Where do I complain about Scammers like [Removed by Support]

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Taylor5CC wrote:

At this point, I'm just surprised the majority here thinks it's 'not OK' to sham him for scamming, but think it is 'OK' to sham me for complaining.

Tells me what I need to know about the culture.

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Taylor5CC wrote:

At this point, I'm just surprised the majority here thinks it's 'not OK' to sham him for scamming, but think it is 'OK' to sham me for complaining.

Tells me what I need to know about the culture.

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Taylor5CC wrote:

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j_tom47 wrote:

And how exactly did you get scammed out of 100c?

He said on the trade channel he had a Perandus Archive for sale and to PM him. I PM'ed him saying I would buy it for 100c. He invited me to his party. I went to his hideout and traded him 100c. He then logged out. I am now sitting in his hideout. He has logged back on and started a new map. He has not responded to my PMs.

I think its a little weird I am not allowed to warn others on this forum about him. If people aren't allowed to warn others about this, it seems to be saying this kind of behavior is ok. I just started playing this game, and I'm not sure I want to continue if bad-behavior is not only rewarded but also protected.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

All this "I did it for the children!" doesn't wash. You did it to get back at the guy, and you tried to use GGG to help you with your revenge.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Firstly, I'm skeptical of your wide-eyed ignorance in light of that 28 you're sporting, Taylor. If you've made it that far without being fucked over even once, colour me impressed.

You are asking if this negative experience and GGG both refusing to intervene AND their choice to stymie your attempts at claiming justice means it's not the game for you. It seems a little like thinly-veiled blackmail (i.e. GGG won't intervene so I'll just withdraw future support) because you've got 28 achievements. I'd say this is definitely the game for you.

But...

This game turns good people into arseholes. I've seen it happen dozens, hundreds of times over the course of my time here. They come here, trusting, naive, a little selfish but nothing beyond what you'd expect. And then they get fucked over, well within the idea of 'acceptable' on PoE and in GGG's eyes, but it's enough to push them over the line. To embrace the 'Social Darwinism' and lose absolutely any and all empathy for or confidence in others, especially strangers. This IS how to win at PoE's metagame. GGG wanted their economy antfarm and they got it. They don't want to police it, because that might affect their observations of the antfarm ecology and social intricacies. And believe me when I tell you 'antfarm' is the word for it. Unless someone is outright cheating (hacking) or excessively abusing others, their actions are as an ant's to a curious, passive but strangely bloodthirsty child.

The only other option, assuming you don't quit or just become a hermit, is to find a guild. To reduce the amount of interaction with absolute strangers. To mutually benefit, I suppose, from what could be anything from wary compliance to outright trust -- it does happen, all the time.

Or, as I said, you can become a hermit. Go solo self found. Rely on none but yourself. Hard to 'scam' yourself. It's the longest way round but it's the only way to know for sure. It's funny how many people asked for that, and yet now it's here, I don't see that many putting the trade/party pipe down. Very funny indeed.

Regarding name-and-shame: it's not naming-and-shaming people want. We had naming-and-shaming here once, in a thread I ran and moderated with GGG's blessing. Their one rule was that they would not intervene no matter what. The thread was purely for community awareness.

And NO ONE USED IT.

People don't want name-and-shame in and of itself. They want justice. They want their currency back. They want these evil bastards to pay. To be punished for their transgressions. And there's nothing wrong with that. But much like the frequent unfairness of real life, it's just not going to happen here. And I'm not going to cite some bullshit RP excuse; I have RPed online for decades now, and PoE has precisely zero RP because it's just not built for it at all. This is a game where the character might be amoral by circumstances as a matter of survival...but the player becomes immoral as a matter of greed and peer pressure. Which I suppose, in an ARPG based around gathering loot to kill shit to gather more loot, might be the same thing.

This isn't about 'Wraeclast xd' as the zealous, overachieving, but sadly misinformed _Saranghaeyo_ keeps saying. GGG don't promote scamming or ripping off. That's just crap. They just see it as part of the market. Caveat Emptor and all that. Nowhere will you see GGG say 'go scam!' or 'feel free to rip each other off' -- that's promoting, and they don't do it. Again, you need to think in terms of ants and children. The fecundity of scams and rip-offs is, in their eyes, pretty much between the ants. Period. If you want to blame GGG for anything, blame them for not deciding if the game is Eve online or Diablo 3. Blame them for clinging desperately to their dream of a free market while providing zero tools to facilitate a fair one.

It really sucks you got ripped off/stolen from, Taylor. I'm sad that this encounter might cause you to lose hope or faith in others, but that'd be totally understandable. And if it makes you see GGG as uncaring or cruel or even malicious, I want you to remember: ants and children. It's all fine and well to want the child to use their magnifying glass to burn this sneaky ant or that, but it's no longer an ant colony the moment the child intervenes. Then it's just a mountain of dead ants waiting to happen.

This is how GGG have chosen to play it, for better or worse. Hands off, almost to an illogical point where it seems they trust the ants not to fuck each other over constantly. It's been over five years for me now since I found this game and I still can't quite get my head around it all. GGG aren't uncaring; they're not cruel. They don't actively promote malicious behaviour in players...and yet they know the straightest line to success in PoE is to fuck others over. And that this in turn promotes reactive negative behaviour, and so on...

This is why I say they need to decide if the game is Eve Online or post-AH Diablo 3. It's either a free market dictated by players but governed by all sorts of tools for analysis and trade, OR it's a loot-whore arpg where the drops are sufficient to progress without engaging in aggressive trading. It cannot be both.

Until they decide, I for one am playing SSF and pretending it's the latter. It's an insane reaction to an insane situation, given drops are no better on SSF, which means we SSFers are literally trying to excel at a game balanced around the idea of trading to get optimum gear. But if that's how I can avoid situations that would absolutely turn me into a raging misanthropic monster, so be it.

GGG are just very lucky no one's released an even half-decent ARPG in the past few years. Very fucking lucky indeed. I suspect Fall of Oriath's above-and-beyond approach is partially an attempt to safeguard against the threat of a superior product popping up.

Anyway, it sucks that you got scammed, or let yourself be scammed as quite a few here would say. It sucks that this game tells players that hurting each other is the way to get ahead. To win. It really sucks that those who resist that call to be selfish and who do feel such behaviour is reprehensible get shouted down, sarcastically or otherwise, by those who have woefully come to accept it. But most of all it really fucking sucks that GGG can't seem to find a happy medium between leaving players to their own devices and encouraging a fair market where it is mutually beneficial for both parties to honour their word, whatever it may be.

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Taylor5CC wrote:

Well, I put the scammer on my friends list for a week so I could get a tertiary understanding of the behavior.

The character he scammed me on was by no means his "main." He would only attempt other scams when he switched to the character he scammed me on. Then I would see broadcasts (which I got a 10 minute ban for warning people about) and complaints of his behavior after. Yet, while he used his "main," he was the model of an upstanding citizen. I never witnessed any complains about him while he was on his "main." So, basically, he has one 'evil' character he uses to scam, and a different 'good' character to reap the rewards.

The fact the system tracts character name instead of account name essentially allows people like him to turn what should likely be an "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" (like most 'RL' interactions) into a Standard Prisoner's Dilemma. This causes scamming to be the 'rational' answer to social interactions.

If the system tracked account name (or both character name and account name) this 'changing of identity' would be harder to do, and would keep interactions on PoE closer to the 'RL' norm of an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Otherwise the default behavior for rational players should be "defect."

I'm thinking about writing a short essay on the Prisoner's Dilemma and how it applies to understanding online communities (in general, not specifically PoE) for fun. If I do, I'll post it in this subforum as a new thread. I'll not have time to do so for a while, regardless.

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Fapmobile wrote:

You basically gave the dude 100 chaos.
There is no system to prevent that from happening.