At this point, maybe we should just let GM's decide what the verdict is. There's lots of sufficient proof where a scam took place, followed by a ban. At the same time, a ban was "not in the ToC", and even with proof, the scammer got away with it. I would just like to add: there's not a lot of consistency when it comes to trivial topics such as this. One day a player gets banned for something really bizarre (smega'ing "tits") and the next day the staff "can't do much" because it's too much of a workload to investigate a case. That's not my personal opinion, rather, it's the opinion of A LOT of people on the server. I'd really like to see scamming stop on this server. It makes it less enjoyable. Thanks for your consideration.
First thing's first - I'm not a GM, I do no banning, and I don't make any gameplay decisions. I'm a developer, and at that, I contribute long hours nearly every day (including most weekends) working towards creating a better playing environment for everyone, and with that, I work alongside the rest of the staff on a daily basis - I hear all about all of the decisions they make, the solutions they come up with, and most importantly, their lives outside of MapleRoyals. A GM position here is not something that rewards time spent with money - it's a volunteer position that 15 people have agreed to uphold with no compensation beyond simple 'thank you's. With that said, our team works harder than some professional teams I've worked with (people who were paid in the higher 5-figure/lower 6-figure range), putting in anywhere from a few hours a day upwards to committing to 12 hour shifts, if not longer. To them, this is the equivalent of a full-time job, which they have to manage alongside real life obligations (because, don't forget, the staff consists of people - people with lives that don't only consist of MapleRoyals). To say that they aren't working hard enough or that they don't have the dedication is preposterous. On top of that, consider this: what's going on behind the scenes is a huge undertaking - running a server on software that wasn't put together well, while helping me create a server that'll ease the workload on the staff (through not needing as many rewarps, not having to do item refunds, etc.). MapleStory itself is no pristine example of engineering either; creating a server for a game that you haven't made yourself, with no reference to how the official game does things, and dealing with all of the oddities that come with it, is significantly harder than creating a game from scratch. Tying that back in with the topic of scamming, how would you go about tracking scams? For scams like trade scams, all we can reliably go off of is chat logs (which do get put to use whenever a scam is investigated), and even with that, the guiltiness of the scammer is not always crystal clear. This doesn't take scams that are harder to track into consideration, like scamming people out of their mesos for leech. Adding more staff members doesn't always provide a better solution, as the problem isn't always about the amount of time that can be dedicated to investigations, but rather, the fact that some stuff is harder to look into (which is something the new source should improve upon, but even at that, there's only so much that can be done). In short, it's unjust to undermine the staff's arduous efforts to create a fair experience for everyone given the amount of work they do for free. Only a knob gobbler wouldn't appreciate the work done by the GMs.
Making criticisms =/= no appreciation. It might seem like I'm just flaming on the forums but believe me I do care about the longevity of the server, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time here. What I said earlier about never working hard enough wasn't meant to be targeted towards anyone, I was simply stating a philosophy I live by; there's always room to improve.
I want to mention this real quick, since I feel like it's slightly relevant; You're right, people can always work harder, and you're right, every single one of the GMs are not constantly doing something related to staff work around the clock. The issue is that saying that we should be doing this to catch scammers, and that nothing is a staff waste of time is ridiculous; if you needed to paint a wall, and we gave you a toothbrush, and then stood off to the side with a nice big roller and whined to you about why you're not going faster, you'd get upset, would you not? If you were curious, the last week or so in our private chats have been dominated by two topics; what we're going to do about scamming, and the nightmare of a server check 24 hours ago. I've said numerous times that some things are unreasonable to look up and spend time investigating in cases of minor scamming and I wholly stand by that statement. With all the logs in the world, we still have far less power in ostracizing certain types of scammers than the community does. Like @ReconKatana said, has anyone heard of Jacto recently? Staff took no action against him. Where there is consistency lies in how straightforward a case is. You by smegaing things that are inappropriate are being inappropriate, and it is plainly in front of everyone's eyes to see that. There is no behind-the-scenes deal, there is no private conversation, just you smega'ing nasty stuff that the majority of people should not be seeing. Therefore, you are instantly banned. In the case of scamming, there are other things in play. The conversation, the payment, the action or service taking place. It's not as easy to see when someone is actually a scammer.
If you're stupid enough to be scammed, you deserve to be. Another poster said it best: unlike hacking, YOU allow the scammer to scam you by pressing the trade button.
Your post is largely unhelpful. Can you explain how you'd engage in a trade for an item over 2.2b without at one point or another having to give money without receiving anything in return? Can you explain how you'd sell a player a Zakum Helmet, Horntail Pendant, or leech without first providing the service as the seller (or giving money in trust as the buyer)? Scams are not always avoidable, period. There are times when you can be confident in not being scammed, if for example your trading partner is someone you've been recommended, know as an upstanding member of the community, etc, but even then you are not 100% sure they will not just take money and run. Please do not post in a thread if you have nothing to contribute.
I strongly disagree with this statement. NO ONE deserves to be scammed. Blaming the victims of scams for trusting others is like blaming rape victims for the way they dress. Whom do you want to punish, the rapist or the victim? The scammer, or the scammed? I say this. If a person leaves their door unlocked, and someone sneaks in and steals all his jewelry, then if you find him, you arrest and imprison that son-of-a-bitch. Letting a criminal go free because "the victim should've locked his door" is unjust and idiotic. Yes, it can be difficult to prove that a case of scamming occurred. However, if sufficient evidence is obtained, especially if we're dealing with a repeat offender, then the scammer should not be given any leniency. Obviously, however, most scammers will get away with it, and no one wants the staff to chase wild geese trying to track down every case. So the only way to deal with scamming is to have the game's programming handle it instead of the staff: Instead of arguing over who deserves what or how much blood/sweat/tears the staff invest into their work, we could be coming up with brilliant solutions like this.
His post was bad. As a buyer you would simply never give someone mesos without receiving something. If im buying something over 2.2 I make them trade the item when they receive the first max mesos. If they refuse I simply don't go through with the deal. If I'm selling one of the items you mentioned or any item over 2.2 I make them pay first. As it stands it's not possible to protect both parties in any trade, But it is possible to always protect yourself. You may lose out on some deals, but doing what I've mentioned will make it impossible for you be scammed. While frank didn't word it very kindly I would agree that being on the side of the deal that is at risk is stupid.
That scenario is purposely setup make someone mad that I don't think it's possible for me to get upset knowing it, I'd probably have a giant smirk on my face the whole time and have a good time! How about some of the reports that are blatantly clear? I can only recall Haul's case off the top of my head but I think everybody here can agree that he's a confirmed scammer, the fact that he hasn't said a word on these accusations plus the discovery of multiple forum accounts pretty much cements it. To me, scam reports are no different than any other report, the victim takes a screenshot of what happened and if a gm deems it banworthy then that person gets banned. In a smuggle report for example, there are no hard proof evidence of anything, just a screenshot of the chat dialogue that shows so and so is about to smuggle but not the actual act of smuggling. Or how about some of the permanent bans that've been given to people who jokingly say they'll ddos the server? None of you can prove what happened in the report to be true unless you do some investigating yourself and in the latter example, that person wouldn't even get a chance even if he was genuinely kidding. I doubt you guys dedicate much time on harassment reports and just take the screenshots at face value and if that's the case, why can't you do the same for scam reports? Also, that final little bit you said about Jacto got me intrigued. The way I interpreted that was, because Jacto has stayed quiet for these past couple of months, the multiple scams he's pulled before gets overlooked and becomes okay. By that logic, you could apply the same kind of treatment to every case; harassment, glitch abuse, kill stealing, etc. Someone massed defamed you the other day? Oh but he stopped doing it ever since. This person's been smuggling lmpq passes? Oh but he stopped doing it after he reached level 72. This asshole stole my bigfoot? Oh but he hasn't kill stealed since then. How come there aren't any freebies in those cases? There's just this huge lack of consistency on what's bannable and what isn't. The only reason I can think of this is because you want to ban certain things and you don't want to ban scammers. Regardless of how great your reasons may be for not banning scammers, at the end of the day it all comes down to you not wanting to deal with them. If none of what we say in this thread have any impact on the final decision (which is what it seems like), why couldn't a staff just say "we're not dealing with scammers no matter what" and closed the thread right from the get-go? At this point, everything we say here is meaningless.
The reason this thread wasn't closed from the get-go is because no matter what it might seem like to you or to anyone else, mate, we're trying to fix the issue.
Apologies for the double post; my earlier one was made right after I woke up with the worst migraine of my life, and I just saw the end of your post which was blatantly toxic and absolutely incorrect, so I responded that and shelved this until I could think straight. Re: Jacto, there are of course multiple methods of interpreting what happened, the one I'm most convinced is true is that the entire community knows who he is and what he does, and so he hasn't been able to scam someone. Maybe he's lying low, or maybe people are ostracizing him, but in either case, he hasn't been able to do anything bad recently, whether he wanted to or not. That's at least the way I see it, but of course, nobody knows why but that player himself. The difference between a scam report and any other report to me, is that it's difficult to prove with a string of screenshots exactly whether or not a player was scammed, like I've said multiple times in past. It's very easy to screenshot a player damage hacking or vaccing, slightly more difficult to screenshot a kser or a botting but still reasonably possible. It was mentioned to me once that we would ban for three defames (3mil mesos to buy back) but not for 60mil lost in a leech scam, and that doesn't make sense. A mass defame takes 1-3 screenshots and a 5 second command that any GM can do on a whim. A scam investigation is not quite so easy. What needs to be made clear is that I personally, and I speak with confidence when I say that I'm sure my fellow staff members are the same, would never ban someone for something that isn't seriously violating the rules (read: duping, serious accountsharing) without fully believing that there is no way that player is not in the wrong. We strive for 100% ban accuracy when we manually ban players because we all know how frustrating unmerited bans can be. Spoiler: Why ban accuracy is important Right now, another common feel in this community is that we ban for a lot of different things and it's making people afraid to use even the language that they're used to using naturally while they play our game. And I fully understand why the feel that way. There is a natural fear of people using words... that's not good. Words that have negative connotations? Yes. Words that don't belong in public? Arguably. Words that our administration do not want in public? Undeniable. And that's why it is the way it is. We don't want scammers here any more than you do, but any sort of scamming ban system absolutely needs to be an accurate one, because, reverse engineering the above, we as staff don't want scammers, the community all agrees that they don't want scammers. But who gets the short end of the stick in a wrongful ban for scamming? Likely a higher leveled mage who did nothing but want to sell some leech, or a group of attackers that just wanted to make a bit of money off of their daily Zakum, or even someone perfectly legitimate just trying to buy or sell some items. Those people should not have to watch their backs in order to do these things. That being said, we have a glaring problem; how to balance the difficulty of screenshot evidence with regards to scams and how to accurately make decisions. In simpler words: what are we going to ask you to screenshot to be sure that you can prove you were scammed? It's not easy to say, as every scam is just a little bit different. This is where us as staff come in with the expanse of knowledge that we've got. As I've said before, the more we have to go off of, the easier an investigation is. If we have very little, it's very time consuming for us to find the truth of a situation, to the point where it honestly seems like a lot of work over a relatively minor offence. In a situation like Haul's, as has been mentioned in past, we're willing to do that. In a situation where it's simply someone reporting a leech scam, it's a lot more difficult to justify the amount of work. One of those situations is billions of mesos, one of them is millions. The more we have, the faster something gets solved, the more efficiently we can do away with the bad members of society and leave the good ones untouched. You may think it's naive to believe that this is possible, but I don't; I personally want to find a system that is both efficient and accurate, and that system simply hasn't been found or proposed yet. I will leave you all with this message; like I said before, there has been about a good solid week of discussing scammers and how to do away with them, and we're approaching a conclusion that hopefully proves to be just what I said I wanted. On one final note, I need to say that this system has arisen because of the people who have posted in this thread with positive, meaningful things to contribute, (which includes some of what the poster I've quoted above has written) and has not arisen due to players coming to us and screaming that we're doing nothing to solve the problem (which is what the poster I've quoted has ended his post with). I implore you all to please try to remain on topic and help us help you. When you try to put the words in our mouths that we don't care to solve the problem, or that we don't care about your opinions, you really, honestly, truly accomplish nothing, because neither of those points are true, they never have been, and they never will be.
As long as you educate yourself on the current scam techniques being utilised here then scams become easy to avoid and become only a minor social inconvenience. Use the trade system; play sensibly, responsibly and safe so you avoid any potential scams. Spoiler PS: I DO remember Jacto
I want to thank everyone for your posts on solutions and opinion I read them all with delight I had no idea this thread would become so big. So many had so much to say! ReconKatana, thank you for making this thread, this was a good idea I now have more insight on the problem from hearing the staff explain everything clearly which I wouldn't have otherwise. Unfortunately I haven't come up with a good idea but I also want to be useful to this thread so I also cast my vote. For now I have to say that I vote for Katsurukas idea unless anyone has another better idea to come with. There were other good ideas however I liked this one the most.
Can I suggest the following. 1. Engage in rude, unlawful, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, threatening, abusive or otherwise objectionable behavior, including, without limitation, looting, kill stealing, making sexual comments; Punishment: 1st offence - 3 day ban, 2nd offence - 7 day ban, 3rd offence - permanent ban 2. Transmit any content that is unlawful, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, sexually explicit, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, or that could be deemed to be stalking or constitute an invasion of a right of privacy of another person. Punishment: 1st offence - 3 day ban, 2nd offence - 7 day ban, 3rd offence - permanent ban Scamming falls under objectionable behavior and transmission of fraudulent content. No one wants to be scammed or feel good getting scammed so it's objectionable behavior. The scamming involves transmitted content in form of a chat/written words with the only purpose to deceit the other part so it's fraudulent content. It's there in the rules, you just have to read into it a bit. So first offence: 6 day ban (3+3), 2nd offence (7+7 = actually a 3rd and 4th offence) perma ban.
It would be great if everyone just played fair, but since that is absolutely impossible, awareness is my best suggestion. Having these conversations only helps inform players who would otherwise be taken advantage of. I have come to a hard realization that we cannot stop all scamming from happening, despite our best efforts. Having open conversations when someone is scammed, only leads to more informed players and fewer Targets. It would be nice if the community blacklist was a little more in the open. As of right now its under Character Issues, under the Minor Offenses tab. While I wouldnt call this buried, It took me 2 months of active forum visitng, before I happened to stumble acrossed the thread.
1) Stop buying/selling leech. 2) If you choose to contribute to our inflation problem for a petty amount of extra meso rather than caring for the good of the server and respecting why there's a tax in the first place, too fucking bad if you get scammed. 3) Why we insist on giving cancerous players (scammers, botters) second chances is completely beyond me. They will never play by the rules. They are unnecessary extra work for the staff. Permaban their stupid asses and send them off to the next server on gtop.
It was recently brought to my attention that a scammer was actually perma banned. I wont say who as i respect the person who told me. But it can and does happen. The regularity may be slower than some would hope, but for me knowing it does happen is somewhat comforting.
One thing I've noticed is that for the most part, bans only happen when there is no doubt that someone is breaking the rules and there is enough supporting evidence for that. For example, many leech scams are hard to deduce because they are providing a service, and I don't think the game logs the kind of info that would be needed to prove it, let alone having to slog through all of them just to find out that hey they dc, had emergency, etc and refunded me later. Another thing is that there is a LOT of information on the forums, especially against serial scammers, to prevent this with a little caution and effort on your part. I've heard many people say "it's too much of a hassle to go check and they might change their mind." From my experience, any legit leecher will be MORE than happy to allow you to check the blacklist or the leeching whitelist to make sure they are legit. And I also find it ironic that people don't have the time to check the forums before buying leech, but have no problem coming afterwards to complain about getting scammed and ask for a refund when there are MULTIPLE resources that would have helped. Another reason that I personally am against instabanning anything that looks like a scam is because I have heard of times when people set up conversations in game to make it look like someone was scamming when that wasn't the case. Not saying most people would, but considering some of the petty revenge reporting I've seen, I'm sad to say that I believe some people would try something like this.
