Stop the scammers

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Topsykret187, Jun 21, 2022.

  1. nawanda Loyal Player

    This is the point of view I’d expect from someone who doesn’t have many (or any) high valuable items banked. People who do aren’t going to accept garbage items for them. It would push the trade of these items off game. People would then sell them for real life money (even more than they do now) or to gold spammers. This is a terrible suggestion. People who have this stuff aren’t going to practically give it away. They aren’t stupid.

    Currently, on the EU server, when an original Plasmic, Nimbus or Smoke aura changes hands it is usually for real life money or a combination of real life money and in game money. What you’re suggesting would widen this to items in the next tier down in terms of in-game worth. Right now there is an idiot spamming trade chat wanting to sell a premium box via PayPal. Thankfully this isn’t the norm, but it could well be. That person isn’t going to accept a gold time torn material and 200 dionesium and neither will anyone else who has a spare premium box. What they have for sale is rare and desirable and thus, valuable.

    The solution to these issues is raising the caps. No solution should treat people who happen to have high value items for sale like some sort of virtual Russian oligarch. In the vast majority of cases wealthy players have either earned their wealth through trading or through supporting the game by buying marketplace cash and then using that to acquire valuables to sell on. People who are suggesting cash wipes and other restraints of trade never explain what their problem is with these players, but they must have one, because making suggestions that take away wealth from players who have fairly accumulated it is plainly unfair.
    • Like x 1
  2. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    The biggest problem as I see it with the 'fixed price' option is lets say it's 3m or 10m. Even if it's a sliding scale for the 'rare' items of up to 100m, if there is no ability to raise the price on an item, there is no incentive for anyone with a comfortable amount of money to go get more of those items. Why buy another 20 TCs hoping to get a 100m item if you already have a few 100m (even after a wipe, it won't take long), so once you hit max capacity to spend the money, getting more is useless. DBG knows this...and they'd suffer for it.

    We'd suffer as well since people buying less means less run off of extra items for sale, meaning we ALL have to take our chances on those same rare items we can 'grind' for today vs shelling out irl cash. There is no more grinding out the money when all things have a set price as items we can all get easy (think the street signs) won't balance out when you get that 'rare' one and you can get a windfall.

    Not saying it wouldn't 'fix' things as far as prices go, but in the end it would make it worse for the ones unwilling to open their real life wallets as the in game wallet would be crippled.
  3. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    Well they CAN be a noob with a bil....if they use the 'bad' way of 'finding' cash in game.

    But yeah, it's preventable without making any major changes. Know who you are dealing with, and if you can't reasonably verify things, don't trade.
  4. Zneeak Devoted Player

    You conveniently leave out that the vast majority of players who are sitting on a lot of valuable items/stacks of cash did acquire it through shady means, which is why the economy is at the state it is currently. Resellers is another issue, especially since the inflation caused by the shady. People are desperate to get rich now, so they try to resell anything and everything which impacts the average player greatly who isn't sitting on dozens upon dozens of billions to just drop on anything they desire at any given time. Certain items are not really worth "XXX" billions gazillions just because one questionably rich players happens to be able to sell it over to another questionably rich player.

    Have you seen the economy over at the US side? Perhaps the EU side is much better, I haven't kept track on it more than what I've heard, but the US side economy is one hell of a mess. Any item valuable enough practically forces you to deal with personal trades, because if you put it on the broker for the max limit, it is now still considered cheap and is bought and sold off broker by a reseller. Trade chat is packed with resellers trying to snatch items dirtcheap and flip them practically in front of people's faces for the "real" value and above, and tons of scammers are taking advantage of the inflation and the "above the limit"-pricing these people have brought upon us.

    So yeah, sorry but not sorry, this isn't a "you want this implemented because you otherwise can't afford it"-request, it is a necessary, entirely understandable one considering the actual situation of the US side-economy where it's more "dog eat dog" than ever.
    • Like x 1
  5. nawanda Loyal Player

    Excuse me, I haven’t “conveniently” left anything out. I don’t play on the US server, have no experience of its economy, and am speaking of what I know, which is the EU server.

    If the US server needs to be treated differently because it’s full of cheats with glitched cash, fine, but that doesn’t mean what I’ve written isn’t fair for the other servers.

    Having said that, it sounds like some of the trading activity you have described in your post would be alleviated if those items could be placed on the broker.

    This is not the DCUO US server forum.
    • Like x 1
  6. Quantum Edge Steadfast Player


    Vast majority of players is a vast overstatement.
  7. Zneeak Devoted Player

    The majority of the people speaking out on the matter are more than likely mostly refering to the terrible state of the US economy, yet your response to the matter at hand indirectly refered to suggested implementations to the actual issues being brought up as people not being to able to afford stuff, which is far from the actual issue, again.

    This is not the DCUO EU server forum, either, lol, but I am willing to bet the majority of players are mainly US based whether you like it or not. Either way, there are issues that needs fixing and simply raising the caps isn't it.
    • Like x 2
  8. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    That doesn't make him wrong about what will happen when items of 'value' can't be traded for lumps of cash. We already see people shouting for out of game trades for big ticket items and you are talking about imposing a low cap or no cash trades, which will make many more things 'high value'...higher than what can be traded in game at least.

    THEN wait for the crys of 'I got scammed'....they will be plentiful.

    BTW for those people who are fixing prices, there is a cure already....quit buying their high prices. Someone was in broker the other day trying to drive up prices on the Earth 3 bounty collections (like Owlman's saliva collection and such). I had a few, so I kept undercutting them by 10s of millions. Checked back last night as I got one and it's back down to a few mil (which is still high, but not stupid high). You can't sell what people won't buy....period. Quit buying things that are insanely over priced and the price will drop.
  9. nawanda Loyal Player

    And all that’s fine, but suggesting I had “conveniently” ignored something to suit my argument was untrue. Of course most of the players are US based. But there is precedent for actions being taken on the US server and not other servers; such as the cash readjustment a couple of years ago.

    The more transactions that can take place by conventional means (broker and a single player-to-player trade window), the more the devs can monitor unusual activity, the less players get scammed, and the less we will see some of the nonsense in trade chat we have both referred to. I haven’t read a single comment from anyone against raising the caps that makes any sense to me. The last time we discussed it in a thread on here, people (while entitled to their opinion) strangely equated raising caps to raising prices, and then there was a self-interested group who are in-game poor and have an incentive to see the reduction of in-game wealth. One group doesn’t understand the principles of economics and free trade and the other isn’t offering a balanced perspective.

    The caps as they are were set up 11 years ago when the economy was much smaller and the money was spread around across a greater number of players. It’s simply something that is in need of an update, and were the broker and trade windows implemented from scratch today, they surely would not have those caps as they are not fit for the purpose of trading the items that players want to buy and sell. This is even more true of the US economy where prices are higher, whatever the source of the money individual players have. It is the market itself that sets the price of items, not individual players, and not the means of trade.

    Good solutions will benefit all servers.
  10. Quantum Edge Steadfast Player



    [IMG]
  11. Killah Criss Well-Known Player

    The Devs do not care about scammers. Preventing scammers from scamming you does not make them money therefore nothing has ever been done, and nothing ever will be done.

    The money economy has gotten worse and worse over the years. I remember when if you had 100 mill you were considered rich. Now that means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. it mines well be $1.

    Could they easily raise the trade cap? Yep. Could they easily raise the broker cap? Yep. Will it be done? Nope. Why? Because they can't make money off of that. Why do you think pvp is still deserted?
    • Like x 1
  12. Zneeak Devoted Player

    Players in general already have a trust issue with 2 part-trades, even more people would have a bigger problem with out of game-trades if it were to become more common. So that isn't too strong of a point imo against the issues and solutions brought up in general. The "crys" of people getting scammed is plentiful already, rightfully so.

    And no, people refusing to pay what they cannot or will not afford clearly isn't a cure to the issues at hand, since prices are being set and controlled by those with enough wealth and items bouncing back and fourth by others with wealth. There isn't a large majority of players able to just throw billions around, but some seem to think so just because some do. The average player simply cannot afford a lot of the stuff going up so frantically in price, not in the long run. The fact is that the inflation we are dealing with comes mostly from a lot of the item and money dupes from the past few years, too much cash is still in circulation and players have both directy and indirectly taken advantage of it. That is still is an issue in need of fixing, whether some players like it or not.

    The prices will drop when the inflation is dealt with. Again, on the US side, to be specific. But I believe you are familiar with the US side-economy already.
  13. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    Oh, I'm familiar with it, and I know that those who have 'all' the stuff will still control the market, even if they did a cash wipe and put in caps. Again, what incentive does someone have to sell something for $1, or $10, or $1m if they already have everything and the accumulation of wealth (for whatever reason some people do that) is removed? The only reason someone with everything would sell their goods is for IRL cash...as in game cash won't be useful anymore.

    I'm not un-sympathetic to your point....just saying I don't think there is any way to 'fix' things that wouldn't also MORE negatively impact the people who are NOT the ones in control of the economy now. Better to have a fighting chance with a lucky drop of a top end item vs battling an unsurmountable hill.

    Unless you are advocating wiping out all cash AND items... In which case we are done talking as that's just straight nonsense.
  14. Zneeak Devoted Player

    Nobody is advocating an all out wipe, so I suggest re-reading the entire thread if you are having troubles comprehending very clear points on the subject lol. But no matter which way we spin it here, there is still too much cash and ill-gotten gains floating around that shouldn't exist. I am more worried about fixing that than the chance of a new wave of "IRL cash"-trades rising, lol.

    I still belive, no matter what, that making the Broker the main hub of trading will be atleast big step in the right direction. Having the vast majority of items being shown through a list where everybody has a chance to keep undercutting eachother for faster sales will probably help stabilize the current pricing quite a bit as opposed to having the majority of big ticket items sold through personal trades.
    • Like x 1
  15. Proxystar #Perception

    increasing any cap will only cement higher pricing.
  16. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    I'm fine with the broker being the main hub...but that would take a major cap raise, unless we wipe cash...which I'm not for. Hand to hand trades should still exist, but NOT as the only option, because we can't list things in the broker (as a 1+ bil transaction is today).

    The only way to get rid of the cash that is 'fair' is have it be taxed by those spending it. A cash sink in game of some sort.

    And the cash wipe was only to say even with an extreme example, those who have the goods will still control things. Not saying you were advocating for it.
  17. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    And you feel it is NOT cemented now?
  18. Proxystar #Perception

    To an extent it is, but it comes with the risk of being scammed, people need to stop doing multiple transactions, they need to basically just force sellers to keep the price within existing restrictions by forcing them to either sell it at the restricted price or just never sell their goods.

    You can't get scammed if the community as a whole refuses to purchase your inflated products - nevertheless I understand the realities of that being next to impossible to come to fruition simply because there will always be someone desperate enough to get the new shiny.

    That being said, if it's market control you're after then much like a form of regulation you achieve it through imposed control.

    disable cash in trade entirely and push everything back in to the broker with a 1bil limit competition will push it down from there :D :D
    • Like x 1
  19. Tiffany6223 Loyal Player

    Does this mean that I can't use a friend to transfer cash to my alt? Since I can't send my alt cash anymore the only way I can move my money is transferring to a trusted who, then transfers it back to me on my alt. This problem needs to be solved first.
    • Like x 1
  20. Proxystar #Perception

    of course, they just need to add a cash slot in the shared bank :)
    • Like x 3