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

[This Is Halloween]

I must agree with what Halsie and Falorni are saying above. Many users who scam people out of their pets ARE reported and there are still no repercussions for them. Instead, the person that was scammed out of their pet is told that the trade is irreversible and that they should've done research beforehand.

100000%. not everyone knows that there’s research to be DONE. I’ve been on this game for 8 years and was unaware about it until what? a year ago? maybe 2. there is no reason to make what is considered a “child’s game” so complex.

[morax]

support. not a fan of the common “you should’ve known” saying that inexperienced and scammed people get told when this is brought up. it’s very hurtful

[Horror]

-sniiiiiiip-

Finally, I want to clarify that I think FTT/Pet Worth Thread linked on trade pages could be a good idea (with rule changes to address my problems above, perhaps a rename to "opinions on trades" and "discuss pet values" or something? less focus on "report false advice" and just allow people to disagree unless they're saying "the UR Tiger can be traded for 3 random rares"?) as this addresses the main core of the problem (accessibility) from two angles: making the threads more visible, and making values less concrete so people are less hesitant to trade.

just adding on support for this specific suggestion! Though I'd still be wary of false advice when it's really just straight up artificial demand pushing. Something like this would work on the trading center page. Alternatively even putting it on the page of trades themselves to really make sure people see it before making a decision, with the buttons linking to (renamed) FTT and how much is this pet worth threads. Even just one button that links to the CS Discussion forum lets people see those + several guides. Maybe a little mention for COPPA'd users to send a help ticket in if they cant post. Anything at all. Anything’s an improvement from the “you should’ve known” that a lot of us were told or heard said to someone else at some point before. It would've helped me a lot when I was COPPA and didn't look at the forums due to not being able to post and didn't know a trade guide or advice existed. Having the "should've done your research" point is stronger if at the very least some accessible way to get help is right there in your face when you're actually trading. If it's linked right there, AS you're trading and you still don't at least ask opinions, then it being on you makes more sense, but as it stands right now I doubt every single individual user on this site is aware of how or where to get advice, the red font and bold on the front page only does so much. The red font hasn't even been a thing until recent years and I've always thought it's kinda rough to place the blame on the ones who get ninja'd like this

I still do wish that at least in some certain cases when someones clearly ninja'ing and a repeat offender of it there could at least be some consequence. You having to suck it up because you didn't know what your pet is worth has been a thing since the sites old times when ninja'ing was more considered an acceptable thing, but things have changed, it's frowned on by the majority of the community, so if at all possible for the rule to change with it that'd be ideal. But regardless of whether or not anything can be done with ninjas and rules fine print this or that, please do make the option of advice more visible, it's a start at least. After how many years cs has been up it’d be comforting to finally have at least some actual preventative measure made to fight ninjaing besides solely bits of text here and there on the 18th

[Neoncherry64]

Sorry in advance for the essay. I didn’t realize this post got so long. I have a lot of feelings on this subject TwT

I will say that there are a ton of really young coppa users on here that may not even know about pet worths or lists or anything, and may send severely unfair trades completely innocently. It would be very hard for mods to distinguish a ninja trade from one of these kinds of trades, and they should not be punished for it.

HOWEVER... I feel as if it is pretty easy to tell if someone is ninja-ing or not based on their trade history. If mods are able to view all of a user’s trades, (which I believe they can?) it should be fairly obvious if a user is consistently sending out mass unfair trades on dec 18th in hopes that one will be accepted. That’s how ninjas work, they don’t just send one or two targeted people trades, they send out a ton at once. This type of behavior should be fairly easy to detect, and I believe, a bannable offense. ESPECIALLY if they have trade history or forum posts trading away those same pets for their “real” market price. There is proof right there that they do in fact know what the pets are worth, and were intentionally misleading their trade partner.

Also, to address Lacuna’s comment about never really knowing if a trade is fair or not because we do not actually know the rarities of pets compared to each other:

I do agree with many of your points! Most trades that occur on CS are probably technically “unfair” based on the number of pets there actually are. However, it is important to note that CS has its own economy. Pets 100% have a “market value” that they trade for, which goes up and down based on “demand.” There is a big difference in saying “the current market value of a nick unicorn is 1 non” or “the nick unicorn consistently trades for 1 non” VS “the nick unicorn is WORTH 1 non.” The first two statements are objectively true, and can be proven with trade data from users. The second statement is more subjective, since people are free to value their pets however they want, with whatever list or metric they want. But it seems crazy to ignore these market values, even if they are technically incorrect, to sweep bad trades under the rug. Sure, someone might try and trade 15 rares for an OMGSR, and weather they really believe that trade is fair or not doesn’t really matter. The trade is still considered unfair by 99% of CS users based on the past trading history of that pet.

I understand that this is a very delicate issue, and that at the end of the day, pet worth is and will always be subjective to each user. You are free to look at other people’s trades and decide if that’s what you want to do or not. But acting like the CS economy is “just a suggestion” seems a little bit nieve.

It’s like Pokémon cards. Pokémon never actually states the pull rates in a given set, just like we don’t know exact numbers of CS pets. We can assume these rarities though, through pull data, just like how we can look at the dates pets change rarity and rank them among eachother. Technically, a holo charizard could be just as rare as a holo anything else, but the market price is way more expensive. I don’t think anyone would say, “oh, the value of this card is subjective to each player” when there are literal eBay recepts available. Just like we have the “successful trade” thread where you can see how much a pet has traded for in the past. Obviously this isn’t a completely accurate comparison since one is a real life good. But it just shows that even with collectibles with no published rates, there WILL be an economy that forms around them, and the community WILL put prices on them that should not be ignored just because we do not have exact rarity data.

[Halsie]

Also just want to add that someone said, “scamming is part of the game. we are going to do anything for profit.” Just goes to show people genuinely have that mindset and purposefully scam. Yes this was said off-site and nothing can be done but just acknowledge that people think that way. Yes this a trading site but that doesn’t mean you can just scam people. 💀 You are the problem if you think this way.

[Nicnova]

These messages were sent anonymously. Halsie mentioned this as well. Two were sent to a public tumblr blog, and the other was sent on a burner account on Flight Rising to nicole, the original poster of this thread.

There is nothing wrong with scamming.. how else are users expected to profit? >.<

Cs so toxic. They are hating on the scammers when it is literly part of the game smh.. Like if u don’t no you’re values judt say that.

Not a fan of your Chicken Smoothie thread. If your so against scamming why are you on a trading site? Like ofc were going to do anything for profit ;-;

This is the mindset that users have since almost nothing is done about ninja trades, or sometimes even scammers. And it makes for an extremely toxic trading environment here on CS. No new player is going to learn how to play the game and stay if this is how users will treat them and not get punished for it.

[~sundae~]

Something needs to be done about scamming and ninja trading.

I was ninja’d out of a UR Kirin on December 18th because the other user sent me a trade containing 60+ or so pets, and the first couple pets happen to be warrior cats, which I was making obvious I wanted and was collecting. I payed no attention to the other pets as pets as I thought “wow I’m getting the warriors I want! This is a dream!”

Now I know how unfair that trade was. Since everything is so subjective you literally can’t tell what’s fair or unfair anymore. I’ve been aiming to get a sunback as it’s my dreamie of all time and it’s been so hard trying to get pets just to get one. I don’t want a sunback because it’s valuable. I want one because I love the design and it makes me happy to look at. I love the design so much I collect pets who have a similar design. It’s so hard for people like me to get pets they genuinely want when people are using them only as means of currency. I’ve seen so many users who have so many valuable pets that I can guarantee they don’t even care about and only have them for the sake of their value.

Like, it’s so stressful to get anything on this website because there is absolutely no information that is stable and accurate because of how things change every second. Why even have rarities if they don’t matter and the actual value of the pet depends on the users???? I like this website because of the pets and designs. I hate the fact how almost impossible it is to even get the pets you want. You either have to devote countless hours of your life to hoarding up “valuable pets” so you can afford the dreamie you want, only for everyone you trade with having completely different values. You could collect 200+ valuable pets because somewhere says that’s the price of it only for everyone you trade with say “oh it’s worth more” or “oh I don’t actually want any of these pets”.

I don’t understand why staff can’t just. Give users pets back when they send them a trade that clearly is unfair. Like, hey I got scammed out of a pet here’s the trade. Trade is clearly unfair. Give the user the pet back and like, there! I may be making absolutely no sense, but I’m just spouting out whatever comes to mind. Trading on Thai website is so frustrating when it shouldn’t be.

[far]

These messages were sent anonymously. Halsie mentioned this as well. Two were sent to a public tumblr blog, and the other was sent on a burner account on Flight Rising to nicole, the original poster of this thread.

There is nothing wrong with scamming.. how else are users expected to profit? >.<

Cs so toxic. They are hating on the scammers when it is literly part of the game smh.. Like if u don’t no you’re values judt say that.

Not a fan of your Chicken Smoothie thread. If your so against scamming why are you on a trading site? Like ofc were going to do anything for profit ;-;

This is the mindset that users have since almost nothing is done about ninja trades, or sometimes even scammers. And it makes for an extremely toxic trading environment here on CS. No new player is going to learn how to play the game and stay if this is how users will treat them and not get punished for it.

If this is how users feel about trading that's really depressing

[Guest]

trading and thinking of methods to profit is fun. scamming ruins the game for everyone and I don't know why anybody would think that its enjoyable, there are so many ways to gain worth without taking advantage of others. use ur brain. some people are just sad tbh

[Electronia]

just popping in to say I support linking the 'is this a fair trade' thread


I also agree with whoever mentioned trades being rarity-subjective, but that isn't really disagreeing with the suggestion. It's going against someone, to my knowledge, taking a OMGSR for something of far less value (say 5 UCs), and agreeing that one side knew and the other didn't.
Scamming, while subjective in some cases, is still an issue.