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Is there any work being done on a system to prevent scams?

JohnCapital said:
Imagine a lending system is born.

Imk.ii, mm, imp/mod fap, shadow armor, etc. Will never be offered for sale for less then 1M ped. (yes, I said 1 million) each.

Oh, I can only "rent out" 3 items at a time? No prob., my "friend" with no skills just happened to "buy" 3 of my good items just so he can rent them out. In fact, so did my other 7 non-skilled alts, um, I mean "friends".

Hell, if we could rent out items, I would never sell anything that's not stackable or (L). Ever. Why would I?

Rental system = items will never sell again = economy tanks = less players = game over

Am I exaggerating, or wrong? Show me where.
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+ people won't have to deposit for high end gear, leaving less funds in the whole game.
+ no need to pay for the markup of (L) items cause you can loan UL items for f(r)ee.
 
ImUp2Mischief said:
From reading this thread it is clear the only people crying for a rental system are the hoarders of UL weapons/Faps.
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If u read through the thread you would see that ME ( one of the biggest hoarders/traders of UL weapons ) am against the rental system , so your pretty much wrong there itself..
 
JohnCapital said:
Imagine a lending system is born.

Imk.ii, mm, imp/mod fap, shadow armor, etc. Will never be offered for sale for less then 1M ped. (yes, I said 1 million) each.

Oh, I can only "rent out" 3 items at a time? No prob., my "friend" with no skills just happened to "buy" 3 of my good items just so he can rent them out. In fact, so did my other 7 non-skilled alts, um, I mean "friends".

Hell, if we could rent out items, I would never sell anything that's not stackable or (L). Ever. Why would I?

Rental system = items will never sell again = economy tanks = less players = game over

Am I exaggerating, or wrong? Show me where.
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No, you are not. Well not by any great lengths and that is why i cannot see an open access system to lending happening anytime soon and i would not want that to happen either.
 
SHY said:
+ people won't have to deposit for high end gear, leaving less funds in the whole game.
+ no need to pay for the markup of (L) items cause you can loan UL items for f(r)ee.
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Not sure about the funds bit because for someone buying someone is selling and withdrawing those peds perhaps as well. However, the (L) consumer market will be seriously affected for sure because not everyone will charge for lending and the consumption of L will get affected consequentially
 
atomicstorm said:
You do not fund THIS work, the context of my post which is a rental system. You fund (through DECAY, not CYCLING) lights on/hardware costs/upkeep, maintenance work and facilitation with the planet partners, personnel required, support, and the frills they keep adding like creature control (which is an extension of a system already built), and bug fixes. PERIOD.

It appears you read my post but clearly failed to understand it.

The lock on your door is you not being dumb enough to lend an item WITH MONETARY VALUE to someone you really don't know or visit (usually) IRL for NOTHING (read: unsecured debt).
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Could not have said it better myself.. +Rep...
 
JohnCapital said:
Am I exaggerating, or wrong? Show me where.
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You are wrong because a Mod Fap rental service, or any item, would need to outperform the equivalent PED value of CLD in order for it to be viable.

With expensive Rental Tokens, it completely destroys the earning ability of renting for profit.

If a Rental Token for a Mod Fap costed 300 PED like mentioned above, then a person would need to charge 1000 PED per week, every week just to match or slightly beat the earning ability of equivalent PED value CLD.

Prices like that puts renting a Mod Fap out of reach for the mass market.. Moreover, most weeks of the year that Mod Fap would go unrented and generally would only be in demand for the largest annual hunting events such as Migration and Merry Mayhem.

Expensive Rental Tokens destroy the viability of a rental service and would ensure the system is mostly used for personal needs and not used as for-profit purposes.
 
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HardWrath said:
With expensive Rental Tokens, it completely destroys the earning ability of renting for profit.
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:scratch: Then why build a system which is intentionally too expensive to use?

"Hey, can I borrow your mod fap?"
"Sure, but let's skip the silly rent system."
*private trade*
"Thanks"
"No prob."
 
HardWrath said:
You are wrong because a Mod Fap rental service, or any item, would need to outperform the equivalent PED value of CLD in order for it to be viable.

With expensive Rental Tokens, it completely destroys the earning ability of renting for profit.

If a Rental Token for a Mod Fap costed 300 PED like mentioned above, then a person would need to charge 1000 PED per week, every week just to match or slightly beat the earning ability of equivalent PED value CLD.

Prices like that puts renting a Mod Fap out of reach for the mass market.. Moreover, most weeks of the year that Mod Fap would go unrented and generally would only be in demand for the largest annual hunting events such as Migration and Merry Mayhem.

Expensive Rental Tokens destroy the viability of a rental service and would ensure the system is mostly used for personal needs and not used as for-profit purposes.
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Well thought through on the token bit and i think that has a lot of merit in terms of the idea itself. +rep for that. Oops..cant rep u just yet as i need to spread it around it seems..:)

However for the example you have mentioned it might still not work. You are assuming that the hourly price of mod fap service will not change, but it will if cost of the mod fap itself goes high. The price would go high because people would start coveting the mod fap/imp faps and other high end gears. Eventually say there are 30 mod faps. Not more then 10-15 are in hands which would actually be available for sale. Now suppose i buy all the 10 of these faps, not a tough thing to do. I could pretty much decide the price of the fap service going forward on it along with mod fap price. So, I could still charge x amounts more then the rental fee and since there are times that we cannot do without mod fap , people would still pay.

Next change would be say all the sga/ten edition and adj/imp/mod items are not available for rental itself. So basically there is a rent/non rentable classification put in place to prevent polarization of items. We will need to consider the impact on L items and balancing the rent token tt value to the mu on the L. Personally a headache which i think MA do not need right now. There is plenty of stuff they need taken care of and this should probably be left aside for the moment.

Added After seeing John's post : And yes people will still want to bypass the rental system and then blame MA for the cost and how they thought they were "safe" even outside the rental system and got screwed over :)
 
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Divinity said:
Well thought through on the token bit and i think that has a lot of merit in terms of the idea itself. +rep for that. Oops..cant rep u just yet as i need to spread it around it seems..:)

However for the example you have mentioned it might still not work. You are assuming that the hourly price of mod fap service will not change, but it will if cost of the mod fap itself goes high. The price would go high because people would start coveting the mod fap/imp faps and other high end gears. Eventually say there are 30 mod faps. Not more then 10-15 are in hands which would actually be available for sale. Now suppose i buy all the 10 of these faps, not a tough thing to do. I could pretty much decide the price of the fap service going forward on it along with mod fap price. So, I could still charge x amounts more then the rental fee and since there are times that we cannot do without mod fap , people would still pay.

Next change would be say all the sga/ten edition and adj/imp/mod items are not available for rental itself. So basically there is a rent/non rentable classification put in place to prevent polarization of items. We will need to consider the impact on L items and balancing the rent token tt value to the mu on the L. Personally a headache which i think MA do not need right now. There is plenty of stuff they need taken care of and this should probably be left aside for the moment.

Added After seeing John's post : And yes people will still want to bypass the rental system and then blame MA for the cost and how they thought they were "safe" even outside the rental system and got screwed over :)
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Here are things to consider.

1. A lot of people won't sell to an item baron simply on principle.
2. If someone did manage to corner the Imp/Mod FAP market by purchasing them all, it would be a waste of time because it would not be possible to rent out and/or offer heal service on all of those Faps simultaneously.

In order to keep pace with CLD ROI, all of those Faps would have to be in use nearly everyday which would be impossible to accomplish due to lack of demand... The hostility in the community toward an item baron would be enormous.. Think of villagers with torches and pitchforks... Anyone who did rent or hire one of those Faps would be shamed be others. The community would reject a baron.

Even at the current 50-60 PED per hour an Imp/Mod Fap service, from a hunting perspective, isn't economical in most cases and doesn't make sense to use on a regular basis unless you are doing huge DPS and cycling a lot of PED quickly. But even then, a lot of those hunters can afford and do own their own Mod Fap or Imp Fap.

The people who would rent, at least most of them, are people who can't afford a Mod Fap or are unwilling to put that amount of money in a video game. For the vast majority of them, they simply will not pay an exorbitant rental fee or hourly heal service fee. The market would completely reject it... For numerous reasons.

Even still, if someone did start to accumulate items for rent and corner markets, the consumable Rental Token idea gives MindArk an easy way to shut them down and deny that person the ability to rent their items simply by ending the availability of Rental Tokens for any specific item.

Item specific Rental Tokens would give MA total control.

I do want to say, Rental Tokens are not my idea
 
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HardWrath said:
In order to keep pace with CLD ROI...
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You keep using this argument, as if a rental system that effectively disables good item selling wouldn't drastically affect the economy, and thus the weekly returns.

Also if such a system were in place, regardless of the costs of renting, if they deemed the item more valuable to sell and sit on CLDs, then they would have to sell the item to.....

Someone who would in fact sit on the item in order to rent it out, regardless of comparable return vs CLD.
 
Oh and btw, this wouldn't affect just the big items.

Hell, I used to own a nice collection of lower armor, stuff ghost and below. I also had a nice small collection of weapons. Ep-41/Delta level old school weapons. ULT10, etc.

If I'd known I could've rented that stuff out, I would never have sold them. Ever.

Hell, I could've offered pixie, goblin, etc. for 1 ped/day rental fee. Not much, but constant income that multiplies with the large collection of items I had, plus whatever CLDs (or other items) I bought with the profits.

Those items would never see a sales thread, until the day I left the game, to sell it to someone else who would never sell them until they left.

And that's just gremlin, ghost, pixie, etc. we're talking about.

A sales thread for UL rocket launcher? At a decent price? Don't make me laugh.
 
JohnCapital said:
You keep using this argument, as if a rental system that effectively disables good item selling wouldn't drastically affect the economy, and thus the weekly returns.
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CLD returns arent affected by item sales.. and for CLD returns, it doesnt matter if you rented or bought your weapon. Turnover is the only thing affecting CLD returns and with an unrestricted lending system, there would likely be a lot more turnover, at least for awhile.

The reason I bring up the CLD ROI comparison is because ANYTHING that generates income ultimately will be compared to CLD.. so if i were to spent 500K ped on nice items to rent out to people and then a couple months into it realize that i could be earning more with CLD while doing absolutely nothing I most certainly would sell my stuff and just buy CLD.

JohnCapital said:
Someone who would in fact sit on the item in order to rent it out, regardless of comparable return vs CLD.
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JohnCapital said:
Oh and btw, this wouldn't affect just the big items.

Hell, I used to own a nice collection of lower armor, stuff ghost and below. I also had a nice small collection of weapons. Ep-41/Delta level old school weapons. ULT10, etc.

If I'd known I could've rented that stuff out, I would never have sold them. Ever.

Hell, I could've offered pixie, goblin, etc. for 1 ped/day rental fee. Not much, but constant income that multiplies with the large collection of items I had, plus whatever CLDs (or other items) I bought with the profits.

Those items would never see a sales thread, until the day I left the game, to sell it to someone else who would never sell them until they left.

And that's just gremlin, ghost, pixie, etc. we're talking about.

A sales thread for UL rocket launcher? At a decent price? Don't make me laugh.
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Sure but you are completely ignoring the Rental Token idea which would be designed to make it cost prohibitive and thus not commercially viable to rent things out for profit.

Think of it as a massive rental system nerf that prevents it from being a rental system and would restrict it so much that it would only be used on a limited basis when needed.
 
HardWrath said:
Sure but you are completely ignoring the Rental Token idea which would be designed to make it cost prohibitive and thus not commercially viable to rent things out for profit.
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Not at all. I simply destroyed that silly thought a few posts back, so saw no reason to attack the dead.
 
HardWrath said:
Here are things to consider.

1. A lot of people won't sell to an item baron simply on principle.
2. If someone did manage to corner the Imp/Mod FAP market by purchasing them all, it would be a waste of time because it would not be possible to rent out and/or offer heal service on all of those Faps simultaneously.

In order to keep pace with CLD ROI, all of those Faps would have to be in use nearly everyday which would be impossible to accomplish due to lack of demand... The hostility in the community toward an item baron would be enormous.. Think of villagers with torches and pitchforks... Anyone who did rent or hire one of those Faps would be shamed be others. The community would reject a baron.

Even at the current 50-60 PED per hour an Imp/Mod Fap service, from a hunting perspective, isn't economical in most cases and doesn't make sense to use on a regular basis unless you are doing huge DPS and cycling a lot of PED quickly. But even then, a lot of those hunters can afford and do own their own Mod Fap or Imp Fap.

The people who would rent, at least most of them, are people who can't afford a Mod Fap or are unwilling to put that amount of money in a video game. For the vast majority of them, they simply will not pay an exorbitant rental fee or hourly heal service fee. The market would completely reject it... For numerous reasons.

Even still, if someone did start to accumulate items for rent and corner markets, the consumable Rental Token idea gives MindArk an easy way to shut them down and deny that person the ability to rent their items simply by ending the availability of Rental Tokens for any specific item.

Item specific Rental Tokens would give MA total control.

I do want to say, Rental Tokens are not my idea
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1. There is no way that if I or anyone else wants an item and has peds that he cannot get the item in question irrespective of whether the seller wants to sell to me or not. :)

2. You are again assuming here that the price of fap service would remain same which it would not.

3. I know plenty of people who could buy an imp/mod fap but they choose not to because they prefer being fapped rather then having to self fap. We got a couple of them in our soc , so you should know :)

4. So, MA could incapacitate the system if needed. Why spend thousands of dollars building a system when the end result would be incapacitating it??

5. Why affecting L becomes a big issue? Because thats the only significant markup u get from hunting. Now with cld's for example converted a lot of people who did x other activities to just sit on cld's and profit. This move would mean people sit on gear and just rent rather then go for L items or whatever else to gain markup. We want to encourage activity in the game rather then just move the active players into passive investors.

6. Its as simple as this. If the token price is high enough, people would not want to lend the item and prefer to go L. Otherwise they will bypass the system and still get scammed like they do now. If it is not high enough , it will affect the L market which is already small , adversely. If its allowed for big items, someone could corner the market on some items. Does not even have to make financial sense. The power alone that guy would get from such an acquisition would make it worthy of it. Btw, it would not be 1 person item barons but mostly groups forming to run such acquisitions and there would be nothing the normal player could do.

Overall I can't see one scenario simulation where the rental system would help without affecting the economy negatively. Thats my take on it and considering i have said all i had to I will stop now and let MA decide on the course for themselves :)
 
Divinity said:
4. So, MA could incapacitate the system if needed. Why spend thousands of dollars building a system when the end result would be incapacitating it??
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Because the point of a Rental System would not be for personal monetary gain by renting items. It would be intended to only be used by people with items of value who for whatever reason need to loan their item to someone for a fixed period of time when collateral can not be provided.

For example, if you are away from EU for a few weeks and want me or someone to help you tier your CalyTrek TEN while you are gone, if I don't have collateral, we could use the Rental System and pay for the expensive Rental Token. In fact.. because I'm helping you tier your gun, it might even be worth it for you to split the costs of the Rental Token with me.

This way, we have a secure system that would prevent scams and dramatically increase the perception of a secure environment.

Now some items, MindArk might want us to rent out to others for profit purposes... Privateers or Shops for example, and with those the Rental Token could be made to be very inexpensive and for longer maximum time durations
 
Can someone find the thread where the guy presented the idea of Rental Tokens???

I looked and cant find it.
 
HardWrath said:
Rental Tokens were Kitch's idea
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Um, might wanna re-read that thread. Including your own comments in it.

Kitch said modest fee, not a fee high enough to make business loaning impracticable. That's something you added, even back in the original thread.

So the part you're backing up most is your own idea(s).

However, let's skip that. In truth it doesn't matter who's idea it was. The fact is, it's a bad idea, regardless of how you spin it.
 
JohnCapital said:
Oh and btw, this wouldn't affect just the big items.

Hell, I used to own a nice collection of lower armor, stuff ghost and below. I also had a nice small collection of weapons. Ep-41/Delta level old school weapons. ULT10, etc.

If I'd known I could've rented that stuff out, I would never have sold them. Ever.

Hell, I could've offered pixie, goblin, etc. for 1 ped/day rental fee. Not much, but constant income that multiplies with the large collection of items I had, plus whatever CLDs (or other items) I bought with the profits.

Those items would never see a sales thread, until the day I left the game, to sell it to someone else who would never sell them until they left.

And that's just gremlin, ghost, pixie, etc. we're talking about.

A sales thread for UL rocket launcher? At a decent price? Don't make me laugh.
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I don't really believe these theories about the universe ending when rentals come out. Seems to me people are forgetting that rentals would also be subject to the same economic factors like supply and demand.

There are so many UL items for all except the rarest models that there would be intense competition. You seriously think you'd be able to rent pixie or goblin armor for 1 ped a day when every other player has a set gathering dust in storage? Don't make me laugh ;)

Supply would outweigh demand and rental fees for 99.5% of items would be quite low, as with all things in game, they would go to the point where it was almost not worth renting it out. The 1% that would be good profit makers would have a long waiting list to use them and would be expensive. It would work great for rare items like clothes and estates and spaceships. I just don't see how one player could collect all of a certain type of item... why would people sell all their items if they have such great income potential?

What non-collateral rentals would do, however, is reduce the amount of money players would have to keep tied up to be able to use high end gear. This could mean less future deposits... but it could also mean that ped already in game could be cycled away with more decay for MA. So the net result, at least for hunting gear, would probably be an increase in hunting, with a lower TT liability for MA combined with more decay income, pretty much win-win as far as MA is concerned if it weren't for the changes in high end gear values and possibility for reduced deposits. It would also result in people hunting more at higher levels. Long term, increased hunting activity increases MA's income. Sure item prices would adjust to the new supply and demand of the rental system, and some players would get monopolies on some rare items. Would it affect me much? I doubt it, except that I'd have a HUGE selection of gear options available, which I think would be a plus.

I don't think it would affect crafting at all, except there would be less demand for L items, but that's the way things seem to be going anyway.
 
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Neil Stockton said:
why would people sell all their items if they have such great income potential?
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Exactly. :wise:



And yes, I was exaggerating (on the low-end) when I said that about pixie armor. However, my point was simple: Hoarding for rentals wouldn't just affect the mod merc/mod fap crowd.
 
Things that come to mind would be....tier 10 hunting gear, tier 10 mining gear and QR100 bps of all assortments. :silly2:
 
KyrismaStarsong said:
It seems like scams in game are on the uptake right now, I'm hearing more and more about trust scams as well as ones due to faulty game systems. Is there a team working on any solutions to make scams obsolete? I've heard many good ideas from the player base, including a recall function like with vehicles, a system similar to deeds for big value items, a checkbox of some sort to "lock" or "bind" items to the owner, or others. Surely there has to be a way to keep our items more secure and prevent the ongoing problem of theft in EU, is anybody doing anything in an official capacity to make it harder for the unscrupulous ones, or easier for honest avatars to protect their assets?
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If they have a system like that they must also protect the one who lends the item, so that you are not paying for it and right after you have done the payment the owner "calls back" the item and keep the money and run for it.....

Anyway, any system like that should be constructed like a way it only can be used for "friend to friend" lending, not to be used in a business like fashion. Could be things like restriction on how often an item could be lent to different avatars, like you can have max one "co-user"/month or something like that.
 
There are at least a dozen orher things that I would rather they do first, so I hope the answer is no.
 
Kim|Calypso said:
There is currently no plan in place to introduce such a system.

Kim
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Thanks for your input :)

Is there a plan in place for an alternative solution of any kind?
 
HardWrath said:
Thanks for your input :)

Is there a plan in place for an alternative solution of any kind?
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Not in terms of a new system but we are in the process of coming up with a new policy for how to deal with these cases when they appear. You've most likely seen some of that work surface with some recent cases that were publicized on this forum.
 
Kim|Calypso said:
Not in terms of a new system but we are in the process of coming up with a new policy for how to deal with these cases when they appear. You've most likely seen some of that work surface with some recent cases that were publicized on this forum.
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Yes we have. I think that the change is very positive and very much needed. So I want to say thank you to whomever in MA advocated for that policy change and especially to whoever decided to implement it.

It no doubt will only bring good things for EU.

Now that it's harder for scammers to run off with borrowed items, or to scam people in other ways, the incentive is reduced, and as a result we likely will see less scams overall.
 
This rental deed stuff is nonsense.

Give bank owners the ability to rent out items pawned to them or provided to them, with automatic return at expiration date.

People who want to rent securely thus would have to do it through a reputable bank.

Deeds or tokens anyone can use will definitely tank the economy. Nobody would sell squat.

With a rental system that is centered on the bank, the bank manager must be part of the maintenance. While it is profitable, the profit over time would not be astronomical due to maintenance cost that would doubtlessly be incurred when items were automatically returned.

How this relates to scams?

It doesnt. A system is provided if you want to play it safe. If you dont you get to take your chances with the crooks.
 
Magyar_Republic said:
This rental deed stuff is nonsense.

Give bank owners the ability to rent out items pawned to them or provided to them, with automatic return at expiration date.

People who want to rent securely thus would have to do it through a reputable bank.

Deeds or tokens anyone can use will definitely tank the economy. Nobody would sell squat.

With a rental system that is centered on the bank, the bank manager must be part of the maintenance. While it is profitable, the profit over time would not be astronomical due to maintenance cost that would doubtlessly be incurred when items were automatically returned.

How this relates to scams?

It doesnt. A system is provided if you want to play it safe. If you dont you get to take your chances with the crooks.
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I'd say no. Why give bank owners this kind of monopoly? If they can make more money off renting, they'd never sell, and what would prevent a bank owner from buying up everything for sale and then renting it all out? Imagine a selling thread for a nice dmg/sec gun that you want. It may take you a while to get the ped...then comes along a bank owner..hmm, I can buy that nice looking gun and just rent it. Rinse and repeat.

Rather than seeing stuff for sale, you'd see a long list of for rent items.

The system already works as it should.
 
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