...about PoE, scamming, its people and culture

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Phrazz wrote:

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The_Scourge wrote:

Keeping in mind there is a difference between a scam and a rip-off.

Why are you defining it different than the rest of the world? Why are we trying to differentiate a rip-off from a scam? Is one thing worse than the other?


Scam
noun, informal
1.
a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
"an insurance scam"
synonyms: fraud, swindle, fraudulent scheme, racket, trick, diddle

Scam. Ripoff. Scheme. Fraud. Whatever. In both cases, you're WILLINGLY trying to swindle someone for your own gain.

Edit: After reading again, it might just be my definition of the word "rip-off" that is "off" here. Sorry. But in my head, selling a 10c item for 100c isn't a "rip-off" in my head, as much as it is a bad/good deal, pending on players knowledge. Certainly not morally right, but a rip-off? Ok, maybe, I don't know. On me, sorry.

It's okay, it's a super fucking touchy subject. But when you invoke 'scam' as a term you're sort of saying GGG has a moral obligation to step in, because it means someone is breaking the 'law', so to speak. That should not include any sort of price discrepancy between seller and buyer...but price-fixing, now there's a really grey area...

I often play late at night after work.

Sometimes I put the wrong thing in the window because I'm dozing off at the keyboard.

It happens.

I usually apologize and discount the item if I notice but once in a while I'm sure someone gets screwed.

Occasionally someone freaks out. The other night it was about a hydra when I kept putting a pair of kaom's roots in the trade window. Little did he know I was confused and sleepy.

I've been scammed before to the tune of about 150c on a 6L rare axe. The guy didn't put all the chaos in the window and I didn't count it. ALWAYS check what's in the window. People don't learn this until they get burned though.

Cheers and Love~
TES

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Aixius wrote:

GGG put the verification step into the game so that you MUST mouseover the item in the trade window prior to clicking accept. The OP literally did everything they could to not take advantage of this protection and the result was that they accepted a trade for the wrong item.

If, like the OP, I had made one of the most easily-avoided noobie mistakes even after playing this game for 5 years I sure as hell wouldn't have made a whine thread to broadcast that fact.

You're missing the point. Perhaps the item looks very similar, you mouse over and assume the seller is being honest. So you miss checking for every single stat, only to find out the gear you bought didn't match the listing and is missing the stat that made it expensive.

I've never had that problem because I spend a few more seconds to examine each item, yet I'm not going to fault people who miss it when trading frequently and quickly. The trading system is flawed, that's not entirely the user's fault. The blame is shared both by user and developer.

The "developer" has gone out of their way to make it as difficult to cheat a player as possible without making the trading too tedious. They don't deserve the blame here if a player doesn't take due care.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

The "developer" has gone out of their way to make it as difficult to cheat a player as possible without making the trading too tedious. They don't deserve the blame here if a player doesn't take due care.

"Out of their way"? Hardly, that's a core part of their job. If they go "out of their way" to accomplish this, they would have resolved the scamming in the first place by providing pristine trading tools/processes. But no, we have open-ended trading on par with the last century.

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uroboros wrote:

I never understood how 1 bad experience can create such anger about a system that works fine 99% of the time.

Would you mind if your bank worked 99% of the time ?

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Ael00 wrote:

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uroboros wrote:

I never understood how 1 bad experience can create such anger about a system that works fine 99% of the time.

Would you mind if your bank worked 99% of the time ?

If only it would.

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Ael00 wrote:

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uroboros wrote:

I never understood how 1 bad experience can create such anger about a system that works fine 99% of the time.

Would you mind if your bank worked 99% of the time ?

First of all, most banks don't.

Second of all, comparing trading pixels for other pixels in a vidyagame to the possible loss of one's savings or livelihood is not even approaching valid and you full well know this, you're just employing some hyperbole to try and bolster your argument.

0/10, bad argument is bad.

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cipher_nemo wrote:

you mouse over and assume the seller is being honest.

I found the problem.

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Morgasming wrote:

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cipher_nemo wrote:

you mouse over and assume the seller is being honest.

I found the problem.

Indeed, that's the final check (in a hypothetical situation) the user failed to do.

It's a human error when it happens. The player has been conditioned after trading for a long time that checking the specifics of items when they hover over them is almost always correct, given that most people who trade are relatively honest. Then they run into a scammer, and thus miss thoroughly checking the item before confirming the trade.

And the proper resolution of the problem is not to blame the users for being idiots when they screw up, but rather attempt to prevent that possibility in the first place. That's why we're asked to enter a new password twice, why many login systems require two-form/factor authentication, etc. And that responsibility rests with GGG, of which they've done THE BARE MINIMUM since the game's launch to curb trade scamming. Go ahead and ask them or press them on this topic and you'll get an ear-full of silence. They know they can do better, yet fail to do anything more.

Now I'm not demanding GGG act immediately or give us a full AH or something. And I'm not asking GGG to create trading tools/improvements in the next release. I'm just stating that the safeties we have in place right now are not enough to prevent scamming at the exact time of each trade, and that you PLAN for human error, not the other way around. Again, I've never fallen victim to this, but I can certainly see why and how even veteran players easily could slip and fall victim to a trading scam.