Beware People Scamming Shavronne's Wrappings

If you've got PoE on an SSD to tryhard load times, you better tryhard your trading so you don't get scammed! Its the HDD's that need tooltips

As to how successful it is if it stopped even one its better than nothing, i'm sure lung disease pictures have put people off smoking but you never read about negatives because people don't shout about them with a megaphone.

yeah, maybe, but not dramatically. I'll wax anecdotal and say that of everyone I know who smoked before they put those labels on, precisely zero have quit as a result of them.

You know what happened as a result? A curious spike in cigarette pack cases. GO FIGURE.

But enough -- the analogy did its job. Back to the issue at hand: why scammers love PoE.

Seems like you are unaware of game called "EVE online". CCP (EVE online developer) intentionally allows player scamming, stealing, griefing, backstabbing and killing each other. Player conflict is game philosophy. You can see people robbing their corporations for hundreds of billions of ISK and then bragging about it on forums. The only justice you get there is justice you make. You can find and shoot those people, destroy their assets or warn corporations that he/she is joining that he/she is untrustworthy. You know, it would be nice if we could tag scammers in PoE for everyone to see, that they are untrustworthy, so people would avoid them. Just how to prevent it from being abused?

Just got scammed out of 2 ex 30 c for a set of Chayula runs, pure trust-based scam with no items in trade window.

Apparently GGG removes threads that mention scammers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guy had 10ex+ in gear, lv 92 or something, I checked his PoB before trading. Multiple characters 95+ in standard.

I was finally able to login after manually removing the last fresh install and the poe folder under my games, but I'm guessing they finally just released the newest patch.

Let's see if I can hit everything -

In D2 yes it was mostly a hardware limitation of the times, remember this was when storage was measured in megabytes not gigabytes. There was no stash upgrading so storage came down to a single stash "page" and the character intentory so muling was practically a given.

With that said, keep in mind that as storage space in PoE has grown so has the potential history of transactions. We're also now talking global scale as opposed to say strictly a North American Market. I'm pretty sure there was a European side back then, but ultimately the coverage and playerbase have grown substantially.

In a nutshell, more users, more data - just as the technology was a limiting factor then the improved technology since means so much more. Let's say it takes a person 5 minutes to investigate a recent trade history, you don't even have to get to the first thousand before the time has already added up.

The top gear mention wasn't really clear because I didn't elaborate (as I wrote way more than expected). But basically given they were people that would actually buy a watch for 5000 they were joking about the knock offs by playing it straight and commenting like they believed they were real - it was all supposed to connect to players playing a game should know that other players may try and sell you a knock off and that all but the greenest of players should recognize when something seems too good to be true.

Since the "human factor" probably warrants more discussion and I was a bit lazy with examples (being a forum and all) I'll focus on that.

I totally agree that there are times when you shouldn't feel paranoid about a simple transaction. Just the other day I was picking up some mexican food and was waiting for the three firefighters in front of me. If I was more selfish and inconsiderate I might have rushed in to beat them to the line or maybe if I was really vain completely disregard everyone else and just expect service. Of course I didn't - but at the same time it's not like that behavior is hard to believe anymore.

As I waited my mind wandered and while I generally prefer to pay the exact amount the ones on me were so crisp I decided to break a 10. I was so focused on the food I completely forgot about the change and the cashier was kind enough to remind me. But I'm also willing to admit that when I was much younger and far more desperate for cash I might have conveniently neglected to mention the error, especially during a rush, albeit in my case it wasn't so much to pocket the cash but to cover for another cashier who paid too much change out of their till.

At the time I thought of it more noble and not really hurting anybody for a good cause. But now that I'm older, I can fully accept that I was making someone completely innocent pay for someone else's mistake.

Don't get me wrong, in this particular case it makes more sense to correct me on my error - the potential of me returning as an irate or even just annoyed customer is enough incentive to encourage "proper" behavior.

But a random transaction on the internet with someone you're unlikely to trade with again is not going to incentivize honesty. And then we're talking about thousands of players many of whom are conducting multiple trades. It's just too much to police all but the worst offenders especially when account creation doesn't require an initial purchase.

As far as the meat of it all - there's only so much that can be done to place additional security measures. The bait and switch scam still works all these years later simply because people fail to utilize the security precautions already in place.

The mouseover required is meant to ensure the player has checked and the item in the window is indeed what was actually agreed upon. Trade is already inconvenient (with a purpose) and even if we had to wait longer on mousing over each item that doesn't mean we have to pay attention.

As far as fooling people, I'm not oblivious to how another person could get a rush from it. Truth be told I'm almost certain I'd get a rush any time I managed to cheat a fellow player. It's not some superior morality that prevents me from doing such a thing, but knowing that the guilt I'd feel would far outweigh the moment of joy over the success.

In terms of Poe or even as far back as D2, I still can't forget ragequitting over falling for a scam. But while the seller was being deceptive, they were basically just bypassing my common sense by making me "extra thirsty" for what I was trying to buy.

And this knowledge plays a part in the real world too. Especially now, you can see people so passionate about their thoughts and beliefs they forget about the bigger picture. I don't think I'm some "woke" intellectual. As angry as I was at the time giving up a soj for vendor trash, that silly mistake helped me to avoid making similar and much more costly mistakes in the real world - of course I've still made plenty of others not so related.

As far as additional measures, all I can really see being done is making it easier to see a 6 link (special notation or marker), making sure items in heavy demand have distinct artwork (ala starforge vs voidforge) and corrupted gems that get the extra level having some emboldened number or special indicator. Problem is, even then bait and switch still works if the person is too eager they don't bother to check.

And the biggest problem with enforcing anything, if players are going to lie and cheat that also means they're going to lie and make false reports too.

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Toshis8 wrote:

Seems like you are unaware of game called "EVE online". CCP (EVE online developer) intentionally allows player scamming, stealing, griefing, backstabbing and killing each other. Player conflict is game philosophy. You can see people robbing their corporations for hundreds of billions of ISK and then bragging about it on forums. The only justice you get there is justice you make. You can find and shoot those people, destroy their assets or warn corporations that he/she is joining that he/she is untrustworthy. You know, it would be nice if we could tag scammers in PoE for everyone to see, that they are untrustworthy, so people would avoid them. Just how to prevent it from being abused?

Speaking of Eve online - one of the biggest and most interesting game related stories came out of there. I can't remember the details, but basically some folks devoted an extended period of time building trust amongst the leaders over the course of months then eventually robbed them blind. It's both impressive and fucked up.

"

Toshis8 wrote:

Seems like you are unaware of game called "EVE online". CCP (EVE online developer) intentionally allows player scamming, stealing, griefing, backstabbing and killing each other. Player conflict is game philosophy. You can see people robbing their corporations for hundreds of billions of ISK and then bragging about it on forums. The only justice you get there is justice you make. You can find and shoot those people, destroy their assets or warn corporations that he/she is joining that he/she is untrustworthy. You know, it would be nice if we could tag scammers in PoE for everyone to see, that they are untrustworthy, so people would avoid them. Just how to prevent it from being abused?

"

NaifanChen wrote:

Just got scammed out of 2 ex 30 c for a set of Chayula runs, pure trust-based scam with no items in trade window.

Apparently GGG removes threads that mention scammers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guy had 10ex+ in gear, lv 92 or something, I checked his PoB before trading. Multiple characters 95+ in standard.

The service type scams are the worst because you basically take all the risk and have no recourse if they re-neg on the deal.

The only way to "reduce" the risk is to put in the effort to develop relationships with a group like a guild and hope they care more about the long term benefits of a reliable person over screwing someone over some exalts.

I would like to point out for the record that having an AH completely eliminates trade window scams, price fixing (to scam newer players mostly that dont know prices), and any exchange rate errors. Not to mention actually having to find a real trade partner in era of bots, and fake listings.

Sure having an AH creates new problems, and PoE doesn't currently have one standard currency, but those issues are easily correctable and highly debatable in general.

For example, the notion of gear progression being impacted mentioned as a key point in the trade manifesto, has long sailed. Most everyone has leveling uniques, and skills are so powerful now, that you can literally use Tabula well into yellow maps.

GGG's stubbornness and unwillingness to address the trade system is one of the most annoying things abou the game.

Excellent response, and thanks for clarifying the Top Gear thing. I suspected that's what you meant, but in this case, I think we'll lean more on their cynicism and post-colonial smarminess than any real belief that people always know too good when they see it.

Firefighter story: very good of you, very good of the cashier, but the whole example is still too anecdotal to be a proper convincing analogy. Analogies have to be more general and relatable. You want to hit that note of the reader going, 'oh, yeah, I see the connection now'. Bonus points if it leads to a change of mind, but eh, only a fool hopes to see one of those in a setting where it's much easier to not respond than admit you might have been less than 100% correct. Again, general 'you' here.

Moving on: I'm going to focus on this bit, because it's exactly what I've been calling for. I won't pretend it's a perfect solution; I won't pretend it's even the best I've seen. But I do profess I find it the most reasonable in terms of work required and potential for reducing the number of incidents.

"

SeCKSEgai wrote:

As far as additional measures, all I can really see being done is making it easier to see a 6 link (special notation or marker), making sure items in heavy demand have distinct artwork (ala starforge vs voidforge) and corrupted gems that get the extra level having some emboldened number or special indicator. Problem is, even then bait and switch still works if the person is too eager they don't bother to check.

It's not really about 'bothering to check' so much as not needing to check. We're talking a big visual difference here. Right now, if we ignore the fact that there is a single step between item switching and accepting the trade, the visual difference between a 6L shavronne's wrappings and a 5L/6S one is something akin to two shades of the same colour. Easily mistaken at a glance. What I'd want is something closer to two different colours altogether or even different shapes. That level of difference. And I'm going to admit something here, something I wouldn't normally but we're all friends here: I actually tried to roll a 6L from a 6S I found once. Click, click, click, click, click, WHOA WHAT IS THAT!!!?!...wait, nope, 5L/6S. Fuck. Bestill my thudding heart.

So I've been there, man. I've confused the two because I was so excited to get one. Fun fact: I rolled a 6L a few days before quitting with a whole five fusings. It's almost like Chris knew he was losing his Ruler (not that I managed to keep him entirely straight but I tried more than once) and was throwing me one last present, except I know better and put it down to nothing more than good old fucking irony. ^_^