Anti-Scam Feature for Trade Market

DISCLAIMER: I take full responsibility for my purchase mistake. I plan to pay more attention to trades in the future to prevent this from happening again. This post is not about me trying to deflect responsibility for my own mistake. This post is about making suggestions for ways to deter scams like this and improve the game and market systems so that scams like this don't worsen over time and run rampant. I'm adding this disclaimer because people keep coming here trying to bash me personally for whatever reason instead of having a constructive discussion about the system changes that I am proposing. And note that any new systems being proposed should be able to be toggled off if you don't want to use them.

Original Post:

The new trade market stuff is amazing, but there should be a new feature added to it to prevent a common scam that is going on right now. What some people are doing is they are posting a large number of small items that people tend to buy in bulk (ex: Ultimatums) for let's say 5ex each. But then on some of them in the pile they'll randomly assign them as 5div instead.

If you're clicking through a large number of the same item to buy them and not stopping to scrutinize every single item you end up accidentally buying one of the 5 div ones when you didn't intend to. Obviously this is just the buyer falling into the seller's trap because they weren't laser focused on every detail while purchasing a large number of items.

In the currency exchange there's a warning when you go to place the trade which warns you if the trade ratio suddenly changes. There should be a similar popup in the market if the previous item you purchased is the same type as the current one that you're purchasing but the price is higher on the next item purchased. Basically warn someone if they just purchased an Ultimatum for 5ex and are now suddenly clicking to purchase one for 5div (which obviously isn't intentional and is just a shady scam that the seller is running).

I got caught by this yesterday because I was tired and not paying full attention. I could have swore it said "5 exalt" but turns out that it said "5 divine" on several of them randomly placed in the pack. I ended up losing 10div before I noticed, which isn't a big deal for me personally since I can make up another 10 div in like an hour or two of doing the runs that I do. But if I was some relatively newer player who had worked their butt off to scrape together 5 or 10 div and I got caught by this scam I might just decide to quit the game. Adding a warning for this is an easy fix to prevent this type of scam which is a bad experience for players.

Another possible solution would be to have a trade "wallet" that we can transfer currency into for the purposes of using it in the market. That way we can control what currency the market has access to. Or some way to just lock certain types of currencies.

It would also be nice to have an Ignore button placed on the left side of the screen opposite from the Leave Hideout button during trades so that we can easily one-click ignore bad traders who are doing scams like this. Currently I need to go back into the market and try to find the same trader again to then ignore them when I'm using the in-game trade window because the search clears.

Thanks.

"

rawdmon#8799 wrote:

If you're just quickly clicking to buy stuff and not paying absolute attention

...then stop it.

Like I hate scammers as much as the next guy but surely we don't need to be diverting developer resources to solve a problem you can solve using the same strategies your parents taught you when you learned to cross the street. Take your time. Look twice.

"

Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

"

rawdmon#8799 wrote:

If you're just quickly clicking to buy stuff and not paying absolute attention

...then stop it.

Like I hate scammers as much as the next guy but surely we don't need to be diverting developer resources to solve a problem you can solve using the same strategies your parents taught you when you learned to cross the street. Take your time. Look twice.

As condescending and sharp-eyed as you seem to think you are, I guarantee you that if you're there buying 40 or more of the same item each day on a regular basis and you happen to also be tired you're going to eventually slip up like this too. I had bought hundreds of ultimatums, and even ran into this same scam previously but managed to avoid it those times. I just happened to slip up this time.

I don't feel that having a simple check like this is an unreasonable request. I'm very obviously not asking the devs to drop everything and work on this right this instant. Just to consider it for the future as a quality of life feature.

"

...then stop it.

Like I hate scammers as much as the next guy but surely we don't need to be diverting developer resources to solve a problem you can solve using the same strategies your parents taught you when you learned to cross the street. Take your time. Look twice.

100% this. If you buy something that is clearly an XX item and you bought it thinking it was a YY (because you didn't pay attention), you were not scammed. That is not a scam. That is a lack of observance or a case of buyers remorse.

If someone told you it was a YY item and it turned out to be a XX item, it's a scam. That is not what's being described here.

When I started playing this game, I bought a few items that were already corrupted or items that my stats didn't support (Ex: required 100 strength). There is no one to blame but myself. I learned from that and I moved forward with new knowledge of things to look for. I don't think I need a label or alert to stop me from making my own bad decisions.

"

The_Gadget#2563 wrote:

"

...then stop it.

Like I hate scammers as much as the next guy but surely we don't need to be diverting developer resources to solve a problem you can solve using the same strategies your parents taught you when you learned to cross the street. Take your time. Look twice.

100% this. If you buy something that is clearly an XX item and you bought it thinking it was a YY (because you didn't pay attention), you were not scammed. That is not a scam. That is a lack of observance or a case of buyers remorse.

If someone told you it was a YY item and it turned out to be a XX item, it's a scam. That is not what's being described here.

When I started playing this game, I bought a few items that were already corrupted or items that my stats didn't support (Ex: required 100 strength). There is no one to blame but myself. I learned from that and I moved forward with new knowledge of things to look for. I don't think I need a label or alert to stop me from making my own bad decisions.

Did you even read my post? It was the EXACT SAME ITEM with a different price on it mixed in with a pack of all the exact same items. It was like 30 ultimatums all with 5 exalt prices except for like three of them that were strategically placed in the middle with 5 div prices. It was an intentional scam by the seller.

"

Did you even read my post? It was the EXACT SAME ITEM with a different price on it mixed in with a pack of all the exact same items. It was like 20 ultimatums all with 5 exalt prices except for like three of them that were strategically placed in the middle with 5 div prices. It was an intentional scam by the seller.

Yes. I read the whole post. EVERY one of those items had a PRICE posted with it. THAT IS NOT A SCAM in any way, shape, or form. That is YOU not using your skills of observation.

FFS. GGG can't be expected to put safeties in place because you aren't paying attention.

You were tired and not paying attention correct? Well maybe you should not be buying stuff when you are tired. Maybe you should realize that you are tired and pay extra attention if you CHOOSE to participate in the marketplace.

Below is a list of things that went wrong during your described transaction. Please tell us who is at fault for each of these:

Buying items while tired: buyer/seller/GGG
Not looking at the price before buying: buyer/seller/GGG

"

The_Gadget#2563 wrote:

"

Did you even read my post? It was the EXACT SAME ITEM with a different price on it mixed in with a pack of all the exact same items. It was like 20 ultimatums all with 5 exalt prices except for like three of them that were strategically placed in the middle with 5 div prices. It was an intentional scam by the seller.

Yes. I read the whole post. EVERY one of those items had a PRICE posted with it. THAT IS NOT A SCAM in any way, shape, or form. That is YOU not using your skills of observation.

FFS. GGG can't be expected to put safeties in place because you aren't paying attention.

You were tired and not paying attention correct? Well maybe you should not be buying stuff when you are tired. Maybe you should realize that you are tired and pay extra attention if you CHOOSE to participate in the marketplace.

Below is a list of things that went wrong during your described transaction. Please tell us who is at fault for each of these:

Buying items while tired: buyer/seller/GGG
Not looking at the price before buying: buyer/seller/GGG

You said "If you buy something that is clearly an XX item and you bought it thinking it was a YY (because you didn't pay attention), you were not scammed." and "When I started playing this game, I bought a few items that were already corrupted or items that my stats didn't support (Ex: required 100 strength)", both of which are very obviously not what happened in this case.

"FFS. GGG can't be expected to put safeties in place because you aren't paying attention." <--- GGG already have such a safety on the currency exchange, this isn't really any different.

You're welcome to take your opinions, which I didn't ask for, and take a hike.

We sure have some real winners on these forums.

Lol these kinds of scams will never go away in PoE , got to pay better attention , right , wrong , irrelevant , people will always punish people that dont pay attention in market simulators.

"

Artaniz#4006 wrote:

Lol these kinds of scams will never go away in PoE , got to pay better attention , right , wrong , irrelevant , people will always punish people that dont pay attention in market simulators.

I'm not disagreeing with this general sentiment, and I'm obviously going to be paying much better attention going forward. I'm just putting it out there that GGG might consider making some small changes to make this much less likely to happen. That's it.

I was theorizing about this type of scam existing in the first day that the new trade stuff was out, but I hadn't actually seen it start being done until a few days ago and hadn't gotten tripped up by it until yesterday.

I wish there was some way for me to control what currency the market has direct access to, instead of it having access to everything in my stash + inventory at all times.

I think you just need to pay attention personally.