The Scam/Not a Scam debate storyline

[TUXs]

The problem is that the issue comes from people flat out not reading. If they can't be bothered to read, all efforts Bioware could make are unimportant.

 

I wouldn't say it's quite that basic...even when reading, the scammers are taking advantage of what you see and what the normal human brain understands. I see 399,730 as less than 499,847 or 599,134 or 699,074...but I, like 99% of the people, make that determination in less than a second by seeing that 399 is the lowest of the 4 numbers.

[TheWookiee]

You didnt get scammed. You made a mistake.

 

YOU

 

made a mistake.

 

the baby wah wah hold my hand generation. sickening.

 

blame the victim? YOU ARENT A VICTIM!!!

 

YOU MADE AN ERROR..YOU YOU YOU YOU made an error.

 

Stop blaming anyone BUT the "victim" in this case.

 

I saw those prices and immediately thought, glitch. or hmm thats weird and didnt buy it cuz I have skull fillings.

 

Pretty darn funny to see the under-brained cry for protection instaid of NOT MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE!!!

 

Could you just realize that people put prices like that and, you know, pay attention? Instaid of asking a company to change things to prevent you from hurting yourself like a toddler.

 

Pretty sad. Humans continue to de-evolve.

 

"Life" is gonna hit people calling this a scam, hard. real hard.

 

No one is really arguing that point on whose fault it is anymore. This had taken a turn into what QoL improvements need to be made with the GTN as safeguards to prevent these stupid mistakes.

 

Your little tantrum you just threw out about "Life" and "Hand Holding (to paraphrase)" makes me laugh. Do you not think there are any safeguards in the real world for protection against price gouging and market scamming? There are serious penalties for going about these practices (unless you are in the 1%). These penalties are there to protect the economy because the world is made up of idiots for the most part. If these are not here then the market suffers and we all suffer. Same goes for the in-game economy.

 

So instead of back and forth ************ and whining from BOTH sides of this issue, start becoming relevant to preventing the issue so everyone will shut up about it.

[ScarletBlaze]

You are right that no ones intent can be determined by a single (or even several) GTN listings. I have fat fingered listings before and posted things at prices that were far too high, and I've done the reverse by accidentally listing items at their base cost. I would not want to be judged a scammer based on that kind of thing.

 

Ultimately, Bioware agrees with you on this, and that's more or less their point. In order to absolutely judge someone as a "scammer" you would need either an admission of guilt, or a pattern of behavior over time that you could judge. The former is unlikely, and the later is too resource intensive, and thus they have said they can't (and won't) police the behavior.

 

That said, it does not take away from a need to make reasonable and easy changes to the system to prevent users from intentionally (or even accidentally) pricing things in a way that would mislead others into overpaying.

 

Yes I agree that some reasonable changes might be a good idea but considering we do have way to help you be sure you want to make the purchase, that seems a lot of people turned off, because it took time away (a few seconds) from purchasing the said item, will the new changes also be turned off and then we have this issue again?

 

(Preferences-User Interface-General-Display Item Purchase Warning)

Edited November 11, 2014 by ScarletBlaze

[_NovaBlast_]

No one is really arguing that point on whose fault it is anymore. This had taken a turn into what QoL improvements need to be made with the GTN as safeguards to prevent these stupid mistakes.

 

Your little tantrum you just threw out about "Life" and "Hand Holding (to paraphrase)" makes me laugh. Do you not think there are any safeguards in the real world for protection against price gouging and market scamming? There are serious penalties for going about these practices (unless you are in the 1%). These penalties are there to protect the economy because the world is made up of idiots for the most part. If these are not here then the market suffers and we all suffer. Same goes for the in-game economy.

 

So instead of back and forth ************ and whining from BOTH sides of this issue, start becoming relevant to preventing the issue so everyone will shut up about it.

 

 

The only issue here is people own stupidity and incompetence .

 

I challenge you to Show me an issue that can't be solved with people paying attention to what they are doing and putting the proper care and attention into it and we will discuss it .

Edited November 11, 2014 by _NovaBlast_

[azudelphi]

I wouldn't say it's quite that basic...even when reading, the scammers are taking advantage of what you see and what the normal human brain understands. I see 399,730 as less than 499,847 or 599,134 or 699,074...but I, like 99% of the people, make that determination in less than a second by seeing that 399 is the lowest of the 4 numbers.

 

And you'd be correct in that rapid assessment.

 

And the same assessment should be true if you are looking at:

10,100.10

100,100

101000.10

1010010

 

And since they would be ordered as such with a price per unit sorting (already in game), then you know that 10,100.10 is the lowest cost per unit.

 

I really can't call them scammers. Predatory posters at worst.

Are they scum? Yes.

Do they have the right to be scum? Yes.

Do we have the right to hate them for being scum? Yes.

Are they breaking any rules? No.

If people read for more than 1 second would they fall victim to these posters? 99% of the time, no.

And that's what annoys me... if you are spending credits, why is a player blindly performing almost no cost comparison? Why are they not looking at the available data? Why aren't they sorting? There are so many easy steps to NOT fall prey to these posts; that's why I feel Bioware is obliged to do nothing. The system works if people actually use the system.

 

Cost per unit, total cost, and a confirmation window are in place to protect players.

 

Personally, I would say fine... unify all price per units to have 2 decimal places and right justify it. Anything more though is entirely unnecessary and likely to cause more problems than it solves.

Edited November 11, 2014 by azudelphi

[TUXs]

The only issue here is people own stupidity and incompetence .

 

I challenge you to Show me an issue that can't be solved with people paying attention to what they are doing and putting the proper care and attention into it and we will discuss it .

The "issue" is the scammers. If people weren't scamming the system, the mistakes made by players would be minimal vs. millions of credits.

[Brewski]

The problem is that the issue comes from people flat out not reading. If they can't be bothered to read, all efforts Bioware could make are unimportant.

Although there are always people who will make the mistake no matter what safeguards you put in place, that doesn't mean you don't put any safeguards in place at all. Just because you have a sign that says "Warning, steep ledge ahead." it doesn't mean you should also have a railing to prevent people from falling off. Will that prevent the true idiot from climbing the fence and falling off anyway? No. But the fence is easy to put up, and may save a few lives, so why not put it up anyway?

 

I view the simple suggestions being made as similar to that fence. I am not advocating for GTN policing or a major overhaul, just some low effort high impact UI changes that would help.

 

And that gives the buyers the right to accuse the sellers of scamming them and excuse them for not paying attention to what they are buying? When are the buyers going to grow up and pay attention to what they are doing or are they going to keep blaming the sellers of scamming because they don't want to have anything to do with take their own responsibility when it is so easy to blame someone else.

 

Where in my post do I blame anyone for any of this? People really need to stop generalizing the opposition and accusing everyone of holding positions just so they can rail against them. This kind of post is everything wrong with this (and many other) discussions in this thread.

 

I am not accusing anyone of scamming, nor denying their right to list any item at any price they want. Heck, I don't even care if someone self identifies as a scammer, because their motive for listing something at an overinflated price is irrelevant to the point.

 

The point is (again) that there are reasonable and easy changes that could be made to the UI to make it less likely people will accidentally purchase items off the GTN due to misreading the price.

[Heat-Wave]

There are no 'good players and bad players' here, and no one is being cheated. Why do you keep defending the lazy?

 

Why do you keep defending the immoral?

 

There are absolutely bad players here, it sounds like you're one of them.

 

And I have never scammed anyone. I do though, absolutely try to get the most credits possible on the GTN. The GTN is simply another form of PvP.

 

So... you're defending the practice because you are one of the people doing it, is that it?

[_NovaBlast_]

The "issue" is the scammers. If people weren't scamming the system, the mistakes made by players would be minimal vs. millions of credits.

 

You didn't follow the rules ... I said show me an issue that cant be solved with paying more attention to what you are doing .

 

You will see a "scam" listing lonngg before you press buy if you pay attention . Try again tux you failed strike one with me

Edited November 11, 2014 by _NovaBlast_

[azudelphi]

Why do you keep defending the immoral?

 

There are absolutely bad players here, it sounds like you're one of them.

 

So... you're defending the practice because you are one of the people doing it, is that it?

 

Do not confuse understanding that their behavior is allowed within the system with approval of their behavior.

 

And trying to cast someone you disagree with as one of the predatory posters? Really? That's a pathetic debate tactic.

[TheWookiee]

The only issue here is people own stupidity and incompetence .

 

I challenge you to Show me an issue that can't be solved with people paying attention to what they are doing and putting the proper care and attention into it and we will discuss it .

 

I am not asking for anything to be solved. I do not want a wait time period, I do not want forced refunds or anything of that nature. I want QoL GTN improvements that remove the decimal points, a UI check box to always have items sorted to my tastes and other small implementations that would prevent price gougers and predatory marketers from using their unethical pricing tactics in the future.

[Brewski]

Yes I agree that some reasonable changes might be a good idea but considering we do have way to help you be sure you want to make the purchase, that seems a lot of people turned off, because it took time away (a few seconds) from purchasing the said item, will the new changes also be turned off and then we have this issue again?

 

(Preferences-User Interface-General-Display Item Purchase Warning)

I think the most popular changes being advocated come in the form of items that can't be turned off. An auto-sort on every search, removing the decimal values on price per unit and right aligning the price fields are all universal changes that would make the pricing a lot clearer, and require not additional user settings.

[LadyVix]

And you'd be correct in that rapid assessment.

 

And the same assessment should be true if you are looking at:

10,100.10

100,100

101000.10

1010010

 

And since they would be ordered as such with a price per unit sorting (already in game), then you know that 10,100.10 is the lowest cost per unit.

 

I really can't call them scammers. Predatory posters at worst.

Are they scum? Yes.

Do they have the right to be scum? Yes.

Do we have the right to hate them for being scum? Yes.

Are they breaking any rules? No.

If people read for more than 1 second would they fall victim to these posters? 99% of the time, no.

And that's what annoys me... if you are spending credits, why is a player blindly performing almost no cost comparison? Why are they not looking at the available data? Why aren't they sorting? There are so many easy steps to NOT fall prey to these posts; that's why I feel Bioware is obliged to do nothing. The system works if people actually use the system.

 

Cost per unit, total cost, and a confirmation window are in place to protect players.

 

Personally, I would say fine... unify all price per units to have 2 decimal places and right justify it. Anything more though is entirely unnecessary and likely to cause more problems than it solves.

 

One way to "fix" this issue...

Bioware needs to make posting fees NON-REFUNDABLE.

 

People will still be able to try to scam other players on the GTN, however they'll eat the cost for trying.

[_NovaBlast_]

I am not asking for anything to be solved. I do not want a wait time period, I do not want forced refunds or anything of that nature. I want QoL GTN improvements that remove the decimal points, a UI check box to always have items sorted to my tastes and other small implementations that would prevent price gougers and predatory marketers from using their unethical pricing tactics in the future.

 

So basically you're asking for a system that does all the work for you becase you don't want to pay attention to what you are doing and use the tools available ? Thats not QOL i in my books and a waste of devs time when the current tools do the job if you use them correctly.

Edited November 11, 2014 by _NovaBlast_

[TheWookiee]

So basically you're asking for a system that does all the work for you becase you don't want to pay attention to what you are doing and use the tools available ? Thats not QOL in my books and a waste of devs time .

 

Obviously you have no concept of what "Quality of Life" improvements are for.

[_NovaBlast_]

Obviously you have no concept of what "Quality of Life" improvements are for.

 

Quality of life improvement are for useful things ...Qul improvement would be taking the timer off quick travel to make dailies more efficient

 

QoL improvements are not to prevent stupid mistake that are made form being careless and not paying attention..

 

You do realize if you pay attention to what you are doing these "scammers" would go away. they only "win" becase of peoples carlessnes s and incompetence . This has nothing to do with GTN itself . If you use the tools available and take your time you never get "scammed"

Edited November 11, 2014 by _NovaBlast_

[robertthebard]

You didn't follow the rules ... I said show me an issue that cant be solved with paying more attention to what you are doing .

 

You will see a "scam" listing lonngg before you press buy if you pay attention . Try again tux you failed strike one with me

 

No matter what you do, if someone is using a speed hack in PvP, you're never going to get away from them. I have seen, in other games, a guy go through an entire rotation in 1/5 the time it should have taken, because he hacked his animations and cooldowns. How will my paying attention to his deliberate manipulation of the game's mechanics fix it? Same issue here, although I can pay attention to what I'm paying, and prevent the issue. However, some of the suggestions made in these threads wouldn't affect anyone, except the people doing it.

[LadyVix]

So basically you're asking for a system that does all the work for you becase you don't want to pay attention to what you are doing and use the tools available ? Thats not QOL in my books and a waste of devs time .

 

If changes make things easier to understand, how is that not a QOL improvement?

 

If the dev team spends a few hours removing the decimal point and prevents players from losing money, that's not a waste of dev time. Not removing it results in more support tickets, which, in the long run, would consume more time and resources.

 

Stupid or not, the people getting scammed are still mostly subscribers. (F2P and preferred don't have the large sums of credits for this to work effectively) Their money still pays to keep this game operating. Bioware needs to take steps to protect their interests too, otherwise they walk and revenue is lost.

[_NovaBlast_]

No matter what you do, if someone is using a speed hack in PvP, you're never going to get away from them. I have seen, in other games, a guy go through an entire rotation in 1/5 the time it should have taken, because he hacked his animations and cooldowns. How will my paying attention to his deliberate manipulation of the game's mechanics fix it? Same issue here, although I can pay attention to what I'm paying, and prevent the issue. However, some of the suggestions made in these threads wouldn't affect anyone, except the people doing it.

 

the first part of your post has no relevance to the subject at all............

 

The point is the the issue could be solved without a fix by just doing what you said above

[Cidanel]

Why do you keep defending the immoral?

 

There are absolutely bad players here, it sounds like you're one of them.

 

Because this is a game. If someone wants to act like a 'bad player', they should be able to. How does it make sense that someone is a dark side character who murders for fun, but then all of a sudden has morals when selling some stuff?

 

'moral vs immoral' is a meaningless argument as long as we are talking about things that are 100% in game, and not hacking the game in any way. People posting items for a high price are using the game as intended and as designed, so 'buyer beware'

 

So... you're defending the practice because you are one of the people doing it, is that it?

 

Not at all. I don't like the idea of a game rewarding people for being nothing but lazy. There is already a solution to this. Read the price before buying. Read the popup before accepting. If that is too complicated for you, then there are bigger issues to deal with.

[robertthebard]

the first part of your post has no relevance to the subject at all............

 

The point is the the issue could be solved without a fix by just doing what you said above

 

Only because you choose to ignore "manipulating game mechanics". So when you can't refute, it just doesn't apply. Got it. Why so dead set against something that is purely "cosmetic" though? Are you going to lose a lot of credits on the GTN if they implement it?

[Heal-To-Full]

Are they breaking any rules? No.

Not by doing that posting, but...

 

If you pay closer attention - like, add some of these to your friend list - you'll discover they're almost exclusively ~level 10, with no main, dedicated credit farming and possibly credit distribution accounts operated by gold sellers.

 

At least on 2 of the servers. There might be some humans in the mix, who got the idea from reading these threads, but they get tired quickly; for the most part - the ones that have been doing this for months, across all servers - are fully automated bots, not players.

 

Not the first game where this exact scheme is run either.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[azudelphi]

Not by doing that posting, but...

 

If you pay closer attention - like, add some of these to your friend list - you'll discover they're almost exclusively ~level 10, with no main, dedicated credit farming and possibly credit distribution accounts operated by gold sellers.

 

At least on 2 of the servers. There might be some humans in the mix, who got an idea from reading these threads, but for the most part it's fully automated bots, not other players.

 

It could be people using aliases to avoid the stigma being associated with their mains.

 

Edit: And if they are bots / gold sellers, they should get the full consequences of those actions as those are true TOS violations.

Edited November 11, 2014 by azudelphi

[Brewski]

the first part of your post has no relevance to the subject at all............

 

The point is the the issue could be solved without a fix by just doing what you said above

 

Your arguments could be applied to any quality of life improvement that has been made to the game since launch.

 

For example, Group Finder. I could say that we didn't need the tool, as anyone could easily use chat to find and form a group. Yet it was added because it made life better for players.

 

Granted, the suggested changes don't have the same level of impact as group finder, but then, they also don't have the same level of effort. Simple changes that help certain groups of players are by default "quality of life".

 

Heck, though I've never mispurchased something myself, I think a lot of the suggestions would be great for me as a heavy GTN user. Having things automatically sorted when I search? Awesome! Fixing the pricing display so that it's easier to read? Great! My life would definitely be a little better with both of these.

 

A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking "I won't benefit directly, so it's obviously not a quality of life change." But they have to remember that not every change can affect every player. PvPers were happy when they added PvP vendors to the starting area for warzones, even though non-PvPers could care less. Jedi Knights were happy when they moved the GTN console on their ship to a better location, despite the fact that the change only affected ~12.5% of players. These too were quality of life changes.

[_NovaBlast_]

Only because you choose to ignore "manipulating game mechanics". So when you can't refute, it just doesn't apply. Got it. Why so dead set against something that is purely "cosmetic" though? Are you going to lose a lot of credits on the GTN if they implement it?

 

There is nothing to refute your whole first statement simply doesnt apply to the t gtn . i Also Don't sell on the gtn very often and when i so i want t a quick sale so i usually under cut the lowest price by alot . My issue with this thread is people blaming others and not taking responsibility for their own mistakes .

 

It's The simple irrefutable fact that if you take your own advice and take the proper care and attention to what you are doing on the gtn the one truth of the matter is .

 

If you use the tools available prop[erly simply doesnt matter what someone sell anything for in any format on gtn. Furthermore nothing anyone ever sells at whatever nefarious price they want to sell it at on the gtn will affect you becase you will see it from a mile a way .

Edited November 11, 2014 by _NovaBlast_