The Scam/Not a Scam debate storyline

[Master-Nala]

It's only about needing automated tools that can't be switched off, that ALWAYS activate in the situations that would be devastating if the purchase qualifies as in ANY way an accident for the buyer. Something very simple such as a popup for any purchase for 1M+ credits with a 5-second delay on the "OK" button would almost certainly suffice - because in the case of a deviously priced item that's 1000 times more expensive than it's meant to be mistaken for, the visually discernible price (the mistaken price that the scammer MEANT it to be mistaken for) is almost certainly less than 1M credits, so a price-level popup alert would be the immediate alert to the buyer that something is outside of the perceived expectations.

 

But not everyone wants or needs that. Why should people be inconvenienced just because some other folks won't go through the trouble of using the tools provided. There are tools right now that prevent you from making these mistakes. The best one is just taking time to ensure you're paying the price you think you are.

[anonnn]

Only use whole numbers. There is no such thing as a percentage of a credit. Problem solved, problem staying solved. Not that I ever thought there was a problem other than too lazy to read players.

 

It's a percentage of a Credit-Per-Unit, not percentage of a credit. And it does have significance.

 

Only using whole numbers would obfuscate which listing on the GTN is selling materials for technically cheaper than the others, which isn't such a great side effect. When looking at the listing of price-per-unit costs, the percentage of a credit makes a difference for large stacks of materials, especially now that stack sizes are up to 9,999 units ... which means that 1/10th of a Credit-Per-Unit makes a different of 1000 credits. Why pay 1000 credits more than you wanted to for a stack of materials? And actually truncating the decimal points would hide up to 0.999 Credits-Per-Unit from the cost of the item, which for a full stack could result in the purchase of an item that was 10,000 credits more for the full stack than another listing that showed the exact same Credits-Per-Unit.

 

I don't know about you, but I work hard for my credits, they don't just grow on trees. I don't want to ever be throwing away 10,000 credits on a not-cheapest stack of materials for no other reason than someone wanted to hide the decimal points in the Credits-Per-Unit column for no good reason.

 

Only using whole numbers in the GTN listings would create an all-new (low-level) GTN scam, that savvy sellers would ALWAYS list their items for 1 credit less than they were going to, so that the effective Credits-Per-Unit of their listing would end up with a decimal point close to *.999 so that the true cost of their GTN listing was partially hidden. This is exactly what gas stations all started doing a long time ago, that the cost per gallon always has an added 9/10th of a cent so that on the listing people see as they drive past looking for a place to buy gas, they might mistake it for a penny less per gallon than the competitors. Of course once ALL gas stations were doing it, it makes no difference whatsoever ... but the ridiculous scammish nature of it is still there for everyone to see.

[anonnn]

But not everyone wants or needs that. Why should people be inconvenienced just because some other folks won't go through the trouble of using the tools provided. There are tools right now that prevent you from making these mistakes. The best one is just taking time to ensure you're paying the price you think you are.

 

You made my point more clear... that you're talking about tools, not safeguards:

.

• tools require the GTN buyer to participate by choosing to go make a separate effort to use the tool in order to get the needed purchase protection
  .
  
• a safeguard actively guards the money of the buyer that could be spent as they click through the GTN interface... guarding their money from ANY type of major mistake or accident that can happen, whether it be the result of accidentally clicking the wrong "Buy" button at the last moment or having gotten confused or hurried or intentionally deceived and misunderstood the price of the item they clicked on
  

 

You agree that buyers need protection because you point them to ways in the GTN tools that could be used to prevent bad purchase accidents. But you don't want to allow an actual GTN feature that would provide good buyer protection.

 

What you're suggesting is a double-standard ... you don't want to allow automated always-on buyer protection mechanisms, because it slows down your GTN usage with a popup... yet when it comes time to declare what mechanisms will protect GTN buyers from purchase accidents that keep happening, you point them to the non-automatic tools that require more slowing down of the GTN buying experience than anything. It's perfectly understandable to not want popups, but it's not a good enough argument against protecting other players from terrible GTN accidents.

 

The angle of your argument is moot for two reasons:

.

• the purchase alert popup I'm suggesting would only show when the item being purchased costs 1M+ credits, not for EVERY purchase (the price threshold of 1M credits could perhaps be user-adjustable in the Settings)
  .
  
• we're talking about buyer protection ... if bad GTN accidents are still happening, then THAT's the sure indicator that the current buyer protection is inadequate... no more supporting argument is needed other than the fact that bad buyer mistakes are still happening
  

 

And just to make sure to prevent a resurfacing of another typical argument in favor of not improving the GTN buyer protection:

. . . . . The current purchase alert dialog is insufficient, for two reasons... it can be switched off entirely, and it doesn't have any enhanced stage of Alert in the case of extremely expensive items (1M+ credits or even 10M+ credits).

The bigger the price of a GTN item, the more dramatic of an Alert that should be presented. That's the mechanics of an effective buyer protection feature.