Scam or No?

Had an interesting situation occur the other day and wanted to get other's thoughts.

I was in DoA when someone posted a relatively cheep run in one of the areas. Sounded like a great deal so I joined. After waiting about 10 minutes for the party to fill to the allowable 8 we finally entered the explorable area. After about 30 seconds another guy says, "shoot, he lost his connection. We should just leave." So people slowly start to leave the team.

I'm thinking usually when someone loses a connection there is a message in green text that says that and the red character name bar dims a little. Yet, the runner's bar still seemed fine, and no message like that appeared. So, finally it's only the runner, 1 hero that the runner brought and this other guy trying to convince me to leave and me left. All the while I'm thinking then why doesn't HE just leave. After waiting about 5 minutes I did leave, but I got to thinking that this could have just been a scam to help him and his buddies get more drops, right? If we all left wouldn't items still drop, but not be assigned to an owner? While no one (or at least I didn't) pay him it's not like we're out anything except for our time. But to waste 15 minutes if this IS what these two are doing does feel like a scam- even if they don't take any money.

Well, if nothing was lost (Other than your time), it's not a scam.

If they just wanted the drops, they would have just gone out themselves. In order to be effected by loot scaling, the party members have to be within range of the monster skill. It doesn't work if you have a party of eight and six people leave. Doesn't work that way.

It is possible he disconnected without you seeing it. Perhaps the two were on Skype/Vent/Xfire/Whatever and he knew prematurely that his friend had lost connection.

Not really sure what happened. People are strange.

Many times this has happened to me. A friend and I are on every night and we use skype to talk. Sometimes we PuG. We've both had times where one's computer would freeze, and the other could warn the group before the actual disconnect showed.

Or they could have just been strange.

I don't know how it could have been a scam if your weren't asked to put up anything in advance.

Most of the more popular scams require a scamee.

Unless you are asked to pay up front, its pretty hard for a runner to rob anyone. Runners getting robbed is much more common.

if he charged you, it's a scam, and you can report that (with screenies)

if he didn't charge you, I don't see how he's getting any benefit from what happened, perhaps he really did d/c

I think he was trying you, tryin to see what kinda scam he could pull, tried to assume you were an idiot. Good that you left, you coulda ended up being scammed, think of yourself an ounce smarter and wiser now. He faked a D/C without actually making a real D/C occur. What a failn00b.

if he didnt take ur money, not scam. if he took ur money and did this, /report

Yeah, if he didn't take your money, it's not a scam. If he did, /report?

Yeah - usually. Sometimes I can't move, can't do anything on GW, it's evidently on the verge of a d/c, and the dratted thing refuses to disconnect, which would at least allow me to do something like attempt to reconnect instead of staring blankly at the screen. If I'm playing with friends, I usually let at least one of them know, and the rest can inform the party. (I usually d/c sometime after, but.)

Well seeing as no one benefited (party members that left do not effect drops) then idt it was a scam..

it's like people looking for leechers in rata sum to raptor farm. they believe that when you enter a zone with 8 real people, more drops are preassigned to the group and when that particular person is out of radar range, that persons drop is reassigned to the farmer.

the same principle here. 8 (or 7 if one member was a hero) people enter the zone then all but the first couple leave, voila, more drops for those that stayed since "everyone else's drops" are then "reassigned" to the remaining players. personally i think it's a load of crap but i don't have any proof for or against it, so meh, whatever.

technically, since no one paid the guy, no one got scammed. all it did was waste your time and theirs.

Wasted your time, and time can equal money so therefore he did scam you, report.

I wouldn't call it a scam, since they didn't rip anyone off as far as gold/items go. I don't know how A-Net would look at it, but it could be catergorized as "griefing" since they (there's no question in my mind that those 2 were working together) wasted your time, and you were expecting something that they never intended on providing. If that happened to me, I'd have taken screenies & reported it.

Regardless of how the powers tha be look at it, it's my humble opinion that what those two were doing definitely falls into the catergory of "douche-baggery," because I don't believe for 1 minute that the guy D/C'd.

Once upon time, i joined some guys for dhumm.

They advertised full UW run, but the truth they hoped to that if you aready cleared UW once you didn't have to do it again and go straight to dhumm.

So pretty much they wasted 30 min of mine and their time, for something that they could just asked.

Meh i was almost tempted of reporting.

Maybe his ping was so bad he knew the run was impossible

So maybe he saved you a wasted 40 min trip for only a wasted 10 min one