After reading so many threads about how many people is getting scammed in our community i feel as if "we" as a community should express our thoughts about how we feel about it being strictly enforced or not (AKA bannable). It's pretty pathetic seeing all these scammers get away with it so easily and justice not being served where it is due. Would like to see what everyone else thinks about it. Feedback would be appreciated thanks!
With the addition of medals in the new source, it'd be a cool idea to change the title of a medal, and give it to those with multiple known cases of scam, and make it un-unequipable. Spoiler: Lel
I've mentioned before how me and my guild knows players who have scammed countless billions. Scamming is a very serious issue and it happens way too often. However, it is much too difficult to enforce. The thing is, screenshots do not provide enough evidence that can prove with 100% certainty that someone has been scammed of leech, books, items, mesos, whatever it may be. To ban more accurately, GMs would have go through dozens of chat logs + screenshots + speak with individual players, and other interrogation tactics. There is way too much player interaction that needs to be investigated. Couple with the fact that there will be a billion times more reports. I don't see how banning scams can be enforced effectively. Unless we are talking about simple scams such as Store Scams (like putting something like 999,999 instead of 99,999), scamming is an issue that is too complex to enforce as serious as it may be. Personally I hate scammers. I think it's SUPER pathetic to scam on an online game where the purpose is to have fun. BTW, I really like the idea of a blacklist. But even then, it doesn't stop the scammer from scamming completely, only hinders them slightly.
I basically agree with @leoye123's post. I'm going to speak from my own sentiments as both a player and as a GM; I can't speak for my colleagues but I'm fairly certain many of them share my feelings. It's frustrating for me to see anyone get scammed, even if they deserve it, because I believe that it promotes a negative environment in this community that we all love so much. The fact that, at any moment, someone could be there aiming to take from you without giving back anything is infuriating. Now, I've got a bit of logic in my head and I'll turn my head away from in some special cases (cough @LuckyLook isstillsuperspecialawesomesenpai cough) but in general, I dislike the whole concept that people like that exist where I choose to play. Now of course, I'm not naive enough to sit here and believe that these people won't exist, but I say that to stress the point that I don't like scammers any more than the people who have gotten scammed. On that token, I do acknowledge it as a problem, and one that needs addressing. Like it was said, though, it's a very difficult world to operate in when trying to prove what someone was promising to do from what they were not. There is no command we can institute like ~mapowner that will tell us what actually occured. These cases then become very rocky; how do we prove something like this? Consider the following: player A and player B decide to sell Zakum Helmets to player C and player D. The boss dies, four Zakum Helmets drop. Player A tells players C and D to loot two helmets each. Player C loots all four before player D has a chance to loot one, for whatever reason, and blows them all up with Helmet INT 30 scrolls, because they have a 95% chance of blowing up an item (hah). Players A, B, D call player C a scammer. Player C denies ever looting more than two helmets. What is too much involvement? Should we really be looking into chatlogs to determine exactly what was said? Chatlogs are already a hugely time consuming process to sift through; reasons we do it tend to be related to major abuse only. Drop logs? Trade logs? Scroll logs? It just gets so incredibly difficult to deal with every case that I'm not sure we'd ever have the manpower to properly deal with. Yes, player screenshots assist the situation greatly, but what about the cases where something is missing? Right now, as I'm sure you've noticed, we only ban for something with solid evidence that it occurred as it did, with the only exceptions being cases where major abuse (duping, for example) may have taken place. Another consider the following: players A (Bishop) and B (low leveled Dragon Knight) agree on a leech agreement. Player A takes payment, leeches player B. Player B claims that they were never leeched, posts screenshots of everything occurring with the exception of the actual leech. Should player A really be forced to screenshot every leech agreement with timestamps and everything simply to avoid an unjust ban? It seems ridiculous. Again, I'm not naive, so I do know why it's too much to ask that we all can't just bloody well get along; people will never fully treat one another with the respect that we all deserve, that's far too utopian to believe will ever exist for long periods of time. What I do believe honestly is that... the amount of effort that it would take from staff to properly be issuing bans for scamming would be so gargantuan that the only results would be either scamming running rampant knowing that we can't keep up with it, or a hell of a lot of people getting upset because we try to go through them too quickly and jump to the wrong conclusions. I just think that bans for scamming is far too much hand-holding for a community of people that should largely be adult enough to handle these matters on their own. If there are any other alternatives to bans that staff can get involved with, I'd love to hear them because I, like you, do not want to see players get scammed, period, I just also know that it's a lot more efficient to ask the community for vigilance than it is for us to need to dig through the world of lines and text files that are our logs simply because people are too disrespectful to both say what they'll do and also do what they've said.
I've been confused for the longest time and have failed to ever bring this up, but is scamming actually a bannable offence with the right evidence? I have one specific example of a scammer being banned and the victim refunded. http://royals.ms/forum/threads/scg-manual-scamming.15514/ Seeing this happen resulted in the changing of my own behavior by screenshotting trade agreements any time that I'm in the trusting position in large trades. I've constantly wondered if my efforts have been in vain for the past year. There was a more recent thread that lead me to believe that this is still enough evidence to warrant a ban/refund, but with how often everyone mentions that scamming is in fact not against the rules, I'm not so sure anymore. http://royals.ms/forum/threads/scamming-and-running-away.40188/#post-221256 John's responses in the linked threads have reassured me that I've taken the correct precautions in all of my "trust" trades, but receiving a written confirmation/denial on my assumptions would be greatly appreciated. I believe that if this is confirmed and if others start to partake in similar procedures, it will stop a fair amount of scammers dead in their tracks.
Scamming has always been in Maple, keep your wits about you and you shouldn't have a problem, I mean personally I've found this community to be a very trustworthy one and the few attempted scams on me have been very poor.
This thread was directed towards someone whom seemed reputable by quite a few other players. He was even in a top guild and he just made off of 3 scams of close to 3 bil each. A solution to this problem is hard because there is so many different factors. The easiest way to avoid all this is to remove the mesos limit being traded and getting rid of tax but of course that will never happen for various obvious reasons. I would suggest a middle man but of course it'd be hard to find one that both would agree to and the time they'd have to take out to help. There is honestly no way to prevent it completely. Someone suggested a BasilMarket/eBay type of system and maybe that'd help a bit. But just like that system & the comunity blacklist now, it's on the onus of the player to check the forums. Usually the 1st scam is hard to avoid, but the 2nd time on is avoidable once that person is called out by someone else. Anyways, I guess in terms of big trades, either take the tax hit or trade in WS & chaos otherwise don't expect a deal to be done.
What if we have some mediators, a few chosen trusted players that people can ask for during transactions that require trust, say person a selling person b something over worth 3b, person a sets up2 merchants that total 3b and give item to the mediator, then person b buys out the merchants and gets item from said mediator. If mediator checks no buyout, he returns items to person a. Can even be gm if any wished to help
I suggested that in my post above, but then you're now also bring in another person that both have to trust. They'd have to take time out of their schedule out to help. Let's say I want to make a 5 bil trade with you right now. Would you be able to find someone we both would trust? You might, but that may also take some time. And they'd then have to take time to help you out. (Which might not be a big deal, but now multiply that by the # of times that person could potentially be called upon).
In v62 there is an uneditable cap, being 2,147,483,647. This number and the tax is pretty much embedded into the games coding and cannot be altered, even by a dev. (i think)
If its a 5 bil trade, i think i would b willing to wait until someones free to mediate lol, not in a rush to get scammed =P
Yes, because 2^31 for 32-bits. Anyways, I have a suggestion but I don't think this will be added because it changes things. But would be nice if we could exchange mesos to an npc and it gives you an item. You can exchange that item back to the npc for the mesos minus tax. Ie. Give 1 bil to npc for gold coin, trade gold coin to players, players use gold coins to exchange for 1b and deduct taxes. I highly doubt this will be implemented and it doesn't completely solve the problem as part of this is that players use arrows to avoid taxes.
I really like the gold leaf idea, maybe they can implement the tax when the player goes into exchange the coin. The player pays the price of higher tax for the guarantee of not being scammed. This also eliminates having to make countless meso mules for higher transactions. +1 for this idea
I think most players unequivocally condemn the act of scamming, but what bothers me even more is that the perpetrator often faces very little consequence. Take Haul for example. He recently made out with close to 8 billion from a string of scams. While his name is tarnished and his reputation irreparably ruined, what's to stop him from starting a new character? If you read between the lines, he's probably doing that already. He's going to have the privilege of starting another Night Lord, fund it with the 8 billion he extorted, benefit from the anonymity that a fresh start affords him, reach bossing level, assimilate into the community, and be poised to pull off another heist OR just play normally but with a preposterous 8 billion advantage. And I'm sure other individuals have envisioned this scenario, and feel extremely uncomfortable with it. In the larger scheme, scamming is an unanimous issue that lacks an effective treatment and prevention mechanism. From a treatment perspective, the staff has made it clear they do not intervene in issues involving faith and trust—and for most cases, rightfully so. The community blacklist can ostracize a character, but not necessarily an individual. From a prevention perspective, a lot of vulnerable players aren't aware of a community blacklist. The lack of stiff punishment (i.e. ban) also fails to deter the most ambitious scammers. In light of that, I'd like to reiterate a suggestion that's been brought up before. We should be promoting the existence of our community blacklist to raise awareness of scams and scammers: we can move it to a more visible section of the forums or even incorporate the message into a RoyalTip that shows up on players' screens. But I'd also like to advocate for staff intervention in the case of malicious scamming. If a player was hacked and lost their items, the staff usually investigates the case, refunds the player, and bans the hacker if traceable. This is likely because the player was helpless and could not have done anything to prevent the loss. I recognize that scamming is different because making a trade is a conscious decision reached after negotiation and deliberation. But any trade exceeding the meso limit often involves an element of utmost good faith (i.e. buying arrows with the understanding of receiving the item) which is standard practice by this community. There's absolutely nothing that protects the players, and no realistic way for a player to hedge against the risk of being scammed. I suppose you can trade with Chaos or WS, but that depends on market availability and the seller's preferences. The only alternative is totally abstaining from max meso trades, which is not a realistic, long-term option. So in the context of max meso trades predicated on good faith, I would consider the scammed victim helpless and not have been in a position to prevent the loss. Thus, why does the line between hacking and malicious scamming have to be so fine? (I'm not asking rhetorically; I'm genuinely interested in hearing a staff's perspective.) Furthermore, if we deem scamming to be a civil issue (conflict between the players) rather than a legal one (offence enforceable by the T&C), could we develop an institutional response to assist those who are scammed? Otherwise, it's incredibly demoralizing to those who get scammed, their friends, the bystanders, even the everyday players like myself who read the news and aspire to progress their characters. Is it logistically feasible for staff to reverse a trade or shop transaction by manually giving the player the mesos/items and taking them away from the scammer? I think that approach, logistics permitting, is the best balance between protecting the players and adhering to an objective standard of decision-making.
Can we talk about this ? http://royals.ms/forum/threads/nukka-leech-scamming.18635/#post-106908 Back when Stu got banned I remember being pissed. It had been set up by several people to frame him and it worked I guess. And after he had been banned he did not appeal, instead he just stopped playing all together.
The max mesos issue needs to be addressed. This is a huge flaw in the game. I think someone mentioned maybe allowing people to buy tokens for max that could be exchanged back and fourth with an npc for mesos. In general I think people that get scammed deserve to take the loss as they've made the dumb decisions that have given the scammer the opportunity. That in mind the meso limit makes being a smart shopper much more of a hassle then it has to be.
I've noticed on old school runescape they've created this item (I forgot what they're called) to combat the max money issue. Basically the idea is you just change your mesos for these items(from frederick I suppose) like for example, 100m could equal 1 coin of some sort. So to have 10 coins from frederick would be the same as having 1 bill. Anyways, I'm assuming there would possibly be some meso exploits and duping problems bringing something like this is in, but it's a suggestion. As for people who get scammed buying leech, I mean, at the end of the day, it's up to you to take all precautions. Any tips I can give to new people is to always ask friends or guildies if they know a friend that wants to sell leech. It's better to try and buy from people you can mutually trust. If that's not an option, then the next best thing would be to check the forums for the leeching white list. Also, if a person is acting shady in general, like asking you to pay in weird forms, or isn't even on an account that could leech you, you should already be suspicious.
