Paranoid To Trade

In the interest of trying to bring this thread back to the topic that the OP intended, I'll answer these.

-Are you afraid to trade? A little bit. I'm not a high end trader, so I don't think any of my trades could hit Anet radars. I have been involved in 1 sided trades with guildies, but none of the folks in my Alliance were banned so I don't think it's an issue for us.

-How do you feel about the fact that innocent people are getting banned, meanwhile very recently people are still out there selling armbraces of truth for 10k each?
First, I'll dispute the fact that armbraces are currently being traded for 10k. Do you know that to be true? Proof? I see people offering 10k for them, but I don't see any sellers. Heck, I saw a guy about a month ago offering 4k for a mini Panda in Kaineng. He was spamming his offer for several hours. I doubt he ever obtained one.

Unfortunately, this was a bad situation all around. Yes, innocents were banned, but everyone who was banned has the right to appeal the ban and Anet did reverse the decision. I'd be much more concerned if their was no appeal process and the ban was permanent even if you were innocent. (I've played games where that was true and it sucks) I'm not going to say that Anet had no reason to ban you. They did have a reason. You conducted a trade with someone involved in duping. At the time, they have no way of knowing if your guildmate was an innocent or an alt account for a big time duper.

-Should buying unidentified gold items from a bot be a bannable offense?
No way. How can I know for sure whether the seller is a bot, a Chinese gold farmer or simply a 13 year old French-Canadian kid who can't speak good English. Trading with bots is an ethical issue. Each of us has to decide for ourselves whether or not we're comfortable trading with a bot.

-How do you feel about one-sided trading?
Nothing is inherently wrong with 1-sided trading. I could list at least 10 legit reasons to conduct a 1-sided trade, but I could also list at least 10 shady reasons to do it as well. I think Anet should write a program that flags 1-sided trades with certain conditions for review by a human. (Note: I did not say all 1 sided trades should be flagged. Only those that meet certain conditions)

-How do you feel in general knowing that all your trades are being monitored? Does it make you feel safe or uneasy? Why?
Safe. After all, those monitors are what made it possible to catch and ban the dupers so quickly and trace the loot thru to the dupers alt accounts. Also consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: I trade 10 ectos to Player X. Player X agrees to pay me 5k for the ectos. He puts 5k in the trade window and cancels trade. He apologizes saying he just realized he has no room in inventory. He runs to storage and again opens trade and puts up 5k. Again he cancels trade. He apologizes saying he hit the wrong button. Again he opens trade and puts up 5g. I accept the trade without carefully checking the window and I get scammed. I can report the player for scamming and Anet has the logs to verify my info.

Scenario 2: I want to buy a nice Chaos Axe. Someone in town approaches me and shows me a nice Req 10 Chaos Axe 15^50. I ask how much and he says he'll sell for 50k. I agree to the price and we make the trade. Later he whispers to me that he wants his axe back. He says a guildie just offered him 90k for it. I refuse and he says he'll report me for scamming if I don't return it.
He has a screenshot of our trade and he doctors it thru photoshop to make it appear that I only paid 50g for the axe. In this case, I'm very glad Anet has logs of the true trade.

yeah punish the company to be causcias, punish them from stopping a potential 1000 armbraces on the market.

Response (GM Phields) 08/16/2007 11:45 AM
Hello,

You received 39 duplicated Victory Tokens for nothing in a trade. Your account has been unblocked and you should be able to log in. If you do anything similar with these duplicated items in the future, the account will be permanently closed.

Take care,
The Guild Wars Support Team

Yeah, mass trading ftw. Quite being such a delusional asshat. Innocent people got banned. Anet failed, deal with it. And no apology. I also sent response asking them why didn't the person who traded me these tokens get banned? Why did they ignore the 549 tokens I received from someone else right before for free? Also, what behavior sent up this red flag so I can avoid doing anything like it in the future.


Their response..... CLOSED TICKET. GG ANET!!! Also, I love how they refuse to put anything about bannings on their website. They know it's terrible PR 2 weeks before GW:EN comes out. God forbid they'd make Gaile do any actual work, she'd rather be on guru, getting into flame wars with me.

And to answer the questions: Yes, I'm paranoid as hell to trade with anyone, and refuse to do so until GW:EN is released.

An Auction House like other MMORPG's would sort everything out as the items you'd be wanting to sell would be taken under Anets direct eyes and they'd be able to monitor everything being sold and it would be impossible to get people scamming. It would also bring the games economy closer to the players and better mae a better knowledge base for all. But this would cost them more (due to databases, maintenance and the game's server system) and would probably involve them considering somesort of monthly cost.

As far as I'm aware GW2 is gonna remain at no monthly costs, correct me if this is wrong, if so how will they be able to compare to the WoW's and the LotR's if they wont have the vast databases that they have which is one of the primary reason for the fees.

I'm expecting it could be similar to 9Dragons, and items will have to be purchased from an online shop to get maximum experience. If not I'm expecting some sort of fee.

We really need that statue we were talking about in out new guild hall, lol.
*pew pew!*

Honestly I think that banning someone outright without warning is inexcusable, and it has made me reluctant to trade with anyone I don't personally know. While we do not indeed pay for playing this game, we do pay to buy it and we are supporting it by being present in the game.

The responsibility for maintaining the game lies with Anet, and the fact is that they are simply not doing a good enough job keeping bots out, and they are banning real people who often had absolutely no idea they had been traded duplicated items and so forth. If they really wanted to alert people, they could have easily added an amount of code to make any duplicated items show up as duplicated. Honestly, if they can detect them, they can add code that can do the same thing. There's no excuse for victimising people who are completely ignorant of any wrongdoing.

Furthermore, the 'economy' of this game is entirely imaginary. Personally I think some items have entered into the realm of the ridiculous, and after a point it stops being fun when the 'economy' becomes outrageously imbalanced. They are not doing a good job of keeping that up, either, and there are plenty of items that are just unfeasibly expensive, which never go down in price to any extent.

Causing the players to suffer for incompetence on the part of the administration is simply inexcusable, and there is absolutely no question of responsibility here. While it is awful for people to dupe items and have bots (and I have seen so many in my time playing), it's even more awful for the players to feel paranoid about trading with others because they don't want to be wrongly banned by incompetent administration. And yes, it is incompetence because this approach is so hamfisted and causes much more work than if they had done their jobs adequately and accounted for the fact that many people have no idea if they have duplicated items. It's more work to have to go back and undo things that you did without making sure.

And why don't they just remove the items from the game, if they know exactly what they are, how much of them they are, and where they came from? There are just far too many details about many of these bannings and issues that make it clear someone just wasn't doing their job at an acceptable level.

Personally I think the reluctance to trade with other players due to paranoia about banning hits the 'economy' much harder than a handful of people duplicating what is usually not even very rare items. 34 linen? Please. That's not going to throw a spanner into even the merchants' prices. I've had runs through the wilderness where I've had 15 linen drop from one monster for me. But people not being willing to trade with each other...now that will affect the economy, and sharply.

Sorry to have gone on so long, but I think this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. Speaking analytically, the problem of reluctance to trade -- which is widespread, in my experience and circle of friends -- is much more detrimental to the game's economy than random duplications. And yes, I am very worried that one trade for something completely pedestrian that I happened to need will somehow curse me. I shouldn't have to worry about that; the administration should find a better, more acceptable way to deal with these things that have come in and continue to come in under their radar. If they have the capability of finding them, they should apply that to preventing them instead of making innocent players suffer, and that's all there is to it.

There you go. That is why your account was flagged. You could have just been a duper unloading gear on different accounts all they knew that is why you needed to be investigated.

I have been more hesitant and leery about trading, and after reading this thread I'm even MORE hesitant. Banned for 39 victory tokens? Bolts of linen? This is getting out of hand (the bannings as well as the dupes). Both the overly zealous and unfair (and eventually overturned) bans AND the duping are hurting the game, and stigmatizing it. This is bad on both ends.

Those "overly zealous and unfair" bans as you put it all included duped items, the bans were to give anet chance to examine whether the person knowingly or unknowingly exchanged those items whilst providing damage limitation to the economy.

Now we have official word on this there isn't much point continuing this scaremongering thread unless someone can provide evidence hard or soft that it is currently unsafe to trade.

lucifer, I appreciate you putting that here, but Gaile has already shown herself to be ignorant on certain occasions and incorrect on others (regarding the duping, hacking, and banning), and with GWEN about to launch, I'm not going to put myself at risk for a ban I can't see coming

Then your welcome to miss out on the trading frenzy that will be GW:EN.
Most players have been and will continue to trade.
Anet banned all those involved in suspicous trading, those who were unwittingly involved have been cleared. All those that knew what they were doing are banned. The exploit has been removed so there are no new duped items currently on the market.

The OP's title subconsciously says it all:

Paranoid:
1. of, like, or suffering from paranoia.

Paranoia:
1. Psychiatry. a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.
2. Baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others.
3. Extreme, irrational distrust of others.

I will feel free trading GWEN items -- they will of course all be new, after the duping was closed.

Beyond that, my decisions are just how I perceive things, not a declaration or edict for everyone else to follow. I can't claim I know every detail about things, and don't have time to. I just have a lot to lose and want to play it on the conservative (paranoid perhaps) side.

Ok what if you get an initial rare perfect gold and someone offeres you 100k + xx ectos. Are you going to take it or live in fear that the ectos could be duped even though the automated banning sweep and the manual bans have finished?

^^ You shouldn't be.
I have two accounts and almost every week I transfer items from one to the other and I had no problems.

Please people don't make me afraid to use the game.

I play to enjoy a few hours out of the reality of real life I don't need to be aggravated and stressed anymore.

I should stop reading these forums I get anxious and preoccupied!

if someone is going to offer big $, they are probably an established trader. I'll look at their track record in the high-end forums and if it all looks cool, I'd sell it, that is, if I didn't want to keep it (I tend to keep the first of any rare skin perfect item I get, such as my 1st r9 Col Scim, 1st r9 Zod sword with inherent 15^50, etc).

that's not being paranoid, that's being smart, imo

I just hope the Asura I bought for 3k for a friend today was legit. He was the only one in my guild without an Asura, I saw one going cheap so I bought him it. Now it's not a case of just ME being banned if it was really duplicated, but a case of HIM being banned too. But according to Gaile, everything is sorted, so I'm assuming I'm safe. But then again, 39 duplicated victory tokens... Ah well. Back to Elder Scrolls.

Yeah, because we all know how reliable Gaile's word is.
Didn't she initially say that the bannings were in the single digits?
Think about it. Has she in past been wrong about anything? Think real hard.

Get real, people! Use your common sense. Gaile Gray works for ANET/NSOFT and is trying to cover their behind. I know you all love GW, but don't follow them so blindly that you disregard any notion of wrong doing.

Just because something doesn't happen to you doesn't mean that it isn't happening. You may have never met a billionaire but that doesn't mean that Donald Trump is public invention.

But I suppose you naysayers won't believe unless it happens to you, will it?
Awareness is important in any community. I and my guild ARE NOT single-handedly trying to bring down Guild Wars. As a matter of fact, we aren't trying to bring it down at all. We love Guild Wars. Do we wish that they were more careful with how they conduct business? Indeed we do!

If you choose not to see past the nose on your face, then I feel sort of bad for you. Denying this problem will not prevent others from talking about it. I think if we are to truly get passed it the public first needs to BE AWARE of it through proper discussion like this.

k, probabely shouldent get in to this discusion. As i didnt even knew the armbraces excisted, before all the duping crap....

But 2 things @ t_the_nihilst: 1. You did get your account back so Anet does follow up and correct mistakes.

2. Shouldent you be blaming your guildleader and officers(wich you guys still call friends)?? They are the ones that put you in that position, they are the ones that risked your account. I would be pissed at them not Anet

Mzzls

If anyone can provide hard (or even soft) evidence that trading is currently unsafe then I will gladly apologise and duly jump on the paranoia bandwagon.

Until then, stop scaremongering trading just because your account was temp banned for investigation after you dealt in duped goods unknowingly.

Your welcome to miss out on trading because of your pride but you will be the one missing out on an integral part of the playing experience.

I have done a few big trades and no problems have occured. Same with tons of others I know. I would maybe just lay off trading rare limited mini pets for a while.

This whole duping exploit episode is most likely only the tip of the iceburg. This game has been invaded by a host of hardcore, exploiting, hacking players and this is just an instance that has come to light in the community. I place a great deal of the blame on Anet itself for continually making gameplay less and less friendly to the casual players while creating a paradise for the children who have nothing better to do than take advantage of things like duping. (Juding by the spelling and grammer of many admittedly affected by the duping in the forums, they are either youngsters or illiterate,maybe both).

Anyone that cares to can search the web and find a huge number of subscription sites that provide detailed information on how to exploit and hack GW. Why Anet doesn't subscribe to such sites and close up the loopholes in the game is beyond comprehension. Given that Gaile has so much as said nothing goes on in the game that Anet isn't aware of and can't deal with, why are the bots still as prevalent as ever? It's just hard to fathom where Anet is coming from in dealing with these issues.

Just reading theads on this fansite forum gives anyone an insight into the "elitist" players who trade armbraces and high-end items as though they were charr carvings for the rest of us. These are the very same players that constantly berate and flame any poster that questions the current state of gameplay. These are also the same players that claim the game is "too easy". It's Anet's own fault that they have to step in and deal with issues like this and, as usual, the rest of us take the hit for it (no reconnect in this instance).

I, for one, have little sympathy for any banning (temporary or permenant) that was given over this exploit. Apparently it mainly affected a particular guild, difficult to imagine isn't it, a whole guild involved in exploiting the game? I'm not paranoid about trading, and neither is 99% of the community. Why? Because we just play the game to have fun, not to impress anyone over what titles or items we have garnered. Not only that, we don't have millions in gold flow through our accounts on a regular basis.

Come Anet, undo the mess you have created yourself. Open the game up rather than clamping it down. Level the playing field so that the casual players have reasonable oppuntunites to acquire gold and items that the hardcore, exploiting, and hacking players now have such easy access to get. Quit catering to the few, pay attention to your main player base, and these issues will resolve themselves!

Yes I'm paranoid about trading now.
You never know if that item you're about to get might be duped or not... hell, how are you supposed to know? And don't give me that crap about one sided trades... every trade is onesided, I've never ever seen a single really fair trade in my entire life. One side allways loses out on a trade. It's the simple law of how things work. You either pay too much and lose or you pay less than enough and the other one loses.
Simply "Buy low, sell high" is now suscpicious behavior? Blergh.

t_the_nihilst, I'd like to point to few things before I anwser:

1) you say some are banned while others still sell Armbraces for 10k. Well, there ain't many who actually try to sell them for that ammount. I've only seen buyers who were looking for AoT for this prices and all sellers were actually people who tried to test those buyer's reactions. I don't belive many were sold for that price for a simple reason: I'f youre a duper, you'd have loads of gold by the bans and you wouldnt be wasting your time for selling xxx ammount of them for such a low price... you wouldnt need the money anymore. The 10k is a drop in the sea of the actual price... I can't imagine ayone carying to actually sell it for AoT. Buy it.. thats annother story.

2) you're complaining that someone has been banned for 34 linen. I'd like to remind you the 2 guys who tested the dupe on red dye before sending the process to ANet were duped as well. You seem to be forgetting that noone manually searched the database! Thats near to impossible, to be honest. They used a script, quite a detailed and well written one if I might say so myself, which tracked every event of dupe and a way from the duper down to other people in trades in an X ammount of time, clearly focusing on high ammounts of duped items or one-sided trades. The script probably returned Hundrets, if not Thousands of lines of data, which was still rather impossible to check manually, but for the sake of community, they decided to act asap and banned all accounts flagged.

Now, I don't see anything bad in the way they acted. As you see, they examine every ticked carefully and if youre pollite and responsive, they unban you. Sure, they saw 34 duped items recived in trade at firs thats why someone got banned. You really blame them? Keep in mind they had a HUGE ammount of data to go through. They did what was best at that moment not to hurt community further. But they unbanned you.

And also, one more thing.
All Dragon Festival Redux I was running - using my 2 PCs (with one IP) and 2 accounts - for tokens. Actually, my 2 accounts were being run by a friend, so at the end of each run I gave all the tokens/Cremes along with gold (one sided trade) to one of the chars and placed them in storage, saving an incredible 50g a run (and time). I did it dozens of times which means many hours of 2 accounts spend on same IP, with disconecting and reconecting (my ISP sux..), and one sided trades of same ammount of same items. None of the accounts were banned tho I was really afraid they might get flagged. This is why I belive the script was quite well written.

I'm sorry you lost 3 days of playtime, but honestly... I belive sometimes people should sacrifice a bit for the sake of the community.

Edit: some typos.

People. Grow up, play the d-REDENGINE-mn game.

This isn't the first time that innocent people have been banned, and it won't be the last. It's been commonly reported here and elswhere that people who have had their accounts mistakenly banned and have appealed in a courteous and persistent(but not harrassing) manner have had their accounts re-instated in less than a week. If anyone can't handle a few days without their beloved GW, then they really need to seek help.

This is nothing to get paraniod about. I'm going to play on and keep on trading like I have for the past 2+ years and not worry about getting my account banned, because if it happens, I'll be sure have it back in a few days.

From a business standpoint, A-Net does not want to lose customers. But which way will they lose more?

A. Taking their time to act on a matter that can potentially crash the whole GW economy to make sure that only the guilty are caught, giving those guilty parties time to launder their ill-gotten gains, making the problem even more wide-spread than it currently is, ruining the game for thousands and thousands of people. OR

B. Taking quick action and getting the slime-balls (and their duped items, thereby vastly reducing the impact on the economy) out of the game which also, unfortunately, resulted in the ban of several innoncent people who can go thorugh a appeals process and, if truely innocent, will get their accounts back within a few days.

The folks who duped the red dye to report to A-Net what was going on got their accounts banned. Did they complain? No (someone else did on their behalf, tho) They got with A-Net and sorted it out. In the thread where that was discussed, they set a very good example for everyone to follow. Kudos!

/sigh /sigh /sigh
Look. I understand that it is hard to discern yadda, yadda, yadda and computer BS and mumbo jumbo. But this is a case of wrong place at the wrong time. People who play GW who were at the wrong place at the wrong time are being punished for nothing.
Spare me the logistics and try to view it for what it is and do not cover it in red tape.

And about the armbraces. While I did hear from people that have no reason to lie that armbraces were being sold in Piken for 10k (I know right? Why Piken of all places?) I was not playing at that time and did not see them being sold myself. The point of bringing that up was to bring up more of an example as to how people are still duping and yet innocent people have lost their accounts, but I guess that wasn’t inherently obvious to some of you.

1. I AM no longer talking personally about my situation and my account. Great big duh, I got my account back *points and waves over to it* *jumps on it*
Okay now that's it's clear, apparently you people have are afraid of anything contrary to what you believe and do not understand why it's important that I think people know about this despite the fact that yes, I got my account back. It's actually quite sad how blindly unconcerned you are for your fellow players. As long as it doesn't concern you or your playing lives you are willing to deny it. That to me is very, very sad.

2. If I did blame any player it would be the dupers, not my guild members as they weren't TRYING to get me banned. I was banned due to neglegence. But to your point, could this be considered a player's fault? Of course, the dupers.

just by reading the threads im glad i havent played in a while o_O i constantly give away free mats and items and plat and what have you along with always switching items back and forth between accounts which turn up as 1 sided. i have no idea what was goin on about the duped item shpeel (havent been able to access forums for work =( they finally caught onto me) and i woulda probably have been banned for god knows what reason.

but even more disturbing than a general paranoia of trade, is the process that a-net takes to "deal" with would-be scammers or bots or what have you. it seems as though its always the almighty ban-hammer being brandished at the first sign of trouble. no investigations or anything like that until well afterwards after all the innocent and non-innocent people have had their accounts taken away. now if someone walked up to me and tried to give me tormented....anything...i would be skeptical but also quite tempted. who wouldnt really... but how fair is it because maybe a person a i trusted, say RL friend or guildie from way back, happens to be an item scanner and i get banned for it? as ive said before i have on many occasions given away many items of great value (including a req 8 collosal to a guildie before they started getting over farmed) so it is possible in my mind that someone may offer me something of great value one day (albeit a slim to none chance anyways). point is i really think they need to re-think theyre ban-first ask questions later tactics.

Maybe it would help if instead of coming up with an error code saying you had been permanently or temporarily banned when they are "investigating" your account for violations, what if the error instead said something like:

Your account is temporarily disabled for investigation due to possible use of a 3rd party program. If you feel this is an error and wish to aid our investigation, please contact PlayNC support.

Your account is temporarily disabled for investigation due to possible exploitation of game mechanics. If you feel this is an error and wish to aid our investigation, please contact PlayNC support.

Your account is temporarily disabled for investigation due to possible fraudulent trades. If you feel this is an error and wish to aid our investigation, please contact PlayNC support.

I don't know about how anyone else feels, but to me that sounds a lot better than "Your account is temporarily banned" with no further explanation or "Your account has been permanently banned" with no further explanation. The current system of banning is "OMG YOU ARE A DUPER! BANNED!!" or "OMG YOU ARE A DIRTY BOT! BANNED!!" and then you have to plead and grovel during the review your case while they are rude and harsh in every reply they give during your account review. If the reason they are so quick to ban is so that you can't hurt the economy or whatever even further while they investigate you if you are indeed doing something illegal, then it would go a long way to explain that you are being investigated with a general explanation of your violation rather than saying that they are certain you have done something wrong and then treating you like a criminal until they prove or disprove it. Be nice throughout the process and then be mean if it is confirmed that someone did something illegal, you know?

I agree with the person who posted that the process is Kafka-esque in that you are suddenly in trouble and know not why and if you are cleared you usually don't even know what you allegedly did to get in trouble. I also agree with Gaile in that if they gave every little detail about what flagged your account for investigation or banning that it would make it even harder to stop bots. However, is it really so bad to generalize that you are in trouble for allegedly using 3rd party programs, for exploiting the game, or for fraudulent trades? And for trade issues to maybe even be a little specific and say "You have traded with an illegal gold seller" or "You have traded for items obtained in an exploit" or whatever when someone contacts support? A little transparency, just enough to help people understand what's going on when their account is being actioned, would go a long way in ensuring that people trust that the investigation and banning process is managed fairly.

Even more /sighs

Let me make it really short and simple: sorry you got banned for being in a wrong place in a wrong time, but still I belive what ANet did was the best thing they could do, and if that ment banning some accounts by mistake, it's a pity, but it doesn't make it less rightful by a bit. Saying otherwise is just plain egoistic (read Kook~NBK~'s post for more reference).

Btw, people are still duping? You know anything about that? Have you reported that to Anet?

Yeah I got banned as well. I can't bitch, though - for one, I understand being careful in a situation like this. It's hard to tell who's innocent or not, all ANet can see is "OH SNAP DUPED ITEM". And secondly, I am no longer banned, not that I was terribly upset in the first place (this is my fourth ban now, I'm used to it these days).

Now this is the good part: I got the same response as Flesh got, but it was with a - get this - a Fiery Dragon Sword. A mother RED ENGINEing Fiery Dragon Sword. Who the hell would dupe that?

A person who wanted to stay under the radar.

KANE

im scared to get torment weapons anymore...

I'll call it paranoia, but with a recent trade, I asked if the items where aquired in less than legitimate means. Took screen shots of various stages of questioning and the transaction. Of course, I did this in all prior high end transactions before news of cheaters getting banned hit these lists.

loluparanoid?

Dead horse in corner------------->

quick, everybody beat it :P

this game is changing for the worst lately

ok... let me emphasize my question...

so... are people still duping?
now you get me paranoid. you know anything about that? any reason to allert ANet? as a paranoid person Ive noticed you haven't anwsered this thread since that post.

Innocent until proven guilty, that's the rule, if ANET have solid proof then the banned players deserve it, otherwise they shouldn't ban and i think its a tragedy and would compromise our trust in the game.
If u buy a stolen car, u didn't steal it and u didn't know it was stolen, but u can't punish someone because the car ended with them; delete the duped items if ur so sure, the lost gold is already a punishment put the account under close monitoring for future transaction until u get a more solid proof, then u can ban them so bad they will learn their mistake...

No but presumably if the police in your area are any good at their job will take take you to the station for investigation until they can prove you didn't buy the car knowing it was stolen.

Just like if you handled some stolen electronics goods unknowing that they were stolen by a prolific theft ring the police would have to arrest you to then investigate that you weren't knowingly handling stolen goods.

Anyone wanna stop beating that horse yet?