Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Why are you buying PLEX at only three weeks old, anyway? Do you think wildly spending money will make you better at EVE? Did being unable to cover the broker fees for selling your PLEX on the market not somehow tell you "maybe this is a bad idea right now"?

The trade window needs a bit of work, but scam protection is something that's your own responsibility. Maybe now you know that using the trade window always means scam.

You're protected in your starter system. It's a bannable offense to gank, grief or otherwise harass rookies while in space in their starter system. It may be bannable to scam them there as well. Regardless of this, once you leave the safety of that starter system you're fair game for ganking, scamming, stealing, extortion and anything else that happens in EVE.

reason ehw as asking was, its become a proven fact that people who buy PLEX, especially early in their career, are much mroe liekly to become frustrated and quit the game.

thats because early in your career, youll lose ALOT of ships, and if you are playing with PLEX, you are more likely to amke the mistake of "min/maxing" with faction or other expensive gear, making your losses that much worse than if you used the standard T1 fits for new players. that and because you can now establish a real life price to all the losses you sustain, you are likely to grow tired of the game.

i personally would not recommend buying a plex to fund an account until 6 months in, minimum, because this is also around the time a PvE focused player can start paying for his account for free with isk.



EDIT: and to your point, you arent getting scammed out of "real world" money, thats illegal, and implies RMT. you get scammed out of a digital item you *just happened* to have payed real money to obtain, it IS an ingame item, and therefore bears no *ACTUAL* real world value.

so no, scam protection for ANYONE involving PLEX makes no sense.

but keep complaining about it, with how CCP has been going these days, you may just convince them that pvp against anyone who didnt /duel should be banned aswell.

I'm personally against "stupidity" scams, like a missing number here, or reading too quickly there. never gotten scammed personally, but i just always felt a greater appreciation for scams that involved a time sink, building trust, relationships, and then cashing it in in one glorious traitorous rampage.

also, because the former "stupidity scams" usually involve a crapton of local spamming and it gets ALMOST as obnoxious as the exploration minigame+pinata.

I'm not against improving the trade window. I wouldn't mind having a popup to confirm the trade for both parties (provided it's toggleable). I don't like the idea of just applying it to trades involving PLEX or rookies though. If we're improving the trade window, improve it across the board.

You're right, of course. To protect rookies was a possible application only.
But i do not know what the veteran's are thinking about that. With my example (rookies) i do not want to hurt the experienced players.

I can only explain my point of view as a rookie. I love the whole EVE game (what i could get to know). But such issues.....it's a pity.


@Nyancat Audeles
Thank you very much. I'm glad to see that i'm not the only one who can see that this could be a whole problem (eve is hard to learn and hard to master. In addition, rookies should not be get in contact with scammers while try to learn that big complicated game).

So i opened a petition. But i have to wait for answer...maybe the problem could be that the gamemaster do not really expect an abuse in the game mechanics (and like you said, it is possible to do this in the trading window with a script / macro))

@OP A quick search for direct trade will let you know that it is a very risky tool that is mainly used by scammers. It is kind of rule for the one selling item through direct trade to take your time and double/triple check offered money - in most cases you'll be able to detect ISK change (unless scammer uses 3rd party tools, in which case it is petitionable). If you want to avoid being scammed - use personal contracts instead (they cost only 10k isk to create). Also you could've earned more than 590mil if you just filled buy order on market, and it is much safer.

@ontopic
I always wondered why CCP created direct trade without double confirmation for both parties?

Just about anything in this game is macroable or scriptable. But this mechanic CERTAINLY is scriptable.

I'm a pirate.
I scam, I kill, I ransom, I loot, I kill more.

But regardless of all the "you should've watched better" the OP has a valid point as in this UI "feature" being broken.
So you google it and it will say "the trade window is mostly used by scammers". Because it is BROKEN. It has been for a long time.
It being broken is not an excuse for HTFU.
Eve is looking into margin trade scams atm, and CCP always stated that while scmas are interesting, a scam where a UI feature intended to do (A) is used for scamming purposes that nobody can protect against, isn't right.
It'll just render UI function (A) unused, forever. Which is already the case.

I enjoy a good contract scam, or even the old renaming T1 BS for faction BS and whatnot. Those can be spotted. But in OPs case there is NOTHING he could've done other than NOT using the trade window. Ergo, the game is broken with that feature because the trade window can't be used for proper trades.

I would gladly see this thread bumped and put on to the 10000000000 little things CCP should fix before thinking about serpentis webs list. (^_^)

+1

--NaK

Actually, no; all PLEX are bought using real money. The fact that some (large) portion of those PLEX are sold on the market is a different matter, but it's not like PLEX are seeded on the market for NPCs to sell. Every PLEX in existence was once bought from CCP with real money, whether directly or through a reseller, and once it became an in-game item, it may be bought and sold a number of times before it eventually gets turned into gametime.


That being said... yeah, scams can hurt. There are safer and more dangerous ways of selling valuable items. You happened to use a particularly unsafe way, since a direct trade is completely unsecured; either side can change their offer at any time. The 'check box' thing isn't much in the way of security, because it's not meant to be; all it means is that the other guy's happy about things. I might support, say, making the trade box visibly blink or something whenever the offer is changed, but that'd be about it.

As is, I like having direct trades without extra fees and rails and guidelines and boxes to click. I mostly use them to exchange goods between alts, since it's fast, easy, and saves me a bit of ISK. If you want to have more security in your trading, use contracts, or the market; either are secured by the SCC, which gives you those extra options to protect yourself (if you're clever enough to read carefully and make use of them)

There's really no way to tell if a trade was legitimate after it has already been made. You can make an argument based on hearsay and suspicion, but in the end it still could have been a legitimate trade.

IE I could buy a Scorpion for 50 mill and conducted the negotiations over a third party voice client. Then later I see a Scorpion being sold for 40 million and I go to CCP and say, "I've been scammed! This guy sold it to me for the wrong price!" Clearly I'm lying, but how would CCP determine that? This is the reverse of your situation, but it's still equally applicable and valid.