Okay hypothetically say I'm playing with a character that I don't want anyone to know is associated with me (no malicious reason, just don't want people to know it's actually me playing) and somehow I get twisted up in a trade and accused of scamming. I would be so angered if all of my IGNs were exposed showing who I am when I actually had done nothing wrong. You may say this example is extreme and while I admit it can be viewed that way, the point still remains that mistakes happen and to get staff involved in "exposing" someone and basically proclaiming them a scammer leaves a bad taste in my mouth and something I am against. As has been said many times now, be smart. If you play smart, work with the community, and do your homework, you won't be scammed.
I believe my previous argument is a reasonable proposal to prevent this sort of issue from occurring.
Hypothetically speaking, that would not fall under the "repeat offences" clause. The idea is aimed towards people who've scammed 4-5 players within a week (or longer periods of time obviously) and their intent is clearly malicious. I've seen maybe one player in all of MR history who's actually bothered to defend himself against repeated accusations of scamming. I believe there are enough guidelines in my suggestion to prevent even extreme cases like your example from happening.
Doing nothing, is just as bad as getting an innocent player wrapped up in something they didnt do IMO. We know the solution isnt easy. But its beyond infuriating when players scam other players and we arent able to do anything except add them to some list of names to avoid. It doesnt help us with names that arent listed. You literally have to suspect everyone is a scammer and I dont like having to think that way.
Maybe I missed something but I mostly see low level characters getting away with scamming on leech, that's only a players fault and I don't see it as GM's job to do any work for that, I wouldn't pay a level 30 assassin to leech me.
I think what is in question here goes beyond the line of us just trying to get GMs to babysit us. While I agree that there are scams where the slightest bit of common sense would have prevented it from happening, that's not necessarily what the conversation here is about. The fact is that there are members who are trying to be systematically malicious to the community. Take Berchtold for example. He literally said, "Well, I am going to same some more people and make that money back." I don't think any of the staff can deny that there are certain members who aim to be continuously toxic to the community. While you don't believe the offenses made are ground for a ban, having some course of action available against them, i.e. revealing their full Royals identity, would help show that having one of their goals to be regularly abusing and degrading the community is not something we will tolerate.
My point is that low leveled characters are not to be trusted and that should be common sense, that doesn't exclude high leveled characters from being scammers. I just find it a bit pointless to target low leveled characters, if people stop giving a random low leveled character money it seems a big part of the problem would be solved. I also see it as if a high leveled character scams it is likely that person wishes to keep playing the server and might use the funds to make a new character so exposing that person is good for the community, but wasting time because some people pay a character that can't even give the service they claim is just stupid and not even worth wasting time on.
I'm confused as to how we're trying to target low leveled characters. My concern is that there are players who are actively scamming and toxic to the community. At this point, I don't believe their levels or which scams they have used are particularly relevant. They are trying to constantly hurt the community, and it would just be nice if some additional action could be taken against them.
I won't deny that some people aim to be toxic towards the community, but I also won't lie when I say that I see no purpose in exposing their character names on the forums. Unless you're telling me that all of the people that get scammed actually check the forums before they buy leech or perform other trust based trades, it wouldn't change anything except for players being labeled as social outcasts by veterans.
Is that such a bad thing? While it might not help the players that get scammed because they did not check the forums, it forces players to reap the consequences of their actions. Take Vlada for example. He was a prominent leech scammer for a number of weeks, with a new report for him every couple of days. When his characters were released, he fell off the map. From what information was provided, he stopped causing problems and created new characters to play royals on. Since he was no longer causing problems, there was no reason to reveal said new characters and he was allowed to continue on Royals. While the GMs can't take any direct action, I don't see a problem with the community dealing with the players as they see fit. Is it so wrong for veterans to outcast players who constantly aim to hurt the community? We spend a lot of time trying to build up the community as a whole. If possible, why would we not ignore the ones trying to break it down.
To me it is, since it seems a big part of the scams are because low level characters gets paid for leech they can't give or traded mesos before even giving the item even though we can trade NX and mesos at the same time. Just sounds like baby sitting.
I don't understand why you seem to be defending the low lvl leech scammers. I do agree on that a little of common sense can resolve this problem, but what prevents the player to believe the scammer does not have another character bishop. Beside, even if the whole community has no common sense and still fall for the scam of those low level leech sellers, does this deny the fact that they scammed? Why should we not take action to prevent more damage within the community. The action of these scammers also bring distrust within the community as it can lead to make everyone think leech sellers are scammers if we don't take any action. The community isn't perfect I don't see any harm even if it requires the gm to do some baby sitting to make a better community, overall the community makes up royal
The point I'm trying to make is that whether or not we're babysitting is irrelevant. These people are toxic to the community. They're actively going out and finding vulnerable individuals in order to take advantage of them. This isn't just some shop scam where a player clicked too fast, this is them going out and actively talking to people to steal from them over and over again. This is far from a black and white situation, but when a situation gets to the point where even the staff, without a doubt, believe the server would be better off without a person, doesn't that mean something should be changed? Shouldn't something be done in cases like these? (Which far from a full list of what they've done as I've missed not only a few posts, but all those who posted in the shoutbox without ever making a thread, and all those who didn't post on the forums at all) -zico/Worker: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) -Makayla: (1) (2) -Eror: (1)(2) -Jacto/Blutsworth/Doue: (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6) These are all cases where I think even the Admins and Staff can believe substantial evidence has been compiled against them that only suggests they'll not only continue scamming, but will continue to escalate. Again, I'm not arguing for a full change of the system where this becomes bannable. I'm asking that the staff formally implement a system which allows for their characters to be revealed. Something that has already been done (but only by the personal decision of a GM) before, and already been proven to be effective. If there is no formal system in place, why would the staff ever feel the need for this to be done? So why not try and change that?
I think that you severely underestimate how much influence the forums has on in-game play. When something is a hot topic on the forums, people talk in-game on their buddy list where their buddies can see and tell someone else. It's a fairly mediate-able sized community in comparison to certain other p.servers and global servers I think that we should take advantage of that fact and maybe dabble a bit more into the community problems at large. One might say that it's too hard to remain unbiased and satisfy the need of one party (by banning one party) but it's not like the admin's personal opinions and discretions haven't gotten in the way of "justice" before. People get wrongfully banned almost everyday for high damage and "suspicious activity". I get that staying out of it seems like the lesser of two evils but is it really the lesser if the scamming party keeps getting away with plaguing your community ? Now, as scamming is way too broad an offense to call bannable, how about criteria be set for scam bans. Perhaps if they are reported more than once for the same 'type' of scam then ban action may be taken 7days/1month/perma. Or if a scam is dubbed serious enough, then the admin/staff are permitted to use their own discretion and make a decision.
I'm not going to refute your post as I've already made my points, however, just because it already has been done by a staff member, does not mean it is condoned and considered permissible. In a similar vein, just because a GM advertises their guild via a Notice, does not mean it is something that should be allowed by other staff members. See what I'm getting at? This is definitely not a situation where you can use the "well someone else did it already" explanation for why we should be doing it now. Furthermore, there is still nothing preventing the community from making the link. For example, someone already noticed a reported scammer must be Makayla as they're dressed the same way and spoke the same way as them. The only thing a GM could even do in the situation is say "yep, the following IGNs logged onto the same IP or same MAC as [insert purported scammer here]." Which of course, instantly becomes an issue when it is a public computer or the IP is one which is used for an entire nation (read: Singapore) where Jen and other legit players are reportedly on the same IP as one of these claimed scammers.
When it comes to the recent cases of scams that happened, I think you overestimate the influence the forums has on in-game play. I've checked the 10 most recent scam threads and only 1 of those 10 players had more than 25 forum posts, this shows how the people that get scammed aren't active on the forums. That is not going to change if we expose players on the forums, in fact some of these scammers don't even have more characters than you guys are aware of and they still manage to scam a lot of players. Then something else you point out: How many of the last 10 scammed players are on your buddy list? I think it's safe to say that 1 would already be a lot. My point here is that most of these players are either not very active with the game, or are fairly new and don't have that many friends and reliable resources to work with (With that I mean players they trust that can sell them items or leech them without scamming). And on top of that they also barely use the forums, so they don't get that much forum influence passed onto them. I know every day people smega warning about certain scammers, but even this isn't a reliable way to spread the word as smegas only work in a few channels usually. This part of your comment is rather confusing to me: You say that we are biased or influenced by personal opinions and then you mention high damage bans right after, while that is an autoban? I don't see how those 2 are connected, as well as "suspicious activity" which is usually based on either showing very suspicious behaviour or having a lot of potentially duped items (ie: whitescrolls / chaos scrolls). Right, but that isn't the suggestion in this thread at all.. This thread is asking us to expose all character names of scammers on the forums. Which in my opinion as a player would do very little, seeing that the majority of the people that gets scammed don't use the forums actively. (unless you call 7 posts in a year active, then go ahead and correct me.)
So you're saying just because someone does not post a lot means that they are not active one the forums ? I mean it's a possibility but i know more than a few people that rarely voice themselves on threads but lurk the fuck out of the forums. I actually did read about Makayla/Zico from my bl because two of my 'lower-levelled' friends heard from someone else that they were scammers. Perhaps the telephone effect doesn't work so perfectly, but I am saying it DOES get passed around, why is there any reason to refute that? So basically what I am hearing is : there is a need to rid our community of scammers because it is toxic for the people who are not as Royals-saavy as the rest of us, but it's too much to deal with... What you're saying here sounds like a local police officer explaining why so many tourists get robbed, leaving me here thinking, "so why not do something about it?". First part: I was stating that I understand the difficulty of staying unbiased in these kinds of 'drama'... It can be extremely difficult to remain professional when other parties speaking to you hold no bounds... Yes, this part was a bit confusing because I started writing it out with the ban of my friend in mind. Several people just didn't like him and posted pictures of them buying leech items from the store (when it had already been bought) then complaining in a scripted conversation to eachother how he scammed them for leech so he was banned. That initially was my thought, thus the justice & wrongful ban bit. But then I thought more about how the apple hoarders were banned recently for suspicious activity but also how some people are just temporarily wrongfully banned by the system, mainly pointing out that they have all been banned at little to no fault. These might not be THAT correlated but they were wrongful bans, that mind you, were only temporary; so perhaps people get over it, but it's the principle to me that matters. And for the last bit, am I not allowed to throw in my own feedback ?? I mean I could make a completely separate thread about pretty much the same thing, but a different course of action... But tbh as soon as I woke up this morning, I regretted posting last night because fuck i hate typing this much lol..[/QUOTE]
It's not about defending scammers, I just think people should be able to handle themselves without needing a GM to save them in situations that can be so easily avoided, I am not against revealing scammers other characters but it is very pointless doing so if people still get scammed for stupid reasons all the time since they can just create new characters and move all items to that new account. Scammers will still be here, sure this could possibly help but I think more that people should be aware of the risk of being careless, making people understand that, is in my opinion a far better solution than to chase scammers, it would give GM's more work because a few people not being responsible (mostly). Probably the biggest reason why scamming can't be against the rules, people would abuse it to be even more careless.
