Community Blacklist

I won't be discussing the evidence submitted above, and whether or not it's enough to get a ban from a Staff's perspective so please do not ask me, I'm just simply commenting because I thought about it over the past day or two and I just wanted to shed some light on the banning process for scammers. I'm not really directing this at anybody I'm just summing up my thoughts on the situation and trying to respond to everything that was mentioned previously.

It's currently 1st offence 14 days and 2nd offence permanent. I don't know what's short about it...?
It would be a bit extreme perma-banning a player if they scammed a low end amount for their 1st offence, no?
Unfortunately, the person scamming could just re-make a new mule and start the process all over again if they do get nailed with 1st offence, in that scenario there's not really much we could do (besides continuously banning those mules for eternity...) as it would be up to the person looking to sell their APRs to as Sen put it, use common sense to protect themselves, and gauge the situation/person who is promising you riches for your sweet, succulent APRs.

I do think there should be a clause added similar to vote abuse/account sharing (IE: Staff have a right to skip 1st offence completely if its severe enough) because if someone's getting away with 1-2b+ items and continuously getting away with it, then yeah I'd probably label it severe enough to bypass the 1st offence provided we have proper evidence documented for us to go forward with the hypothetical ban in this conversation, and if other Staff also agree with that kind of thinking during the discussion.

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I understand being frustrated at the current rules and wanting to put the blame solely on those, I get it-- I truly do. However, in my entire time of being on Staff I have only seen 1 or 2 people get successfully banned for scamming because the evidence required for us to issue the ban for scamming was always incomplete and we couldn't continue further with the banning process.

Evidence can be "concrete" however if they do not capture everything we need to place the ban on them for scamming we're unable to continue forward with the ban. The evidence needed to get on the blacklist is unfortunately a bit different than reporting it because you mainly just need a screenshot of the scam after it happened and usually that'll get them added to the list, but for getting somebody banned we do need additional evidence required to move forward with that approach.

With that being said, please please please report these people even if you think a ban won't happen.
It helps us keep track of problematic individuals and it could open the doors for Staff discussions on case by case situations.
It could lead to a ban if more people come forward but it needs to be reported because we don't accept any blacklist posts as valid reports. (Unless its to show the individual's patterns, and aiding the current evidence you have gathered in your report.)

Here is the required evidence needed to increase your chances of getting a successful report to nail these problematic people copy-pasted from the Capturing Evidence thread:

Scamming:

• Record the entire interaction to protect yourself and properly report the scammer in question.
• Include evidence of agreement (agreed price of item/service, items included in trade, ~servertime, party window, your exp bar (if buying leech) etc.) In the case of expeditions or boss runs, please ensure that the agreement on who is entitled to what is settled prior to entering the expedition, and that this is clearly visible in the evidence.
• Include evidence that agreement wasn't met (include ~servertime command to show time duration, screenshots of person offline or gone, your exp bar, party window)
• Include evidence that the other part doesn't intend on rectifying the issue (chat screenshots, etc).
• Please understand that Staff does not refund/return/pay back any transactions.

I agree the hoops you have to jump through are a lot, especially to have a higher chance at getting a successful scam-related ban, however in the same vein there's a reason why it has to be like this. Ignoring the "Include evidence of agreement/agreement not being met" portion of the evidence needed will open doors for people to lie, or splice together screenshots to make it look like the truth. (It has happened before, and it didn't work.) Or get their friends in on the report and have them accuse the person in question even if they didn't do anything wrong. Then we would need to get an Admin to verify chatlogs when they are already backlogged, and then on top of that it will open the doors for "well how come so and so had an Admin check their chatlogs?? Why can't you get mine checked too??" Which will lead us into requesting the Admin for essentially every single report so they can search through the chatlogs for every single incident dealing with missing chatlog information that wasn't gathered initially by the reporter otherwise they would get labelled as "cherrypicking certain reports."

So it's really an "everybody gets special treatment" or "nobody gets special treatment" when it comes for requesting Admins to check chatlogs for scamming or harassment reports which is why we rely on YOU (the person reading this) to document the evidence needed when making a report.

It is up to the reporter to gather as much evidence as they can. Our chatboxes can hold over ~10 hours of text now instead of the 64 lines they could do previously, tab out and read the Capturing Evidence thread that is pinned under Report Abuse and try to document everything you possibly can.
There's no time-crunch to grab evidence because in the past having a shorter chatbox evidence would get washed away quickly, but now it's easy to scroll up and gather everything you can that supports your case.

A lot of the evidence submitted via Report Abuse unfortunately does not cover what we need in order to land a successful ban for scammers. It pains us just as much as you guys because we obviously don't want these people in our community, but in the same vein we also have to be fair to everyone because contrary to popular belief we don't ban first ask questions later. (Unless it's a very serious incident such as RWTing and the Admins noticed dodgy/suspicious trades/logs taking place with them.) We need that evidence of the initial interaction agreeing upon the terms, and then showing the agreed upon terms not being met as well, otherwise we have to decline it and it does suck knowing someone got away once again because the proper evidence was not captured.

It's a lot of work that needs to be done in the heat of the moment, I record any kind of deal (end of boss kills, trading APRs, hell even letting someone borrow a chair/wanting to try on expensive NX lol) that could end poorly. I am using Windows 10 its just as easy as pressing the Windows key + G to get the gamebar capture to appear and then press the record button. It takes me ~2-3 seconds minimum to get a video started.

This part's a bit difficult to word and I apologize of any miscommunication stems from it: I don't want to put the blame solely on the victims, however in the same breath due diligence does need to be done and expecting to not get scammed is unfortunately wishful thinking. People get scammed everywhere and its an unfortunate truth, I learned my lesson when I was 7-8 years old in GMS someone wanted to try on my brown bandana and poof! Like a fart in the wind they were gone, and never to be seen again. RIP my brown bandana.

Most of the scammers are using mules and for a good reason-- to avoid getting crucified publicly and any other consequences that may come their way. It's already been listed in here what to look out for and such, so because of that I just want to touch on a few ideas and suggestions that were already submitted above:

Don't do trades with characters that look like mules: low level (under 120 to be safe), basic NX, default hair/faces, bathrobe wearing noobs, guildless, etc.
Ask for a 50/50 split up front, or ask for the person buying the APRs (in this situation) to pay you first. If they get all whiny and weird its safe to assume it's a scam and you are more than allowed to back out of the deal if you do not feel comfortable going through with it.

I want to encourage those of you who can be bothered to record these interactions because it will greatly increase the rate of these scamming reports to actually get banned. Recording with Windows 10 takes literally ~ 3 seconds to set it up and hit record and will definitely help us in removing these people from our community.

Notes:
When I took over the Blacklist back in 2019 I went out of my way to create a "How To Report" thread because at the time the current Staff "How To Report" didn't cover scamming, and even with those additional steps I am still seeing scamming reports unfortunately getting denied because it didn't capture the required evidence we need.

Spoiler: Thread I made in 2019

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/how-to-report-a-scammer-101.146432/

Spoiler: Staff Capturing Evidence for Reports Thread

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/capturing-evidence-for-reports.177814/
Scamming:

• Record the entire interaction to protect yourself and properly report the scammer in question.
• Include evidence of agreement (agreed price of item/service, items included in trade, ~servertime, party window, your exp bar (if buying leech) etc.) In the case of expeditions or boss runs, please ensure that the agreement on who is entitled to what is settled prior to entering the expedition, and that this is clearly visible in the evidence.
• Include evidence that agreement wasn't met (include ~servertime command to show time duration, screenshots of person offline or gone, your exp bar, party window)
• Include evidence that the other part doesn't intend on rectifying the issue (chat screenshots, etc).
• Please understand that Staff does not refund/return/pay back any transactions.