Scammer PvP 1 - TRR Member

[admin]

Hey recently I hit commodore and wanted someone to build me a ST Pavel and I was approached by someone who said he could do so, down below is all the screenshots I have of our conversation and the trading taken place. It took me several hours to gather the materials as well as a lot of gold buying them I knew the risk but I thought I could trust someone whom our clans have diplomatic agreements with, guess I was wrong. Ive heard nothing can be done and from looking at the other scam post nothing will be done but atleast go away with a warning that it does happen even on friendly clans and such. 

 

Edit-He is no longer TRR So dont give them grief

 

He then goes onto advertise this in Britain chat: http://imgur.com/1IEi0Fk

 

btw 

dont get upset or disheartened by the lack of swift judgement. It will come with time once we figure out what do to and how to help others like you. We don't want scammers in game.

[MaliceA4Thought]

It will be really hard to stop this by any game mechanic as there will always be a way around this due to the direct trade. Only way to stop these sort of scams is to remove the direct trade and that would be a big step back as its used to make deals in trade between two players. Is to give gold, ships , materials etc to players. It's also to help people to craft (I use it to help crafters by crafting their material so they can produce more ships faster).

 

So if you want to be certain to stop these scams the only way is to remove the option for it to be able to do so and that is the direct trade between players which make it possible.

 

Edit: Grammer 

 

 

Not true..  It may be a fairly simple change to add an option to build by escrow   (the theory is simple, the actual coding is not mine to determine:)  )...   If you are expecting someone else to craft for you on an agreed deal..  Then a new option is needed in the trade window..  I'll call it escrow.

 

In this option, the builder would preload the BP into the escrow trade window.

 

The requestor would load required parts and any goods you transfer would be held in a "temp warehouse" that both players have access to..  the party doing the building would have access to these materials but only from this "temp warehouse" which would be used up on the build and the goods crafted would also go into the "temp warehouse". 

 

 Once completed, there would be the accept buttons...  if BOTH players hit accept, then the residue of goods provided would go to the building player, the built object (ship, whatever) would go to the other.. any money would also be transferred.  If either (or both) hit cancel, then all parts placed in temp by requestor are returned,  ship is removed.  

 

CN and BP lottery are only decided once both players hit accept and are sent to the builder..   this would stop a possible abuse where you could keep crafting in this way and cancelling out until you received a BP or CN.

 

Likewise, in the lottery of stats for the ship..  these are not disclosed until ship is transferred..  (apart from colour and defined extra..  eg  Yellow with Planking).

 

A system such as this would prevent ANY scamming in crafting as the requestor can see what has been used and produced and the crafter can see that money and/or goods have been provided for the build before goods are transferred. 

 

As to the game itself.. I see the easiest way to do this as being a trade instance.. like a combat instance in OW..  the trade instance has the temp warehouse associated with it (so that is deleted upon exiting)   the trade instance continues until either both players have hit accept, or one player hits cancel.   That would stop the need for multiple instances of a temp warehouse being setup and possibly filling up the database and storage systems.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't have thought this was a huge job, but not one that should pre-empt the content being delivered..  however as we get to larger ships and high end mods for the ships, this scamming will become much more common.

 

It could also serve as a base to handle in-clan crafting and deals through a clan warehouse.

 

 

M

Edited March 6, 2016 by MaliceA4Thought

[Tomms123]

Not true..  It may be a fairly simple code change to add an option to build by escrow   (the theory is simple, the actual coding is not mine to determine:)  )...   If you are expecting someone else to craft for you on an agreed deal..  Then a new option is needed in the trade window..  I'll call it escrow.

 

In this option, the builder would preload the BP into the escrow trade window.

 

The requestor would load required parts and any goods you transfer would be held in a "temp warehouse" that both players have access to..  the party doing the building would have access to these materials but only from this "temp warehouse" which would be used up on the build and the goods crafted would also go into the "temp warehouse". 

 

 Once completed, there would be the accept buttons...  if BOTH players hit accept, then the residue of goods provided would go to the building player, the built object (ship, whatever) would go to the other.. any money would also be transferred.  If either (or both) hit cancel, then all parts placed in temp by requestor are returned,  ship is removed.  

 

CN and BP lottery are only decided once both players hit accept and are sent to the builder..   this would stop a possible abuse where you could keep crafting in this way and cancelling out until you received a BP or CN.

 

Likewise, in the lottery of stats for the ship..  these are not disclosed until ship is transferred..  

 

A system such as this would prevent ANY scamming in crafting as the requestor can see what has been used and produced and the crafter can see that money and/or goods have been provided for the build before goods are transferred. 

 

 

M

The thing most crafters ask for the material is so they dont have to provide that material themself. So the ship becomes cheaper as the crafter only use the LB on that persons account.

So to build the ship you have to give them the material to use otherwise the ship wont be built.

 

But there is a solution as you said but it might not work out or not.

That is that you got a temporary warehouse (sort of) the player which is buying/trading the ship or whatever you're trading for puts in the materials in there. That player get also a window of what that player can build by those resources provided in the temp warehouse. So we will take an example.

A player want me to build a Pavel, I ask for resources, that player add the required resources in the temp warehouse (which is located in the trade dialog) the player then select the Pavel from the blueprint list and how many notes shall be used for the ship/modules. It will then check if all the required resources is there (I can also add in the materials needed for it if I want too). So the player have added the resources,money (whatever is part of the deal), picked the ship/module then when we both agree the ship is built put into the ship slot of the trade and the resources is used and the trade is complete.

 

 

Edit: When I reread what you wrote again we sort of had the same idea here ^^ But that I force the ship to be traded when the ship is built so the crafter cant keep the ship when its built (otherwise we got a scam possibility again)

Edited March 6, 2016 by Tomms123

[Wang]

Scamming sucks period and i do understand that the dev's cant really get involved in dealing with every scammer that pops up and intervening with every issue we have.

 

The issue is, people being able to re-role now days with no consequence. Ltdean can delete his character, re role another one join another nation or join Britain again.  

 

With no consequence, and repeat this process over and over.  

 

Also note people are re rolling to other nations to purposeful screw up any diplomacy between nations.

 

You solved a small issue with people complaining about being stuck to a nation, and now opened a new can of worms with these issues.

 

There is no way for the community to police it themselves.  We can't track these scammer players, or people re rolling to screw up agreements. 

[Quineloe]

Reading chat while playing is easy.

Handling scamming cases? What if it is fabricated?

Don't trust strangers. Why would you trust a stranger? 

Trade interface provides accept button. Don't accept the deal if it is not to your liking. Press cancel.

 

We are willing to change the global rules, but scamming is very hard to prove.  I can tell he scammed me after any deal, creating even more scams.

 

I think a completely 1-sided trade with the chat showing why it was given that way would be very easy to prove.

 

How do you fabricate this? The trade is logged on your servers, right? If you have the trade log, and you have the chat log, what could a fabricated scenario possibly look like?

 

The reason this is happening often right now and would require a lot of work on your part is solely because currently you do let them get away. As soon as punishment is a real thing, scamming will also become very rare.

If you don't want to use dev hours on this, use the volunteer hours. Do your moderators have access to the server chat logs? Then just add trade logs to their permissions as well. The system Malice4 has proposed, that would take far more effort to put into play.

 

I'm the kind of guy to craft ships for free if all materials are provided to me because I want the craft exp and the BP drop chance. This stuff actually hurts me, because people might be too hesitant to do this due to repeated scams having been made public.

[admin]

 

I think a completely 1-sided trade with the chat showing why it was given that way would be very easy to prove.

 

How do you fabricate this? The trade is logged on your servers, right? If you have the trade log, and you have the chat log, what could a fabricated scenario possibly look like?

 

The chat screen can be done in photoshop

 

One sided trades happen every day. Its not a proof it was a scam.
You claimed that you always get resources from players to build their ships. Now imagine someone says you are a scammer. Trade log will show that you did a one sided trade.
Should we ban you if someone falsely reports you as scammer for taking resources from him

 

Also did you volunteer by your post or you want someone else to do it (checking the logs and jpeg proof reports)

 

If reports are not done by F11 they could be forged. F11 connects the server logs, the rest could be forged and affect good people.

 

 

 

You solved a small issue with people complaining about being stuck to a nation, and now opened a new can of worms with these issues.

 

There is no way for the community to police it themselves. We can't track these scammer players, or people re rolling to screw up agreements.

 

It does not matter in the Early access. We want flexibility so people uncover more problems at all nations. There is no can of worms. There is lack of understanding that this is alpha and cases like this can help solve the problem eventually. But because it is an unfinished game some things might take longer to fix.

 

Player here gave someone resources without payment. Willingly.
Someone has stolen them from him.
Its easy to ban people based on scam reports

 

The problem lies in a different area. False scam reports will become a problem then. You cannot prove that the person is a scammer or not just based on logs.

[Quineloe]

I don't see why a photoshopped chat screen would even matter if you have the server stored chat logs to fall back on.

 

Should we ban you if someone falsely reports you as scammer for taking resources from him

Nope, because in your trade log you have two minutes later me giving him the ship. Which you would find with a good db query.

 

Also did you volunteer by your post or you want someone else to do it (checking the logs and jpeg proof reports)

assuming my IT skills are up for the task I can do this. I can do some minor select stuff in SQL. Would that be enough to pull trade log data?

[Tomms123]

I'm gonna write a few things about what you have written against Admin and Game Labs.

The team which work with Naval Action is a small team compared to what kind of size of game they're creating, putting out content as you ask for and the other subject you demand is very hard for such a small team (prewipe one of the admins said 12 people worked with Naval Action).

It will be resolved and the most efficient way is to put it into the design there is 2 options as I see it. Either remove the direct trade or do a version of what Malice suggested (I would suggest you read Malice suggestion and mine). If direct trade would be removed that would be removing a very usefull tool for the players to trade directly, to help eachother etc. So according to my opinion that shall not happen.

 

But there is a way to improve the already existing direct trade (sort of what Malice and I have suggested).

Okey I will take the already trade dialog as reference to this 

So what we see on the screenshot is two sides on the dialog, my side to the right and the other players side to the left side. We got total of 12 item slots, a ship slot and a place to add the gold value in. So if we press the button "Select ship" we get up another dialog which let us to select the ships we got in the harbour and add it to the trade.

Then we also got two more buttons showing, "Cancel trade" on the left and "Make offer" (that makes it so the other person can see what you have added and go from there to either cancel, re-negotiate or accept the trade) and when the "Make offer" button have pressed it change name to "Accept offer", you can also press "cancel trade" (unsure if that button has it name changed) and either remove stuff, add more stuff or just change something.

 

So what we sort of both suggested is the following:

I want another player to craft me a ship, the player ask for material, I add what needed in (the slot will be to 86% chance be forced to increase, from 12 to the maximum of different goods you need to the most spread resourcefull ship there is to craft) material way into the slots. I then have another button which I can press on to see what kind of blueprints (sort of like the crafting view

) that player got but also which crafting rank the player is on. So from there I can decide what ship I want that player to craft, how many crafting notes which shall be used for the ship and what kind of inbuild modules shall be for the ship.

 

Let say I want the player to build a pickle and the resources I have added is short of 2 tar and 20 planks, this will then show when I pick which ship I want the player to build and pop a warning like "Not enough material". But if I dont have any room in the port we're at it will state the same message which is already stated if you try to craft a ship or buy a ship even tho you cant have any more ships in that port. If the warning "Not enough material" is stated then I can still go further with the "Make offer" button so the other player can see what ship I want that player to build and that I got or dont got the material for it. Then that player can either state "bring the rest of the material or no deal" and cancel the trade if wanted. Or let me cancel my offer and add the remaining missing material for the ship.

 

Or the player can add the missing material on that persons side. So the crafting material used for this ship is taken from all the materials presented in the trade view so to actually build the ship all the material required need to be in the trade view. So either I add the material/resources or the player I want to craft add the material/resources (depending on what we both agree on(this is not just limited to ships but all kind of craftings in the trader view, so can be crafting planks or modules)). 

 

So when we both have agreed to that this is fair and the deal shall go thru we press accept trade, the player which craft use up the required LB(Labour Hours) and the material needed for the ship, the crafter get any possible drop from the craft. I get the ship and anything which werent used in the crafting which were added by the crafter.

If the crafting is for example planks the crafter will use the LB(Labour Hours), the crafted resources will given to me. If I have added in gold into it or any other material which isnt used for the crafting the crafter will get that.

 

This will not make scams possible as the resources needed for the crafting is in the trade view and both of the partys can cancel the trade at any time and nothing has been lost but a tiny bit of their time.

But normal trades shall still be possible for those which want to direct trade, give resources or sell a ship they have already crafted or something.

This will require code changes and I expect that this wont be a priority as you're pretty busy with other things but this is the only way I can see it done without having to deal with these report of scams (if they have been scamed you can plain out simple state "you didnt use a feature which is there to protect you from scamers so we're sorry but your fault").

[admin]

I don't see why a photoshopped chat screen would even matter if you have the server stored chat logs to fall back on.

 

 

 

Let me rephrase because others might not understand what i am talking about

• Random guy in chat tells that he will make a Pavel for someone if that someone gives him resources
• The victim then gives this random guy resources without payment.
• Random guy dissapears and stop all contact with the victim

You are suggesting us to punish the random guy just based on the trade logs. 

 

But it means a lot of honest people will suffer too. 

Here is a basic case 

• Someone gives you resources for other things and does not like you. He then reports you that you are a scammer (because there is no other trade). We check the logs and see no pavel and ban you?
• Or even better someone says - hey resource donation here are the resources i give them for free - and then reports the person accepting a gift as scammer

Because a lot of people give resources to others for multiple reasons, we cannot take a blank trade (someone gives someone else something without payment) as a proof that its a scam. Thus chat logs wont help.

 

You are saying that you want to put punishment and investigations into the hands of volunteers?

You want to give chat logs and full server logs access to volunteers?

Some of which are active players and are members of clans and are at war with each other.

We are being constantly accused of mod bias already. 

As a player i will not want some Danish volunteer to read my chat logs and trade logs! Are you really thinking it all through when you suggest that volunteers should do it? Can you imagine the outrage!!!! How can you even suggest that?

 

There are no solutions to the case when some people part with their resources too easily. Only detailed investigations. And this can only be done by employees (unbiased). And even then it is exploitable

 

Solution. 

Delete the trade feature

or

Dont trust strangers on the internetz and give resources only in exchange for monetary deposit or pavel 2nd rate itself.

or 

Hire 10 men to work on logs and start charging subscription

[admin]

 

 

But there is a way to improve the already existing direct trade (sort of what Malice and I have suggested).

Okey I will take the already trade dialog as reference to this 

 

Honestly Tomms  

Do you want this trade interface or officers (surgeons, carpenters, capellans), new ships, port investments and epic group events?

[Tomms123]

Honestly Tomms

Do you want this trade interface or officers (surgeons, carpenters, capellans), new ships, port investments and epic group events?

The answer is clear this: "officers (surgeons, carpenters, capellans), new ships, port investments and epic group events"

But you asked how you could implement a way to avoid these scams in the design. That is a way and as I stated this "This will require code changes and I expect that this wont be a priority as you're pretty busy with other things but this is the only way I can see it done without having to deal with these report of scams (if they have been scamed you can plain out simple state "you didnt use a feature which is there to protect you from scamers so we're sorry but your fault")."

 

But the most simple solution for both you at Game Labs and players would just not to trust other people which you havent played with for a long time or just not trust anyone

[admin]

 

 

But the most simple solution for both you at Game Labs and players would just not to trust other people which you havent played with for a long time or just not trust anyone

 

We want to solve this problem and want the Nation chat to be somewhat friendly without scamming and backstabbing. We are against scamming, but want to eliminate it by design (with 0 manual input).

 

Thanks for the proposal everyone btw. It is a hard problem to solve if people trust strangers.

[Rigge1988]

Im starting to feel annoying comparing everything to eve... But. CCP only interfere with big scams and frauds.

It's just that simple that people shouldn't trust strangers for the same reasons they don't in the real world.

It really is up to each his own and you can only blame yourself. Really.

[Quineloe]

 

You are saying that you want to put punishment and investigations into the hands of volunteers?

You want to give chat logs and full server logs access to volunteers?

Some of which are active players and are members of clans and are at war with each other.

We are being constantly accused of mod bias already. 

As a player i will not want some Danish volunteer to read my chat logs and trade logs! Are you really thinking it all through when you suggest that volunteers should do it? Can you imagine the outrage!!!! How can you even suggest that?

 

There are no solutions to the case when some people part with their resources too easily. Only detailed investigations. And this can only be done by employees (unbiased). And even then it is exploitable

I thought that was a genuine offer. If you think you can't find people with enough integrity to not abuse their mod powers, then that is your assessment and I'm not going to dispute it.

 

I thought moderators are already volunteers  with that kind of power.

[admin]

I thought that was a genuine offer. If you think you can't find people with enough integrity to not abuse their mod powers, then that is your assessment and I'm not going to dispute it.

 

I thought moderators are already volunteers  with that kind of power.

Ah.

It was a genuine offer. If you find a way for secure trading without having assets you might make billions in real life too. And if you are willing to help we plan to open several mod positions very very soon (in fact next week)

 

But moderators dont have access to logs. they act based on reports or based on the real time chat. 

Logs are for employees only because sometimes they could provide sensitive information that could be used in wars.

[Johny Reb]

This case is also one of the reason why still no clan warehouse. 

Don't trust anyone and you can always press cancel when you don't like the deal.

Clan warehouse is pretty important for the clan development stage of the game.

I think it needs to be rolled out with two other mechanics.

One, an extra rank that allows warehouse access.

Two, the ability to put a name with the item so that only a certain person can pull the item out.

[Tomms123]

Clan warehouse is pretty important for the clan development stage of the game.

I think it needs to be rolled out with two other mechanics.

One, an extra rank that allows warehouse access.

Two, the ability to put a name with the item so that only a certain person can pull the item out.

So do you mean only that player which added the item or the people with the rank that can access the warehouse shall be able to remove the item?

Is that access then limited to (both adding and/or removing items) or shall everybody in the clan be able to added items but only those with the rank be able to remove the items?

Also is the clan warehouse gonna be binded to a port? If its for the whole map I can see a clear exploit that someone goes several ports away, add items and someone else in another port can remove it at an instant. That can make it so I go up to Sunbury and another in my clan is at La Orchila and we can trade items at an instant.

[Slamz]

Maybe there needs to be a contract system.

 

I create a Contract for a new Trincomalee.

The contract is like a bundle: it contains everything I am offering up. Could be money, raw resources, parts, crafting notes, whatever.

The contract has a "guarantee price" and a time limit.

I set my guarantee price to 500,000 gold and a time limit of 24 hours.

 

In order to get this contract, you must pay the guarantee price, which is held by the system. You then get everything that was in the bundle and you have until the time limit to deliver the product.

 

If you deliver the product, you get that 500,000 gold back.

If you fail to deliver the product, I have lost my stuff but I get the 500,000 gold.

(The idea being I always set the guarantee price to more than the value of the items. You would always prefer to actually make the item than to pay the gold.)

 

 

You could also do this without the guarantee price, but moderated by players: now it's clear who owes who. You took the contract and never delivered the product. The contract is a trace of what was agreed on and therefore easy to search for.

 

I don't see why we can't just totally automate it, though, with the price guarantee solving the problem. (The system might even warn you if your price guarantee is clearly less than the average vendor price of the bundled goods.)

[DeRuyter]

...

 

There are no solutions to the case when some people part with their resources too easily. Only detailed investigations. And this can only be done by employees (unbiased). And even then it is exploitable

 

Solution. 

Delete the trade feature

or

Dont trust strangers on the internetz and give resources only in exchange for monetary deposit or pavel 2nd rate itself.

or 

Hire 10 men to work on logs and start charging subscription

 

"caveat emptor"

 

Seems to me finding a mechanical solution would be a waste of development resources at this point in time. Hopefully the OP will only hit accept when the ship is in the trade box next time.

[Damaskinos]

Let me rephrase because others might not understand what i am talking about

• Random guy in chat tells that he will make a Pavel for someone if that someone gives him resources
• The victim then gives this random guy resources without payment.
• Random guy dissapears and stop all contact with the victim

You are suggesting us to punish the random guy just based on the trade logs. 

 

But it means a lot of honest people will suffer too. 

Here is a basic case 

• Someone gives you resources for other things and does not like you. He then reports you that you are a scammer (because there is no other trade). We check the logs and see no pavel and ban you?
• Or even better someone says - hey resource donation here are the resources i give them for free - and then reports the person accepting a gift as scammer

Because a lot of people give resources to others for multiple reasons, we cannot take a blank trade (someone gives someone else something without payment) as a proof that its a scam. Thus chat logs wont help.

 

Question: There was mention of fixing these issues through mechanics rather than going after them retroactively with staff digging through logs. The question is, how much time and effort are developers willing to put into stopping this with mechanics? Secondly, how much time and effort do the players want taken away from alpha testing and content development to fix such issues at this stage of the game?

 

I cannot answer that question:

 

BUT

 

I may have a suggestion that would work if the answer is YES this is important enough to devote developer time to fixing.

 

Create an escrow mechanic within the Trade UI/backend. Two players enter a trade, they have the option to click "Ship Consignment" one enters as the Builder, one as the Buyer. A ship type is selected and resources for that ship have to be filled within the ship consignment queue. Game tags each item and resource that is entered in to the queue to the player that put it in. Once they are all present Builder sets a price. Builder cannot click build until the Buyer accepts the price the Builder sets. Resources are expended, ship is delivered to the buyer, gold to the Builder.

 

Basically it'd be a temporary warehouse shared by the two players that holds all the resources required for that ship until they are all gathered. Put a time limit on it (X number of days or whatnot), if the queue isn't filled and the ship built, goods are delivered back to their tagged owners warehouses.