Notice Introduction of new game rule: Handling real world trade goods

I feel like this shouldn't be a rule, but more of a warning to the player base about making sure they double check before buying a very expensive item from someone they don't know.

I also feel that investigations for RWT situations would be easier with more than one admin investigating them. We used to have Andreas and John doing admin duties as well, but there hasn't been anyone promoted to junior administrator since at least 2017.

Anyways, this rule sounds like it was discussed at length in staff chat, but I don't know how many people are actually going to remember it when the time comes for a trade. Might end up creating more of a headache than solving the issue it was aimed at.

 

I can already see this rule impacting the player base. Saw some comments in guild discord and I’m tempted to leave Royals too if this isn’t repealed.

 

welp...

 

I would really like to understand what it means to have a free market economy if restrictions are applied to trading?


"You're expected to do your due diligence on any trade you plan to make that's valued over 1B by following this checklist:"

Say for example I wanna buy this 16 att glove and lets pretend the seller wanted to lower the price the next day to 1.3b and I wanted to buy it at 1.3b. Would I have to wait and ask all the above questions before buying it from this store? What if the buyer is a casual player and is only online in certain periods of the day. It makes trades a lot slower and difficult you literally have to talk to the individual first before buying an item 1b+

 

I'm going to go ahead and make a prediction: this rule is going to be revised or removed. Its just a matter of days before the background check criteria is ameliorated.

If that happens, I called it first

 

Does staff not have a resource who is proficient in SQL to write a script to show you players with certain items? Honestly curious.

 

Doesn't look like this rule is being revised or removed with the responses Tim has been giving us so far.

 

thats only for people who buy from your store what if you wanna buy from their shop

 

So is the solution to stop regular trades under 2b, and set up a shop any time you want to do a transaction? Whats even the point of the arbitrary >1b meso item rule then if there's such a simple loophole? You could easily Smega the item, the location of your shop, and circumvent the entire process. It just further proves the point that this rule is at best confusing, tedious, and uneffective.
EDIT: To be clear, do not try this or to be cheeky about it. This is just to show how messy this implementation really is.

 

too much responsibility on the players...everyone just want to have fun playing...now with this rule everyone will fear they might do something wrong or made a mistake by just trading that will get them banned and its not fun anymore plus not everyone have the time to investigate every person zzzz questions are dumb and 1b is literally nothing

 

特 色 社 会 主 义 市 场 经 济

 

This is a very badly made rule and is quite honestly straight up ridiculous. If you don't have the resources, then find more volunteers. To be blunt... you aren't paying people so money is not an issue here.It's scary to think I could get banned simply because I didn't e-stalk someone well enough, or if I can't "proove" I e-stalked someone well enough. There isn't even a clear way to provide proof for that.

I also barely use the forums. Some people don't at all. What if the person is like me?

It's blatantly obvious nobody likes this rule and how bad of an idea it is. It'll be interesting to see if the staff actually cares or not.

 

I have so many questions about this it dragged me out of exile.

Who was this rule made for?
Was it to protect players or was it to take the burden of investigation off of staff?
Are players now expected to have a forum account- as not having one is a flag when players are asking each other that list of questions.
Will high value trades be investigated independently or will only trades that are reported be looked into- which begs the question who is going to report it cause the person looking to RWT isn't and assuming the other person pays the price... why would they have any reason to think their purchase will contribute to black market shenanigans if they are happy with the trade and the other person is too?

People are now expected to report any "sketchy" trades... surely a deluge of bad reports (good intentions or not) will negate any time saving. I know. I know. I was contentious back in the day and I was NOT afraid to call about a bad idea but surely, SURELY, someone on Staff saw this proposal and spoke up about it. How many MMO's said fuck it we can't stop RWT and threw the market into chaos trying to fix it? Blizzard did it with those purchasable gold things (can't beat em might as well make money off it and keep it in-house) and Jagex killing the game when they got rid of free trade and boss drops. The former is too big to see it's own dick and won't backpedal and the latter tanked the game SO hard it's become a generic MMO clone that had to relaunch an older version of the game- which to no ones surprise is more popular.

At what point is enough enough? If it's become too much for Tim to do, then you guys need another admin. I know trust is an issue... but I don't even know what to say. Most Staff I knew are gone and whether they were ever even in consideration for a promotion like that or not is moot because if someone who was around as long as Joel or Muff didn't make the jump it's hard to imagine anyone on Staff now making that jump.

This feels arbitrary and wholly unenforceable. It'll only confuse players and stifle the free market. Part of the fun of Maple is making trades and sometimes you get boned, and sometimes you get a really good trade and none of that should mean you need to be investigated for RWT. You say stores are exempt. I'll take that at face value but I sure hope someone is running a check because historically RWT was done with stores and stacks of arrows. Anyone who spent any amount of time on Basilmarket saw the threads and screenshots back in the day. I'd ask for you guys to reconsider however I fully expect to see a series of revisions and compromises made to this just like with some other updates in the past.

This whole thing could be avoided with the implementation of an in-game trading house. Want to sell something for more than max mesos? List it for sale using an NPC in the FM and allow players to offer XYZ (bilcoins, items, mesos, etc) and have it sell like a blind auction- and by doing so you can easily implement a pop-up listing all these things that Staff wants players to be aware of- before using you have you hit accept. If the seller likes an offer they can accept the offer and items are swapped and sent via Duey (is he still around?). All trades are logged and it'll spit out a list that allows Staff to see high value trades and allows people to safety make the trades. If there is a concern over people not using stores, or using this to advertise items, then require the purchase of an NX ticket that allows you to list an item. To prevent spamming and flooding you could easily limit the postings to items that meet criteria like being above X level, or gold quality scrolled, or items like BWG and other high value trades, etc.

There are SO many ways to help combat RWT and NONE of them should threaten players with a ban for making a trade especially when there is nothing stopping the people who are RWTing from lying, doing all of this discussion outside the game, etc.

 

remove the rule you tyrants!

 

If blocking WS/CS drops, tracing BCoins and blocking drops in FM isn't sufficient to mitigate RWT to a (hopefully) large extent, this rule is unlikely to make a dent on the situation, and is likely to cause more innocent players getting caught in the cross fire although they did their due diligence.

Imagine getting banned just because a Staff deemed that your due diligence wasn't extensive enough and you should've done better. And if things are still status quo for how RWT cases are handled, then it won't make Tim's life any easier.

I implore Staff to reconsider this rule and explore other avenues that won't put players at a disadvantage. Preferably something that doesn't require any actions from the players, or something that isn't open to interpretation.

 

No words, even former staff think this rule is bad

 

I think the rule should be changed to "if you benefit off a trade with a RWTer and there were any warning signs something was off that you missed, we might take the items in question or ban you". This only affects people profiting off of RWTers.

But this basically already existed just wasn't explicitly stated. So the rule is just like a formality to make ban appeals clearer. The bigger problem is RWTers...

 

Spent a day thinking through this new rule and the feedback provided thus far, and I find that I largely agree with the vast majority who are pushing back - there have been lots of well-thought and clearly articulated considerations shared in the ongoing discussion (shifting burden of investigation onto players, confusion in implementation, loopholes, etc.).

There seem to be a few open points I find particularly annoying and for which I would like to voice my opinion on. Despite my clear disagreement with the new rule, I hope that my views will be of some constructive value instead of coming across as solely antagonistic. @Tim I am only quoting from one of your previous posts as a reference to Staff's collective stance; please be assured this is not intended to be directed at you personally.

Spoiler: 1. "Just have a conversation with your seller"

We've had a few community flare-ups in recent years where a common theme has been the unwillingness of Staff to empathize with player perspectives - I think this is fully embodied in the suggestions quoted above. Hand on heart, can you sincerely imagine anyone "striking up a conversation" like this as part of natural gameplay?

I have played Maplestory since 2005, and I have never seen or heard of anyone "striking up a conversation" during a deal to ask ridiculous things like "Can you contact me from your forum account?". This just comes off as blatantly suspicious and awkward - why should anyone be subject to intrusive questioning just because they want to play a mushroom game? Also, who the hell am I to attempt to determine "who they are" and "if them having those items makes sense"? We're on this server to chill out and escape from real life. We're not trying to clock practice for Know-Your-Customer and Client-Due-Diligence checks.

In my personal opinion, the checklist just makes everything worse and even further detached from "striking a conversation" - it sounds more like a freakin interrogation. To begin with, most of the checklist questions sound pretty dumb (like those cited above), but some are straight up braindead. In particular: "Is there a forum thread on this item to get the best offer? If not, why not?". Can you imagine being excited and full of joy, on the cusp of making a sweet (and fair) deal in the FM for a great price, but wait! You remember the almighty checklist. You now have to pause mid-trade to ask the seller why they are stupid and selling you the item at a lower price than what they could be otherwise fetching on forums.

Spoiler: 2. "We're not asking for screenshots"

This bit seems especially well-intentioned, and in theory, would be of some help to the community. However, I genuinely struggle to believe that this is true given the extensive track record of ban appeals we have seen on this server. How many cases have we witnessed where innocent players were only exonerated and unbanned after providing screenshots of their trades? Isn't this the exact same situation - trade logs vs chat logs? Despite Staff already having full access to trade logs and being able to verify legitimate trades, the burden of proof has consistently been held against the accused player to provide evidence via trade screenshots.

Why should we trust that things will be any different this time around? I for one can foresee the same tedious pattern of ban appeals repeating - Staff will continue to provide vague replies once a month, and the onus will once again fall upon the player to provide evidence of due diligence via screenshots. I believe the community would collectively be appreciative (and greatly encouraged) if there were specific reasons for us to believe otherwise.

Spoiler: 3. "Market price"

The issue of "market price" has been alluded to in preceding posts, and it seems there will be an ever-growing list of ambiguities surrounding this subject. Who decides what "market price" is? What if the trade in question occurred 18 months ago - will Staff maintain a historical price tracking database for every single item in game valued over 1b so we can make retrospective price evaluations?

Furthermore, how should anyone judge if a trade is "suspicious" and determine a sale to be "too far below the market price"? @lee1 mentioned he was banned for paying the equivalent of ~150b for an item which Staff instead decided was worth 170b. 20b is indeed a large margin, but what if he had paid 160b instead? Or 165b? At which point would the purchase warrant a ban? The variance in these margins are completely undefined and arbitrary, but critically remain at the sole discretion of Staff. There is absolutely no clarity here, which in my opinion, makes for a pretty flimsy rule - especially when you want to enforce it server-wide with zero feedback being taken into consideration.

Spoiler: My final thoughts: Sorry if overly negative

Considering that:
(i) Staff must have held extensive internal discussions prior to releasing this RWT-related rule; and
(ii) The ongoing state of the ban appeal forum section has been ironically sad, where the community has witnessed multiple false bans for RWT being dragged on and on through shambolic appeal processes,
My personal takeaway has been that this is pretty much the closest we'll come to an open admission from Staff that the RWT situation is frankly out of control.

There have been lots of positive updates in recent times, lots of good feedback being heard and implemented. I personally feel like this is us collectively a taking big step back in the wrong direction.

 

So after all the negativity about the new rule can we get the attention and to see if you Staff care about our opinion.
Its obvious the most of us think you should find another way to fight the RWT.
If there was a poll it would be 85% vs 15%
So please tell us do we have a say after all ?
Are you going to keep it as it is or listen to our opinions as a community who donate and keep the server running and relevant @Tim
We want answers !