Scammer Question For GMs

Madijon - Lost City wrote: »

Have you never gone to the store and were looking at lets say clothes. (for sake of comparision). Then you find a really great deal on a pair of jeans in your size section. Your rushed for time so you throw the jeans in your cart, make your purchase and go about your business. When you get home you realize you bought a size small instead of large. OOOPS, it was on sale, no return. Now your stuck with an item you didnt want or need. Oh well your mistake, tough cookies. Bite the dust, move on and swear to be more careful.

And I agree, I've missed priced items many times late at night, or set up shop with a variety of items. This last week i've been selling duke rose outfits along with other things. I put my title as duke rose, but when i get up with the baby and check shop if i've sold soemting i just refill withwhatever is in my inventory. I might not change the shop name till tomorrow when i get home from work.

In the case of your shop with the title as you said, I don't see how that would be scam. There is a clear difference in the icons of the duke rose set, compared to every other fashion set.

In game Player Moderators is a really bad idea. For starters, you have to give them some kind of icon by their name to differentiate them from non player mods, otherwise anyone can go around impersonating them with the purpose of scamming people who don't know any better (asking for account information, offers to "make you a mod" in exchange for money, extorting money or items from people by threatening to ban them, etc.) If you have player moderators in the game, people have to be able to tell who they are.

This brings up the real problem with player moderators. When a game starts to pick mods from its player base, the players who don't get picked, start to see it as a "status symbol" (especially with the icon by their name) and will work very hard to gain it, like any other piece of fashion. If the GMs think they a lot to do now, their jobs would be endless if they had to sift through hundreds of thousands of tattle-tale tickets from wanna-be moderators every single day. If you think I'm exaggerating, think about the number of people who look at one cat shop in West Arch in say, a 12 hour period. Even if just 1/10 of those people ticketed it for scamming, it would still result in hours of extra work for the GMs every day ... all because people can't watch what they are buying.

I do support making things look different though. Things looking the same just makes scamming easier. We wouldn't even need to think about having in game player moderators if things didn't look the same.

I'm sure you would have known by now that some of the GMs actually play the game too, but no one actually knows their real characters that they play on.

At least eatwithspoons has mentioned playing the game as a regular player. Of course I'm assuming he doesn't use a similar naming scheme that he used for his GM name (something that combines an action with an object - "eat" with "spoons").

Considering I only just "recently" started noticing him on the forums, I'd almost suspect he was originally a player who got offered a job as a GM.

The whole catshop scam thing is getting out of hand, and yes, in Sanctuary, I've seen catshops advertising one thing, and when I check, it's a different thing. Another thing is the price gouging that seems to be rather popular nowadays. Sometimes, when I set up catshop, I will sometimes sell an item or two above its original price, but I do that based on how rare/wanted the item(s) is/are. Other than that, I sell items at as-is prices. Anyways, the price gouging seems to happen to a lot of items that are relativaley cheap at other, honest shops. But yeah, some items go for ridiculous prices, and later, you end up finding them for about 10 coins a pop.

There are MANY scams, both IRL, and In-game, with bait-and-switch being the common concerning the latter. Sure, the addage, "Caviet Emptor," applies here, but it is not entirely up to the buyer to be sure of what they are getting. That's like blaming a **** victim for being **** and adding that she was asking for it. Not to be mean, just trying to make a point concerning the whole, "It's the buyers fault," issue.

I tend to go overboard at times, since I get frustrated with this kind of thing a lot, and not just in-game, but offline as well.

And yeah, you're right about that statement I made, but I only said that because, in all honesty, I'm getting tired of other players constantly saying, "It's the buyers fault," and whatnot. Yes, there is some responsibility to the buyer, but really, if it really is the buyer's responsibility, then we either wouldn't have scam reports, or we'd have too many complaints about scamming.

As I said, I'm heavily frustrated by scamming, and on TWO occasions offline, I was ALMOST a victim of a bait-and-switch scam at two of my now-on-my-*****-list stores.

Yep. Stay with a tried-and-trued method.

well in my opinion its mainly the buyers fault i mean pay attention if your not smart enough for that just npc and avoid all possible scams and get it cheaper anyways i would be able to see scams but i simply npc cause its cheaper

The blame lays imo 50/50 between scammers and buyers.

Without scammers players wouldnt get caught out
Without players stupidity then scammers couldnt operate.

and yes before people scream and flame it is players stupidity that gets them scammed, since we are talking about very very basic attempts to scam, nothing that a bit of observation when buying couldnt solve.

But like the old saying goes: " A fool and his money are easily parted ".

No I dont condone scamming in anyway ,shape or form but it is easily avoidable

Ruax - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The blame lays imo 50/50 between scammers and buyers.

Without scammers players wouldnt get caught out
Without players stupidity then scammers couldnt operate.

and yes before people scream and flame it is players stupidity that gets them scammed, since we are talking about very very basic attempts to scam, nothing that a bit of observation when buying couldnt solve.

But like the old saying goes: " A fool and his money are easily parted ".

No I dont condone scamming in anyway ,shape or form but it is easily avoidable

I was scammed like that once...I just took it as a lesson to pay closer attention XD

redhotcharacter2 wrote:

Ive seen that scammer. He is selling near the daily quest area of Arch. From your picture it looks like he has sold maybe 10 gems of each and the blemished too.

I saw one person that had every gem priced normally except for one that was way marked up for people that don't pay attention. I laughed when I noticed they had about 10 left of the other four, and 80+ left of the overpriced one.

Daishar - Dreamweaver wrote: »

So getting scammed is mainly the victims fault, not the one who plans and executes the scam? The thing that makes me feel sick is that ppl are actually defending scammers. Sure, when cat shop scam happens, it`s buyers fault not to look what he bought, but that doesn`t make scamming justified.

I posted on this way back on page 3. The distinction you are looking for is between the individuals making the transaction, and the social value of having scam-free cat shops. The "blame the victim" mentality focuses only on the individuals involved in this transaction, while completely ignoring the degrading effect it has on society (i.e. how nice it is to play in PWI). To repeat:

Say I were to dig potholes into the road. Most people see them and maneuver around them. But some for whatever reason don't and wreck their wheels or occasionally their entire car. Yes the victim is to blame for failing to make a simple maneuver to avoid the obvious pot holes.

But whether people can see and avoid the potholes is not the point. The point is that in order to promote the smooth and speedy flow of traffic so people can get where they are going as quickly as possible, there should be no potholes in the road at all. Society as a whole is better off if there are no potholes in the road. So someone who goes around digging potholes needs to be stopped.

JasmineSoul - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've also noticed on a daily basis in the catshops that sell roughs, they like to "accidentally" have a typo on the price on the middle or fourth stone over, adding an extra zero or two.

I get so peeved over this sort of thing, but there's alot of dishonest people out there. There's been a drastic decline in morality over the last decade or so. It sucks.

The even better one to watch for is the cat shop that says "G6Citrine120k", and when you look he has 60 average citrines for sale at 120k each. Unlike the previous example who may have had a stock that has sold, this one is a total deliberate scam, as the incorrect shards have been priced with the correct value for the higher level shard.

Lesson- always check every item and cost before buying, then check it again.

Tryndal - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I personally really dislike scammers. I was scammed on a whole different situation but all in the same. If you see a scammer dont be affraid to put it out on World Chat these FCKS need to be stopped. Make sure you tell your Guildies and if at all possible try to get in contact with their guild leader if they are in a guild!

Then have the guild leader laugh and call you a noob for falling for the scam.

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Then have the guild leader laugh and call you a noob for falling for the scam.

Very possible, however, even if you have one or two guildleaders that will talk with their members, and they stop, it would be worth it.

One way I just thought of to prevent scams (the shard kind at least) is to put a price limit on them based on their grade.

Example:

A beautiful shard normally sells in a cat shop for 150k. An average shard which is the next grade lower, sells from the npc for 60k That average shard can be limited to selling at 60k no matter what because you can buy it from the NPC anyway, so paying more is truly a rip-off.

Simply lock in the maximum amount a shard can be sold for as the price it would cost from the NPC to make it.

Something like this can only apply to items you buy from NPCs of course.