Beware Scammers Obohh And Absurd

Jeez, the cringe from the 'ackshually' crowd still shitposting on a forum like they're living in 2006 still is just downright sad. Can't believe some are still posting like they're the cool kid on BG. Pathetic.

For OP, if you see any of those merc shouts for V25 etc., assume its a scam as 99% of the time, it is.

Gms USED to. But the scam is to take money on a shout mule and delete the character. They can't "do anything" about that. Character is gone long before they bother to answer 5 hours later.

IF the *** even bother TO answer. Can't even get the *** to answer anymore let alone do something that resembles a job. That's why scams are so numerous.

There is literally zero fear of repercussions of any kind anymore.

If an anon/level 1/keymashed name yells a merc. Red flag.

If the shouter doesn't already have the party started. Red flag.

If they're rushing you to pay fast and/or "starting soon" but pay now. Red flag.

If it's a v25 clear at all, it's probably a red flag.

If it feels sketch at all, don't *** do it. Stop falling for obvious scams.

The reason people had no sympathy for this was because the OP either:
Paid 25k, which is a trivial amount of gil, that's like half a stack of grape daifuku
OR
Typed 25k instead of 25m

That's it. For half a page, people were mocking him for losing barely more than 1 acheron shield's worth of gil.

He later clarified (maybe?) that it was 25m and he just doesn't know how to write numbers.

Either way, you're playing alone because you have no social skills, you can't be bothered to do content yourself and would rather pay somebody, and you blame others for your problems, not because people mock you for not knowing how numbers work.

I wouldnt say we laughed at the victim, but we definitely has a chuckle.
They came here to warn us about how someone scammed them for "25 thousand per player", then re-affirmed it was "25 thousand gil .......", then had the *** gall to call everyone idiots (paraphrasing based on the "does anyone have any understanding").

Yes, we understand fine. Were not the ones who got scammed, and were not the ones who confused 25 thousand with 25 million.

If folks got scammed? That is terrible and they should call a GM. If the wrong amount of money was given? Then this post should be deleted because it is an unfair player warning brought on by a misunderstanding. Although technically, that money should still be given back, even if it was only 25k per player.

There is no need to ridicule. People make mistakes, but they can also get screwed. So from that, the OP can figure out what to do.

Well technically it should be deleted because player warning are against the site rules, or at the very least edited to not contain specific names

I can appreciate the warning, but they're going to make new characters in a week and continue doing this so the names likely mean nothing. Same as the Ody scammers (though if you genuinely think someone can carry you through a t3 v25, you should probably perma log out anyway).

If you're giving your gil to an anonymous character wearing lv1 gear / no gear with promises they can get you through CL150 content, thats on you.

I empathized with people who got scammed by Odoro in port jeuno, especially when that bot started trading people as they walked up, as there were multiple elements at play including abuse of the game interface. This is just worse than someone falling for snake oil. Whats next: A scam warning for pyramid schemes?

"Give me 50 million gil, and you can use my characters to run merc services. You can also sell access to my characters for 50 million gil each. But heres the best part: if you sell 3 passes to my characters for 50 million gil, you get a cut of that, but if those people get other people to sign up, you get a cut of those further sales and merc income as well!"

BTW, SE never refunded the thousands of goods that were essentially stolen from players via Odoro. It was blatant too. That really never sat right with me. My guess is the OP wouldn't get a dime of guess money back from GM even if he complained. SE hasn't really shown that they care about injustices like these done to people, which is sad. Yes you shouldn't (be "dumb" enough*) get scammed, but it would be nice if SE didn't allow the circumstances for players to get away with it. It's shameful.

*I use the nextdoor app for my neighborhood. It's fascinating to see how many people fall victim to text message, social media, and mail scams. As a 30 something year old, scams are obvious to see and I be thinking "how can anyone be dumb enough to fall for that"?. Then my mother in law fell for one regarding CashApp and I realized how insidious these scams really are. They prey on less experienced and knowledgeable people, and take advantage of that ignorance. It's a scummy feeling seeing someone get got over scams, no matter how blatant, obvious, or dumb you think the person is. It's wrong

Yeah IDK...SE has like .5 GMs left in this game, I'd personally rather they be focusing on actual issues rather than trying to hunt down trade logs (if they exist) to hunt down gil/items gained from illicit behavior. What's the solution here?

If Odoro takes a COR+2 neck, trades it to his main, then sells it on the AH or through bazaar, what does SE do? Delete it off the character who bought it? Or are they just going to duplicate all the stuff he stole by "refunding" it to the people who got it stolen from them, without removing the original item?

IDK if it's a great solution for the FFXI economy to be adding in hundreds of high-level crafted items out of the blue, especially considering many of the victims probably already bought a new one, so they'll be throwing that "replacement" right on the AH next to dozens more, throwing the crafting market in absolute chaos for weeks/months.

Ditto these scammers, what are they going to do? Track every trade these guys made to find out where all the gil went? What if that guy spent all the gil on an item on the AH, or 10 items on the AH? What if he traded those items to another account? Are we going to ban anyone he traded with? Or are we, once again, just giving all the gil back to the scammed people and duplicating that wealth?

Is the person who scammed going to be banned for stealing? If so, under what part of the TOS? If you aren't going to ban them, what's to stop me and my friends from coordinating a fake scam where I "Steal" 100m from each of them, then SE refunds them and we just made a couple billion.

As usual, just seems like a problem where the "obvious" solutions completely fall apart the moment you try to follow them through to conclusion.

Scam would fall under griefing

In Odoro's case, nothing. They have to assume the in-game functions were used correctly in lieu of proof otherwise. There's no text log or anything to prove he's scamming, so by the rigid rules set forth in their manuals they can't do ***.

Ban the POL account associated with the scammer. If you make 50m per account, you might potentially remain profitable.. but having to buy a new account key for $10 and go through the whole SE registration process for 50m at a time is not going to be efficient enough to continue doing indefinitely.

It would be under this:
https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=20&la=1&kid=12650

Without action, it's just logging and deleting the char, no monetary cost, less than 2 minutes of time.

Odoro sold stuff through the same character while streaming people falling for the scam. This went on for the better part of a year, at least. He'd vanish for a few weeks and come right back for several more months, still selling on that account. The fact that he was using tools to do so was blatant, but it didn't matter. They could come back today and it wouldn't matter. Zero *** were given.

Eh...There's no TOS for griefing. I guess you could argue:

3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of SQUARE ENIX’s computers and servers.

But TBH I wouldn't call taking a trade from someone and stealing their gil interfering with the game experience of other players, bit of a stretch.

I think banning any account which "stole" (however they can verify that, if at all) gil from others is a bit heavy-handed, TBH.

What if someone buys a clear from a merc, but doesn't get the clear and there's a dispute about how much gil they should get back? That guy getting banned for stealing from the other player? It's a trade of gil, the guy feels like he was stolen from/lied to. Is their singular GM going to make these calls based on chat logs? What if there isn't clear enough evidence in the tells? What if they discussed the rates on ffxiah or Discord, so there's no evidence in-game other than the trades?

Eh...ok interesting article linked above. I guess they can *try* to get your items back but once again...good luck tracing that stuff through 5 different trades, or if it was sold to an innocent john. It also says nothing about the scammer being banned.

At the very least, they could have popped him for 3rd party tools. I highly doubt he was leaving his spot at any time to put things on the AH legitimately and he was streaming himself auto-accepting trade and auto-dropping trash items. They couldn't be bothered though, even with as obvious as it was and for such an extremely long time.

They've done this plenty when the game was more populated in the 75 era. They read the chat logs and talk to the involved parties.

Player A offers to sell a kraken club for 500m.
Player B /tells them saying they'll buy it.
Player A opens trade and puts in a shellbuster.
Player B opens trade and puts in 500m.
Player B realizes they screwed up, asks Player A to refund, then calls GM when they refuse.

GM will respond, read the chat logs, pull Player A and Player B into Mordion. GM will ask Player B to directly trade the gil back to Player A using the ingame systems. If Player B does it, they will likely receive a lesser penalty(1 day suspension if no prior offenses). If Player B refuses or is unable(immediately spent the gil), the GM will use their discretion to try to make it right but Player B will receive a harsher penalty(1/2 strike or straight to ban).

I'm not saying it's necessarily going to function the same in 2023 with less staff, but this is something that has verifiably happened numerous times in the game's history.

??

If you think a SE GM is checking a Twitch stream to enforce their rules, I've got a bridge to sell you.

I wonder if they can detect the difference between a third-party tool accepting trades or a player, but I'd guess it's pretty unlikely. Maybe they could notice that he's tossing items too fast with an add-on, but I'm sure there are loads of people using that addon who don't want SE to start snooping that and banning them for using it, including most of the people on these forums.

I don't think they're watching streams, that's insane. But I do know of people who have submitted recorded streams as their proof when reporting other players.

I don't imagine it would be hard to tell that a person isn't interacting with the AH, but still is placing items up, as well. Idk how that works, though.

Oof, guess I skimmed too much, I was just reading the part about how they'll try to get your items back but no guarantees, skipped right over that bit. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.

I guess I never realized this rule existed; good thing it does and I think it's reasonable, but also a nightmare to try to track and enforce, especially if patsies, mules, deleted characters, or buying/selling are concerned, as is mentioned in the SE post.

Odoro is a more clear-cut example. Was he constantly streaming? Maybe he'd turn off the stream and then trade all the crap to another character to put on AH.

Fair point, SE has a rule about this and some kinds of tools to enforce it, but I think the manpower is seriously lacking and with the amount of scammers on Asura they'd need to hire several full-time GMs to track all this crap down, I'm not surprised they don't enforce it when the ROI on those salaries is going to be in the red. Prove the number of subscriptions you'll be saving by appeasing these fools.

There's nothing to be gained by enforcing the rules, and that's why they don't.
(Anymore)
((but still don't swear at jp, they still go scorched earth on that ***))

You can look at his history now and see a crocea he sold, plus multiple mats for JSE weapons, etc. It's all stuff he was traded by mistake. You could look at his page any day while he was around and see JSE necks, SU5s, mats, heroism, all being sold by him. If there were trades to another character by him, he was still selling on himself. No, he didn't stream constantly.

The issue with Odoro is that there was no contract, implicit or otherwise. If you don't have a text agreement, there's no way to conclusively decide if you meant to trade the items to him then regretted it later or if something was misrepresented.

I don't disagree that it should be obvious it's a scam, but GMs have to operate on protocol. If trading an item to someone with no dialogue can result in it being refunded, you open a ridiculous potential for abuse that exceeds any benefit.

An honest seller should have no problem clearly stating the terms of sale and taking your gil on a high level, highly geared character. This gives you potential for recourse.

I like to imagine a GM sipping from his Odoro® coffee mug while going over reports about them, just quietly sighing.

Design a trade menu that is significantly different for trading to PCs vs NPCs. Add a confirmation (that you can toggle off) that ask if you are sure you want to trade to <t> (especially if it is a one sided trade). The confirmation would not even be needed for NPCs.

There are a lot of UI things that SE can do better to combat Oboro scams.

Mentioned in the Odoro thread, but there is the obvious size difference in two-way trading that should make it obvious. Going further, you also have that 1 second delay between adding items that doesn't exist when you trade to NPCs. People really need to pay better attention to what they're doing, specifically when dealing with an amount of money that would upset you if you lost it.

I mean, they do.

This is the PC to PC trade window


The PC to NPC trade window doesnt have that second box underneath. Seun also mentioned the moderate delay when adding items in PC to PC trade vs PC to NPC trades.

At one point he was actively trying to trade people I recall. If someone is half asleep and just trading something before bed, I can see it happening. That went on for so long its pretty crazy that they did absolutely nothing, he even hit JP players lol.

Also, they most def don't look at streams. That is why it was such a ridiculous time when people kept suggesting certain streamers were getting banned for addons.. they don't care at all in the slightest lol. It is honestly probably at a breaking point soon, when there is no consequences who knows what these people will do. I'm surprised they aren't doing it already, especially since most are apathetic. Just offering a service and stealing the gil from anyone.

The economy is pretty bad atm... Have an item literally selling for max gil, Kraken club... can't make it up. Gil is just constantly being generated via bots and Odyssey and they cut off sparks Gil too late. Doesn't seem they care to take it out the system either.