Edit for those who are not familiar with the thread and don't want to read through long walls of text: The bolded and/or underlined points in this post and this post especially are a summary of my main points of discussion and provide a good tl;dr. Or just this quote: This is in response to the conclusion to Sila’s scammed thread Long story short, my understanding in one ss: This is completely impersonal; I do not know any of the people mentioned in this post and I’m happy that Sila was refunded, but I just have trouble understanding the reasoning. Using a similar report that @Azyrite found, einaaarr's scammed thread (and the preface) as a comparison and laying out what happened: Both einaaarr and Sila lent out item(s) einaaarr: Almost 1 year ago a took a longer break due to studying abroad and I was asked by a friend/guildmate (at that time) if she could borrow my items until I came back. I did not know if the server would still be around when I returned and I felt that I knew the player fairly well so I agreed. Sila: As the title says. I lent this guy my 16 attack Stormcaster Glove to be kind, as he was (seemingly!) a nice guy. Multiple people tried to help him get started with his new character, claiming he was new to royals, blablah whatever unrelated. He had borrowed it once before without issue and returned it, so when he asked to borrow it again I felt it was reasonable enough to let him borrow it as long as he returned it. I lent him my SCG under the clear terms that he was to return it before logging out. Both users set a term for the borrowing einaaarr: I was asked by a friend/guildmate (at that time) if she could borrow my items until I came back. I did not know if the server would still be around when I returned and I felt that I knew the player fairly well so I agreed. Sila: Around Tuesday afternoon about 5:35 pm EST I lent him the glove, in the trade window I said clearly "return this before you log out". Both users were ignored when they wished for their items back einaaarr: I noticed that she had deleted me from skype/facebook and ignored me when I came home again and tried to contact her regarding my items. I heard from other players that she had quit while I was gone. I feel scammed, sad and betrayed because she completely ingores me. Sila: Nearly 48 hours later and no sign of him. He's been active in forums, actively ignoring my PM and profile comments. I've had two friends in game keeping an eye out covering different timezones, and the only time he's logged in was repeatedly logging in and out. And yet the conclusion einaaarr: Sila: Tim finds and reveals all of the borrower's characters and gives Sila a refund I recognize that there are differences--and flaws--in the two situations, mainly the duration and terms of borrowing, but I don't think that the former should validate the differing end decisions and in regards to the latter, it's arguable that Sila had legitimate proof of the borrowing terms whereas einaaarr did not, but this is what the two users had: einaaarr, a Skype screenshot Sila, nothing Spoiler: This is a cropped screenshot. Cropped screenshots are not accepted. Again, cropped screenshots have never been accepted. Therefore, both users arguably had no proof for their borrowing terms. In the end, Sila acquired her proof through Tim's look into the chatlogs, but could the same not have been done for einaaarr? My point with this is that I think both users had cases that were similar enough to have warranted the same ending (but did not). And personally, I think that einaaarr's conclusion is what should have happened and should continue to happen. Lending out items is something that one does willingly. And if the worst case scenario of losing the items happen, I don't think the lender should expect administrators to go and rectify the situation for them.
John specifically said "there's no case of scamming that went on here though." That's because there's no proof that the scam occurred. einaaarr never showed that the scammer avoided her and never showed how she tried to get in contact with the scammer. The point about banning for scamming is that the scammed party has to show that the scammer had the intent to scam. But all that einaaarr proved was that she had such and such items and her friend asked to borrow her stuff until she came back. So what if that friend quit Royals, wanted to focus on real life and deleted Royals friends from their social media? That friend may have had no ill intention, but after a year, figured that the person they borrowed the gear from was never coming back, so they just quit. There's no showing that the friend had any malice, just that they never responded which has multiple legitimate, good faith reasons. Side note. When admins look into logs, they ask for specific times and dates to look through. Reading logs is extremely time consuming. Staff aren't going to go on a wild goose chase, spending hours through logs that spam days, weeks, months. Sila provided exact times and dates for checking logs. So the logs were checked and the scam was verified. And personally, I think staff should ban and refund victims in scamming cases when the fault lies on the scammer, usually because the scammer broke the terms of the good faith agreement. And they have in the past, before Sila's case. As long as there's clear evidence that a scam occurred, which einaaarr didn't have. Last edit. Borrowing itself doesn't constitute a scam. But borrowing and volitionally refusing to return the items when asked constitutes a scam.
If you look at the Skype picture you can see he sent a friend request to her ("kontaktbegäran skickad" = "contact request sent" in Swedish) so it seems like he tried to get in contact with the her. And this is what he said in the preface thread http://royals.ms/forum/threads/looking-for-my-items.57464/ = "I tried to contact her via skype/facebook without any luck she either ignored me or didnt notice." So he actually got avoided and he also tried to contact her.
Isn't Sila's case considered a "trust trade"?. I remember most of these cases being shut down by GMs saying it's the player's fault for trusting the other person. One case can be found here: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/reporting-haul-for-scamming-for-2-9billion.44979/ to which Tim replied saying "Unfortunately we cannot offer refunds for people that lose their meso/items in trust trades.". In that thread John also said that scamming is not banworthy, yet in Sila's thread Tim banned the scammer.
These 2 cases are WAY to different to even compare..... One was scammed within a 2day period where the person agreed to give them back, the other QUIT for "almost a year" and came back to the player she had lent the items to had quit apparently, and how do you know thats even the person on skype talking to her?
Haul actually got banned for scamming after a few scams from memory(i think) and items were returned(maybe :\...?)
The contact request doesn't show the friend purposely, intently avoiding her. If einaaarr showed that the friend was active on that Skype account (e.g. changing status message) and the Skype contact went unanswered all that time, that shows volitional avoidance. But einaaarr did not. We only see that she sent a Skype contact request. And nothing more. So what if that friend used that Skype specifically for Royals? And that friend quit Royals and abandoned that Skype account? What einaaarr said in the thread that you quoted has no proof. einaaarr herself said the friend "either ignored me or didnt notice." So there's no evidence that the friend is even aware that einaaarr has been trying to contact them. And this is why there's no proof that the friend had any intent to scam, so no scam occurred.
There were also clear conditions given that show the agreement terms: I trade you this glove you return it this same day before you log out. If it were different like "Im letting you borrow it until I need it" that's an indefinite and hard to determine boundary I guess you can say. We have banned for scammer as long as we can provide proof. There were other cases somewhat recent where someone provided proof of multiple attempts to contact a person over an agreed trade that one party didn't follow up on. Iirc this was a leech scam I'm thinking of. And there was another case in the past with someone over someone trading scg materials to someone else with a manual and the person with the manual took materials and ran. Right now I'mobile and having a hard time opening up 1 thread let alone 2 but overall what Shiyui explained is about right. A definite time line and agreement between traders and clear attempts at communicating to get the items back within that time. In my case I specified "before you log out". Said player proceeded to log out without returning glove, ignore forum Pms and profile posts, and created both a new in game and forum accounts t to transfer the stolen item over to. From what I understand of the other case it was "borrow these until I play again" and likely no proof of them running off with the stuff to new characters? Also we have become more clear with how we handle things as time goes on, hopefully for the better. I'm trying to speak as impartial as I can. For what it's worth I went in with my report unsure if I had enough to qualify for a proper scam report. I was nervous and I feared that I would have lost my only glove because someone decided to be a dick and take advantage of a kind gesture. A few of my close friends didn't hear the end of it. I kicked myself for only grabilla-ing the trade window not the full screen. But I was smart to have exact timestamps and dates as well as character names to supplement my ss which meant it could be tracked down. I saw the Skype IM from Tim that just said "results of your report" and I was so nervous it might have been denied because of lack of proof on my end. If you lend something to someone and have a bad feeling about it like I did, ss the full window. Make them agree to specific clear terms ie: return this in 24 hours or return this before you log out. Make multiple attempts to contact the person if you feel something is wrong. Do everything you can to rectify it without a gm, player mistakes and life does happen. I was personally going to give this guy until Monday until I discovered he had made alts. Hopefully this helps clear it up as both a gm pov and someone who was scammed.
As long as everyone else in a similar situation with similar evidence gets treated the same way as Sila from this point onwards then I suppose this is fine. I must admit I thought the stance on this server that scamming was non-refundable regardless of the situation. I suppose that isn't true, although I don't think I've seen somebody be refunded for being a victim of a scam before now. Obviously I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just not what I've seen. Even when there has been enough evidence to ban somebody for a leech scam, I don't believe the victim was refunded their money. Perhaps nobody has had enough evidence to warrant a refund up until this point. I doubt the Gms would be as eager to go looking through the logs if it was just some random and not one of their own. It's a good thing that people are being refunded, I just hope this wasn't some one-off favouritism.
As someone who frequents the report abuse section, I'm pretty sure admins had refunded scam victims before (although it does not seem like it is always the case). I did a simple search "banned for scamming" and "for scamming" in Report Abuse Section, and here's what I've found: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/scg-manual-scamming.15514/#post-88003 https://royals.ms/forum/threads/i-t...-he-didnt-give-me-the-item.58819/#post-311597 https://royals.ms/forum/threads/scam-tangogo.61830/ https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mary-scamming-leech.71749/#post-371736 https://royals.ms/forum/threads/the-lying-leecher.73262/ Although in the last case, it doesn't seem like the person had gotten a refund, or it could be the GMs were overwhelmed by new reports and didn't respond because the thread was already closed...
As I was the GM to investigate and ban Haul, I can tell you that he was not banned for scamming. I believe he was supposed to be refunded (discussed on Skype) but I'm not sure if it has actually happened, I will have to confirm this with Tim.
This was only mentioned briefly in the thread, but I've had several people message me regarding it so I would like to clear things up--this thread is not about favoritism. It is also not a witch-hunt. I apologize for bringing Sila into this; my intention was and still is to compare and clarify the two cases, not the people. As I've told my friends, I would have written the same post had the person refunded been a "normal" player, a friend of mine, or even myself (imagine that, "uh why did u refund me lol"). All in all, I think there were two points to the post: first, I found Sila's case to be similar to an older one and was confused as to why there were differing outcomes, and secondly, which I feel like many people are missing, i.e., I don't think actions performed voluntarily should be considered scams (as it pertains to incidents in the game at least, in society is a different matter altogether). I acknowledged from the start that the two cases are not exactly the same. Perhaps einaaarr wasn't the best person to reference (in that case, I blame @Azyrite (I'm jk)), but I think it still served to communicate my thoughts well and from my understanding those who have previously lost items they've lent out just accepted the consequences and never pushed for action. As I've said, I think both cases are flawed. This is my objective breakdown of them: Sila says she lent out an item. einaaarr says he lent out multiple items. Sila has no valid proof of the transaction or agreement. Her screenshot is cropped; it should not be taken into consideration at all (not how I personally think, but how the rules work). As a result, we're back to the first bullet in which we only have her words and need to decide at the end whether we believe them or not. einaaarr has no valid proof of the transaction or agreement. As a result, we're back to the first bullet in which we only have his words and need to decide at the end whether we believe them or not. Sila says she was ignored. There is no in-game evidence provided. She uses the forum as her means of proof. einaaarr says he was ignored. There is no in-game evidence provided. He uses Skype and Facebook as his means of proof. (Personally, I don't think either of the used means of proof should be accepted unless there are read receipts as whether it's with unread text, Snapchat, Facebook, Skype, etc. messages, I know a lot of the time I just let them collect and only open them when I feel like it. I'm not maliciously ignoring Bob when I see that I have a new message and don't read it (I may not even know that it's from him), I may just be preoccupied or to be blunt, indifferent.) Now for the decision-making time. Sila is ultimately missing legitimate evidence, but an admin retrieves it for her (chatlogs and different characters and accounts with evasive purposes). einaaarr is ultimately missing legitimate evidence, but there is no effort to retrieve it. Admittedly, einaaarr does not provide a time to the transaction like Sila did, but he still had a date. No, I don't know how much work is required to look into logs, but I never made the assumption that it was easy (else I would bring leech scams into this as well) and there are cases before where admins have looked into logs with only a date as their guideline anyway. Yet in einaaarr's case, it wasn't done. Going back to the previous bullet, an admin confirms for Sila that his ignorance (in the form of evasion) was true. An admin does not even suggest einaaarr to, as Akira brings up, show that the borrower was active on Skype/Facebook so that they can then investigate whether she had made new character(s)/account(s); his case is just closed. In response to @Shiyui "einaaarr herself said the friend "either ignored me or didnt notice,"" let's not play semantics and syntax. Would it really have been different if einaaarr said "my friend ignored me" versus "my friend either ignored me or didnt notice"? Either way, we are either giving his words the benefit of the doubt, or not, and double-checking to see if they are true. Moreover, it has always been my understanding that the burden is on the player to provide proof. I don't think it's wrong for admins and GMs to give players pushes in the right direction toward retrieving said proof (as could have been done for einaaarr, but wasn't), but I don't think they should be retrieving it themselves (as was done for Sila). Admins and GMs should only be confirming evidence--if they also retrieve it, then what are the requirements? That lost items and/or mesos must have values in the billions of mesos? That hardly seems fair and much too subjective; to a new player, or even to an old player that just doesn't focus on increasing his/her assets, 50, 100, 500, etc. million mesos may be worth just as much as a billion mesos to another player. In fact, a billion mesos to some players may be worth even less than 100 million mesos to another. So the differences in the endings, why? I just think this is a terrible precedent to set. Yes, it is great that a lost item was returned, but what does that mean now? Until this point, others and I have always lent out items only to people we 100% trust and under the assumption that if lost, they are gone. Now, imagine the following scenario: Someone I just met asks to borrow my claw so that he/she can complete bosses more quickly, show off, whatever. Usually I would not give him/her it unless we were close, but he/she points to Sila's thread and says, "Don't worry, just take a screenshot of the trade and I'll explicitly say that I'll return the claw by _ time--the admins/GMs will give you your item back if I don't return it." There is little reason for me or other players to refuse. And I don't like that. I really don't like that. It promotes carelessness, it promotes dishonest behaviors, it gives unfair advantages, etc. I'd love discussions as to why this should (or should not) be allowed. Although this is in a different context (and was not received very well), as Andreas said before,
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/scg-manual-scamming.15514/ Shows the both parties had an agreement and the scammer actively avoided the scammed party, demonstrating the intent to scam. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/i-trade-with-someone-but-he-didnt-give-me-the-item.58819/ Gives specific time and date for when the scam occurred, allowing staff to check logs and verify what happened. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/scam-tangogo.61830/ This case is interesting. I wouldn't expect it to end in a ban and refund. I don't see any proof that the scammer had any malicious intent. The screenshots only show the trade, and not the scammer's avoidant behavior afterwards. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mary-scamming-leech.71749/ Shows the both parties had an agreement and the scammer actively avoided the scammed party, demonstrating the intent to scam. https://royals.ms/forum/threads/the-lying-leecher.73262/ Shows the both parties had an agreement and the scammer actively avoided the scammed party, demonstrating the intent to scam. Credit to Riv for finding these. The point is that scamming has been banned and refunded for in the past. So let's not argue about GM favoritism because that's not the issue here. (I'm not speaking to Jiwoo; I'm speaking to Spectasist and the people that like their post). Simply, the reasons for why scamming incidents in the past resulted in bans and refunds are consistent with Sila's case and not einaaarr's. I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure what I'm missing. I agree that lending out items is something that one does willingly. The next two sentences express your opinion on staff policy. I don't say that derisively, so please don't take any of what I say as a personal attack or anything of the sort. I only want to civilly explain the discrepancy between the Sila and einaaarr cases. I didn't reply to what I quoted above because it's not relevant to the two cases, their circumstances, and their outcomes. If you or anyone else find any such case, please link it here! I looked at the third case linked above and stated my opinion that it should not have been denied. So I'm not just siding with staff, and I disagree with staff policy on occasion, but for the most part, I understand staff reasoning on scamming cases, the Sila and einaaarr cases included. Yes, she does. Case two justification applies: Gives specific time and date for when the scam occurred, allowing staff to check logs and verify what happened. I said this in my post above: When admins look into logs, they ask for specific times and dates to look through. Reading logs is extremely time consuming. Staff aren't going to go on a wild goose chase, spending hours through logs that spam days, weeks, months. Sila provided exact times and dates for checking logs. So the logs were checked and the scam was verified. Agree. She didn't even provide the necessary information to check logs. And her forum based evidence proved that the scammer was actively avoiding her. She PMed him and he never responded, despite being active on his forum account after she messaged him. You don't need read receipts to see that he was purposely, intently avoiding Sila. Just look at his last forum activity. Again, einaaarr never showed her friend actively avoided her. An admin retrieves it for her because Sila provided the specific times and dates to check logs. If you show that a staff member has checked logs when only going off a date and not a time, I'll agree with you that einaaarr's case was decided wrongly. But I haven't seen such an incident. Sila's case had active ignorance. einaaarr's case had passive ignorance. The former shows intent. The latter does not. So what if einaaarr's friend got in a car accident and was in the hospital for three months? If passive ignorance was accepted as showing intent and thus, a scam occurred, einaaarr's friend would get banned. And what about when they were released from the hospital and saw they were banned for scamming? Does the friend have to show staff their medical records for their ban appeal? Because nothing, nothing at all, showed that the friend knew that einaaarr was trying to contact them and that the friend was actively avoiding her. The above is a hypothetical, of course. But the point is that passive ignorance is fundamentally different from active ignorance. I agree that a staff member should have told einaaarr what evidence she was missing. It's not staff responsibility though. So yes, I personally agree with you. But from a professional standpoint, the outcome of the einaaarr case is valid. I would appreciate if you don't accuse me of playing games. We have to examine language and the implications of it when we're going off of he said, she said evidence. If einaaarr said "my friend ignored me," that still doesn't show that the friend demonstrated active avoidant behavior. But einaaarr saying "my friend either ignored me or didnt notice" strongly suggests that the friend never demonstrated active avoidant behavior to begin with. It's not a question if we are or not; we are not giving einaaarr's words the benefit of the doubt. Because there's no evidence. Also, question. The issue here is that einaaarr didn't show the friend's intent to scam (i.e. active avoidant behavior). How would staff verify this? We could say einaaarr tried contacting the friend on such and such date. But do we expect staff to check every single log of every single character the friend had? I don't think either of us do. All the logs in Sila's case span less than 24 hours. Within those 24 hours, Sila specified when her glove was supposed to be returned to her. Completely agree. Staff retrieve proof (i.e. check logs) when there's sufficient information to go off of. Sila had that, einaaarr did not. No, and I don't know where you got that from. To staff members, I ask you to state, officially, under what conditions scammed players will be refunded. Here is my understanding. Please confirm or deny if what I think is true. First, you must have proof that both scammer and scammed party agreed to the terms of the good faith agreement. (e.g. Scammed party: I'm lending you my gear, but I need you to give it back to me before you log off today." Scammer: "Okay."). You must also show what gear you gave them, preferably with an SS of every item, while in the trade window. And of course, include the screenshot of the trade being successful. When the scammer breaks their end of the agreement (e.g. logging off without giving the gear back), the scammed party must make multiple efforts over a significant period of time to contact the scammer and resolve the situation. This may include but is not limited to PMing them on forums, leaving profile messages on their forum account, whispering them in game, finding them in game directly, and so on. If the scammer does not resolve the situation with the scammed party, either by ignoring messages for days while showing activity that they should have read and received those messages or avoiding the scammed party by ccing or logging out when contacted, the scammed party can then demonstrate that they attempted to resolve the situation multiple times and over the course of those multiple times, the scammer's refusal to resolve the situation will demonstrate their intent to scam and thus, that a scam has truly occurred. In such a situation, the scammer is at fault because the scammed party committed no player error and thus eligible for a refund. Carelessness, no. Going off the guidelines in the above paragraph, the player shows they painstakingly took precautions against getting scammed. Dishonest behaviors, no. If staff would clarify under exactly what circumstances that scamming is bannable, scammers wouldn't exploit the system and the playerbase's lack of knowledge on when and why scamming is bannable. Unfair advantages, no. Are you saying that players should never borrow another's gear and everyone should only use gear that they made and/or bought themselves? You borrowed Erik's gear, and there's nothing wrong with that! Again, not if the red tape for bannable scamming reports is as high as the red tape for bannable ksing reports. The requirements for bannable ksing reports was raised to cut down on petty reports. The same logic for scamming reports applies. If people don't have sufficient evidence, like in einaaarr's case, it's denied and if they do, like in Sila's case, it's approved, ending in a ban on the scammer and refund for the scammed player.
Okay I've read through this whole thread, and while both cases are pretty ambiguous, I think it comes down to the fact that Sila was able to have her chat/trade logs reviewed whereas einaaarr didn't get to have that chance. Both players provided a similar amount of evidence (very little), but were able to produce a date where the scam occurred. Sila was able to give a more exact time, but searching through 1 day's worth of logs shouldn't have been that much harder. If you ignore the evidence provided in the logs, Sila didn't even have proof that the guy intended to give the glove back, as a simple "yeah?" as a response could even be interpreted sarcastically. The scammer also had all of his associated accounts banned which likely would not have happened had a normal player reported him.
Often in scam cases, players allegedly being scammed/reporting abuse will ask the staff to check logs, and the staff will say that it's up to the player to provide proof for ban, rather than to ask the player to provide a specific time to check logs. There are examples where specific times are provided, but staff did not check logs (one example here). Another example showed that perhaps policy for checking logs is somewhat unclear, where one staff member refused to proceed further with the request even though specific time was provided, but another staff member later may have gone further to look into logs (it is unclear whether she banned the accused based on evidence provided or looked into the logs herself). Edit: missed a word.
I think all in all losing things you lent out shouldn't be a scam because after all you are willingly giving someone else your items so whatever happens from that point on should be your responsibility
Keep in mind i also had more evidence of him actively avoiding that I provided in private because it was not information generally accessible to the public like alternate account creation under the same IP and forum activity on said alt account. I won't comment on anything else for now as I'm out of town and mobile still. But providing more proof in Pm is always an option as well and clouds what people see as " little to no proof".
So essentially you were able to get information a non staff member couldn't get and therefore were able to gain a refund? On a side note, lending more expensive equipment to a person that you just recently met is rather naive even if you believe that they are nice or a good person. *I'm not saying that that's a bad thing that sila was able to be resourceful, just trying to clarify the situation
It's a bit naive to assume that everybody here is given equal treatment, there will always be people given special treatment over the rest and that doesn't just happen in this server but life in general. Not saying that's what happened here but it's not absurd to think that. We're all guilty of this because we all have these personal rules that we pridefully hold onto and refuse others to break yet if a situation arises where our beloved friends or family break them, we make an exception. As much as I'd like to sit here and say that I treat everybody equally without any bias, that just simply isn't true and we're all the same in that regard one way or another.
TLDR, but I did skim the key parts of this forum. All-in-all, it does seem naive to just let somebody you have known for a short time borrow the equipment. It is also partly your responsibility because not only do they agree to take care of your equipment, you also gave consent to let them borrow it.
