Only read the OP, but what bothers me the most is that when...
A known exploiter makes a mistake of 120k ped, it get's resolved..
When a hard working player get's scammed out of a mod merc & some other gear worth more (yes, I'm talking about rept), MA does not seem to be home & the player takes the loss...
Why did I ever depo again?
Forgive me if I don't quite agree with you on this point, okay?
Because its like locking a person in jail (and throwing away the key) or banishing him/her into hell forever...just simply for that "deed" made in the past...and with no hopes of redemption...ever.
"Deed" or no "deed" doesn't warrant that he/she loses that much cash in a single error.
(That being said, on the point of that "hard working player" getting scammed, I would agree with you that the lack of action on MA's part is "distasteful" and a cause for concern. Which points back to its lack of clear guidelines.)
All trades are final but some are more final than others. (With apologies to George Orwell.)
Which was why I've made this thread in the first place. To highlight what was "troubling" to me.
A lack of clear guidelines and safety measures...
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The thing is...being an RCE, which deals with $$$$ (cash), there appears to be a gross lack of certain (in my opinion necessary) precautions to prevent or warn the players against making costly mistakes.
And no I don't mean nor refer to high stakes gambling in hunting, mining or crafting...for those costs are explicit...and thus the blame shouldn't (nor can they) be placed on MA in those instances.
By costly mistakes, I refer to the fact that a
single mistake of pulling the wrong stack/item or pricing something wrongly (as a result of misunderstanding how the auctioning system works or not paying enough "attention") could result in the player losing upwards of thousands of USD.
(Players who don't see the sense in this...either doesn't have enough PEDs in-game to be worried about this, haven't had this happen to them yet or are "secretly" praying for "someone else" to make this very costly mistake...so that they could "benefit" from it.)
And since we continue to observe this at a frightening frequency, there is clearly something wrong with the system here. (And thus the fault lies squarely with MA in this case...for failing to address this problem...swiftly and decisively.)
And in the case of PVP lootable space, a lack of a "headsup" which informs the player of how much he/she would risk losing...an accidental summon (and acceptance) whilst someone is still mid-hunting/mining/crafting...speaks volumes about the lack of a "safety measure" here too (as well as a lack of enough thinking/discussion when they decided to implement it in this way).
When an RCE does not have enough safety precautions and methods of recourse to protect you, its precious customers, would you still want to risk putting in sizeable amounts of money into it?
Are they trying to attract gamers or investors?
If its gamers, then the lack of safety measures is okay....so long as each gamer doesn't hold too much PEDs or have a high ingame networth (of items/peds).
But with the way things are or are implemented...so much so that there's a good handful of players which holds enough to be reasonably classified as "investors" instead of gamers...
Do you think its okay to leave things as they are?
And that leads me to reasonably conclude/believe that MA doesn't quite know where they want to lead Entropia Universe to.