The Scam/Not a Scam debate storyline

[TakexeNex]

I think that folks are so used to the argument they are sticking to their guns no matter what.

 

I have had people argue the old arguments with me, when I was never part of that argument. That is a clue to how some folks are just focused on the singular point-counterpoint deal.

 

I have said it before, I will say it again....

The current QoL features on the GTN are not protections for buyers or sellers. They are simply QoL features.

Doing things like right justifying the amounts or removing fractional currency would not harm sellers.

Allowing flags WOULD harm sellers, but only those that likely deserve to lose business.

 

I prefer the flag method.

Well I agree with the points in yellow except to say a measure that flags bad sellers would encourage better tactics but in a game as little policed as I have seen in this one its a hard sell.

[TakexeNex]

Not meaning a troll here, were you bored? Its a fine list and I multitask while doing dailies but this seems to me an extreme case of boredom. Anyway nice work maybe it'll earn you a pewlitzer.

[Turajin]

Are people really saying that there's nothing wrong in deliberately trying to get someone else to make a mistake and grossly overspend for an item?

Actually.. yes, I do. Because I don't see how someone is able to trick someone into making a mistake.

 

I can read numbers, I can count and I can distinguish dots from commas.

So I can't come up with any situation where I would misinterpret

999,999

as

999.99

 

Especially since I can sort the GTN from lowest to highest, in wich case the 999.99 will show up way before the 999,999.

 

In addition to that, there are several other filters: if I don't want to spend more than 100,000 credits, I put that amount into the appropriate field in the price filter. If I do, the 999.99 will show, but the 999,999 wouldn't.

 

So, there is no fraud, no scam, deceit... the price is clear for everyone who can read numbers (what everyone playing this game should be able to), and there is no way to trick someone into believing there would be a different price than the one posted.

 

So the deal is: learn to read, be attentive, take you're time. You loose nothing if you spend that half minute longer on the GTN to check twice bevore clicking on "buy" and then on "ok" in the pop up. Thirty seconds invested in reading it over should be enough to prevent you from clicking on the wrong bargain. And don't tell me you don't have this 30 seconds to spare. These 30 seconds will never make the difference wether or not you can do that one flashpoint today, nor will it these 30 seconds of "missing" game time that will keep you from levelling up today... but they will help you to buy what you want for the price you want.

[Malorey]

Are people really saying that there's nothing wrong in deliberately trying to get someone else to make a mistake and grossly overspend for an item?

 

It's all part of the game. People seem to forget they're playing a game!

[EvenHardNiner]

Then again.... people seem to forget that everytime a game developer codes new constraints and restrictions into an established MMO..... new bugs are introduced and additional load is placed on the server to process and apply such filters.

 

Conclusion: it's not a wide ranging problem, players simply need to pay attention and show some common sense, and therefore not worth the time to develop, debug, and install.

 

Keep in mind.. if they are coding into the game every possible player want/need in the area of hand-holding and police protections.... other content is delayed/cancelled.

 

I do around 100 transactions per day on the GTN across three different serves and I have never been scammed as you describe. I see the bogus list prices on occasion

 

 

Look guys, apparently adding a simple ignore function to apply to the GTN means it will take a lot of time and energy and resources, with the risk of adding new GAME BREAKING bugs which could accidentally delete all of your characters!! Adding a simple ignore feature would take an INCREDIBLE amount of time according to Andryah! If they add this, then new features are delayed by WEEKS, all because of a simple ignore feature!

 

But wait! Andryah does 100 transactions per day and has never been scammed. . But if Andryah has never been scammed, then that means nobody else has been scammed! It doesn't affect Andryah, which is why Andryah is saying it's pointless to add it in because the entire world revolves around them !

 

Thank you again Andyrah for defending things with your life <3

[EvenHardNiner]

ooooo Edited November 9, 2014 by EvenHardNiner

[Fantazm]

"save me from myself"

[JumperPenn]

As it is all you have to do to avoid making a mistake is to sort by lowest price, do it a couple times, you might miss out on an item or stack but if you have to have it instantly(as soon as your search comes up) you're probably trying to snatch up someone's mistake where they listed something TOO cheaply.

 

Now removing the fractional credits from the listing I'm fine with. I think it is pretty silly people can't use the sort by prices tabs and go from there, hundreds of transactions or not. It is just good habits to do that, the ignore is so the OP can avoid doing the smart thing for themselves. Adding the ignore seems almost guaranteed to be more development heavy than removing the fractional display since that was added in fairly recently.

[Muljo_Stpho]

That's the best punishment, yes.

 

However -- why are some people so opposed to small changes that would make it a harder trick for those sellers to pull off, and not take anything away from anyone else? For example, eliminating the display of fractional per-unit prices? Does anyone really care about or gain a benefit from what amounts to never more than 0.99 credits per unit, when the max stack of anything is 99 and so the hypothetical max difference would be 98 whopping credits?

 

I always sort by unit price lowest to highest anyway, so this isn't even something that affects me, I'm just bugged that people even try this kind of crap.

 

Consider this a "Max is from another planet" moment, where I don't get human beings... I'm just very confused by the vehement, sometimes venomous opposition to even the least intrusive efforts against this practice.

 

I think it's more of a "What's the point? This won't fix stupid." than "No! This is a horrible idea that will ruin everything! Don't do it!!!"

 

The developers could take a few minutes here and a few minutes there to put in various suggested tweaks.

 

They could right justify the unit price and include the fractional part even when it's .00 (or alternately accepting the slight bit of rounding error in displaying all unit prices as whole numbers).

 

They could add customizable warning thresholds that color listings in yellow when the total price and/or unit price exceeds a certain threshold.

 

They could add a system to flag listings from sellers on your ignore list and maybe color the listings in yellow or gray or whatever.

 

They could add a setting to assign a default sort to fix the random unsorted ordering that it currently starts with before you click a column, and they could fix other issues with sorting like how sometimes you have to click the unit price column first to sort total price correctly (or vice versa).

 

We could even say should in many of these cases. Why not?

 

And hopefully any one or more of these fixes would be enough to shut these topics up. But, realistically, someone out there will still find a way to ignore every warning and make some regrettable mistake yet again. And they will just open this floodgate back up again to start up more raging in topics like these about what "mandatory" fixes need to be made to end the reign of these fiendish scammers that keep targeting them... And on that note: Why bother?

 

Honestly, small improvements like that should only be done for their own merit as general quality of life updates on the system in general. They should not be done in an effort to address the concerns of the people making these topics. It may even be a dangerous precedent to set if they can be perceived as having only done something because an angry mob demanded it as loudly as possible and as frequently as they could think of new angles to spin off into new versions of the topic. Because then when new problems come up the mob will cry out that much louder because they now "know" that it works. (So... best option? Sneak in one of these updates as a stealth change not mentioned in the patch notes. Include it among many other general fixes throughout the game that are far more noteworthy.)

[jstankaroslo]

I started "marking" scamming listings with my own 999999999 for a single mat.

How: lets say I see a rydzykoftorun (name is abusive itself) character trying to sell primordial artifacts for hundreds of thousands, pretending it to be hundreds of credits. I see he listed a lot of those. I see him and several other do that with various mats.

I put single primordial for 99999999 (max there is, no one should have this kind of money, it surely will be red for 99% of players). That way my price, clearly the highest will be on top just above scammers' listings. That way no one should make a mistake and buy from them.

It is really easy, just browse "crafting materials", and "archeology" (in this case) and look for suspicious looking prices. Usually 3-5 in the category have scammers' listings. Marking them takes a minute, and then they have no profit.

This is my own policing the GTN on Progenitor. And after a week of this, the scammers retreated. Really, they were gone for like 2-3 weeks. When I see them come back (I check when I'm doing my own GTN selling/buying) I mark their postings.

Recently I saw someone else doing the same -so I'm not alone on the server in this fight.

 

This really works.

 

Why I'm doing it?

1. I dislike the unclear listings, and having to check twice as carefully my transactions

2. I dislike the practice of robbing peoples credits ie their TIME invested in the game -which I consider a real value.

3. I think those scammers are probably credit sellers

4. I think this practice is bad for the game itself. For crafters, for new players etc. Loosing millions of credits, that is their time invested in game can discourage them from playing -and so the game suffers

5. I enjoy griefing griefers. I'm happy to know that creatures like rydzykoftorun and others don't have their income because of me.

6. I think fighting such practice is the right thing to do

[pquadro]

I started "marking" scamming listings with my own 999999999 for a single mat.

How: lets say I see a rydzykoftorun (name is abusive itself) character trying to sell primordial artifacts for hundreds of thousands, pretending it to be hundreds of credits. I see he listed a lot of those. I see him and several other do that with various mats.

I put single primordial for 99999999 (max there is, no one should have this kind of money, it surely will be red for 99% of players). That way my price, clearly the highest will be on top just above scammers' listings. That way no one should make a mistake and buy from them.

It is really easy, just browse "crafting materials", and "archeology" (in this case) and look for suspicious looking prices. Usually 3-5 in the category have scammers' listings. Marking them takes a minute, and then they have no profit.

This is my own policing the GTN on Progenitor. And after a week of this, the scammers retreated. Really, they were gone for like 2-3 weeks. When I see them come back (I check when I'm doing my own GTN selling/buying) I mark their postings.

Recently I saw someone else doing the same -so I'm not alone on the server in this fight.

 

This really works.

 

Why I'm doing it?

1. I dislike the unclear listings, and having to check twice as carefully my transactions

2. I dislike the practice of robbing peoples credits ie their TIME invested in the game -which I consider a real value.

3. I think those scammers are probably credit sellers

4. I think this practice is bad for the game itself. For crafters, for new players etc. Loosing millions of credits, that is their time invested in game can discourage them from playing -and so the game suffers

5. I enjoy griefing griefers. I'm happy to know that creatures like rydzykoftorun and others don't have their income because of me.

6. I think fighting such practice is the right thing to do

 

Thank you white knight

[TravelersWay]

I second this .

 

I third!

 

I couldnt disagree more. Of course there are bad and good sellers. There are sellers that inflate prices, or drastically undercut other sellers, thereby reducing the value of the items below crafting cost. I do not give my business to those kind of toxic sellers....they do not deserve my business.

 

 

 

You keep saying this...and it is getting rather odd. What does paying attention have to do with me desiring the ability to rate sellers? The GTN does not give me any tools to rate sellers, to keep saying this is rather silly. The current tools are unimportant to me...they are simply QoL features, nothing more.

 

Like a flag would be.

 

You already have that flag of sorts - it's called filter by cost range (and furthermore to sort by price). Thereby you can eliminate the habitual undercutters and the overpricers.

Edited November 9, 2014 by TravelersWay

[LadyVix]

It's all part of the game. People seem to forget they're playing a game!

 

Just because this is a game doesn't justify deceptive prectices such as this.

 

Purposely manipulating prices to confuse consumers into buying vastly overpriced items isn't acceptable in real life, and it shouldn't be allowed in-game either.

[robertthebard]

People seem to have a bone and run with it on BOTH sides of the argument.

 

First there are those that say "its dishonorable, I need something to prevent making mistakes", and then there are those that say "its your fault, its not Bioware's job to protect you".....

 

And it seems like that is most of the argument.

 

IMO, it doesn't matter why the OP wants a system like this. Nor does it matter whether or not it is the players fault or it is a dishonorable practice.

 

This is how I see it.

 

1) Obviously it is a dishonorable practice. This is commerce. Dishonorable practices are par for the course.

2) Buyer beware. Oldest rule in the book.

3) It would be NICE to punish those that engage in dishonorable practices by denying them sales of ANY kind.

4) It would benefit the game, the market and the economy overall if some kind of system was in place to rate sellers.

 

For me, it is simply annoying to have to keep a character name list (which has 24 names at present BTW). That is an annoyance I can live with, so this is not a required change IMO.

 

But it would be a QoL feature in my eyes.

 

So, the question I would ask those that for some kind of change would be this....

 

Can you live with a simple personal flag system you could use to sort bad sellers to the bottom of the GTN item list?

 

And the question I would ask those that oppose this change....

 

Why do you oppose the change? If something like this were implemented, what do you feel it's impact would be?

 

Isn't it obvious? If this were implemented, they'd lose out on income. People would look at the exorbitant prices they charge, add them to their ignore lists, and then all that money they spent buying up cheap/reasonably priced (insert item here) would be wasted. Of course they don't want anyone "breaking" their game. I wonder which one of them it is that's on Shadowlands, listing beryllius for a billion credits a piece.

[HammerOneOne]

I think it's more of a "What's the point? This won't fix stupid." than "No! This is a horrible idea that will ruin everything! Don't do it!!!"

 

 

You may not be able to fix stupid but you can mitigate dishonest practices. And even the smartest person in here could make a mistake.

[Grayseven]

I'm having a hard time understanding how people are falling for this.

 

First, the actual sell price has to be a whole number. You can't list in fractions for the list price.

 

Second, while the per unit price can end up as a fraction it will only show two places past the decimal point...whereas these "scammers" listing garbage for stupid credit amounts have three places past the comma everyone seems to mistake for a period.

 

Third, you can filter the list by clicking the top of the column. This allows you to sort the list by the lowest overall price as well as the lowest per unit price although I will admit that while the overall price sort will stick the per unit price will not and has to be filtered every time you change items.

 

While I like the idea of being able to ignore people on the GTN, I can't help but wonder how people are falling for this stuff. If you pay attention and stop trying to be Gorden Gekko on speed you might actually find it pretty easy to spot these idiots.

[Theeko]

Just remove the decimal, and I bet everyone will stop buying them accidently

 

FYI: Up Arrow = Cheapest to expensive, and also double check actual price before buying anything too.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Theeko

[LyraineAlei]

Not meaning a troll here, were you bored? Its a fine list and I multitask while doing dailies but this seems to me an extreme case of boredom. Anyway nice work maybe it'll earn you a pewlitzer.

 

....

 

 

...

....

 

*shifty eyes* Yes.

 

But it is a nice little thread to keep the discussion/war/debate/orgy/whatever somewhat straight.

 

And I needed something to do while my cold medicine finally took effect, my computer decided to reconnect to the network, and alt+F4 finally closed the game for disconnecting me.

 

*Takes the prize anyway* I would like to thank Darth Wicked for encouraging me to make this thread in the first place, all those weeks ago, and the many, many,many people posting this topic for irritating me enough to try and box all the threads into one locatable spot.

[MSchuyler]

Someone's irresponsibility is not a scam.

 

SIGH! I picked on this poster, but there are several, most of which are not as concise as this one.

 

<OBVIOUS>

This here thread can be considered a "meta thread" about the issue. It is not a thread about the issue itself. OP is compiling all threads that address this issue so that we, his dear readers, may avail ourselves of those threads, commenting as we see fit, ON THOSE THREADS, but not this one, where commenting on the issue itself is off-topic. NOBODY CARES what you think about the topic itself and if you have commented thusly, YOU ARE COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT!!! What is so damned difficult to understand about this?

</OBVIOUS>

 

So, are you offended? If you are, how does it feel to be so weak-minded that mere words hurt you?

[LyraineAlei]

SIGH! I picked on this poster, but there are several, most of which are not as concise as this one.

 

<OBVIOUS>

This here thread can be considered a "meta thread" about the issue. It is not a thread about the issue itself. OP is compiling all threads that address this issue so that we, his dear readers, may avail ourselves of those threads, commenting as we see fit, ON THOSE THREADS, but not this one, where commenting on the issue itself is off-topic. NOBODY CARES what you think about the topic itself and if you have commented thusly, YOU ARE COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT!!! What is so damned difficult to understand about this?

</OBVIOUS>

 

So, are you offended? If you are, how does it feel to be so weak-minded that mere words hurt you?

 

The post you quoted was a couple months old. I revived the thread from the dead with the newer threads on the topic. Sorry about the confusion.

[Vandicus]

People will make new threads on it for so long as people keep on trying to sell non-raid crafting mats for millions of credits per unit.

 

Even if everybody on the forums today agreed to drop the issue, someone completely unaware of any such agreement will lose millions of credits and come to post about it on the forums.

 

Issues don't die so long as they're significantly upsetting to people.

[TrigPt]

Serious question have Bioware ever commented on this issue?

 

Given the number of posts on this subject I would have expected some comment but can't remember ever seeing one. Too lazy to try to find one so if anyone has a link to a Bioware post on the issue I'd be interested to see it.

[LyraineAlei]

Serious question have Bioware ever commented on this issue?

 

Given the number of posts on this subject I would have expected some comment but can't remember ever seeing one. Too lazy to try to find one so if anyone has a link to a Bioware post on the issue I'd be interested to see it.

 

So far, from the first thread I linked to, till now, I do not think so. If someone has any Dev-words or something, that would be a welcome post here, and I happily beg for it.

[Aussircaex]

Which was the basic point some of us were making in that thread. It goes to the sellers intent, regardless if all the information is there if it was intentionally set up to cause confusion specifically for the purpose of tricking someone into paying more it is a scam. To that point lets look at a couple of price tags from Walgreens.

 

http://cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/walgreens.jpg?w=420

 

The issue with these tags was they were left up after the sale had been expired causing some people to think the items were still on sale when they weren't. All the info is there, it clearly shows the expiration date on the tag, it clearly shows the regular price when the items aren't on sale. The purchaser was never in contact with the seller (a point made in the other thread why it couldn't be a scam) Now how is this different? The buyer simply failed to read the tag thoroughly or they'd have known the item was no longer on sale & exactly what it costs. And we can't 100% prove Walgreens intentionally left those tags up, maybe they just forgot to change them.

 

Walgreens has been sued & forced to settle in several states over this & other pricing issues.

 

When I worked in retail, removing expired sales tags was very important, because legally they can be considered false advertising, DESPITE the presence of an expiration date of the sale on the tag. The law errs on the side of consumers here despite legitimate efforts to provide time limit expectations on the sales tag.

[Oyranos]

There is a topic of a guy who sold something for 8 million, is that him? haha

 

here is his topic.. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=774770

Edited November 10, 2014 by Oyranos