The 75%off coupon scam

[(PSN)Nightninja2413]

Most recently I've seen an increase in the volume of scam traders offering players the option to purchase the 75% off coupon this has lead me to having to make this post. As in just the past week I've had to help and advise players what they can do. As DE have persistently failed to address the issue as it seems profits may come first. And scam traders come last. 

Edited December 1, 2019 by (PS4)Nightninja2413
Poor punctuation and spelling whilst rushing through anger

[Drasiel]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Nightninja2413 said:

Most recently I've seen an increase in the volume of scam traders offering players the option to purchase the 75% off coupon this has lead me to having to make this post. As in just the past week I've had to help and advise players what they can do. As DE have persistently failed to address the issue as it seems profits may come first. And scam traders come last. 

DE already warns players that trading for promises is a bad idea and they do not offer support for it. What you should be doing is screenshotting those people offering it and reporting them via support.

[Diavoros]

Scam traders? Scam how? Players taking plat and not mailing the items?
I imagine that for console players it works this way:
Player gets discount coupon
Player offers in trade to "sell" stuff from the market by that % discount
Player gets the plat from buyer + a fee for grofit
Player buys the item in the market and "gifts" it to buyer?

[(XBOX)SupremeMorph]

55 minutes ago, Diavoros said:

Scam traders? Scam how? Players taking plat and not mailing the items?
I imagine that for console players it works this way:
Player gets discount coupon
Player offers in trade to "sell" stuff from the market by that % discount
Player gets the plat from buyer + a fee for grofit
Player buys the item in the market and "gifts" it to buyer?

Yeah, a lot of these scammers cut out that last part. Because there's no real reason for them not to aside from honesty which, if you're a scammer... yeah

[(PSN)O_o_II_II_o_O]

55 minutes ago, Diavoros said:

Scam traders? Scam how? Players taking plat and not mailing the items?
I imagine that for console players it works this way:
Player gets discount coupon
Player offers in trade to "sell" stuff from the market by that % discount
Player gets the plat from buyer + a fee for grofit
Player buys the item in the market and "gifts" it to buyer?

Pretty much. It's more down to being naive then a scam. People ask for gift first then never pay plat, or visa versa. Honestly would probably be easier to simply make them tradeable, especially as for older players the need for them becomes less with boosters not counting towards the discount

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

I played another game where people actually traded PSN cards in game. So dumb, all those people that couldn't go the normal route and lost out. You're just adding extra steps and stress by relying on a random person lol.

I occasionally buy plat and trade. I'm not here to do back alley deals with strangers online lol. 

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

Trading plat in exchange for a promise that they will gift you an item is covered in the rules, and by covered I mean DE states in trade chat rules that they do not enforce trades for favors, clan membership, etc. etc. because they cannot actually do anything about it other then try to discourage it.  

[Tipperty]

I go with the belief that if anyone falls for these types of scams, then they have nothing but themselves to blame.

I also can't see how strongly DE can police this type of scam! What should they do, monitor all player to player messages, I mean apart from most players being upset with this type of thing, how many people would it take to read all the messages being sent daily?

Scam artists create a few new accounts a week, because it only takes 2 days to get past the trade restriction, should DE increase this? Well again this will just annoy new players and yes, at the end of the day, it will effect DEs bottomline, because a lot of money comes from new players who are excited about the game and want to buy some plat for market trading. Besides, it won't stop the scam artists, they will just grind out to the higher level.

Since most creditcards are only handed out to 18 year old, they should be responsible and have enough brain cells to not fall for scams. I am aware that some banks allow children as young as 11 years old to have debit cards, with parental permission and a highly restricted spending limit. However, it is not DEs job to be a parent to someones kids, it is the parents job to watch out for their kids and what they get up to.

 

While we are at it, with blame culture, why don't we create a new social job, this persons job would be to walk beside you in life and keep the person they are assigned toout of harms way, like scams, loose pavement slabs they might trip on, hangnails that might tag or rip clothing. I mean it would solve 50% of the job problems in the world.

 

Or, we allow people to think for themselves and ween them off blame culture and those that can't, well we just put that down to natural selection.

Edited December 1, 2019 by Tipperty

[(XBOX)Umbra Howl]

Against the terms of service 

[Talinthis]

19 hours ago, (PS4)Nightninja2413 said:

Most recently I've seen an increase in the volume of scam traders offering players the option to purchase the 75% off coupon this has lead me to having to make this post. As in just the past week I've had to help and advise players what they can do. As DE have persistently failed to address the issue as it seems profits may come first. And scam traders come last. 

With just that one sentence you clearly have no idea what you are talking about

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

 

 

20 hours ago, Diavoros said:

Scam traders? Scam how? Players taking plat and not mailing the items?
I imagine that for console players it works this way:
Player gets discount coupon
Player offers in trade to "sell" stuff from the market by that % discount
Player gets the plat from buyer + a fee for grofit
Player buys the item in the market and "gifts" it to buyer?

One player could simply not "gift" the item in question and walk away with the plat. I've also seen people do this "gift first" and then the person who had the coupon gets screwed because they never got the plat... it's a bad idea. 

I wish DE would make them tradeable because I see this crap in trade chat ALL. DAY. LONG. "Wtb/wts coupon" and right now it's set up in the most possible way. 1) theres an incentive for people to take the chance (saving plat) 2) its very very easy to screw people 3) you're not supposed to do it but it's easy and theres nothing really stopping you

2 hours ago, (XB1)Umbrahowl said:

Against the terms of service 

I think you're right but dont remember tbh. 

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

1 hour ago, Talinthis said:

With just that one sentence you clearly have no idea what you are talking about

They clearly havent done enough. I can go into trade chat at any hour of any day and immediately see players posting WTB coupon or WTS coupon and I still see complaints about people getting scammed one way or the other on a regular basis. 

[Oreades]

1 minute ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

I think you're right but dont remember tbh. 

I'm actually pretty sure they aren't. 

Trading for things outside of the game, goods, money, services IRL is definitely against TOS but trading on a promise is just strongly discouraged because they won't enforce trades that fall through. Not necessarily because they wouldn't like to but because the resources involved in verifying every claim would be exceedingly prohibitive. 

If someone was to egregiously go around scamming people they'd probably eventually get banned because pretty much every TOS in every game essentially has a "we can ban you for any reason we feel like just cause'" clause in it.  It just takes quite a bit before they jump to the nuclear option. 

[Leyvonne]

1 minute ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

They clearly havent done enough. I can go into trade chat at any hour of any day and immediately see players posting WTB coupon or WTS coupon and I still see complaints about people getting scammed one way or the other on a regular basis. 

The person to blame is the person getting scammed. All they have to do is stop trusting strangers on the internet and they'd be safe. Not saying that scamming is right, but it is so easy to avoid that I have no symphaty for anyone who falls for that stuff in a game or irl.

[Drasiel]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

They clearly havent done enough. I can go into trade chat at any hour of any day and immediately see players posting WTB coupon or WTS coupon and I still see complaints about people getting scammed one way or the other on a regular basis. 

Then report them so support can take action.

[kwlingo]

Im guessing someone cracked to code for warframe and now are placing fake codes on random sites to create fake plate in game?

2 minutes ago, Leyvonne said:

All they have to do is stop trusting strangers on the internet and they'd be safe.

Yes agreed, just stick to the in game discounts. Doesn't make any sense to be looking on google for plat discounts.

This kind of sux because if this money is circulating then we are all might be under suspicion if we are trading in the last week or two.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

21 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Then report them so support can take action.

Bruh. If I reported every single person doing it I wouldn't have time to actually play this game. 

21 minutes ago, Leyvonne said:

The person to blame is the person getting scammed. All they have to do is stop trusting strangers on the internet and they'd be safe. Not saying that scamming is right, but it is so easy to avoid that I have no symphaty for anyone who falls for that stuff in a game or irl.

My personal opinion is that they're both at fault. Yeah, it's on them for being stupid but I dont give anyone a pass for taking advantage of their stupidity either. 

24 minutes ago, Oreades said:

I'm actually pretty sure they aren't. 

Trading for things outside of the game, goods, money, services IRL is definitely against TOS but trading on a promise is just strongly discouraged because they won't enforce trades that fall through. Not necessarily because they wouldn't like to but because the resources involved in verifying every claim would be exceedingly prohibitive. 

If someone was to egregiously go around scamming people they'd probably eventually get banned because pretty much every TOS in every game essentially has a "we can ban you for any reason we feel like just cause'" clause in it.  It just takes quite a bit before they jump to the nuclear option. 

I'm gonna be honest I'm going off memory and simply cant be arsed to go dig through the terms of service right now but my understanding is... I think theres something specific about the coupons and you're not "supposed to" use them for that purpose. You're "allowed to" trade for a promise... they just dont enforce it. 

As for screwing people, it's still bad, and my understanding as that they can and do ban people for scamming. "Being dumb enough to get scammed" doesnt mean they wont ban the guy that ripped you off. Its toxic behavior. I've sent a few tickets over other kinds of scams and they do seem to take it seriously. 

We had a guy in our alliance try to blackmail somebody for plat, for example. 

 

It's stupid to me that this is allowed to happen though. They could solve this problem by a) making coupons transferrable b) making them not work on gifts or c) make them only work on gifts for friends that have been on your friends list for longer than then duration of the coupon that way... or something. 

[Drasiel]

53 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Bruh. If I reported every single person doing it I wouldn't have time to actually play this game. 

<snip>

 

It's stupid to me that this is allowed to happen though. They could solve this problem by a) making coupons transferrable b) making them not work on gifts or c) make them only work on gifts for friends that have been on your friends list for longer than then duration of the coupon that way... or something. 

Then don't report every single one but do report some, the problem isn't going to go away until people are removed for doing it. At the very least trade chat bans can remove them for weeks at a time potentially permanently. If the people on Xbox aren't willing to use the tools to get rid of scammers there isn't much we can do to help.

[Avienas]

37 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Then don't report every single one but do report some, the problem isn't going to go away until people are removed for doing it. At the very least trade chat bans can remove them for weeks at a time potentially permanently. If the people on Xbox aren't willing to use the tools to get rid of scammers there isn't much we can do to help.

The problem is that D.E. took no steps to PROPERLY fixing & addressing it and just leaving it up to player judgement to handle it. There is a reason why ever-quest style `marketing` died off, because it leaves too much flexibility for people to hood-wink values and take advantage of people thru word-play, impatience and so many things that could easily lead to players rage quitting a game after getting conned out of what sounded like a great deal. ESPECIALLY, to those who are new, naive and likely came from other online games who had a kind playerbase or they are not familiar with how ruthless jerks can be present.

Plus not everyone can read that `block of text` that says that D.E. does not enforce trades, usually due to how text boxes work, those get blown away way too fast in both region, market & recruit chat, so they likely have no idea on what D.E.`s policies are on those elements since they were not able to read it at all. Plus, if the game allows one to buy game cash and trade it with other players, D.E. kind of already should be `enforcing` some proper measures to prevent such a possibility to happen.

It would not be an issue if trades only happened with farmable goods for other farmable goods, especially if one of them is used as pseudo-currency, just like how path of exile does in a savvy manner, then it would not be as much of an uproar.

 

Plus thar is a reason i do not trust reporting systems to resolve my problem, usually i rather report on critical issues like one of my riven mods suddenly up and vanishing or when a player somehow hacked into the game and is now causing every player to constantly be locked in one spot on a orbiter and they cant access the main menu, But baro`kiteer is present, but no one can access it. Throwing up a report when someone swiped stuff from my account or tricked me to give away my stuff, usually never works in most games especially if that lee-way exists where it was `your action that allowed such a scam to happen`. With it usually getting written off as you should of had a secondary password or have a stronger password, even if i had a 10+ letter password using uppercase/lowercase/numbers/symbols in a very erratic fashion.

OH, lets not forget that since warframe is a free to play game, it should not be that hard for a person to make dozens of accounts, basically get them to a semi-decent MR rather fast, then use them to do the scam trades then quickly transfer the stolen plat/goods to other characters before that account could get `banned` if D.E. were to do that after several hours of reviewing it, meaning the con-artist can easily get away with the plat and just repeat the process again and again, which they could keep the plat between those accounts till they gather it up later on.

White knights can cry about keeping the market system the same still, but i rather D.E. update the system get rid of the spam text, scammers and illiterates who cant even properly spell out what they want to buy/sell, thinking they can just minimize it so much that even if they are showing up a link for the mod [Guardian], they suddenly start saying they wanted to buy [Arcane Guardian], acting like they have no idea what item linking is, in addition to D.E. needs to update in-game info to properly give people idea on why a mod like Blood Rush should be VERY pricy(Seriously, does once a year for a few short days on a rather low drop rate chance, not sound like a hard to get & valuable item???), amongst letting them know where they are gotten, so they get a better idea on why one should pay a considerable lump or they know where they should be shoving thar pickaxes to mine for it themselves

Edited December 1, 2019 by Avienas

[Drasiel]

1 minute ago, Avienas said:

The problem is that D.E. took no steps to PROPERLY fixing & addressing it and just leaving it up to player judgement to handle it. There is a reason why ever-quest style `marketing` died off, because it leaves too much flexibility for people to hood-wink values and take advantage of people thru word-play, impatience and so many things that could easily lead to players rage quitting a game after getting conned out of what sounded like a great deal. ESPECIALLY, to those who are new, naive and likely came from other online games who had a kind playerbase or they are not familiar with how ruthless jerks can be present.

Plus not everyone can read that `block of text` that says that D.E. does not enforce trades, usually due to how text boxes work, those get blown away way too fast in both region, market & recruit chat, so they likely have no idea on what D.E.`s policies are on those elements since they were not able to read it at all. Plus, if the game allows one to buy game cash and trade it with other players, D.E. kind of already should be `enforcing` some proper measures to prevent such a possibility to happen.

It would not be an issue if trades only happened with farmable goods for other farmable goods, especially if one of them is used as pseudo-currency, just like how path of exile does in a savvy manner, then it would not be as much of an uproar.

 

Plus thar is a reason i do not trust reporting systems to resolve my problem, usually i rather report on critical issues like one of my riven mods suddenly up and vanishing or when a player somehow hacked into the game and is now causing every player to constantly be locked in one spot on a orbiter and they cant access the main menu, But baro`kiteer is present, but no one can access it. Throwing up a report when someone swiped stuff from my account or tricked me to give away my stuff, usually never works in most games especially if that lee-way exists where it was `your action that allowed such a scam to happen`. With it usually getting written off as you should of had a secondary password or have a stronger password, even if i had a 10+ letter password using uppercase/lowercase/numbers/symbols in a very erratic fashion.

OH, lets not forget that since warframe is a free to play game, it should not be that hard for a person to make dozens of accounts, basically get them to a semi-decent MR rather fast then either use them to do the scam trades then quickly transfer the stolen plat/goods to other characters before that account could get `banned` if D.E. were to do that after several hours of reviewing it, meaning the con-artist can easily get away with the plat and just repeat the process again and again.

White knights can cry about keeping the market system the same still, but i rather D.E. update the system get rid of the spam text, scammers and illiterates who cant even properly spell out what they want to buy/sell, thinking they can just minimize it so much that even if they are showing up a link for the mod [Guardian], they suddenly start saying they wanted to buy [Arcane Guardian], acting like they have no idea what item linking is, in addition to D.E. needs to update in-game info to properly give people idea on why a mod like Blood Rush should be VERY pricy(Seriously, does once a year for a few short days on a rather low drop rate chance, not sound like a hard to get & valuable item???), amongst letting them know where they are gotten, so they get a better idea on why one should pay a considerable lump or they know where they should be shoving thar pickaxes to mine for it themselves

you've wandered all over the map here so I'm just going to break this down into bullet points

• There is already a system in place showing everything DE supports for trading: the trade window itself. If the item can't go in there it shouldn't be traded. That's basic level stuff. Can't put a promise in the box, can't put a coupon in the box, can't put a dojo in the box, can't put clan membership in the box. If you are trading outside of the trade system the game is pretty clear about not "supporting" internally.
• You say scammers are a big problem then say it's not worth reporting because it's not a big problem. Make up your mind, either this an epidemic or it's not worth following up on, it can't be both.
• Warframe has a section explicitly for trade scams so even if they are not returning the items they are still acting on the reports.
• "Alt accounts prevent bans from working" Yes and no, unless they are using a VPN 100% of the time they play warframe it's pretty easy to find duplicate accounts. I mean christ companies have been dealing with that since battle.net was born.
• Could the trade chat be better? Yes.
• Free market is the free market just like life if they aren't willing to do the bare minimum research on just the wiki then that's on them.

[Oreades]

1 hour ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

I'm gonna be honest I'm going off memory and simply cant be arsed to go dig through the terms of service right now but my understanding is... I think theres something specific about the coupons and you're not "supposed to" use them for that purpose. You're "allowed to" trade for a promise... they just dont enforce it. 

As for screwing people, it's still bad, and my understanding as that they can and do ban people for scamming. "Being dumb enough to get scammed" doesnt mean they wont ban the guy that ripped you off. Its toxic behavior. I've sent a few tickets over other kinds of scams and they do seem to take it seriously. 

We had a guy in our alliance try to blackmail somebody for plat, for example. 

 

It's stupid to me that this is allowed to happen though. They could solve this problem by a) making coupons transferrable b) making them not work on gifts or c) make them only work on gifts for friends that have been on your friends list for longer than then duration of the coupon that way... or something. 

Honestly can't be bothered myself but I the part that I recall from that is more dealing with coupons with regards to trading between alt accounts, EG do not. Which is more to prevent people from starting a ton of accounts to farm the discounts. 

That said I tend to agree if anyone is super toxic trade wise I'm sure there will eventually be consequences. I think it's just going to be more of a case by case than a hard specific TOS ruling and yer out. 

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

8 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Honestly can't be bothered myself but I the part that I recall from that is more dealing with coupons with regards to trading between alt accounts, EG do not. Which is more to prevent people from starting a ton of accounts to farm the discounts. 

That said I tend to agree if anyone is super toxic trade wise I'm sure there will eventually be consequences. I think it's just going to be more of a case by case than a hard specific TOS ruling and yer out. 

I have a back injury and am currently on some heavy medication tbh. When I'm feeling up to it ill look into the rules myself and if that doesnt get me a good answer I'll just ask support for clarification. I do know from asking support that trading between accounts that you own is a no no. That is a thing. 

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

Then don't report every single one but do report some, the problem isn't going to go away until people are removed for doing it. At the very least trade chat bans can remove them for weeks at a time potentially permanently. If the people on Xbox aren't willing to use the tools to get rid of scammers there isn't much we can do to help.

For what its worth: if I can get evidence of an actual scam or bad behavior, I do report it. But unless DE wants to compensate me for being a hall monitor I am not going to go out of my way to be hall monitor. 

Somebody posting "wtb coupon" or "wts coupon" isn't proof that they're actually intending to rip someone off, at least not as far as I'm concerned. It does prove stupidity though, again, at least in my opinion

[Avienas]

34 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

you've wandered all over the map here so I'm just going to break this down into bullet points

• There is already a system in place showing everything DE supports for trading: the trade window itself. If the item can't go in there it shouldn't be traded. That's basic level stuff. Can't put a promise in the box, can't put a coupon in the box, can't put a dojo in the box, can't put clan membership in the box. If you are trading outside of the trade system the game is pretty clear about not "supporting" internally.

Plat can and i have ran into plenty of situations where people say they `left the item on another character` which was usually my red flag to avoid forking over plat or a riven mod i planned to sell. Does not need to go in the item box to enforce it, People can easily bait you with words to pull off the con, especially to the naive and kind lot.

Quote

• You say scammers are a big problem then say it's not worth reporting because it's not a big problem. Make up your mind, either this an epidemic or it's not worth following up on, it can't be both.

I would not say they are a CRITICAL issue that requires immediate attention aka send in the A-team type of urgency, but its more of a fact, that its easy enough for them to get away with it scott free. Unless D.E. can actively pull up trade logs on players to confirm the reports, but to expect a company of a f2p game to be so ruthless & repeat it for every instance of con-artist reporting, to where they will INSTILL that fear that scammers would rather go poach a different game then end up with being IP banned and then end up with some crazy where thar IP gets reported to several popular games to then IP ban them. Well, they would likely be paying alot of people to handle that stuff or they are going to have a perpetual crunch period for those people, just to confirm reports and then systematically burn every account on a particular IP, which might somehow tick off some other people if they accidentally banned the wrong accounts.

Not saying a company can pull that kind of crap, but we all know fear is one of the better ways to make a person to stop trying to yoink cookies from a cookie jar, when they realize that a bear`trap is present to chop their hands off if they keep trying.

THAT or proper measures are put in place so the lee-way could not exist to allow such con-artistry to occur in the first place.

Quote

• Warframe has a section explicitly for trade scams so even if they are not returning the items they are still acting on the reports.
• "Alt accounts prevent bans from working" Yes and no, unless they are using a VPN 100% of the time they play warframe it's pretty easy to find duplicate accounts. I mean christ companies have been dealing with that since battle.net was born.

Finding the `extra accounts`, might be easy to find, but can you expect the company`s reporting staff to check all those reported scam-instances, confirm they are duplicate accounts for the fiasco and not some new player who rarely gets on then confirm if any plat exchanges between those duplicate accounts could of been from scammed plat? At best they will likely check the first account involved with the scam interaction and usually only ban that one. Not sure if D.E. has the right to chain ban a bunch of accounts especially if they were not confirmed to be directly involved with a scam occurrence. 

Quote

• Could the trade chat be better? Yes.
• Free market is the free market just like life if they aren't willing to do the bare minimum research on just the wiki then that's on them.

The minimum research would be to know ingame, without having to read a book on handle marketing, to get the idea if something is worth buying/selling that value or not. Which sadly since warframe`s version of a  `free market` is so erratic as FK to where a item can be worth 500 plat on day 1 of its release, but suddenly only be worth 5 within that same day in less then a few hours, not because of item oversaturation, but because someone started a chainfest spam of WTBs demanding the item of a lower value, even if only one person was selling the item only.

Meaning that person could likely not even sell the item for 100 plat, because a piranha frenzy of spammers spammed the WTB value to absurd levels, even if the item has a less then 1% to drop off a boss that could have a 8 to 72 hour spawn window(Im referring to Final Fantasy 11 Notorious monster spawning rates). Because the market is not controlled by SOLD HISTORY and only active input values, even if the ones inputting those values have not even gotten the item yet, well, its no wonder why warframe`s version of a free market is kind of bad.

 

In all honesty, Warframe`s market is not much of a FREE market but more of a `Free Auction` where people are just throwing up signs to say they are buying/selling something, while covering up each other, as other people rush them with money/items in hand, bashing them with the item/money to get thar attention. Sure, free marketing means no laws are involved in it, but it does not exactly excuse mannerisms where people can get in the way of market transactions of other players. 

Its basically a mess that has no regard to morals and it would benefit more if people just had special chat box links they have in the market chat where up to 1-3 people could join and then talk to the buyer/seller without an absurd number of people flooding it, causing a headache of a mess, where the offer person has to sift thru too many messages usually to figure whats the best deal or be the dik and not respond to them at all, where some might respond back as late as 1 hour afterwards(which has happen to me, many times in all these years).

While the latter would have a limited number of people to price bargain for the goods then blindly competing with what could be 50 or something people for all they care and if the offer-er is not even responding, they could likely think they already got the deal they wanted, since the offerer is not `obligated` to respond back to every PM they received from players.

 

Edited December 1, 2019 by Avienas

[(PSN)N7_Dredgen]

I guess people should use their brains then and not trade things that aren't covered in the trade system.

Coupons aren't meant to be traded.  Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. 

[Drasiel]

27 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

<snip>

Somebody posting "wtb coupon" or "wts coupon" isn't proof that they're actually intending to rip someone off, at least not as far as I'm concerned. It does prove stupidity though, again, at least in my opinion

Going by the trading rules found on the support website that is enough to at least warrant examination of their account.
 

Quote

 Can I trade for items or services not listed in the Trade interface?

No, trading is restricted to what is listed in the trading UI. Players trading for items or services not listed in the trading interface face removal of trading privilege, account suspension or permanent banning.

the whole article is here if you are curious: https://digitalextremes.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200092259-Trading-FAQ-Safe-Trading-Tips

19 minutes ago, Avienas said:

Plat can and i have ran into plenty of situations where people say they `left the item on another character` which was usually my red flag to avoid forking over plat or a riven mod i planned to sell. Does not need to go in the item box to enforce it, People can easily bait you with words to pull off the con, especially to the naive and kind lot.

That's not the system's failure that's the user's. There comes a point where the user has to take responsibility for using the system wrong. If you give something to someone without them paying for it that is on you.

19 minutes ago, Avienas said:

I would not say they are a CRITICAL issue that requires immediate attention aka send in the A-team type of urgency, but its more of a fact, that its easy enough for them to get away with it scott free. Unless D.E. can actively pull up trade logs on players to confirm the reports, but to expect a company of a f2p game to be so ruthless & repeat it for every instance of con-artist reporting, to where they will INSTILL that fear that scammers would rather go poach a different game then end up with being IP banned and then end up with some crazy where thar IP gets reported to several popular games to then IP ban them. Well, they would likely be paying alot of people to handle that stuff or they are going to have a perpetual crunch period for those people, just to confirm reports and then systematically burn every account on a particular IP, which might somehow tick off some other people if they accidentally banned the wrong accounts.

Not saying a company can pull that kind of crap, but we all know fear is one of the better ways to make a person to stop trying to yoink cookies from a cookie jar, when they realize that a bear`trap is present to chop their hands off if they keep trying.

THAT or proper measures are put in place so the lee-way could not exist to allow such con-artistry to occur in the first place.

I'd bet you my right sock that they can check those logs when needed but a  proper in game screenshot of the attempt to sell "real world items" which is what coupons fall under is normally more than enough for a warning and follow up.

19 minutes ago, Avienas said:

Finding the `extra accounts`, might be easy to find, but can you expect the company`s reporting staff to check all those reported scam-instances, confirm they are duplicate accounts for the fiasco and not some new player who rarely gets on then confirm if any plat exchanges between those duplicate accounts could of been from scammed plat? At best they will likely check the first account involved with the scam interaction and usually only ban that one. Not sure if D.E. has the right to chain ban a bunch of accounts especially if they were not confirmed to be directly involved with a scam occurrence. 

duplicate accounts to avoid ones ban are generally a ban on sight since you are trying to bypass the games moderation systems (not talking about moderators just moderation from support) In most games, I don't see warframe being any different on that point because otherwise problem users could never truly be punished or removed.

19 minutes ago, Avienas said:

The minimum research would be to know ingame, without having to read a book on handle marketing, to get the idea if something is worth buying/selling that value or not. Which sadly since warframe`s version of a  `free market` is so erratic as FK to where a item can be worth 500 plat on day 1 of its release, but suddenly only be worth 5 within that same day in less then a few hours, not because of item oversaturation, but because someone started a chainfest spam of WTBs demanding the item of a lower value, even if only one person was selling the item only.

Meaning that person could likely not even sell the item for 100 plat, because a piranha frenzy of spammers spammed the WTB value to absurd levels, even if the item has a less then 1% to drop off a boss that could have a 8 to 72 hour spawn window(Im referring to Final Fantasy 11 Notorious monster spawning rates). Because the market is not controlled by SOLD HISTORY and only active input values, even if the ones inputting those values have not even gotten the item yet, well, its no wonder why warframe`s version of a free market is kind of bad.

 

In all honesty, Warframe`s market is not much of a FREE market but more of a `Free Auction` where people are just throwing up signs to say they are buying/selling something, while covering up each other, as other people rush them with money/items in hand, bashing them with the item/money to get thar attention. Sure, free marketing means no laws are involved in it, but it does not exactly excuse mannerisms where people can get in the way of market transactions of other players. 

Its basically a mess that has no regard to morals and it would benefit more if people just had special chat box links they have in the market chat where up to 1-3 people could join and then talk to the buyer/seller without an absurd number of people flooding it, causing a headache of a mess, where the offer person has to sift thru too many messages usually to figure whats the best deal or be the dik and not respond to them at all, where some might respond back as late as 1 hour afterwards(which has happen to me, many times in all these years).

While the latter would have a limited number of people to price bargain for the goods then blindly competing with what could be 50 or something people for all they care and if the offer-er is not even responding, they could likely think they already got the deal they wanted, since the offerer is not `obligated` to respond back to every PM they received from players.

No, I'm sorry but times have changed. Where game manuals used to be the source of information then evolved into in game tutorials, the basic knowledge of our era for games is contained in the Wiki's. I do dislike this trend and I wish more could be found ingame but that is not the reality of our current situation. If one won't use the wiki then at least talk to clan members or region.

one of the ways to tame warframe's unruly free market is with filters. They are absolutely mandatory now. The game doesn't explain them or even mention them which is a tragedy. I definitely agree we could use a better system but I don't know what that would be since an auction house is out of the question. For now we are stuck with the free market and sign hurling. *shrug*