Jarvis Hellstrom
Gallente The Flying Tigers
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Posted - 2009.05.28 18:59:00 -
[1]
Personally I find scams boring, stupid and annoying and, while CCP may think that they're okay, I actually happen to think that they're shooting themselves in the foot.
Scams seem to mostly impact newbies. They're the ones who haven't been around long enough to pick up on the tricks of contract scamming etc. Anyone who reads the contract CAREFULLY will realize what's up, but new folks aren't really up on that yet. The contract system can be a little (or a lot) intimidating to newbies. Certainly I found it so long ago and I've written and negotiated real world contracts!
The reason I feel that CCP may be going the wrong way in allowing scamming is that, honestly, if someone gets taken badly enough and early enough that's a lost account, a lost customer and a bunch of other potential customers that may never play EVE. In short, it's bad business. Particularly when it's something like someone altering a decimal on a contract as that's not so much a matter of not 'reading' as the font being hard to read and the change small and easy to miss. Contracts are about consent and one cannot consent when one is lied to (essentially) about what the price really is by relying on a system weakness to confuse them.
One way to fix it might be to make some kinds of contracts only available to those in player corps (ie: make the War Dec-able). Getting back at someone for a flawed contract is probably one of the most correct 'in-game' reasons for a corporate war that I can imagine particularly in the absence of litigation such as we use in the real world.
I don't think I've ever been scammed, but I did once have a lot of fun with a scammer running the old "You can't dock at the destination station" courier scam. See, I knew the destination station was blue. While, as it turned out, I couldn't dock with it, I was on good enough terms with the owning Alliance that the diplo gave me docking permission for a few minutes so I could complete the contract. Now the scammer's worthless junk is at a station he cannot get to and their ISK went into my wallet.
Point to Hellstrom.
May God stand between you and harm in all the Empty places you must walk
(Old Egyptian Blessing) |