO explain me how someone will confuse when the greater enchant is rank 9 and the perfect is rank 10?

Already explained what people are doing atm lesser bonding are flooding auction house yet if a person is using search and types bondings wanting to buy a "greater" bonding their are people that intentionally post a "lesser" bonding just a tad bit less than a greater bonding in hopes someone will screw up and buy it by mistake. Can be a simple for a person buying it not thinking someone would list a lesser for 700K over the actual price at this time and thought they was buying the cheapest greater bonding listed. Trust me people do this and yes the person that list it in hopes someone slips up is a scammer.

scammer? no.

opportunist? yes.

whoever is listing the item for sale, it's up to them to choose the selling price, likewise it's up to the buyer to make sure they are not buying an item at an overly inflated rate.