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Warning: Exploiting Auction System in Cross Server Dungeons


shakti

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2 minutes ago, shakti said:

I thought "leave the party" was good advice and so is try to look at the numerical place holders rather than the bid, but most of this "advice" is just letting the scammer off the hook.

 

I was hoping people would appreciate a warning that this scam is going on. Moreover, if the scammer is well-known, people will keep leaving parties and forcing them to re-recruit and reform.

You yourself said *everyone* wants to rush and get on with their dailies, this alone will deter people from leaving full and half full parties with a member they know is a bid trickster. The most efficient way of handling this problem, without wasting time leaving parties because u don't like someone, is to look at the digits below the bid timer bar.

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56 minutes ago, Finsternis said:

So wait, because you can't take 10 seconds to properly read the bid you call it scamming?

Also, what kind of argument is poor eyesight? You either can or cannot read the bid. And if you only can after looking at it for 10 seconds, then take the time. You have all the bid timer worth of time to read the bid, ponder wether you want to raise it and then follow up on that.

Seriously... the nerve of people. And here I thought I had issues that on my QWERTZ Keyboard Y is accept bid as well as an skill, and you can't rebind accept bid so in combat you could accidently bid.

 

Take your time and bid only after checking all the things and being sure you want to bid the amount that is said. If you can't do that - don't bid. Easy as that. There is no scam involving this. It is purely the bidders fault if he bids too high.

I dare you to count to 10 with "mississippis" during the copper portion of a bid and see if its 10 seconds.

 

Waiting to study each copper bid isn't normal practice: it's only something you can blame others for not doing if this hasn't happened to you. If everyone was taking that kind of time on each and every one copper bid, your dailies would take forever. I doubt you would bother with this game for very long if that were the case.

44 minutes ago, KaLnoX said:

You yourself said *everyone* wants to rush and get on with their dailies, this alone will deter people from leaving full and half full parties with a member they know is a bid trickster. The most efficient way of handling this problem, without wasting time leaving parties because u don't like someone, is to look at the digits below the bid timer bar.

If I saw his name again, I wouldn't bother putting the work into the dungeon first to see what happens.

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31 minutes ago, shakti said:

However, the assertion I just wasn't paying attention isn't advice: that's assigning blame and it's projecting a situation you remember (times you weren't paying attention) on to me.

 

You also remark that you don't think this was a scam, so anything I say to maintain this was a scam  and not to defer to you will come across as an excuse to you.

You are acting as if you are a victim, your situation doesn't make you a victim. As a RTS (I hate these new terms), I know what being a victim is like,  something in a video game, which can easily be avoided and doesn't actually harm anyone is not something to stress over. I have serve PTSD and take a ton of medicines a day just to function. So sorry if I don't fall your your self pity, as I know what really can mess you up, and what happens in a video game is not something worth stressing on, unless you work in that industry, but that's a different subject. 

 

As for the "Scam" you never said what they bid 1 gold on, if it was an item sure, everyone would admit that was a dick move, but if it was an Outfit or some other upgrade material which sells high or is really rare, then no we don't think it was a dick move, since if you were paying attention, and not biding fast that person would have paid the party a gold. 

20 minutes ago, shakti said:

If I saw XXXXXX's name again, I wouldn't bother putting the work into the dungeon first to see what happens.

I would remove their name from your post, as that is actually against the TOC. 

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8 minutes ago, gothicshark said:

 

Honestly, as I have learned the hard way that this can happen, I don't bid on trash items, although most of the time I'll watch the bid war, as I get paid by just waiting for the auctions to end. I look forward to the scammer  you describe, because of their  Chutzpah I would make bank if they did that. 

So you admit the reason you're fine with such scams is that you benefit from it? O.o

 

Are you open to the possibility some people might need to bid on things and thus have a greater chance of becoming a victim of such scams instead of a beneficiary? At the start of the post, I said I haven't been able to save up enough for all the moonwater transformation stones I need. I was hoping an alternative route was to craft them myself, but as it turns out, I still need raid items for crafting.

 

Now that I'm discouraged from trying to obtain the materials, I'm discouraged from using the crafting system. That doesn't seem like something the developers of the game would want.

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3 minutes ago, shakti said:

I dare you to count to 10 with "mississippis" during the copper portion of a bid and see if its 10 seconds.

Waiting to study each copper bid isn't normal practice: it's only something you can blame others for not doing if this hasn't happened to you. If everyone was taking that kind of time on each and every one copper bid, your dailies would take forever. I doubt you would bother with this game for very long if that were the case.

So, because you are impatient everybody has to be?

You just don't get the reality of the situation. There are only a handful of bids that matter. Nobody cares for yet another green sword. And people WOULD take their time to ponder the important bids if they needed it. Everyone. Everyone with sense that is. If you are in such a rush, the only thing that can help you is to search a regular group and talk about drops beforehand. Other than that the point remains: take your time or take the blame yourself.

And if people don't like you taking your time? Let them leave. You need 5 seconds to find another person in cross server dungeon.

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11 minutes ago, shakti said:

Are you open to the possibility some people might need to bid on things and thus have a greater chance of becoming a victim of such scams instead of a beneficiary? At the start of the post, I said I haven't been able to save up enough for all the moonwater transformation stones I need. I was hoping an alternative route was to craft them myself, but as it turns out, I still need raid items for crafting.

Moonwater Transformation stones are god awfully expensive, I had to run 10 Blackram Harbors to make the money,... guess what, I like running that one. Also the Purfum Jars sell like mad. 

 

However your situation is not victim making. You messed up, no one assaulted you and took advantage of you, you used your own free will and made a mistake. This is why no one feels empathy for your situation, especially as you keep coming up with one reason or another why it's not your own fault. You are not owning your mistake, and you are upset it happened. Sorry, you are not a:

noun
 
  1. a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.
    synonyms: sufferer, injured party, casualty; More
     
     
     

No one tricked you, no one harmed you. What happened is something you did to yourself. 

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The item was a Moonwater Tear: the expected final bid would have been between 20-40 silver, and recent bids have been going a lot higher. This is usually the most expensive item in the old Big Four dailies (other than outfits), so the bid is expected to go into the silver range.

 

There was no "1 gold" bid or even "1 silver" bid. There were a few copper bids, and then the scammer inserted a bid for 22 gold and some copper change so it looked like the first silver bid of someone hoping to pay the low end price.

 

This was a deliberate trick.

 

Rapid bidding at the copper part is normal. It's not a matter of whether everyone else "has to be" impatient: it's what normally happens. Again, it's extremely easy to accuse someone of not paying enough attention after the fact, and a lot easier if it hasn't happened to you, or worse, you don't want "auction snipping" to be identified as a scam because you are benefiting from it.

 

@GothicShark - I can't do the Blackram Supply Chain because of the jumping problem. I only recently (as in yesterday) started doing Bloodshade Harbor because players take the shortcut of jumping across mazes there. I can't do that, so I had to be strong enough to run the maze without dying while people yell at me to hurry up. It takes me all day to earn around 17 gold from dailies. I can't keep that kind of time investment up, so without being able to craft moonwater transformation stones, I guess I can get no further. Though, if the jumping problem can't be identified, I can't finish the main quest line anyway, so meh.

 

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Still not sure where you're trying to go with this thread.

You're at fault but are trying to blame the person who exploited your lack of attention and patience.

Everyone in this thread has explained and even showed how you could've avoided it but you keep saying "it's easy for us to accuse someone if this hasn't happened to us".

For myself, it already has happened because I was trying to get a material and clicked a tad too fast. Did I come to the forums to make a thread saying it's an exploit and that it's the other person's fault? No, I simply accepted that it was my own fault for going too fast and went on with my gameplay.

 

Just learn to accept that it's your own fault and move on with playing the game.

Learn from your mistakes.

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I'm sorry but if you are trying to save money by bidding 1 copper at a time you are just leaving yourself open to this kind of thing happening (if not on purpose but on accident when someone like me gets fed up of waiting and just puts in what the item is worth and you spam Y and I don't want to pay any more than what I put in).

 

Stop trying to save your coppers, put in what you are willing to pay and then if someone outbids you pass and move on.

 

I see people bidding up to 1 silver a copper at a time and I just don't understand why. Type in 1 silver and be done in <1 second, saves time and the risk of this kind of "accident" happening.

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14 minutes ago, Zuzu said:

Still not sure where you're trying to go with this thread.

You're at fault but are trying to blame the person who exploited your lack of attention and patience.

Everyone in this thread has explained and even showed how you could've avoided it but you keep saying "it's easy for us to accuse someone if this hasn't happened to us".

For myself, it already has happened because I was trying to get a material and clicked a tad too fast. Did I come to the forums to make a thread saying it's an exploit and that it's the other person's fault? No, I simply accepted that it was my own fault for going too fast and went on with my gameplay.

 

Just learn to accept that it's your own fault and move on with playing the game.

Learn from your mistakes.

The only reason this is an entire thread is there is a set of people who insist on exonerating a scammer. Every possible attempt has been made to blame me, under the cover of "advice", but it should be clear by now that I don't regard most of this thread as "advice" - I regard it as a pile-on to exonerate scammers.

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2 hours ago, shakti said:

There is a player on the cross-server dungeons who is changing copper bids to gold while everyone is trying to rush to get to the real price. This is especially a problem for players with low vision who can't tell silver from gold. The exploiters add some copper change, so it also looks like silver because there is just 2 places and makes the bid in what would be a plausible range for silver. In this case the bid went from a few coppers to 22 gold and copper change: players would have expected the end bid to fall between 20 and 40 silver, so they would continue to bid fast at 22.

 

Several players have reported this, but I have a feeling Player Support will say it's unfortunate but legal.

 

I spent over a week trying to save up to buy moonstones so I can upgrade my items enough to try the new purple dungeons. I need around 35 moonstones at this points, and I still don't have enough money after a week of farming all day. I finally got the Merry Potters recipe in Brightstone, and my first attempt to get just ONE moonwater tear cost a third of the gold I had left.

 

I'm already unable to complete the main Yellow quest line because of a bug in my qing gong jumping skill. This kind of setback, which prevents me from going on to the high level purple dungeons as well as making me afraid of the auction system, is extremely disheartening.

Hopefully you learned to pay more attention while bidding and don't just spam the bid button in the future.  The only fault here was your's for not paying attention.  I'd suggest that instead of spamming the bid willy-nilly, you actually input a bid into the bottom part of the bid window.

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This isn't a scam or an exploit. It's economic PvP. The bidder pulled a move that fooled you, and you got owned. No shame in that. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and learn from your mistakes.

 

"Keep your guard up at all times" isn't just good advice for boxers.

 

PS: No, I've never pulled this on others, but as soon as I saw the bidding system I realized the potential for such shenanigans.

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3 minutes ago, shakti said:

 

The only reason this is an entire thread is there is a set of people who insist on exonerating a scammer. Every possible attempt has been made to blame me, under the cover of "advice", but it should be clear by now that I don't regard most of this thread as "advice" - I regard it as a pile-on to exonerate scammers.

Were you forced to press the "Bid" button as soon as the next bid was made? Oh wait, did he trick you into bidding for "x" amount of gold because he told you it's worth that much? None of the above? Then it's not a scam.

But sadly I guess the person playing victim will always claim otherwise and will stay in that mindset no matter what.

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then dont copper war, for gods sake

 

what's even the point of even doing it? to annoy the heck out of ppl who want to move on? Seriously whenever a item that i want drops i bid 50s-xg (depending on it) right away to speed up the process, because it's faster, and avoid risk of ppl being scammed due to "y spam". You're not even supposed to y spam, just wait 3s before you bid something so you can watch the price and see if it will get within what you wanted.

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This is my personal problem, but it's difficult for me to place a bid in the numeric slot fast enough because I can't see the keys on my keyboard -I don't touch type the number keys, and if I try to, my fingers get out of place for the letter keys. I use the mouse for everything I can.

 

If anyone is wondering why I'm quoting whole posts, its because the contrast is so low that I can't read the text to edit it once I paste the quote. Someone has already shared that I'm not the only one who has to play with work-arounds, so I'm not saying I'm special. However, advice that works for you may not work for everyone - please keep that in mind.

 

And people are going to just have to get over the fact I'm not blaming myself. This was a scam, and it came across that way to other people who were in the party and witnessed it, as well.

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There's no easy way of telling this, but people are right on this one. That kind of a move is called a DI*K move but ultimately, it's your own fault for not paying attention. My best advice is, learn from your mistakes and hopefully, no one will fool you twice.

 

Some good advices, though, like looking at the your bid area and inputting the amount of money you are willing to pay. I will definitely take these into consideration myself!

 

P.S. Just so you know, I was 'scammed' myself that way. And even though you may see it as a scam, it's a flaw of bidding system which certain individuals exploit and no one can do anything about it.

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13 minutes ago, MsPeepers said:

This isn't a scam or an exploit. It's economic PvP. The bidder pulled a move that fooled you, and you got owned. No shame in that. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and learn from your mistakes.

 

"Keep your guard up at all times" isn't just good advice for boxers.

 

PS: No, I've never pulled this on others, but as soon as I saw the bidding system I realized the potential for such shenanigans.

I agree that some players see this as "economic pvp", but since a good portion of the population may be pve players, this amounts to saying the game is "for" the pvp players. One segment of players gets to "win" by making the game miserable for another segment. By this logic you could also say that griefing is a gaming style. Some people have tremendous amount of fun griefing: the game operators who support this better hope those griefers are also spending money like whales, too, because their victims aren't going to stick around.

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Just now, shakti said:

I agree that some players see this as "economic pvp", but since a good portion of the population may be pve players, this amounts to saying the game is "for" the pvp players. One segment of players gets to "win" by making the game miserable for another segment. By this logic you could also say that griefing is a gaming style. Some people have tremendous amount of fun griefing: the game operators who support this better hope those griefers are also spending money like whales, too, because their victims aren't going to stick around.

I'm not defending the behavior. I'm not saying it's enjoyable or fair if a person gets duped.

 

I'm merely pointing out that this game (like all others of it's kind) is rife with losers who have no respect for themselves, let alone others. However, being an out-and-out jerk doesn't necessarily make a player a scammer or an exploiter. All it does is make them a jerk.

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10 minutes ago, ThePrelate said:

There's no easy way of telling this, but people are right on this one. That kind of a move is called a DI*K move but ultimately, it's your own fault for not paying attention. My best advice is, learn from your mistakes and hopefully, no one will fool you twice.

 

Some good advices, though, like looking at the your bid area and inputting the amount of money you are willing to pay. I will definitely take these into consideration myself!

 

P.S. Just so you know, I was 'scammed' myself that way. And even though you may see it as a scam, it's a flaw of bidding system which certain individuals exploit and no one can do anything about it.

I agree about the good advice you point out, even though some of it won't work for me in my personal circumstances.

 

I continue to disagree that my attention was any less than anyone elses: my attention was glued on the bid because I couldn't afford to pay too much and would have let the bid go after 40. I believe I was playing normally, as most people do, and, as you yourself point out, another person exploited a flaw in the bidding system at my expense.

 

You're also right that nothing can be done about it technically (except maybe putting the word COPPER, SILVER, or GOLD on the "Current Bid" line. However, it's within the power of the game operators to encourage or discourage certain types of player behavior. Calling this behavior "scamming" is a vote to discourage it. Blaming me for not paying enough attention is a vote for encouraging scammers.

 

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48 minutes ago, shakti said:

Moonwater Tear

I'll often bid 1gold on these as I actually need them, and can't be bothered to go in a bidding war. If people sold them individually on the AH I wouldn't do that, but they are usually in big stacks. It seems more and more like you are just wanting attention for being a victim. 

 

I hate platform games, and can't jump for crap, think it's an age thing, because when I was younger I had a Nintendo and never had the problem. My timing is off, So I usually just bust the boxes and kill walk instead of Jumping and wall running. Which is funny since I do this on my Warlock. I can't wait for my Destroyer to get to level, because it'll be RP appropriate for her. 

 

So you are upset a high cost item which some of us will bid a gold on, was set to a gold while people were bidding in the copper, and you paid over a gold on it because you were unaware of the increase. This isn't even someone pulling a dick move. No scam, no victim, at this point I'm more offended by your excuses for this and that. If you are having this much problem maybe this isn't the game for you. 

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2 minutes ago, gothicshark said:

I'll often bid 1gold on these as I actually need them, and can't be bothered to go in a bidding war. If people sold them individually on the AH I wouldn't do that, but they are usually in big stacks. It seems more and more like you are just wanting attention for being a victim. 

 

I hate platform games, and can't jump for crap, think it's an age thing, because when I was younger I had a Nintendo and never had the problem. My timing is off, So I usually just bust the boxes and kill walk instead of Jumping and wall running. Which is funny since I do this on my Warlock. I can't wait for my Destroyer to get to level, because it'll be RP appropriate for her. 

 

So you are upset a high cost item which some of us will bid a gold on, was set to a gold while people were bidding in the copper, and you paid over a gold on it because you were unaware of the increase. This isn't even someone pulling a dick move. No scam, no victim, at this point I'm more offended by your excuses for this and that. If you are having this much problem maybe this isn't the game for you. 

1 gold is a reasonable bid. 22 gold and small change is a huge over-bid that was meant to look like a normal silver bid.

 

I very much enjoy your points about older players, and a few things could be said about gender differences in style of play as well. I hope your remarks about jumping weren't intended to imply my "user error" in that case as well: I get enough flak along those lines in-game already.

 

However, you (and others) can blame and impugn me all day, and I'm still going to see this as a deliberate scam.

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i was in a game where both the scammer and scamie both scam'd each other.

it was quite halarious, and each of us walked away with 20g.  

 

The first auction... bam 10g... the last auction bam.. another 10g...  

 

And both didnt have a clue to just leave party really fast to prevent the losses....

 

 

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Something similar which happened to me was a guy around lv47 or so went to Tomb of Exiles and set the minimum bid to 50s. Which essentially locked out all the lowbies from getting any drops unless they were willing to pay 10% of their total gold for it. I mean, if the item would be the subject of a bidding war that goes beyond that price sure, but he set it so that even items only lowbies would want (infernal accessories, infernal weapons, soul shields) were blocked off, so many of these items went unbid on by anyone. He then pushed the minimum bid up to 1g for the boss's auction.

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4 minutes ago, shakti said:

1 gold is a reasonable bid. 22 gold and small change is a huge over-bid that was meant to look like a normal silver bid.

 

I very much enjoy your points about older players, and a few things could be said about gender differences in style of play as well. I hope your remarks about jumping weren't intended to imply my "user error" in that case as well: I get enough flak along those lines in-game already.

 

However, you (and others) can blame and impugn me all day, and I'm still going to see this as a deliberate scam.

Why would me being female have anything to do with my gameplay style? I've been a hardcore gamer since the 80's, when it was dice and quarters. When I was younger I would kick most guys arses in Tekken. My issue with jumping is why I gave up on Wildstar, if it wasn't for the old school fighting game feel of this game I would have left back to FFXIV last month. I hate the Story, I dislike Jumping. 

 

Also 22 gold would be back in a dick move. So yah, he was a dick, and it sucks. But he didn't effect your freewill, and he didn't actually harm you. Learn from this, and be cautious when bidding. You are not the only one with physical limitations, you are not alone in some of your problems, but become stronger, take your time, and dam them if they don't like it. As I said, I slow walk my Warlock in that one run, granted I bust the boxes for the Shortcut, but that's not like jumping. I can't even do the 3rd one because I have yet to get the jump upgrade. As I wont buy the item on the AH, and I'm working to make it. Also I have a guild of just me and 9alts, all of whom are crafting for me to get all the needed stuff. (yes 2 accounts one on my laptop, one on my desktop. needed a way to deal with my altism, and my need for a cute Lyn Fem Boi.)

15 minutes ago, fatalystic said:

Something similar which happened to me was a guy around lv47 or so went to Tomb of Exiles and set the minimum bid to 50s. Which essentially locked out all the lowbies from getting any drops unless they were willing to pay 10% of their total gold for it. I mean, if the item would be the subject of a bidding war that goes beyond that price sure, but he set it so that even items only lowbies would want (infernal accessories, infernal weapons, soul shields) were blocked off, so many of these items went unbid on by anyone. He then pushed the minimum bid up to 1g for the boss's auction.

Oh I ended up in a run like that once, I dropped out when I saw the min bid notice. No way, on a random run I wont take that Bleep from anyone. 

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