Limiting the range of scams

Discussion in 'Prison General Discussion' started by PurbleMist, Jan 12, 2022.

?

Make scams outside of sign shops and /ah bannable?

  1. Yes. Only allow these types of scams.

  2. No. Allow all types of scams.

  3. Make all scams bannable

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  1. PurbleMist

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    Over the past month I have seen the most amount of long time players get hit by scams. Players lost inventories they spent $100+ on in your very own store. I would like to understand the staff teams reasoning behind how the rules are set up and the communities thoughts on why they should be changed or not changed.

    My stance and reasoning on no longer allowing scams outside of sign shops and /ah.
    Players have lost their inventories to scams since the beginning of prison but the most you used to lose is an immortal pickaxe and some tokens. No big loss. Nowadays though your inventory has an upgradeable pickaxe you have spent the past 2 weeks grinding out and most likely a few backpacks. You no longer lose today's grind you now lose weeks of progress AND items you spent IRL money on in the form of keys. Keeping scams limited to /ah and sign shops will mean the most players will normally lose is in game money and tokens. In most scenarios losing these things will not lose you IRL money or weeks worth of work.

    Let me give you a scenario. I do an IRL deal to trade away my pickaxe for a $25 mcc gift card. The deal goes smoothly and afterwards I ask to see it to take a farewell screenshot. They give it to me being nice and as a thanks for doing the deal. I run off with it. Deal was done. No harm done based on the rules. Yet a player just got $25 stolen.

    Another scenario. A player spends money in your store on keys once opening them they have a few backpacks. The next day they are mining and get a tpa request of a player wanting opinions on his build. Wanting to be helpful they accept it. Instead they get tped into pvp and killed and their backpacks lost. That player just got scammed IRL money without it being directly through a trade.

    I ask everyone for their thoughts but especially Staff on a reasoning for why this is okay but doing the exact same thing during a IRL trade isn't. New players log into your server a lot and buy 5 keys and end up getting scammed for their items they just opened and asking for help in chat. Only to learn that the scammer is in the right and is protected by the rules. The new player never returns. You are not only not protecting your players' money. You are killing your own server by making sure new players logging in as fresh targets for the scammers never return to your server.

    With a clean slate on players records and changes to Sev 3s. Now is the perfect time to be at least thinking about changing rules.
     
  2. Nikki_

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    Nikki_
    Hey there,
    Honestly getting scammed really comes down to the decisions that the player makes. The first scenario you gave does not make sense to me... how did they get $25 stolen? If you can elaborate more then I can give you a better answer. With regards to the second scenario, if you are a prison player and you KNOW scamming is allowed, why on earth would you accept a teleport request to some random guy, ESPECIALLY with an inventory full of your most valuable items?

    I made a forum post a very long time ago https://mccentral.org/community/threads/a-guide-to-avoiding-prison-scams.135651/#post-314581 In which I basically describe in more detail what I mean. I can't really say why exactly I think scamming needs to be on prison, but it makes it more prison-y. Either way I don't think a few (or more than a few) people being too trusty means scamming should be bannable.

    If you have more to add lmk and we can discuss it more but for now peace out and don't get scammed :sweatsmile:
     
    lavoova the grape likes this.
  3. DaveDreaD

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    Im with you purple not sure what the answer is but im with you. Nikki i didn't see you play prison this season but trust us its toxic. Even for the seasoned player it has changed the way you have to play.

    !00% for me certain items (maybe your pick armour and defo your backpacks) should have keep inventory on so you cant lose them unless you trade them away in /ah or /trade.

    Nikki the current scams you simply cant see coming.
    A trusted player could set up the best token shop and you could visit that shop safely time and time again but at anytime they could be waiting for you to rock up with your mining gear on and once you do they could drop the anvil and boom its gone. as quick as that. Seasoned prison players are falling fowl to it as well as new players.

    TPAs should have a shorter timer on them , they should timeout after 10 seconds or so and no way should they be able to TP you to your death.

    not sure of all the answers as i dont know all the scams but people losing stuff they have had to spend RL money on aint right !
     
  4. Zac25zac

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    Zac25zac
    Hello,

    While I understand getting scammed on prison isn't fun in the slightest, I feel that MCC has scamming in the game to put a slight bit of "reality" into prisons. What I think the point of allowing scamming & griefing is to show the fact that you may never know who you can trust (like being in prison, you never really know who can just). As much as I'd like there to be no scamming, I think it is unlikely this would be a change coming to prisons. Newer players should at least take a glance at the rules to see what is allowed and what isn't.

    For your first situation about doing an IRL deal ($25 MCC Giftcard) for a pickaxe, IRL scamming is NOT allowed anywhere on MCC. Even though it may take time to get a middle man for IRL deals, it is a safe step to assure a safe & smooth trade. On top of this, you can record the whole deal just in case anything else happens.

    For the second situation, like Nikki_ said, you should NEVER accept tpa requests if you know scamming is allowed. The time could maybe be decreased to 1 minute to accept, or maybe a click on the tp message, but there needs to be a little bit of time for the request.

    While there are many other types of scams out there that may be unknown, you should always remember to be careful when going to others' plots, accepting tps, etc. You should either see if anyone in the chat is saying that player is a scammer, or if it is someone you do not know much of, maybe accept their tpa with one token or go to their plot with one token to see if it is a scam. Also, when selling or buying items, you can always tell the player to list it on /ah or /trade with a banknote at /spawn.
     
  5. Nikki_

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    Nikki_
    Everything I said still applies: don't wear your armour or backpacks unless you are currently using them. As in, do not tp to ANYONE with all of your valuables. If you are wearing you mining armour and backpack at the mines, then you take it all off and store it safely when you finish mining, nothing will happen to it. Any time someone /tpahere's you, empty out your inventory and make sure the only things in your inventory you are happy to lose. I can't make it any easier for you to understand. You can never lose your valuable items if you store them safely when you are finished using them, and that includes teleporting to someone to look at their plot.

    Moral of the story: treat EVERYTHING like it's a scam, that way you will never get scammed.
     
    Zac25zac likes this.
  6. DaveDreaD

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    Ok forget token shop lets call it a standard 65k ore shop , cant leave your backpacks behind as u need them to sell your ores..and what miner is going to disrobe and store his pick just to sell his ores.

    Look i know what your saying about prison being "real" were just calling it like it is..

    To many people are getting scammed and its costing you players.
     
  7. abbs

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    Abbskababs
    Hello darling, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Removing scamming is not the answer to this issue. To start with I'd like to cover some of the most common scams and the only scam I think should be disabled.

    Anvil Death trap:
    This is the only scam I feel should be removed due to how deadly it is, While other traps take time to kill you this one is instant leaving no room for escape. I find it to be a little over powered and believe the easiest fix for it would be to remove the gravity on the anvil.

    TP Traps:
    To put it simply, if a player you do not know dm's you asking you to tpa for what ever reason or just sends a tpa don't accept it. There is ways around this, If you're Bedrock + or have the private virtual chests perk you can easily store away your items before accepting.

    Sell shop Scams:
    Typically these are advertised in chat with offers that sound to good to be true, the reason is usually because they are. When ever you are checking out a shop etc for the first time its always a good idea to store your items and scout it out before hand. Avoid shops that sound to good to be true.

    P warp death traps:
    Excluding the anvil death trap its possible to TP out of most of these. The only working tp traps are lava based and suffocation, You can TP out of suffocation pretty easily and can tp out of lava the same way.

    AH Scams:
    If you're dumb enough to buy one of these darling then that on you. I personally have scammed on ah with fake holographic skulls before and if you're silly enough to fall for it then I'd say it's probably deserved, If something looks to good to be true its because it is.


    Ta ta now x
     
  8. PurbleMist

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    Do you see how bad of a mentality that is for a community? New players do not know this and most quit after getting scammed once. Every player that is still playing either was told extensively about how to avoid scams or has gotten scammed multiple times. The veteran players who went through that vetting process we could call it did not have it as bad as the new players do with what you could lose in scams. It is killing your server. No normal person is gonna go through that and decide to keep playing. It is a do not befriend anyone. Turn you back and save yourself in every situation. Even if you have made friends that have lasted over multiple seasons you still shouldn't trust them because they could just decide one day to scam. Most players might as well be playing solo.

    I really like DaveDreaDs idea of having keep inventory on with certain items but instead you could add an item into the custom enchant pool with a very low chance of getting. This custom enchant could be placed on any item and will give it the properties of keep inventory.

    Finally Nikki your post needs to be stickied and if possible updated to add in things like just warping to someone elses pmine has a chance of you dying to anvils and the like. Never sending a tpa request to anyone and all the new types of scams that have appeared this season. Sure stickying it won't reach new players before they get scammed most the time but at least players and staff alike will be able to post it into chat after a new player starts raving about getting scammed. With that being able to turn a player from having to get scammed 4 different ways to learn about everything and quit instead to them hopefully only being scammed once and learning how to avoid the rest. With that all said though I still feel something needs to be done to stop players from being able to lose a pickaxe they spend weeks working on and items they bought with real world money.
     
  9. Nikki_

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    Nikki_
    hihi I actually was hoping it would get stocked when I made the post, especially now that it's so old its tricky to find. I will bring it up again!

    As for where you mentioned that new players do not know this: it really comes down to how gullible you are. I am in no way purposely trying to blame people who get scammed, but at the end of the day if you really believe something that is clearly too good to be true, then perhaps you need to rethink your own actions. (that sounded quite rude and I am very sorry)

    The custom enchant idea sounds great, however it wouldn't stop new players from getting scammed because they most likely do not have keys to get the custom enchants with. Personally I just think that there's no real way of solving this.

    If we immediately made scamming punishable, the amount of people who would get banned for it and annoy staff, threaten us etc would be unbearable. It also would make a lot more work for staff (not that I am complaining about it). There are only 17 staff members, and the amount of people online scamming at once would just mean people are spam tagging us for someone to get on, when we are so busy. I have absolutely no issue in banning people, but sometimes there are simply no staff who are able to get online. In a way I think it would do more harm than good. There would be people scamming, and no staff to ban them.

    My final thing to add, even if it did become punishable, how would people get evidence for it? It works the same way as avoiding the scam. If you are planning on recording it and expecting it to be a scam, then why not take off all of your armour and stash your items so you don't lose them? It just doesn't make sense to me how you would be able to get evidence of a scammer if you are not already avoiding being scammed in general.

    I apologise that this thread was a bit long, and I hope I haven't come across as rude at all! <3
     
    PurbleMist and abbs like this.
  10. Kinito

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    TheRealKinito
    I strongly agree with this, for similar reasons. Me personally, I've lost over a $100 inventory due to one small mistake I made despite how careful I usually am. The scams I find myself against the most are definetely the ones that kill you immediately after you teleport to someone's plot. I dont think you should be allowed to death trap your own plot's spawn as it makes everyone suspicious of almost every single place they have to go and overall just a toxic environment and makes it much more difficult to enjoy the server as you have to be careful about every little decision you make or your entire progress can go just like that.
     
    PurbleMist likes this.

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