Doing something about Ninjaing/Scamming. [Poll Added!]

[nicole]

I agree it is really big issue. For the last couple days I've been trying to get my hands on a dragoncat PPS(usually valued at .25 non) (I understand this is avery popular pet) and everytime I've made a post I've recieved a trade from a user asking for .5 non, I'm okay with overpaying but I don't want to double their whole worth. I suggested less pets saying I didn't want to trade .5 non
they replied by declining the trade and stating "then im not intrested sorry pps cat dragon is rising. have a nice day tho". I get wanting overpay but they are literally inflating the value of the pet. They later sent a another trade valuing the dragon PPS at .5 non saying this "i recently got .5+ wort for my last pps cat dragon (as seen below) so im willing to do this?
link to trade". This is absurd, I'm only upset about this because if I was a very inexpirenced player I would have payed double the worth of the dragoncat PPS because they make all these claims of it being worth .5 non and even citing a trade. Am I crazy? Or is the Dragoncat PPS really worth .5 non???

It's not worth .5n, and those sort of trades are referred to as outlier trades. There are certain users who do try to push trades and get unfair trades sent to them and just accept it and then claim for it to be the new "norm". Or in other cases, they send out these trades and expect to be able to push it to .5n which is absurd, as they're probably getting the pps cat from somebody at the normal value of .25n.

[pancakelover43]

As an old CS user, I heavily support this :]

[Nicnova]

While I am very worried about scamming and want to find a way to solve the problem, I'm unsure if a public blacklist of those who more commonly do so would do more good than harm. These are still people, and I feel that they might get 'witch-hunted' or harassed. I don't wish that on anyone just for sending unfair trades.

I also agree with this concern. I just want players to be aware and careful of who they trade with, but I don't know if there's any good way to do that without people harassing scammers.

[far]

I agree it is really big issue. For the last couple days I've been trying to get my hands on a dragoncat PPS(usually valued at .25 non) (I understand this is avery popular pet) and everytime I've made a post I've recieved a trade from a user asking for .5 non, I'm okay with overpaying but I don't want to double their whole worth. I suggested less pets saying I didn't want to trade .5 non
they replied by declining the trade and stating "then im not intrested sorry pps cat dragon is rising. have a nice day tho". I get wanting overpay but they are literally inflating the value of the pet. They later sent a another trade valuing the dragon PPS at .5 non saying this "i recently got .5+ wort for my last pps cat dragon (as seen below) so im willing to do this?
link to trade". This is absurd, I'm only upset about this because if I was a very inexpirenced player I would have payed double the worth of the dragoncat PPS because they make all these claims of it being worth .5 non and even citing a trade. Am I crazy? Or is the Dragoncat PPS really worth .5 non???

It's not worth .5n, and those sort of trades are referred to as outlier trades. There are certain users who do try to push trades and get unfair trades sent to them and just accept it and then claim for it to be the new "norm". Or in other cases, they send out these trades and expect to be able to push it to .5n which is absurd, as they're probably getting the pps cat from somebody at the normal value of .25n.

Is this not a little messed up?? It's really disheartening to see people jack up the value of these pets when they themselves don't even want them they just want profit... Also shouldn't someone be reported for this??

[starcrusher]

agree but not exactly sure how a fix could be effectively implemented as something users could do themselves as opposed to mods going after scammers as they appear

i do think the various value/demand/trade guide threads should be maybe better organized and more accessible? i feel like especially for younger/newer players, at this point they may have had little to no experience navigating a traditional internet forum like CS's.

personally when i trade i can barely be bothered to add up pets in any depth more than "rare+" and "uncommon, common, vc, omgsc", but of course the system keeps track of it. it'd be nice to know how many pets of each rarity are on each side of the trade before i actually send the trade and realize "oh, i offered 12 pets for their 70? that's a lot!"

to help with the math, it would be nice to see "you're offering x very rare pets, x rare pets, x uncommon pets..." and so on, or have the pets optionally separated in ascending/descending rarity order rather than date order. this would be useful for browsing groups too! i think enhanced organizational ability within the trading center itself would go far in helping players make sure what they're trading is even, rarity-wise.

item rarities would also be amazing but thats a whole other topic lol

[user G0ne]

This is what I've been afraid of! Obviously so far I've had a great time trading and such on this site despite me being here only since last month. However, how valuable a pet is is still a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around. The rarity meter thing makes sense, but then people take into consideration dates and then make rules for that and what they will and won't accept. Which is fine, honestly I understand why people do that. I just am unable to understand. I'm worried that by accident I'm going to have an unfair trade with someone and then I'm going to get witch-hunted for something that I couldn't understand. I don't think that sounds fair but then again, I am also bad at finding solutions.

[KiraWolf]

I agree with some, but not all aspects of this post. Yes, it's true that scamming has always been a big issue on the site; it's unfair and frusterating, but I think it's gotten a lot better and easier to spot and report nowadays. Every single year the Dec. 18th post gets longer and has more resources for newer players to become informed; when I joined those resources were very few and far between. I've been a resource like that in the past before, someone you can ask to get your Dec. 18th pets evaluated to try and mitigate scamming but it still happens. I'm not trying to alienate new players, I've been ninja'd a handful of times myself, but it really does take a lot of time and effort to understand the true value of these pets and there will always be people who are going to try and game the system. I feel as though it's sadly a problem that isn't going to be fixed by adding more rules, since rules tend to spawn grey areas. (And require much more staff intervention) Maybe we could implement a newer, better rarities guide, possibly built into the actual site to protect from scammers? (Like an indicator/warning you have to approve in order to trade an omgsr for a common?) Or possibly a system that protects newer players from getting trades for their Dec. 18th pets until they are grown and have their rarities indicated?

[far]

Here's an idea- why aren't pets that are worth more than their date & rarity somehow marked? Like a star or something next to their rarity bar

[sludge]

I agree with some, but not all aspects of this post. Yes, it's true that scamming has always been a big issue on the site; it's unfair and frusterating, but I think it's gotten a lot better and easier to spot and report nowadays. Every single year the Dec. 18th post gets longer and has more resources for newer players to become informed; when I joined those resources were very few and far between. I've been a resource like that in the past before, someone you can ask to get your Dec. 18th pets evaluated to try and mitigate scamming but it still happens. I'm not trying to alienate new players, I've been ninja'd a handful of times myself, but it really does take a lot of time and effort to understand the true value of these pets and there will always be people who are going to try and game the system. I feel as though it's sadly a problem that isn't going to be fixed by adding more rules, since rules tend to spawn grey areas. (And require much more staff intervention) Maybe we could implement a newer, better rarities guide, possibly built into the actual site to protect from scammers? Or possibly a system that protects newer players from getting trades for their Dec. 18th pets until they are grown and have their rarities indicated?

unfortunately as obvious as it is to us who's scamming, the reporting doesn't do anything. there are plenty of well known scammers who are still actively trading and have been for years. it's easy for us to understand what to look at when trying to figure out of something is unfair, but it's not for other people, not even just newbies.

[Nicnova]

I agree with some, but not all aspects of this post. Yes, it's true that scamming has always been a big issue on the site; it's unfair and frusterating, but I think it's gotten a lot better and easier to spot and report nowadays. Every single year the Dec. 18th post gets longer and has more resources for newer players to become informed; when I joined those resources were very few and far between. I've been a resource like that in the past before, someone you can ask to get your Dec. 18th pets evaluated to try and mitigate scamming but it still happens. I'm not trying to alienate new players, I've been ninja'd a handful of times myself, but it really does take a lot of time and effort to understand the true value of these pets and there will always be people who are going to try and game the system. I feel as though it's sadly a problem that isn't going to be fixed by adding more rules, since rules tend to spawn grey areas. (And require much more staff intervention) Maybe we could implement a newer, better rarities guide, possibly built into the actual site to protect from scammers? Or possibly a system that protects newer players from getting trades for their Dec. 18th pets until they are grown and have their rarities indicated?

unfortunately as obvious as it is to us who's scamming, the reporting doesn't do anything. there are plenty of well known scammers who are still actively trading and have been for years. it's easy for us to understand what to look at when trying to figure out of something is unfair, but it's not for other people, not even just newbies.

I wanted to add: a lot of times ninja trades will not get reversed and I think that's one of the main issues here. Ninja trades sent to new players should be reversed. After all, every party gets their pets back and overall no one is hurt in the end. Unlike if the trade was allowed to stay completed.