Bugged Deeds?

Neil Stockton said:

Well, I guess the first thing is MA should have taken over NI a long time ago and we wouldn't have this problem... but yes if deeds are bugged and going to remain bugged, the owners should be compensated.

It's not just NI... I understand that certain caly shops have been bugged for years... why are these allowed to remain without being fixed/compensated?

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In ancient days, things were different... and compensation was a regular thing for when stuff was broken.

Post VU10 things changed in that regard I believe, as Mindark realized that it can't keep just paying off people instead of actually trying to fix the underlying problems. Sadly, those underlying problems still exist in various estates, etc.

atomicstorm said:

Well neverdie participating, looting mobs, playing as a regular user while ALL OTHER officials main accounts are frozen per PP agreement is a whole other story that needs further discussion but not on this thread.

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updated my first reply with the link to the Millstreet thread about DA Manager using a stall deed as compensation for trading that he was not supposed to be using... That issue is very much related to the issue described in this thread in my book since it's essentially the same darn thing that happened... A planet partner used a deed to affect the Real Cash Economy (RCE) that they were not authorized to use in that manner. In other words, this isn't the first time this sort of BS has happened...

Mindark should really start putting safety precautions in place so that this type of crap doesn't keep happening... they are putting way too many estates/deeds/las out there that are tradeable that don't work, or used to work at one point in time but then quit working. That's got to stop if they really want anyone to have any level of trust in the entire RCE idea.

I already posted what MA told me, but since my word isn't good enough, here are the screenshots.











MA did tell him what he said they said.
It was however not true as the screen shots here prove.
All of this info has been given to Fatal over the last week so it is not new to him.

I believe it was unethical of MA to take the deeds from him without compensation.
I believe it was unethical of MA to lie about what they had told me in order to shirk their own responsibilities.
I believe it is unethical of MA to continue with the lie/word twisting even after confronted.

I felt bad for Fatal and would have continued fighting for him because I believe he was wronged, but stopped when he became aggressive with me.
Perhaps I was not as patient with him as I should have been, but I am frustrated with the whole situation esp. considering how I have gone out of my way to be transparent with him and share every communication I have had with MA.

My suggestion would be, reverse the trade.

And then either sell the deeds to someone who is interested in NI history and have no hurry in getting them to work, or just hold on to them.

The deeds were listed in sales thread as 40k+35k; apparently the buyer got them both for 44k+6k (paid 44k "cash" and 6k "credit") - which is fairly cheap for land areas.

It would had been more interesting if someone like Ace Skywalker (item collector) or Honey Kitten Little (NI veteran) got at least one of them. Or Deathifier. (Or, well theoretically NEVERDIE but I Think he currently got his hands full with RT).

narfi said:

MA did tell him what he said they said.
It was however not true as the screen shots here prove.
All of this info has been given to Fatal over the last week so it is not new to him.

I believe it was unethical of MA to take the deeds from him without compensation.
I believe it was unethical of MA to lie about what they had told me in order to shirk their own responsibilities.
I believe it is unethical of MA to continue with the lie/word twisting even after confronted.

I felt bad for Fatal and would have continued fighting for him because I believe he was wronged, but stopped when he became aggressive with me.
Perhaps I was not as patient with him as I should have been, but I am frustrated with the whole situation esp. considering how I have gone out of my way to be transparent with him and share every communication I have had with MA.

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If this is all the correspondence that you received, then I will deeply and honestly apologize for saying what I had said, because it seems to me that MA never told you not to sell them, and yet they stated that they did in their response.

Telling you that "these deeds were never approved for sale" is NOT telling you that you yourself cannot sell them, as they state in their response. It is telling you that simply these deeds were not approved for sale yet. There is a difference there, one that I believe MA is trying to gloss over.

MA, afaic, has to now answer as to why unapproved and worthless items are being created and introduced, and why they lied to you both about saying that Narfi was "not allowed to sell them".

I assume that somewhere in the EULA is a clause that states that unapproved items are not allowed to be sold by anyone, but I don't believe they made that clear to you. And more importantly, their failure to rectify the situation, and to have removed these deeds from our universe a long time ago, back when they were made aware of their existence, simply reeks of mismanagement of the game we trust our money in.




Edit: The more I think about it, the more ashamed I am for wholeheartedly believing what MA wrote in their response to Narfi and Fatal...and the more hurt I am for letting it induce me into doubting a person that I never should have doubted.

Sunsout Gunsout said:

If this is all the correspondence that you received, then I will deeply and honestly apologize for saying what I had said, because it seems to me that MA never told you not to sell them, and yet they stated that they did in their response.

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thank you,
narfi

Wait a bit, MA took the deeds completely? Not even leaving them as "eggs"?

/mod note/
narfi, you'll recall that this forum has a rule about posting private communications:

2.6 - Private Communication
Posting the content from a private communication in a publicly viewable area of PlanetCalypsoForum is NOT permitted. Private communications include any medium where the involved parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as: emails, chat logs, instant messenger logs, private messages, private society forum posts, private social group posts, reputation comments, etc. Such private communications are to remain private, not shared with third parties. Any such private communication content posted on PlanetCalypsoForum will be deleted without notice.

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I will therefore be removing the text of the private chat between you and fatal.

As this is a somewhat unusual situation though, I'll be sending a pm to fatal asking if he would agree with that text being posted. If he does agree, I'll restore the posts.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
I've received a response from fatal overnight, and as he's agreed for the chat to be posted, I've restored narfi's posts.

Sunsout Gunsout said:

MA is saying they said not to sell

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Without looking at other details that wouldn't be enough to stop some "investors" to take the risk.


In fact I believe that a certain planet partner told somebody who receive a item in is planet to never sell it (althought in didn't say why, but left the impression that it could become very valuable).


Risk and reward are fluid concepts.

a case of MA deliberate ambiguity and issue avoidance leading to a much larger, real problem

referring to the LA originally not being intended for sale is not the same as saying do not sell them, making them untradeable, or removing them from game as would be the responsible things to do

My soc mate bought 2 land areas on NI and cant do anything with them.

narfi said:

I agree Divinity except that Fatal and I have been in daily communication for more than a week, so he had copies of what MA had originally told me as well as my responses to them. I feel bad for him but I can't allow him to bully me.

I purchased them from someone that had done work for NI back when it was in development.
It was my understanding they had been given to him as payment for services rendered.

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I would like to receive the explanation of these words - what does this really mean.

Personally, I think it looks like that you can clearly see here that if an avatar has worked or made ​​the company some services dont get paid for their work in the money outside the game, without getting paid in the game in a way that conveys that the avatar has direct advantages over others in the game that MA always told it does not exist.

I can not see this in any other way but if someone else can, I am grateful for the help.

narfi said:

I had already given Fatal all of this information, so he knows I didn't do anything wrong.
I had filed support cases on his behalf requesting they give him back his deeds and fix them, or refund him what he paid for them and bill Post directly for it. (Issues between MA and PPs should not involve the players)
I had also requested they retract the lie they were telling him about me but they did not.

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all trades are final we know that for sure. my question to you is are you willing to reverse the trade or let fatal get it from previous owner or MA?

If MA removed the deeds from his inventory the least they can do is replace it with 2 speculative items for something to potentially happen with in the near or far future, should they see fit...

Sry might have missed it, when/where were these deeds sold in the first place (introduced)?

To me, MA clearly indicated that they will not be involved with these deeds because the land areas were never approved. Narfi would have had enough information to deduce that these deeds are not bugged but rather useless.

Calling it bugged implies that it is a temporary issue that will later be patched. MA however, indicated that these were not bugged and intentionally useless/worthless. The correct action was for Narfi to seek compensation from the party who originally sold him the deeds instead of pawning it off to some unsuspecting person under the pretense that the item was bugged. How is MA supposed to assess this "50,000 PED value" if original transaction Narfi "supposedly" purchased them in occurred outside of game? His description of his acquisition is wishy-washy at best.

I don't know Narfi and I don't know fatal. Reading all support cases, its obvious to me that Narfi knew that MA would not be involved with these deeds and still called them "bugged". Why would somebody decide to sell them now after all these support cases? Simply because it had become apparent that the deeds were not bugged, but rather useless items.

narfi said:

[...]
edit: I'm not asking for the owed money, just pointing out the technicality of the situation.

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Technically if somebody sell something for fixed price, they want pull price to be paid.
Looks to me that you are very happy to get rid of rotten eggs and paid money is enough for you.
That would mean you knew you do something shady and no excuses will change it.

EggRollOneDolla said:

This isnt the first thing that MA screwed up and it sure as hell wont be the last...

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And how MA screwed this up?
From what I read those deeds were never approved by MA and they were created by NI PP and gave to their employee as a payment for some job. Then this employee sold deeds to Narfi.

How come this is MA's fault? They did not received a dime for this sale so you expect to pay money to somebody?

Didn't neverdie 'worked' for NI?
Considering Narfi's ties with neverdie I would risk to state theory that it was neverdie who sold deeds to Narfi.
Possibly even created them for himself while working on NI.

Now we also see other things neverdie do in game, like playing and looting on his planet.

If there is any blame on MA in such cases then it is for not dealing with rogue PPs line neverdie.

Teiwaz Storm said:

And how MA screwed this up?

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By introducing them in to the game.

From what I read those deeds were never approved by MA and they were created by NI PP and gave to their employee as a payment for some job. Then this employee sold deeds to Narfi.

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I might be wrong but aren´t all items introduced by MA? after PP sends them specs and graphics for approval (in this case deed and LA coordinates)

Sissi said:

By introducing them in to the game.


I might be wrong but aren´t all items introduced by MA? after PP sends them specs and graphics for approval (in this case deed and LA coordinates)

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Something like that but I don't wonna publicly blame them, my loot is bad enough allready

Sissi said:

I might be wrong but aren´t all items introduced by MA? after PP sends them specs and graphics for approval (in this case deed and LA coordinates)

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Exactly. Not only the deeds, but the LAs themselves do physically exist, they're shown on the map, etc. If MA didn't want them in game, they wouldn't have create them.

What actually happens is now that NI PP is gone and MA have NI to themselves and work on revamping it, they don't want to honour old PP's agreements and want to keep the lands (and those LAs are very huge by Caly standards).

the_prophet said:

Sry might have missed it, when/where were these deeds sold in the first place (introduced)?

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If I understand right, they were the payment to the original NI Forum admin.

Teiwaz Storm said:

...

How come this is MA's fault? They did not received a dime for this sale so you expect to pay money to somebody?
...

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Although when they are created for the game it is MA's responsibility to release each and every item into the game - which includes the rotten Deeds. They didn'T handle it very well in the past and therefore item exist which were not intended by MA, but they didn'T do anything against it either on THEIR platform, and that is when their responsibility comes into play.

To the topic, i think Narfi did his fair share fo informing the buyer BEFORE he sold the deeds and i can't see bad intention in selling them, seeing what MA wrote about the case. I understand the text that the Deeds were originally not approved to be released, nevertheless they do NOT explicitly tell Narfi not to sell them - It might been it was intended to say that, but either due to misscommunication or intentionally i don't know.

In that case i see main responsibility on MAs side, therefore they should refund the buyer by the amount he paid Narfi ( Because they took the deeds from his inventory and know exactly the price he paid to Narfi )
and then go to David Post and ask the money from him, because i guess he broke the contractual agreement by releasing the deeds.

And for the future collect all deeds that are not intended to be in the game before they do more harm

the_prophet said:

Sry might have missed it, when/where were these deeds sold in the first place (introduced)?

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This is my understanding from info gathered from this thread and my own knowledge about the game.

The two deeds in question Ajoite Game Reserve and Kyanite Game Reserve I were created by NEVERDIE (ND) who used to work for Next Island as it's developer. It appears they were never approved by MA but still created by ND as it's developer.

Now it's pretty obvious ND knows he should never have created them without approval. ND used to be a developer for David Post and these LA could have been payment for work he did for Next Island.

ND should have cleared it with MA and David Post and indeed still needs to sort this out with MA and David Post.


Now Narfi is an avatar who works for ND. Exactly what the arrangements are and how he gets paid by ND I doubt very much that he'll tell us here.

Facts I can tell you though is Narfi has received the following items from ND:
Mothership (via a dubious competition. If I remember correctly another avatar thoought he should have won if it wasn't for help narfi received from ND in winning the competition e.g. extra spawns of The Thing created for narfi at end of competition)
Privateer
Next Island LA's (Ajoite Game Reserve and Kyanite Game Reserve I)


So it's entirely feasible Narfi never paid anything for the Next Island Deeds. As he works for ND he probably knew they should never have been created and indeed that they were never approved and he was not to sell them. Narfi does however sell them with the pretext that they are bugged rather than tell the buyer they are useless. I say this because of the issue below:

dan trin said:

all trades are final we know that for sure. my question to you is are you willing to reverse the trade or let fatal get it from previous owner or MA?

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Narfi is not willing to reverse the trade as you can see from the support messages he posted Narfi gives MA a few options none of which involve reversing the trade.

In my opinion Narfi knew exactly what he was doing on behalf of ND which was to make a few peds from LA's that were useless which he described as bugged to the buyer in order to make the sale.



Problem here is MA trusted a PP and it's Developer ND. Clearly that trust is misplaced as ND and Narfi have not behaved in an ethical manner.

GeorgeSkywalker said:

ND used to be a developer for David Post and these LA could have been payment for work he did for Next Island.

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ND got whole eastern half of the planet for his work, I suppose it's more than enough. LAs didn't exist upon launch of NI.

In their correspondence MA tells Narfi to "contact Marius to see if you guys can settle this with David Post", so apparently the said Marius was the previous owner of LAs, and my guess it's Enzo Marius Romanus - the first administrator of NI forum.

Points:

1) deeds can't get into the game without being "approved" so therefore these deeds were given to ND (which of course stands for "Non-Disclosed avatar" who might be this "Marius" character ) with MA's understanding that ND would never give them to anyone else
2) ND gave them to another avatar
3) support often gets things wrong, especially before the issues are escalated to "someone who knows"
4) Narfi and Fatal apparently made their transaction (of money) out of game, meaning MA cannot refund, because they don't know how much was really paid

So, if I'm understanding correctly, we have bad decisions being made by:

1) MA, in not setting the deeds to "nontradable" before they were given to ND in the first place
2) ND, in trading these deeds to Narfi
3) Support, for doing what they too often do, PLUS, pretending to have told Narfi not to sell the deeds, when in fact all they said was the deeds were not originally "approved for sale" (not the same thing!)
4) Narfi and Fatal both, for making a trade outside of the game

and hey let's just add

5) the community for jumping to conclusions

GeorgeSkywalker said:

This is my understanding from info gathered from this thread and my own knowledge about the game.

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It is common knowledge that GeorgeSkywalker is in fact Jack the Ripper who was captured by the police but set free because he was good friends with the queens illegitimate son and granted eternal life. He now purchases items in Entropia with a royal stipend in preparation for the day when he may have to return to exile with the Antarctic aborigines.

The only thing correct in his post of hatred was that I won the THING event.
If you ask those who actually competed in the event, they will tell you that I did nothing wrong then either.

I have never owned a Privateer and the one I did use belonged to Sitka (you can ask him yourself)

From my understanding the deeds were put into circulation much after ND was removed from the NI project, but thats just what I was told so is an internal matter for MA and none of my concern.

And while I do enjoy Rocktropia and call it my 'home planet' the only 'work' I have done has been as a volunteer mod on his forum which I seldom put any effort into because of a lack of rules laid out to follow.

tldr: GS is a lier with a vendetta, but anyone who knows him or I already knows this.

Neil Stockton said:

Points:

1) deeds can't get into the game without being "approved" so therefore these deeds were given to ND (which of course stands for "Non-Disclosed avatar" who might be this "Marius" character ) with MA's understanding that ND would never give them to anyone else
2) ND gave them to another avatar
3) support often gets things wrong, especially before the issues are escalated to "someone who knows"
4) Narfi and Fatal apparently made their transaction (of money) out of game, meaning MA cannot refund, because they don't know how much was really paid

So, if I'm understanding correctly, we have bad decisions being made by:

1) MA, in not setting the deeds to "nontradable" before they were given to ND in the first place
2) ND, in trading these deeds to Narfi
3) Support, for doing what they too often do, PLUS, pretending to have told Narfi not to sell the deeds, when in fact all they said was the deeds were not originally "approved for sale" (not the same thing!)
4) Narfi and Fatal both, for making a trade outside of the game

and hey let's just add

5) the community for jumping to conclusions

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+Rep.. Pretty much what i have made out of it so far. Had this trade been made in game, a lot more i feel could/would have been done.

As it stands now, I don't see this reach a favorable conclusion for anyone because everyone went outside the system in there dealings and the system itself did not preemptively prevent this mishap from happening.

MeanMachine said:

My soc mate bought 2 land areas on NI and cant do anything with them.

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These two landareas, or two *other* land areas?

One thing to keep in mind: As far as I know, there has never been any publicly sold land areas on NI.

I have no clue how these "game reserve" land areas got into game; and beside those the rest of the land areas are mainly a part of Neverdie's "Champions Park".

A parallell: Long time ago, someone asked about the 5% land area tax on the (then) two chunks of owned land on Arkadia (8 coin area and the big Island in the North). The answer was, that the 5% tax was "mandated". Between the lines, the land given to the "founders" was under special regulation from MA.

Neil Stockton said:

5) the community for jumping to conclusions

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When estates were put up for sale, I asked from where they came, and the responst that came was that they were sold. From that you can draw the conclusion that the sale of those deeds Went kind of fast - maybe too fast.

Just consider this: If all payment of the deeds had been made through ingame transactions, this would had been much cleaner.

aia said:

A parallell: Long time ago, someone asked about the 5% land area tax on the (then) two chunks of owned land on Arkadia. The answer was, that the 5% tax was "mandated". Between the lines, the land given to the "founders" was under special regulation from MA.

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No need to read behind the lines for that... it was clearly stated that they were given to the pre-investors as part of their investment agreement and the tax rate was not adjustable. So, maybe not the best parallel, other than they were land areas given privately rather than thru public sale. Unfortunately in the NI case, there doesn't seem to be any kind of agreement in place, at least not now with David Post having abdicated the throne and left the monkeys and boars to rule the planet.

GeorgeSkywalker said:

Facts I can tell you though is Narfi has received the following items from ND:
Mothership (via a dubious competition. If I remember correctly another avatar thoought he should have won if it wasn't for help narfi received from ND in winning the competition e.g. extra spawns of The Thing created for narfi at end of competition)

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It was a very, very close contest and Narfi went "all in" by hiring a whole army of mercenaries to shoot with him. It wouldn't surprise me if ND adjusted the spawns during the contest, as the higher-level THINGs didn't spawn enough for either of the two finalists' tastes and I think requests were made to make them more common. If so, this would hardly constitute "help" or be unfair, as it was available to (and as i said, i think requested by) both the final competitors.

* * *

It seems the only appropriate resolution to this is for MA to fix the LAs, giving a disclaimer as they do so that the areas in question are subject to change in size and/or content in some future VU due to their unsupported and unapproved origins. Then the current owner gets working LAs, MA keeps the right-of-way to modify NI as they wish if/when the time arises, and the whole mess is resolved by the party who is ultimately responsible: the platform operator who has to approve all new developments.