Spot stealing: illegal or not?

I see where you're coming from. This is a nice analogy.

What if the person who camped there is a friend of the person selling the spot? I feel like this has the same premise as scamming, which was discussed in a feedback thread. Someone suggested for scamming to be included in the T&C, but it's been 2 years since that thread was opened, so the request might have been denied. Maybe FM Snipers that steal sold spots could be punished via blacklist community?

I guess that I'm up for the free-for-all aspect when reopening your shop, so it doesn't necessarily feel like you're hogging the spot all the way until server check. BUT, stealing a spot that a person sold to someone else is quite ludicrous and should definitely be punishable or blacklist-worthy.

 

Yeah well, even if it wasn't an accomplice I felt like I got scammed as well.
In that case it didn't feel like an accomplice since he set up his own shop directly after stealing the spot.

Justice isn't really being served if you let spot campers / snipers and macro users get their way.
It only encourages more people to use dirty tricks and unethical behaviour to gain meso in the FM.

They sit at someone's spot for hours on-end and usually run a macro to steal someone's spot. It's really a shame that the GMs find this non-punishable right now.

In effect, the one who stole my spot gained 80m (of spot resale value) and I lost 80m for nothing. Is that really fair?

The blacklist community you mentioned won't be able to do anything much about this.

 

The problem is your buying something that's not really owned by anyone. You're pretty much paying for closing their store, you can't buy ownership of the spot itself.

Obviously it's a shitty thing, but i really don't think it should be a bannable offence. (Apart from using a macro, which already is bannable but hard to prove in this situation)

 

I'd argue that you do in fact own the spot - temporarily. Of course it's not yours permanently since there are server resets and you may forget to reset the shop.

I mean if you say that you don't own the spot, how is it possible that some spots have values like 80mil attached to them, yet still have buyers for that amount?

I don't know if you noticed, but certainly people are keen on buying FM spots (lots of smegas asking for them), and I have sold many in the past as well for 20-30m each.

 

I would argue you never really 'own' the spot. It's free game and if your shop is there obviously no one else can put their store there. But you never 'own' the actual space you're filling with your store.

People are paying mesos for others to close their store. The amount of mesos attached to it doesn't change that fact.

 

they use hacks, they leave mules behind the stores for hours, even if you try to reset the store and reopen it from another angle with another character in less than 1 second after closing it the hackers will still take the spot because the hack they use works in milliseconds

 

also there is a new hack going on, some kind of surfing bot, if you place your character right in the center of your store their bot appears in the map right where you are, this would not normally be possible because when you switch channels you appear at certain spots, but somehow the hackers manage to surf quickly within the rooms and if you are about to reset your store they appear right where you are and steal the spot with hack, i'm actually surprised this hasn't been banned, i've seen this happening for awhile now

 

You're still not answering my reply, so why would there be value associated to it and a market for buying/selling spots if no-one owns the spot and it's "Free game"?

Well it's this very mentality that causes so much grief for the FM community. This kind of thinking just encourages people to camp your FM spot and get away with selling your spot for mesos that they gain in the end.

I assume that you haven't got a spot stolen from you or being camped by someone using a macro or a hack like the previous reply by @Cami .

 

This isn’t a hack. It’s a technique used to ensure you’re 100% on the perfect spot to open/reopen a store in a squished space. You use an owl and teleport to the store, it places you precisely in the middle, which is where you’d need to be to guarantee you can open the store for immediately when it closes. I’ve actually used it against the people who steal spots (unsuccessfully, because as mentioned prior they do use third party programs, just not for what you outlined here).

Think of it like paid parking. You can put time (money) in the meter, but once you move your car it is open for somebody else to take despite you having put money into paying for the space for the duration which your car was parked there. You do not own the parking spot. You paid to rent it until you moved your car.

 

A macro and/or using a hack already is bannable, so there's no point discussing that.

The fact that people attach a value to something isn't an argument for them actually owning the spot, especially after they close it.
As mentioned earlier, you're never stelling/buying a spot. You are selling/buying closing a store. You can't control what happens with the spot once your store is gone, so you can never guarantee the buyer can actually open their store there.

The main difference with the parking spot analogy is that someone else actually owns it, even if no car is parked there. This is not the case in royals, no one owns that space.

 

these hacks are difficult to detect futak, the only way to do it is with video, a screenshot is not enough, hacks might be bannable, but these specific hacks as of now are not bannable yet because they continue to use them, and yes, no one owns the space, but the hackers have the advantage because they don't take one spot, but several, many more, and that defeats the spirit of the game, of a clean game.

 

It sounds like you have encountered quite a lot of these hackers. I have no doubt that they exist and since you already know how to record them, can you please post an example of one? If they are so many of them, to an extent they'll defeat the spirit of the game, I'd guess it won't be too difficult to spot them. It'll raise awareness among people and help countering them.

 

I honestly don't think it's similar to parking irl where when you drive the car out of the spot, the spot is no longer yours anymore and up for anyone to grab.

I believe it to be more worthy to be considered as temporary virtual real-estate.

Here's why:
- The spots have different values attached to them, according to supply and demand -- Think how desired a FM1 door spot is in comparison to a FM20 spot for instance. Everyone wants that FM1 door spot and some are willing to pay hundreds of million mesos for that spot, can the same be said for a FM20 spot? No.

- And it totally makes sense to buy it for that amount since your items will sell quicker with more traffic in the FM1 and earn you back the meso spent for the spot. Better location of virtual real-estate = more traffic = more profit earned.

- Does random car parking in the shopping mall work the same way and have different values depending on better locations? No.

- You can sell your spot to buyers who are looking for that spot, and you will get a lot of buyers if your spot is in FM1. Can you sell your shopping-mall parking spot IRL? Maybe but chances are people will just laugh at you.

As such I really hope the GMs can take spot stealing more seriously as they are making a profit off of doing this and it is akin to cyber crime. They are stealing other people's virtual real-estate and ending up being rewarded for it instead of being punished.

 

In the perspective of someone who's planning and waiting to take over a good spot, there's 0 difference whether the closing of shop was intended for a simple reset by the previous owner or a result of payment by a 3rd person. If one calls that cyber crime...jeez.


Here's what it'll look like in real life.

Location: Public parking lot outside a shopping mall

[A parks his car in the best spot, right next to the entrance to the mall]

[A's friend B tells A that he's willing to pay 5USD if A allows B to park B's car in the spot instead]

[A takes the money and pulls his car out of the spot]

[Before B manages to get his car to the spot, C, who was waiting for the spot's opening grabs the chance to park his car in the spot]

[A and B goes to C and complain that C's move is a crime because B paid A for the spot]

[C stares at both in awe and tells them this is a public parking lot, not reserved or paid]

It doesn't matter whether people decide to put values to public spot and pay each other for it. It's still an open, public area, provided by the server, available to anyone who first shoves in their head .

 

That is a valid way of thinking about it.

But do you really think that this is a healthy way of thinking and the way it should be?

I mean it will already likely cause a fight in real life.

It’s also different because here the spot stealers are well aware of the fact that it’s someone else’s spot that they are stealing from.

And how does it feel to get a 100mil spot stolen from you? Trust me it’s not a good feeling and one that makes you want to quit maple.

If the shops all have even value associated to it then this won’t be as big of a problem.

Let’s say the positions of the fm entrances like 1-22 were coded to get shuffled every 10 minutes or something. So this means that the first, and most convenient fm entrance is random and could be any number.

What this does would make all the fm spots more even in terms of value and thus discourage people from camping, sniping and stealing those FM1-3 spots.

 

First of all, if I had a 1-1 fm spot, I wouldn't engrave a 100m value to that "temporary" public space I grabbed. Why do you still believe the current shop owner is entitled as the "owner" of the public space? The parking spot is occupied by the car that was first parked there but the owner of the car has 0 ownership of that "space". It belongs to whoever actually owns the "land", in royals's case = the server it self.

Selling public space for profit is out of selfish ambition, for personal gains at the cost of other's convenience. In reality, every legal citizen (paying taxes and such) has the equal right to use the public facilities. If the parking lot is owned by the shopping mall, every customer of the mall has equal right to park wherever they want, be it the best or the worst spot. In royals case, every legal player who registered and downloaded the client to take part of the game has equal right to set up their shop anywhere in fm. By encouraging sales of best fm spots, you are effectively preventing others (who aren't willing to pay for spots) from enjoying the best fm spots. This custom appeals more unhealthy to me than competing for spots which is natural in a free market. If one attempts to sell public space with mutual agreement, risk of take over by a 3rd person should be an obvious factor in the equation.

The same way you prefer good spots over bad ones, others also want good spots in fm and there's no rule stating that they have to pay to get them. After a server reset, 1st grabbers didn't pay 100m to get the nice fm 1-1 spot but they "competed" with every other quick login players to grab the spot. It's natural for others to compete for the same space when the 24 hour parking ticket expires or whenever they want to pull out. Why should that space safely belong to first grabbers even after expiration, without a chance for others, when both parties have equal right for the spot?

 

Hakuna Matata, take Channel 1 Rooms above 6

 

be a normal person n set up ur shop in room 1 of ur guild channel

 

If you think spot stealing is illegal or community blacklist worthy then you should be banned instead. Scamming is blacklist worthy, but I don't think its illegal.

 

What would be considered the proper amount of evidence to report individuals who have been standing in my spot with a mule for over 10 hours running what I can only assume to be a macro/hack to claim the spot immediately upon my shop's closure?

Would two timestamped screenshots (beginning and after x amount of hours) of the individuals staying in the same spot as well as a video of myself (unsuccessfully) attempting to reopen the shop in less than 2 or so seconds suffice?

Curious because I've been dealing with this issue recently. I've been setting my shop after server resets in Ch1FM1 with a store permit as opposed to a hired merchant, and the parked character with the store permit attracts these sad individuals like bees to honey.