Catshop scams

Raggik - Heavens Tear

So the cat shops scamming healing orbs as U. subs and shabby shards as blemished or common etc has gotten really bad on HT lately. Was wondering if posting a thread with screenies of all the scammers would get me in trouble?

Belial - Heavens Tear

Yes, naming and shaming is not permitted.

Fireblood - Harshlands

I can walk through arch and can find AT LEAST 3-5 cat shops doing this b:surrender

Alyyy - Sanctuary

Fireblood - Harshlands wrote: »

I can walk through arch and can find AT LEAST 3-5 cat shops doing this b:surrender

i dotn ewen think any1 bothers with it


i have a question tho if some1 writes "what u need" is this also wrong?

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Well, it is kinda annoying to see a shop advertising one thing and find they're actually selling something completely different.

But yeah, most catshops seem to just advertise "Stuff" or "Free Sex". The catshops title is pretty much to ignore. You've got the full info available before you hit 'buy' anyway.

Tatuaje - Lost City

Always, always, ALWAYS review befire you hit the buy button.

I was buying rough stnoes for my CrasyStone one morning and I noticed all was going well until I added 6 of the last stones (I was buying 6 days worth) when my price went from the low numbers to over 100K.

Thankfully I was paying attention that day because the seller had added a few extra zeros to the last stone.

Its a scam and we as the players need to always preview our purchase before fulling closing the sale.

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

It's still a scam. I'm all for being careful when you trade but the whole "no, the scammer is perfectly justified and the victim is an idiot nub" thing is ridiculous. Only a scammer, or jerk who think's they're clever could say such a thing anyway.

I can't see why it isn't bannable. It makes new players miserable and quit, cause arguments, the devs and GM's don't benefit at all, it's underhanded and deceitful..... why is it allowed? The scammers knows full well they'll never sell healing orbs at 60k, there's nothing fair about the trade. It shouldn't be encouraged as a legitimate way to make cash.

Tatuaje - Lost City

No matter how bad it may be "scamming" that is, people are given the choice to do what they want. If you put limits on one item you need to put limits on every item. I don't agree with scamming but heres another issue. You have someone new that has pretty much kept to themselves during their game play. They put up some sales to make cash and don't know the going prices, the prices are too high and are considered scamming prices. Do you ban them for that? You all need to stop the mob mantality and just educate yourselves and others when you can. I always take the time to teach new people the ropes when they reach out for advice.

Does any really comprehend the amount of man power required to control such an issue.

It is better for everyone to always educate themselves and be responsible for their own actions.

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

Tatuaje - Lost City wrote: »

No matter how bad it may be "scamming" that is, people are given the choice to do what they want. If you put limits on one item you need to put limits on every item. I don't agree with scamming but heres another issue. You have someone new that has pretty much kept to themselves during their game play. They put up some sales to make cash and don't know the going prices, the prices are too high and are considered scamming prices. Do you ban them for that? You all need to stop the mob mantality and just educate yourselves and others when you can. I always take the time to teach new people the ropes when they reach out for advice.

Does any really comprehend the amount of man power required to control such an issue.

It is better for everyone to always educate themselves and be responsible for their own actions.

That's not a scam. If I took 50 pots out of my inventory, set up a shop and tried to sell them for 100k each I wouldn't be scamming, I'd be overpricing. There's a huge differance.

Scamming is a deliberate attempt to trick a person out of their cash. Misleading shop titles are an example.

A player beside auction house with a shop 1g = 100k selling gold foil at 100kea is a scammer. A nub in the starter town trying to sell grease and logs at 100k each is just vastly overpricing. In that case if you bought it's your fault for not shopping around. Hence what I meant by "I'm all for being careful when you trade"

Think of it, in real life if you went and set up a shop in town with the name "lemonade r us!" and every one of your lemonade bottles was actually sparkling water.... you'd be run out of business quicker than you know what happened. O.o

Tatuaje - Lost City

We all agree that scamming is bad.

The only problem is that PWI does not "police" this sort of thing. I don't disagree that a full out scammer (ei. ult sub selling when its some healing thing) should be repremanded but that is not the case in PWI at this moment.

All complaints (which are liable) should all be placed into the suggestions area and people need to ask that scammers be repremanded.

That is where your needs will be answered if and only if PWI deems it nessecary. People coming to General will just be told to stop QQing and the such.

We all still need to watch out at all costs.

When I bought my first gold HP charm I did not know it came in a box. So I made the seller take it out and make the trade, that way I saw the charm itself. You can never be to careful.

Raggik - Heavens Tear

Well that's annoying that we cant make a list somewhere on the forums. I have not been caught by a scam shop yet but a lot of my faction members have.

On the plus side I noticed when I logged this morning people were setting up shops next to the scammers and putting titles like " <==Scammers==>"b:chuckle

Redmenace - Heavens Tear

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Think of it, in real life if you went and set up a shop in town with the name "lemonade r us!" and every one of your lemonade bottles was actually sparkling water.... you'd be run out of business quicker than you know what happened. O.o

The difference is in RL, if someone scams you there is the very real danger of you knocking their lights out. For catshops, nothing happens. There is no "down side" to trying to **** customers in PW.

<sigh>

RedMenace
\wants the ability to kill catshops
\\or the addition of a "vote" option in catshops
\\\ FFFFFFF---FFF WUD NOT BUY AGAIN SCAMMING BASTAGE\/
\\\\SLASHIE ABUSE

Alyyy - Sanctuary

lol if ppl would actualy bother with reporting this the whoel arch would be empty rofl



b:surrendertoo many ppl out there to check

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

We all agree scamming is bad.

However, in order for scamming to be worth it, people need to not be paying attention and fall for it, so they are as much to blame as the scammers themselves.

Therefore, we should also ban all the people that do not pay attention and fall for the scam, since they are encouraging the scammers since it is profitable.

If you want to see scammers gone, do your part and don't buy from them, at all.... not even the other cheap items they are selling. If everyone did that, I can assure you the number of shops scamming would go down.

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

We all agree scamming is bad.
However, in order for scamming to be worth it, people need to not be paying attention and fall for it, so they are as much to blame as the scammers themselves.
Therefore, we should also ban all the people that do not pay attention and fall for the scam, since they are encouraging the scammers since it is profitable.

Wait, you think being a gullible moron and falling for a scam should be a punishable offense?

The sad truth is that Perfect World does NOT remove most scammers, even when reported. I reported an obvious scammer to them 2 weeks ago. They sent me a polite response that they would investigate and thanked me for the tip. I posted in the forum with screenshots blocking out the scammers name. Although I haven't checked this scammers shop every day, from those times I have checked I can tell that he has made many millions from his ventures.... and he is STILL there. So the conclusion must be that they either take no action against scammers, are incredibly slow, or that this scammer has discovered a loophole. I noticed that he was selling one item correct to the name of his catshop - one blemished for his advertised price. The rest of his gems were shabbies for the same price. Perhaps Perfect World will not take action against a scammer if he has one correct item. Perhaps they give a warning... and then forget about it. Perhaps they don't care until enough people complain.

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

We all agree scamming is bad.

However, in order for scamming to be worth it, people need to not be paying attention and fall for it, so they are as much to blame as the scammers themselves.

Therefore, we should also ban all the people that do not pay attention and fall for the scam, since they are encouraging the scammers since it is profitable.

If you want to see scammers gone, do your part and don't buy from them, at all.... not even the other cheap items they are selling. If everyone did that, I can assure you the number of shops scamming would go down.

Ban the scam victims? Victims as bad as scammers?
Fail...
You're an idiot. What else can I say? b:surrender

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Ban the scam victims? Victims as bad as scammers?
Fail...
You're an idiot. What else can I say? b:surrender

Im guessing shes a scammer, scammer wanna-be, or friend of a scammer... at any rate those who excuse scammers in this way appear to be easing their own consciences by attempting to legitimize it.

Darksylph - Heavens Tear

Tatuaje - Lost City wrote: »

Does any really comprehend the amount of man power required to control such an issue.

It is better for everyone to always educate themselves and be responsible for their own actions.

The fix for this issue on PWE's part could be REALLY simple. Change the U.Sub. icon to something unique. Takes 15 minutes to make a new graphic? There, problem solved. If any other substitution scam becomes prevalent, do the same. The base of the "misunderstanding" (i use that loosely), is that both items appear identical in the catshop window. Now the scammers cant do the scam, and no policing required.

Edit: Would also be nice if there was an increasing glow around the different grades of gems or something, for the "B"Shard (Blemished instead of Beautiful) scam. The price the last item too high scam i cant suggest a solution other then just watch your Buy coin amount, at least you dont need to hover & wait for a popup description to verify that one.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Vellamo - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Wait, you think being a gullible moron and falling for a scam should be a punishable offense?

From DarkSeraph
"Ban the scam victims? Victims as bad as scammers?
Fail...
You're an idiot. What else can I say? "

From Vellamo
"Im guessing shes a scammer, scammer wanna-be, or friend of a scammer... at any rate those who excuse scammers in this way appear to be easing their own consciences by attempting to legitimize it. "

@Vellamo
If you think I am a scammer, report me. Meanwhile, stop making libelous and defamatory statements about me. Please read the TOS. Read section 10 a)
http://www.perfectworld.com/about/terms

@DarkSeraph.
The buyer needs to take responsibility for their actions. We already agreed that taking advantage of other people is bad, however to fall for a catshop scam, the buyer really needs to be asleep at the wheel. I agree that there are other ways to scam that would be much harder to prevent, however, this post is about catshops, not scamming in general.
Unlike other crimes, this one the victim has to select the item, than drag it to the buy side, than choose how many of the item they want, than they have to click buy. At that point, they have yet another confirmation dialog box asking them if they are sure they want to buy the items, and it lists the total as well. This is not the same as being walking around and getting your wallet stolen from your pocket... the buyer was actively involved in the transaction and it had at least 2 chances to back off the deal, and all the time in the world to review what he was buying.

We all have the power to stop them for good, just by paying attention to what we buy in catshops. If nobody buys from those people, they will stop.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Darksylph - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The fix for this issue on PWE's part could be REALLY simple. Change the U.Sub. icon to something unique. Takes 15 minutes to make a new graphic? There, problem solved. If any other substitution scam becomes prevalent, do the same. The base of the "misunderstanding" (i use that loosely), is that both items appear identical in the catshop window. Now the scammers cant do the scam, and no policing required.

Edit: Would also be nice if there was an increasing glow around the different grades of gems or something, for the "B"Shard (Blemished instead of Beautiful) scam. The price the last item too high scam i cant suggest a solution other then just watch your Buy coin amount, at least you dont need to hover & wait for a popup description to verify that one.

Agree with different icons for all items.... I lost count of how many times I have accidentaly NPCed my wraith tags because they look just like the DQ item....

The only way I can think for stopping the item too high priced issue would be to either:
1. Have all items have a fixed price, so when you sell to someone else you could only sell for the npc price. It would make setting up shop pretty much pointless, since you would only make the same as selling to the npc.
2. Remove catshop and revamp AH, and only allow player to player trade through the AH. Not something I would look forward, but it would achieve the removal of pretty much all possibility of scamming, as well as the ability to give gear to friends.

Quilue - Sanctuary

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Therefore, we should also ban all the people that do not pay attention and fall for the scam, since they are encouraging the scammers since it is profitable.

is not the whole point of taking action against scammers to protect everyone else? that's like saying if i rob someone, the guy who got robbed is also at fault for further encouraging my crime spree because my success here would increase my likelihood of attempting more robberies.
o.o

Aadi - Lost City

Quilue - Sanctuary wrote: »

is not the whole point of taking action against scammers to protect everyone else? that's like saying if i rob someone, the guy who got robbed is also at fault for further encouraging my crime spree because my success here would increase my likelihood of attempting more robberies.
o.o

More like if a prisoner escapes a prison because of the carelessness of a prison guard. The prisoner is at fault mainly, but the guard doesn't get off without punishment for being careless and allowing the prisoner to escape.

The fault isn't entirely with the seller, but it's more with the seller than the buyer.

lostsoul1213

We see this on Dreamweaver heavily on scams. Not only scams but also shop bots, which last we checked were not allowed also.

The catshop idea is a good one, but needs refining. THe only problem is there is no way to fix it..... I would list the names of over a dozen games with this problem but it would barely touch the issue.

I would say I am happy this game has not met a fate like so many others on ones advertising cheat sites, and dozens of bots killing low mobs for gold to send to their mains. THis destroyed mabinogi and several other sites.

The only real way of dealing with this is taking out the catshops, use auction house as a backbone and design a system that notifies a gm if a price is too high.

Raggik - Heavens Tear

We all seem to agree that what the catshops is doing is a scam where ever the blame seems to fall. Obviously scamming is a violation of the ToS.

this is listed under User Content

(j) Engage in any actions that defraud or attempt to defraud, scam or cheat others out of any items that have been earned through authorized game play;

We have also established PWi seems unwilling to attempt to fix this immediately. I guess at this point the thread is moot even with a clear Violation of the ToS b:sad

lostsoul1213

SPeaking from their side from experience..... to fix something, it must fall into many criteria.

1. how much time will it take to code
2. the cost of the patch in man hours
3. Is the concept sound? can people get around it?
4. Test the idea, if it is found to be exploitable, how do you fix it?
5. does the fix destroy the main concept of the original implemented feature?
6. If the answer to 3-5 is yes and if there are loopholes, the idea will surely fail.

In short planning the perfect mousetrap to fix a bug or a exploit is not as easy as it sounds. Trust me...... On one site I worked on, people wanted something much like the territory wars here. The problem was 3 years in the making. Thousands of accounts were on the server. Over 6000 factions existed. Players were allowed to join 3 factions. THis created basically one huge faction with everyone linked together. Being 3 years into the game, it was impossible to get around.. We came close but still it was impossible to fix.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Raggik - Heavens Tear wrote: »

We all seem to agree that what the catshops is doing is a scam where ever the blame seems to fall. Obviously scamming is a violation of the ToS.

this is listed under User Content

(j) Engage in any actions that defraud or attempt to defraud, scam or cheat others out of any items that have been earned through authorized game play;

We have also established PWi seems unwilling to attempt to fix this immediately. I guess at this point the thread is moot even with a clear Violation of the ToS b:sad

The main problem is the proof part.....

How can you prove that he is indeed scamming and it was not just a mistake? You are talking banning accounts here, so I would hope the GMs would take their job of proving it very seriously, unfortunatly, this process takes time.

Being a F2P game means people can make dozen of accounts, so even if people complain, the number of hits against a single player can be low, helping to keep it under the radar. Keep in mind that, in order for the company to do a IP ban, they better be sure nobody else plays on that IP, since in some cases, like college students, you will have multiple people with the same public IP address, and if you were to IP ban one player, it would affect countless others.

This is not a easy problem to solve, and the most effective solution is community action, as in, we as a community make the effort to always check our purchases, so that people trying to take advantage of others while using catshops will not be able to make any money.

Any action that PW can take, would open the door for nasty side effects, unlike what we can do as a community, which would only have the side effect of taking an extra 30 seconds per catshop purchase to make sure we are getting what we want.

Zoe - Heavens Tear

I'd add something to the game to prevent this from going on, and when players complained I'd just say this:

"You were the ones scamming, you brought this on yourselves. You don't like it? Don't scam."

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I'd add something to the game to prevent this from going on, and when players complained I'd just say this:

"You were the ones scamming, you brought this on yourselves. You don't like it? Don't scam."

Zoe, that makes no sense, since if you were to do that, than there would be no going back, EVEN if there was no scamming at all, since there would be no way to know if it would come back..... And once you remove this, what would be next? Removing all PVP, since some people think that is griefing but refuse to go on a non-pvp server? Or maybe make it bannable to wear armor and weapons lower than your level, since that would be missleading (a form of scam) to other players.....

Also, I do not scam, and I would complain, so what would you answer to me? That I have to suffer because someone else was not paying attention while someone else was greedy?

Raggik - Heavens Tear

They should be able to sort out public IP blocks from private home ip's. Is my understanding it's just a fair bit of work.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Raggik - Heavens Tear wrote: »

They should be able to sort out public IP blocks from private home ip's. Is my understanding it's just a fair bit of work.

And all those hours to do it would be able to get circunvented in less than 2 minutes by either reseting the home modem (for those people with non-static IPs), or by using a proxy....

Mythsoul - Heavens Tear

IceJazmin has proven to have the IQ of a pencil.