Be careful when using warframe.market

[InsomnIaC.]

*Pardon me if this ought to be in a another section of the forums, I was contemplating Players Helping Players but given that this isn't a guide it didn't seem like it belonged there.

(UPDATE: Removing sass from original post because people were getting triggered.)

(UPDATE 2: Replacing original lines with sass under spoilers because people were getting triggered. Added changelog at bottom of post.)

DISCLAIMER: Before I begin, let me state explicitly that I support warframe.market's initiative to provide reliable price gauges for non-variable items (everything in the game except Rivens). The website has been nothing but a boon to consumer information, and has, for the most part, discouraged overpricing or lowballing efforts, for those that are willing to use the system.

Spoiler

Original line below said: "This hasn't stopped some pieces of shi scum from attempting to manipulate the system."

This hasn't stopped some undesirables from attempting to manipulate the system:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

Original post said: "For those who have problems viewing the image, the story is this: some pieces of sh individuals have created fake personas..." rest of text is unchanged.

For those who have problems viewing the image, the story is this: some con-artists have created fake personas on warframe.market to make fake listings that deliberately undercut the average (in between lowest seller and highest buyer) price. To the undiscerning player, this presents the false idea that prices are actually a lot lower, resulting in them making the uninformed choice to sell their items for much less than what they could usually get.

For the specific case above, there's about 10 different sale listings, some from the same player, that undercut Sovereign Outcast's actual average price of over a 100 to numbers ranging from 50-90. In contrast, the highest buy listing is at 100. Makes you wonder, why hasn't that buyer already purchased his mod then?

These accounts, while creative in their naming, have not been so for their buy and sell listings. When I observed the same phenomenon occur for Shotgun Riven Mods (Veiled) 2 months ago, they had listings using different combinations of Boltor Prime, Rhino Prime components, and Shotgun Riven Mods.

I don't personally have an account on warframe.market, but if anyone could notify a mod there (if one exists) to immediately ban said accounts, it'll be my pleasure if you could do so.

[*EDIT: Or if you think I'm full of bull and that I'm just witch-hunting, feel free to ignore me and continue about your merry way. Based on some of the responses later in the thread, people really do believe that those are real accounts. I won't judge you if you'd like to hold on to that belief, but bear in mind that if you're going to start a debate with me about whether those accounts are real or not, you're not going to find much to back up your argument.]

I was reluctant on censoring the names, since they're readily available to anyone who cares enough to search up Sovereign Outcast on market right now (as of 26/02/17 UTC 0415 hours), but I'd rather not risk having the images removed due to forum violations.

TL;DR: Please use warframe.market carefully. Always use both sell and buy tabs to check for the average price of the item you wish to trade. If the lowest sell price is less than the highest buy price, it's probably too good to be true. Vet the profiles of traders, if need be. It's always healthy to look at some of the offline players too, to see if you might potentially find someone who just happens to be offline for the day and might come on and give you the price you're looking for.

Changelog in spoilers below:

Spoiler

CHANGELOG

- Initiated post with intent to warn playerbase of possible malicious activity on 3rd party site. May have been emotionally charged and opinionated at time of post about such behavior to the extent that mildly offensive language was used, albeit with some placed under strikethrough (i.e. example).

Update 1.0

- In response to angry replies, reworded language in original post to reduce likelihood of evoking irrational responses from angry mob, and to encourage constructive debate over said topic rather than provoke non-constructive argument.

Update 2.0

- In response to accusations of victimization, readded original lines into original post under spoilers to maximize transparency.

- Added changelog to maintain book-keeping efforts and for posterity.

 

Edited February 26, 2017 by InsomnIaC.
Tidying up

[Praxxor]

Isn't that pretty much common sense by now?

[InsomnIaC.]

On 2/26/2017 at 1:00 PM, Praxxor said:

Isn't that pretty much common sense by now?

Sadly, trade chat proves that statement wrong everyday. If it was common sense I shouldn't be seeing people actually entertaining requests to buy Shotgun Riven Mods for 50 plat when the highest buy order on WM is a 100. In either case, common sense or not, this is a fair warning for all traders to not throw caution to the wind.

Also, if there's anything else constructive to take away from this thread, it's that we ought to do our best we can, as a community, to prevent the efforts of this sort of malicious behavior from seeing fruition. My view, which I'll acknowledge as extreme, is that by ignoring this sort of behavior we're condoning it. That shouldn't be acceptable, IMHO. I'd rather get up and do something about it than take no action.

I'm also pretty upset about all the ill-mannered, malicious, deceitful individuals that dominate trade chat, exploit information to their advantage, deliberately create troll messages to bait opportunists and waste their time, or don't have the decency to behave in a civil manner. It might be wrong for me to pass judgment over these actions or make sweeping statements about their morality, but I don't want to see the same sort of 'devilry' manifest itself on a website that has largely proven reliable so far. In any case having fake accounts isn't acceptable, considering the F.A.Q on warframe.market clearly states that it doesn't wish for that to happen.

 

Edited February 27, 2017 by InsomnIaC.
cleaned up language to reduce offensive material

[Miser_able]

Or you know, they could just be desperate. 

EDIT: after looking at the mentioned item I see no proof that any of these account are the same person. They are just most likely a bunch of people who see it go for that much in trade chat so they post it for that price. 

Edited February 26, 2017 by Miser_able

[InsomnIaC.]

5 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

Or you know, they could just be desperate. 

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if you're implying that those profiles I linked are actually real people, I have to vehemently disagree with that perspective.

All the accounts went offline at approximately the same time, as indicated by the "last online" timestamp. On a previous occasion, when I tried messaging one of those accounts in game when they were listed as online, it resulted in a "user does not exist" message.

Most of those accounts listed are fake. If anything, the extreme laziness in some cases to not remove a higher sell listing and to simply add in a cheaper sell listing goes to show how much time and effort said player has spent to edit the profile. If he/she was managing a single profile, it wouldn't be that difficult. Trouble is, he/she's not.

Edited February 26, 2017 by InsomnIaC.

[Miser_able]

Just now, InsomnIaC. said:

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if you're implying that those profiles I linked are actually real people, I have to vehemently disagree with that perspective.

All the accounts went offline at approximately the same time, as indicated by the "last online" timestamp. On a previous occasion, when I tried messaging one of those accounts in game when they were listed as online, it resulted in a "user does not exist" message.

Those accounts are fake. All evidence points to the same conclusion.

Timestamps can be incorrect. Unless of course all of my steam friends (even those who haven't been on in months) logged off at the same time. 

Just because someone chooses not to use same alias on a third party site as ingame that does not mean they are fake. Also I've been told by the game accounts don't exist even though I was playing with them so it's buggy. 

This entire thread is rampant conjecture.  Don't get me wrong, if those accounts are indeed fake then the person who made them is indeed a shameful waste of space, but without concrete facts I cannot condone possibly innocent people to a burn at the stake of a baseless witch hunt. 

[kaliazane]

When I opened it now I saw 6 online listings (which are the only ones that matter) and all of them between 170-200, so everything looks fine. Sure someone could create fake account and put fake wts for half value there, but it's pretty damn obvious when you see it. The ironic part is that they are wasting their own time and could make far more plat by playing the game.

Edited February 26, 2017 by ViS4GE

[Xekrin]

One of the major disadvantages of a 3rd party trading system is people can create fake accounts and/or pretend to have items for sale they do not have.  There is no inherent verification for places like this.

There will always be those who try and scam others out of their hard earned coin.  The sad thing is it happens just as much in WF trading in the game so people need to be vigilant regardless of where they are going to find trades.

The people who are running that site should at the very least have a disclaimer pertaining to the possibilities of scammers and that any price isn't a guarantee to actual averages in-game.

[InsomnIaC.]

19 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

Timestamps can be incorrect. Unless of course all of my steam friends (even those who haven't been on in months) logged off at the same time. 

Just because someone chooses not to use same alias on a third party site as ingame that does not mean they are fake. Also I've been told by the game accounts don't exist even though I was playing with them so it's buggy. 

This entire thread is rampant conjecture.  Don't get me wrong, if those accounts are indeed fake then the person who made them is indeed a shameful waste of space, but without concrete facts I cannot condone possibly innocent people to a burn at the stake of a baseless witch hunt. 

I see where you're coming from, but I wouldn't be posting this thread, nor would have bothered linking images if I was just basing it purely on conjecture. In any case, you're comparing warframe.market time stamps to Steam friend's list time stamps, when one has been working reliably as far as I've observed for the past 4 months and the other has been bugged since 3 years ago. That's not a very good premise for your reasoning.

 

14 minutes ago, ViS4GE said:

When I opened it now I saw 6 online listings (which are the only ones that matter) and all of them between 170-200, so everything looks fine. Sure someone could create fake account and put fake wts for half value there, but it's pretty damn obvious when you see it. The ironic part is that they are wasting their own time and could make farm more plat by playing the game.

You're missing the point here. It's done to lull wanna-be sellers into false thinking that the stuff they have is worth less than what they could actually get for it. Of course, granted it works better only if the profiles are online, but it won't stop said malicious player from going "oh look there's this guy offline selling for cheaper, I can just wait for him to come on and buy from him" and pressure the seller into going lower. Sure, ultimately it's the seller's fault if he's so gullible to buy that load of bull, but should we be standing by and allowing this to happen? IMO, no. You may disagree with me.

[InsomnIaC.]

42 minutes ago, Miser_able said:

EDIT: after looking at the mentioned item I see no proof that any of these account are the same person. They are just most likely a bunch of people who see it go for that much in trade chat so they post it for that price. 

You can't be for real. Really? And here I have someone saying

24 minutes ago, ViS4GE said:

but it's pretty damn obvious when you see it

Almost 10 different profile accounts, all selling nothing but Sovereign Outcast. No buy listings. All went off at almost the exact same period, give or take an hour. Considering the number of sell listings for Sovereign Outcast number less than a mere hundred, you can't seriously be thinking this is a coincidence.

Edited February 26, 2017 by InsomnIaC.

[ashrah]

that not passing with ppl who have expirence in trade... i trade a lot before... i post for example wen just primed flow coum out i maxe it and i post wts  primed flow max  lets say 500p... if someone ask nice to lower for 50p no big deal... but ppl who try to cut price i insta close tab...and ppl who cut... they buy stuff like that then sell ppl who  dont know well prices then rip them.... one player once tryed to sell rifle amp new player rank 4 who.. barely know anything in game for 100p... i insta invate him and gift him.. 4 aura for free...ppl just need to be more aware..but this community also have some great ppl i rember wen i wish to buy rcane grace set... guy sold it to me for 100p each wen is arcane grace been 200-250p each so yeah

Edited February 26, 2017 by ashrah

[kyori]

Yes, that is why I always said people at warframe market are controlling the prices because most people will go there to see benchmark, so a lot of times I see people lowered the prices in warframe market... maybe their sole purpose is to make people in trade chat unable to sell at the original benchmark price or higher.

[Red_Bones]

I don't know why you people are arguing with @InsomnIaC., the point is valid, and you'd have a hard time disputing "player not found" and the same time-stamps whatever 'logic' you would like to use against it.

Also, no amount of common sense claim makes something common sense. Common sense is a byword for "you think people would almost definitely have it, because its obvious and important, but they almost certainly don't".

The key thing here is - unlike what some people I've talked with try to suggest - you don't use a median for determining the price of an item, you look at people who are online and accessible. Based on the range of their prices, you can get an idea of the prices you would be looking at if you were talking to people in game, and were giving you live price checks.

[Volinus7]

Everyone wants to control the price that's why there's no price range limiter in the game, what's a surprise with free market? With or without wfmarket you can still be ripped off either way.

[Minak]

Default view is set to show first ingame people, then online on site and offline after that. All these 'sections' are sorted by the price. I personally just browse first one or two, because of exactly what you showed, there are so many abandoned or forgotten entries with users been online like 130 days ago, that them are not worth effort to check, in my opinion. Furthermore there are no stable price, and it's that someone set certain price, don't mean someone would pay that much at all.

[Aurea_Hiigara]

Anyone who references prices from offline people could just as well reference what BlockBuster used to charge for a movie compared to Netflix today, or the price of filling your car's gas tank in 2000 rather than now.

[taiiat]

yes, just like any economy or economy statistics that Players are the driving force of, information is inaccurate at best.

luckily, there are some people that spend enough time on this stuff for Warframe to help matters.
in recent times, some convenient robots available to do what humans can't - get an actual idea of what people are willing to buy and sell things from, from the horse's mouth. data available at: https://nexus-stats.com/

this isn't foolproof either ofcourse, as theoretically one could misrepresent by spamming Tradechat with 50 alts - but this is certainly the lowest likely abuse of any abuse for a Player driven economy.

 

Edit:

3 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Babadookcf said:

partnered with discord

there's no partnership with Discord - that's just the preferred contact method. 
that some of the people creating and using this data are using it for their Discord Bots - has no direct connection to Discord.

Edited February 26, 2017 by taiiat

[(XBOX)Babadookcf]

https://nexus-stats.com

This website is a very handy tool. It uses statistics that's partnered with discord to show how much said item should cost and shows percentage of supply and demand. I've been using this site to price my items. 

[ashrah]

DE just need to block any 3th party sites...they are many dirty stuff involved

[InsomnIaC.]

3 minutes ago, Aurea_Hiigara said:

Anyone who references prices from offline people could just as well reference what BlockBuster used to charge for a movie compared to Netflix today, or the price of filling your car's gas tank in 2000 rather than now.

Only true if said player has been offline for a prolonged duration. I often use offline profiles that have seen activity in the last 24 hours to decide if I want to make a purchase now, or simply wait for the chance to get it a lower price when he's online. (Yes that's how stingy I can be, and thus far it's worked out to my advantage.)

I'm aware posting examples of profiles that were offline since 30 days ago doesn't lend any weight to my opinion, but the whole point is to remind people that even websites like warframe.market are prone to exploitation. I could have posted this 2 months ago when I saw the same stunt being pulled off with veiled Shotgun Riven Mods, but hadn't gained enough confidence to make a post like this yet.

18 minutes ago, Minak said:

Default view is set to show first ingame people, then online on site and offline after that. All these 'sections' are sorted by the price. I personally just browse first one or two, because of exactly what you showed, there are so many abandoned or forgotten entries with users been online like 130 days ago, that them are not worth effort to check, in my opinion. Furthermore there are no stable price, and it's that someone set certain price, don't mean someone would pay that much at all.

I have a suggestion, but unfortunately it's probably not going to be seen by the people who can actually do something about it. It's quite simple: profiles that have not been online for more than a week (adjust duration accordingly) should have their buy and sell listings removed from the search list.

[InsomnIaC.]

1 minute ago, ashrah said:

DE just need to block any 3th party sites...they are many dirty stuff involved

No. 3rd party sites were spawned with the intention to assist player's activities in-game. Like christx with raid records, such 3rd party sites provide information that is taken at the end-user's discretion. I won't go so far as to say that you can't blame the site for such exploitative methods (i.e. there are measures that can be taken to prevent such misuse), but blatantly discouraging the use of an entire wealth of information just because there're some bad apples in the mix isn't a solution.

If anything, it lends weight to my point that something should be done to clean out these scummy tactics, if and where possible.

[ashrah]

25 minutes ago, InsomnIaC. said:

No. 3rd party sites were spawned with the intention to assist player's activities in-game. Like christx with raid records, such 3rd party sites provide information that is taken at the end-user's discretion. I won't go so far as to say that you can't blame the site for such exploitative methods (i.e. there are measures that can be taken to prevent such misuse), but blatantly discouraging the use of an entire wealth of information just because there're some bad apples in the mix isn't a solution.

If anything, it lends weight to my point that something should be done to clean out these scummy tactics, if and where possible.

they can made some kind of kiosk for trade with fix prices ..current market is ruined a lot....items dont hae any value lot sharks..re-sellers..wtb 3 xx helmet for frame... u instantly know its re seller

[Aurea_Hiigara]

A dynamic economy scares you a lot, doesn't it, Ashrah?

We HAVE a kiosk with fixed prices: It's where you get Ducats for Baro.

Platinum values fluctuate depending on how useful a frame or weapon is, how new it is, whether it's vaulted or not, whether it's recently unvaulted etc. etc. etc. Do you want DE to constantly monitor and update those prices based on what THEY think something should be worth? You know, the guys with a direct interest in putting platinum prices much higher than they should be because they earn real money from platinum?

[Lawmonark]

This mod is not worth much...lol. You can buy a set of armor, a potato Ohma and this mod for 270p on the market. You do the math, DE does not think the mod is worth much.

 

Also, that site is for "fast" selling. the prices in game are much higher on average.

 

Another thing... just report them on the site. Check the bottom of their profile page.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Krhymez

[Acersecomic]

I have to agree about the people manipulating the market. I don't care if they have an item to sell. But these people don't have it. They're posting fake listings which won't be removed in order to force cut the prices.

I'm not mad about this because I don't get to buy something expensive for a low price, it angers me because it's filth.

P.S. Out of principle, don't buy from people who cut the prices by 1-2% of the price, they're undercutting just to make a sale, cheap tactics. Don't encourage them.