I want to promote safe trading, safe practices and the power of the community should be in the hands of the community and not a single person / group

[WhiteHatMan 0]

Hi All,

I've been checking out this game and hanging for its release for a while. I've been going back and forth trying to decide how i should play this game but I've decided to put my energy into trying to help keep a safe and fair trade environment, If there's even a role for that?

Why do I want to this, why you should pick me and what have i done to prove i can do this? (I don't even know what role i'm campaigning for)

I have worked as a process specialist for 5 years in the real world (no longer do that) and have been involved in a couple different gaming communities and have seen first hand how bad processes have the potential to affect innocent people and will like to help create processes that avoid having innocent people caught in gaps.

My gaming community journey started with a game called Team Fortress 2 and the introduction of cosmetic tradable items. As there is money involved in trading / selling users did what they could in trying to make these items work for them. Some users would play the trade game, some would create their own communities and processes turning the digital items to real world money, some would take the scamming approach and some would put themselves in a position where they had a lot of control over the community.

To explain the last point "position where they had a lot of control over the community", which i feel is the biggest thread to both the developers and the community. My pitch is don't let one person have the power, the power of the community should be owned by the community... I'll explain why below.

In TF2 there were many scammers on the loose and as communities wanted to keep a safe community they needed to keep these people out. In the early stages when the foundations were being created a community called "SteamRep" that had no connection with steam created a scammer list, this was their sole focus.
As other communities didn't have time / want to police their own communities they put their trust in this SteamRep scammer list and would connect to their API and if a user was banned on this steamrep community they were considered to be a threat to their community and would then be denied.
So what ended up happening was that if you were banned on SteamRep you were banned from the vast majority of the community.

This is great if it was just scammers being banned but things took a nasty turn one day when they introduced a new ruleset "If you trade with a listed scammer, you yourself could be listed as a scammer"

No remember this group isn't working for valve / steam and had placed them into a position where they had control over who can and can't enjoy the trading environment and had just pushed out a rule that forced all users to visit their service to make sure they are allowed to trade with a certain users (many banned users didn't have a note to why they were banned) and if you didn't follow their rules you were out.

This then turned into a mess where someone could have scammed someone, and then someone (who had never scammed) traded that person, thus is now a scammer, then this newly falsely accused scammer would trade someone else, who would then be listed as a scammer. This could go 100 trades deep and everyone in that chain could be a scammer.

As such many innocent people were kicked out of the community, myself being one. I was a trusted figure in the community and was an active middleman, holding items worth over $500 in middleman deals, i had made a record purchase at one time buying a Burning Team Captain (most expensive item in the game) but because I had completed a trade while SteamRep was down I was listed as a scammer (listed as a scammer because they traded with someone that traded with a scammer) My nephew who was 8 at the time had logged into his account on my internet connection was considered an ALT and had his account publicly listed as a scammer. He would join games and was being abused for no reason.I had 5 years of very high tier trades, had promoted safe trading, done giveaways and the likes and when I tried to mention this i was told, since i was so experienced i should have known better.

It was very evident that the community had not agreed with this ruleset and my listing but they had a suborn approach.

The rule set was around 3ish years and I was the most vocal person about this before I was listed and I stepped out my call out game once I was listed. They would defend their ruleset by saying that the rule is in place as scammers could easily move items to new accounts and sell them there, and they were happy to have innocent people caught in the firing line as long as it meant scammers couldn't sell their items. I felt education was the best form of protection, rather than have a scammer list on who to avoid it would turn out a lot better to educate users how not to get scammed by anyone... over trying to fight a battle you can't win and that places innocent people in the firing line (the people you are trying to protect) I took a strong public approach via reddit to get them to revert this ruleset, it took a white but in the end myself and other vocal users got them to change the ruleset which affected innocent people.

I had my name removed from that list and was done with that game and then started playing and enjoying Rocket League. I dropped an item which was painted, so i thought there must be a trade community so i thought i'll check it out. What i found was very raw trade community where listed "trusted" middlemen were scamming users and the powers to be in this community were defending their actions,there was a spreadsheet where people were being listed as scammer with 0 evidence. I felt like i had just left a pile of crap and then entered a bigger pile So me being me and having the experiences from TF2 I've had many discussions with the different "leaders" in the community. I've found that in most communities to be a leader it's sort of a case of first in first serve, as an example if no pricing spreadsheet exists and you create one first you now have a lot of power with the viewership and you are now in a position to manipulate prices. Being first doesn't mean you are best.I've found out that most of these first in people are generally greedy and were motivated to go through the effects to create their process for the benefits and once they have the benefits they possibly won't be against abusing them.

At this point in time in Rocket League I've created a safe trading flow chart where if you follow the chart correctly you can't get scammed and have this published on a very popular pricing spreadsheet and am in talks with one of the developers there where we are discussing some evidence community concerns.

I'll love to be able to help create processes where no single person or group have more power than the community. I'm happy to share evidence / answer any questions.

 

Peace

 

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2017 by FnFunky
typo

[uncannierlink 225]

As far as I'm aware there aren't going to be Items worth actual money in the game.

[JoelKeys 412]

3 hours ago, uncannierlink said:

As far as I'm aware there aren't going to be Items worth actual money in the game.

There will be cosmetic micro transactions

[uncannierlink 225]

9 minutes ago, JoelKeys said:

There will be cosmetic micro transactions

I thought they were being sold for in game currency... Maybe it's a hybrid system like eve online?

[JoelKeys 412]

8 minutes ago, uncannierlink said:

I thought they were being sold for in game currency... Maybe it's a hybrid system like eve online?

Players will sell their own made products for in game money, but the Identity devs will put up cosmetic items for purchase with real life money.

[uncannierlink 225]

6 minutes ago, JoelKeys said:

Players will sell their own made products for in game money, but the Identity devs will put up cosmetic items for purchase with real life money.

Ah. So it is a hybrid system. In that case OP may be a huge help.

[WhiteHatMan 0]

8 hours ago, uncannierlink said:

Ah. So it is a hybrid system. In that case OP may be a huge help.

Hey, yeah i guess we will need to wait for the finer details. My thoughts is that:

If players can trade items / in game currency to each other then there's going to be a black market (users will like to sell their items for real money over in game currency) this will be controlled external to the game, and there will be a fight for a power here.

If this is the case then there's going to be users trying to exploit this black market such as scamming user and manipulating values. What I'll like to do is give guidance on how to avoid getting scammed and how to keep these prices are their true value and not manipulated values.