IMPORTANT: How to Avoid Trade Scammers

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We’ve been receiving an increasing number of reports that people are being scammed while conducting player-to-player trading. These scammers use various methods to acquire other player’s items for less than the value agreed upon during the negotiation process. Please take a look at the tips offered below to protect yourself against trade scammers and identify someone that may be trying to scam you during the trading process.

How to protect yourself while conducting player-to-player trades:

-Be very cautious when dealing with a level one account that is selling or attempting to acquire expensive items.

-Do NOT accept a trade immediately after posting your items or coin. Pause for a moment to see whether the other person does anything suspicious.

-Wait for the other person to accept the trade before clicking the accept button. This will prevent the other person from being able to change the terms of the trade at the last second.

-You can always request that the other person use the cash on delivery mail feature to trade items

Warning signs that someone is trying to scam you:

-They are removing items from the trade window after having posted the correct item up for trade.

-They are changing the coin totals in the trade window to less than the agreed upon price after posting the correct amount.

-They are making excuses to reopen the trade window several times before accepting the trade. This is often a way to make you hurry through the trade process instead of using caution.

-A level one account is trading away extremely valuable items or is attempting to acquire extremely valuable items. Often time’s scammers use alternative accounts in an attempt to hide their primary accounts.

Trade scamming other players out of their hard earned coin and items is something we take very seriously. We will be patching in changes to eliminate the opportunity for players to scam other users out of their hard earned items. Look for this in future patch updates. If you encounter a scammer, please report the issue to community@ageofempiresonline.com with a screenshot of the chat log and a description of what occurred during the transaction, we will investigate the issue from there.

Thanks,

--Cosy

|||On top of that, I hope you will ban their primary accounts which they transferred their hijacked stuff to, and post a list of their names so we can celebrate over their rotten dead accounts.|||

Andy, we don't discuss moderator action taken with anyone but the effected parties.

That being said, I can assure you that are working vigorously to make sure we have a healthy and happy trade community.

|||A hall of shame would be a great deterrent.|||

TWO WORDS: Auction House

|||ingame mail COD.|||Good call. I'll add COD to the OP.|||

I don't want to tell you guys how to do your job, but why didn't you just hotfix it today?

It takes 2 lines of code to reset the accepted status for both players whenever the entered items or gold are changed. It would effectively take you less time to do that than to write this entire guide, and you'd never hear of this problem again. Most MMO games use this system and you don't need to reinvent hot water here.

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We will be implementing a fix that eliminates the describedmethods of trade scamming. Patch deployment is aunique process to every game studio.

Edit: The trade status is reset when a player changes the terms of the trade, that is not the problem at hand.

|||another reason that we need auction house fast
|||

try to add durability to weapons and armor this way will improve the
trading in-game like after 10-15 matches this is for uncommon for rare
should be 20-30 and epic same but with possibility to repair them with
empire points or gold that will cost allot depends on lvl you will need
to get new weapons or armor only those that you use i mean if you build a
barracks if will drop the infantry armor and weapons after the match so
if you build barracks and siege weapons it will drop just the barracks
and siege weapons gear

this is just an idea to improve trading in-gmae

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Or we could just fix the issue, which is the POORLY DESIGNED TRADE SYSTEM, by simply adding an additional confirmation window after both players accept in which they can review what is being traded and accept again.

...Or we can just make worthless threads about how to try to survive in a flawed system. There are a thousand simple valid ideas for fixing this simple problem.

I am drowning in poor programming.

|||Confirmation window is the best option to do. But please don't put the confirmation window over the items and coin bars :p|||wow, since you made thios thread, people tried to scam me even more often. i know how to avoid them, but still annoying
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There's 4 main ways to sell/trade items.

1. A Fixed Price

2. Highest Bidder

3. Trade Goods/Barter

4. Give Away Free.

To be honest, the trade tab is pretty useless and is just being a showoff of what you have. I would change the Trade Tab to the following.

Make it easier to post. At least 10 times a day I see in chat "How do you link items to trade?". When you want to sell an item for a fixed price or highest bidder have it where you have a popup screen, you pick the item in your inventory and then either set a price or pick highest bidder. Once you hit OK or SELL the item is not available in your inventory anymore. On fixed prices it becomes first come, first served. With auction of highest bidder it becomes a timed based item. With no direct interaction there's less chance of fraud/theft.

With a trade barter this would be use at your own risk. Once both parties hit accept a second screen pops up that says <user> is trading <items> for <items> and give a choice to hit ok or cancel. So if someone switches at the last minute it can be caught. Limit the amount of trades a person can do (or cancel) in a 24 hour period. Free accounts, one trade every 24 hours, 3 cancels. Premium, 2 trades, 3 cancels. If you have to cancel trades more than 3 times a day then something is wrong!! Those who just want to waste the time of others and "see their gear" are now limited to 3 times a day.

Those who wish to gift an item could pick "gift" and the username. You then can set limits on how many items a user can gift and receive in a day. This will cut down 3rd account fraud transfers. They can only send 1 gift a day or receive 1 gift a day.

Lastly, I would setup the trade like pvp. You must be level 5 or 6 before you can trade. This slows down people from making fake accounts in an attempt to rip off others and send the goods to their primary account Then when they can only make 1 trade every 24 hours, they'll soon realize it's easier to just play legit than rip people off.

Bill