Miles
Prowler
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2007
- Posts
- 1,214
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Society
- Al Nahar Wanderers
- Avatar Name
- Stanley Miles Stardust
I don't see why anyone would mind this. Just to be clear, are we talking about buying something from someone, drops it, logs out and picks it up with another ava and sells it for higher? Of course this is deception but let's think about this:
Why should I actually mind this? It doesn't affect me. I agree that it's deception as I mentioned, but firstly this means someone is spending hours to make probably 0.04 USD, secondly I, as a player, still must agree to all avatar trades on the two confirmation boxes during a trade. I'm 100% safe. If I don't like somebody's price, and I think they're just going to sell it back at a higher price, then I don't click Accept (I actually personally do not even haggle, I either take someone's price as-is, or not, and I do the same when I sell something, too). So the fact that someone is using 2 ava's to get a .01% profit doesn't actually affect me. I would imagine it doesn't effect MA either because any of their "earnings" would be from other players. (If this is not what is meant by laundering then please correct me.)
I would imagine that it would still be possible to do the exact same thing (trade items to a different ava) by having a friend log in to the other ava... so the problem is not solved anyway. (What's next, remove ava trades completely because some people are meanies?)
Also aren't there people who have multiple family members but share a computer? Those people might have actually dropped items on the ground to trade as well.
Maybe my most important point, I'll also add that after you've played for a little bit, you can generally identify "re-sellers" pretty easily based on their trade messages and their prices. After I took a long break, I got "scammed" out of all my animal skins/leathers. Somebody kept persisting and convinced me they weren't worth more than 101% total and convinced me to sell them all to him for that price. I finally agreed. UNDOUBTEDLY he re-sold them to someone else for a profit (possibly on a different ava). Did that feel bad for me? Sure. But it was my fault. I agreed to the trade even when I felt it wasn't a good deal. It was a good lesson learned and it never happened again, and I quickly learned to spot re-sellers. This was my only "bad" experience with re-sellers and I've had countless "good" experiences with finding and hiding items.
When MA is investigating serious charges of money-laundering, which is crime, and the fencing of scammed items, which is violation of TOU at least, they can follow the registered transactions via P2P trades, Auctions and Shop sales, but a Drop-trade breaks the trail of evidence.
I have dropped items back and forth with my wife's avatar due to the one-pc problem, but I can live without that option if makes the platform more secure for all of us.
I've been playing for 11+ years, and my very first P2P trade got me scammed out of my first 1k of hard-earned sweat - you don't need to tell me to be cautious. But plenty of good, trusting people get scammed by assholes every day, and that is not good for the game. Removing unregistered transactions is one more way to make it harder to scam, but I think the bigger issue involves activities on a scale that most everyday players cannot imagine, which is why they changed it, despite the obvious negative feedback it would generate. MA has a history of willingness to do things most of don't like because they are important for the long term good of the game.
Adapt or perish, no?
Peace, Miles
P.S. This is an opinion, of course - I could be all wrong.
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