Trading shenanigans Thread - Zombie Grinder

sooo, I was trying to trade for a sweet blue gem, should have no problems right? some lols were had....

so the first guy tried to scam me out of my gems, kinda funny, wouldn't actually show me the gem iwas trying to trade for, kept spamming random junk into his trade window while i had 3 sweet gems in mine, trying to rush me into pressing accept by saying "just pess accept" "trust me I'm wiser" "last chance" and also "because the item is rare". won't post his name here cause he was unsuccessful, after repeated questions demanding him to show the gem i was trading for he said "brb afk" and proceeded to cancel the trade. claaaaasic textbook scammer attempt

on the next trade, it hilariously went almost the exact way around. the person showed a light blue sweet gem (I was looking for dark blue), and after telling him so, he started putting random stuff in trade (meanwhile my trade window is empty), all the while saying nothing. after i said "apparantly you don't have a dark blue gem...." he proceded to start playing with his accept trade button. after a few seconds he just....left it on. I jokingly also pressed my accept trade button (still empty trade window), and proceeded to hilariously grab his stuff.

I then tried to tell him in IRC to trade me back to give him his stuff back, with no response. i tried to send him a trade request, but found that he was offline.

as I'm no scammer, I'll send him his stuff back once, or IF he comes back online, but there are a couple lessons learned here for some suggestions for the future:

1. don't allow trades to complete if anyone in the trade has an empty trade window. Empty trades should never happen, those that do are almost always accidental and/or scams. this certainly won't stop scammers, but it adds some slight protection for noobs.

2. Allow gifting- a legit way to send items to someone without having to trade with an empty trade window, and allow the system to work even when the recieving player is offline. if the player is offline, keep gift items in limbo. If the sender gifts items, they should disappear from their inventory. if the reciever has no inventory left to accept a gift, keep the gift in limbo until there is space and keep giving them a message saying so. to view current unreceived gifts, the recieving player should always have a popup (like the trade popup), when they first reach the game startup menu ie: Press F1 to view current gifts! press F2 to view them later!

3. Have player accounts keep a log of the past 1000 trades serverside-(should be a simple text file). Then allow the player account to view their record of trades in a new menu option called trade records, in their game start menu. within this menu they can view their past trades, and also have a Report option to report any scams. if people abuse it, they get banned, but this alone should catch any and all scammers, as they'll get reported by the victim. to prevent a scammer from maliciously reporting a victim (for example, scammer acts like new noob, begs in chat, and someone graciously gifts them an item, creating a trade that looks like a scam), all trade logs should also keep a log of the trade chat (Im assuming the IRC already has chat logs). this goes without saying trade logs should also have the time of trades recorded, so as to coincide with IRC chat logs. Of course, this scenario is less of a problem if a gifting system is implemented. if people give gifts, then they take the risk of gifting to a scammer. furthuremore, if a person has multiple accounts begging for items in chats (and thus gifting stolen items to main account), you can either track the gifts to the scammer, or simply make begging in chat a bannable offense (if it's not already).

when it comes to trade moderation, the community is currently small, so that shouldn't be an issue. when it gets bigger, you can remove trade bans, and select community moderators (unpaid trade admins, basically), that instead flag players for scamming. after a certain set of flags, the moderators can then report players to True admins, who have the power to ban them, and who only have to deal with the very few bad apples. This system should handle steams number of players. furthuremore, players flagged for scamming should automatically have the flagged items in the trade removed from their inventories, and have those items then gifted back to the victim (if those items have been sold or otherwise modified, the scammers entire backpack is reset to default as a punishment for scam evasion, then items are created in a system gift sent to the victim). you don't need to give unique id's to items to implement this, just give the flag system a search function searching the inventory for the victims items, even if there are multiple items that match the victims, the system will only need to take the amount stolen.

Now, I know the most likely response is "but players are responsible for their own trades, we don't care about the scammers because we don't have the manpower to track them and ban them anyway"

my answer to this is that although the commuinty is currently very small, you plan to put this game on steam yes? This WILL introduce a FLOOD of players (and scammers), and currently, there is no popup telling players they are responsible for their own trades, which means that the default liabillity is arguably on the admins. This is of course debatable, but the fact that it is debateable means you can have issues in the future with steam's overlords. You need to warn players about the risk of trading to put trading liabillities on them, so that you know for a FACT you aren't liable. this leads into my next suggestion, which is by far the most important (and easiest to implement).

4. Add Warning text when players start trading - this should already be there, so unless i've been incredibly dense and not noticed it, there should always be warnings telling players to be aware and careful of scammers. linking to a page with steps to detect scammers can't hurt, such as watching out for individuals attempting to rush the player, say things such as "just press accept" and the like, should give noobs a headstart.

I'm calling you out on this NOW so that thousands of players won't go crying to steam admins saying there's no trade warnings. implement a trading warning system now (plus anti scamming measures) to save you headaches in the future. theoretically, if you integrate into steam's trading system (which would be AWESOME), the importance of this becomes ten-fold, because people can then trade with items they payed real money for, making scamming quite the serious offence. Of course, if you do integrate into steam trading, they have their own system for dealing with scammers, but it's best to be prepared fundamentally for scamming, as that obviously makes your game more attractive for steam integration.

/end wall of text

implement these additions and your trade system will be fully matured, as it is, it is a bit unfinished and as it is it seems scammers can run amuck without punishment. gamers should always know the risks of trading, but assuming all players are perfectly intelligent is unfortunately ALWAYS bad juju. In reality, it's always best to assume the lowest denominators (IE: complete noobs), and give out warnings where appropiate. After that, those that refuse to pay attention to the warnings and still get scammed have only themselves to blame.

Edited by: Neo160