World !! Completely Remodeled Thread !! - Treatise On The Topic Of Item Stealing (118 Supporters)

I realize that this thread is extremely long since it aims at discussing all aspects of the suggestion. However, if you don't have time to read the whole thread simply read the section labeled: Suggestion. If you don't agree with it, then look at the Question and Responses section, where I cover almost all inquiries. (Yours will most likely be there) It would mean so much to me if you could vote in the poll as well. The poll runs on a double vote system. First you vote on support or no support, then you vote on your own experiences with item stealing.

Thank you for your time,
Blizzardgale




Alright, I am currently in quite an enraged state of mind, so my writing may be a bit biased and crude. A couple minutes ago I was equipping my experience armor for the DXP weekend. Unbeknownst to me, I had dropped my actual armor to make room for inventory space.

Another player happened to pass by and collected some of the items I had thrown, two of which were a 41 SP 2/4 stardust and a highly well-rounded Libra. Additionally, both had two Tier 5 Water powders on them. As you can imagine, I was ecstatic and the player said that we could meet at the Rodoroc bank for my items. However, in the midst of the trade, they stopped in the final check mark and exited out. I originally thought it was a misclick, but then they replied with, "It'll cost you." 11 le was the given price, and they then proceeded to sell it to me multiple times.

Spoiler: Full Conversation

Now, some of you have probably formed opinions already; most likely, "blizzardgale shouldn't have dropped their items in the first place!" Now, I concede that it is partially my own fault, but I personally feel that I shouldn't be charged for my own item that I worked to acquire with my own time! Honestly, I can anticipate already that plenty of you will respond to this thread, "No Refund Policy." But please, take a second to imagine a similar event happening to you, and people only responding with, "It's your own fault." If you can put your mind into this perspective, surely you can see how the dilemma of item stealing needs to be addressed.

11 le wasn't too much in my case, but I was definitely not giving that hypocrite the satisfaction of having picked up someone's items and selling them back. A similar occurrence had happened to my friend about a month ago, where he dropped his thrundacrack. A player picked it up and demanded several stacks of le in order for the owner to receive the item back. Luckily, a mod was able to help in that instance, @Moe_Ronickah , which I felt did an exemplary job in dealing with that task. I offer my complements to you.

However, others are not so fortunate, including me. If you looked through the full conversation, you'll see that I chatted with a friend (the one with the thrundacrack) about reporting item stealing. Just as he had suspected, item stealing was not against the game rules. This is simply ludicrous in my opinion! Wynncraft rules directly state: "To make sure everyone has a great time in Wynncraft, every member of the community must follow these rules." A player losing their items and being forced to pay for them in order to retrieve it? That only causes misery, anger, and hatred upon the Wynncraft rules and community.

Additionally, imagine if a new player who joined the server was charged an le for a coveted legendary they dropped. Most likely, the player would be angry and confused at how such an act is tolerable on the server, in addition to not being able to pay for it. This paints a negative image on the community and makes many players who encounter item stealing leave within the first week, even though they've only seen a small minority of the entire server. Modifying the rules will significantly help the server and keep a more loyal fanbase. It's not only new players who are leaving the game, older ones are now leaving too after losing an item, since they can can carry an astronomical amount of value.




Therefore, I would like to propose an ammendment to the Game/forum Rules section of the Rules and Information, for the purpose of ensuring a better play experience for players.


16. Item Stealing
(Although players are held accountable for losing their own items, other players must return those items if they happen to collect them. Sufficient evidence must be provided in order for an item to be returned. Lost items without anyone finding them aren't able to be returned.)




Congrats! You successfully finished a rant/ suggestion thread. If you completely and absolutely agree with everything I've said above, great! You're done. Please vote in the poll on your experiences, along with your support for this thread. But if you're still unsure, I'll be responding to criticisms and controversy to my ideas in the section below, as well as in the comment section.

1. Sorry, but Wynncraft has a strict no refund policy.

Response: Okay, I understand this policy wholeheartedly. Practically all of us have had accidents where we lost our items for good. The Wynncraft team can't magically bring our coveted items back from the dead, and it would be extremely easy to for players to lie about their lost items. However, taking this argument into the topic of item stealing is unacceptable. The item isn't gone, it's in another player's inventory! A more fitting phrase to describe this would be, "Finders keepers losers weepers," which has absolutely no correlation to a refund policy at all. Although you could argue that it mirrors real life losses, Wynncraft's rules have stated that the game is supposed to be geared towards a fun experience. This element is certainly not entertaining, and I would classify it as a scam, part of rule 8 of the Game/Forum rules.

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2. People who dropped their items can say "you'll be banned" and start threatening the person that picked it up. This causes another problem of the person that dropped the item possibly getting out of hand and breaking rules themselves. It is just better to try to contact a mod for help, and mods will help out in these situations as they happen. If you wait for hours though there's not much we can really do. There's also no real way to verify who has the item.

Response: The problem with contacting mods is that many users do not know that one can request for help in these situations. It isn't listed in the rules at all, and the explanation of the scamming rule doesn't refer to items being stolen at all. The addition of this rule would allow more players to contact mods about these issues. Also, mods can be absent during a player's most desperate time of need. If a few hours elapse and mods just happen to not be on, then the player will have no hope of retrieving their items.

Concerning verification, I propose the idea of having screenshots of your equipment on you as proof of ownership. This was used by my friend in order to reclaim his mythic, and Moe_Ronickah accepted it as sufficient proof. It is certainly a bit tedious, but I'm sure many people would want to secure their more expensive items. If you're worried about people accusing each other after trading an item, mods could easily scroll back through chat logs to see who is the rightful owner.

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3. It's just a poll, many Wynncraft players don't have a forum account and hardly anyone even loses their items to item stealing.

Response: A poll is representational of the Wynncraft community. I acknowledge that the current active Wynncraft playerbase consists of thousands of players, and forums users are part of the minority. However, you can't deny the fact that 26% of the users who voted have had to pay for their items! Fourteen people have even voted that they have had to pay for multiple items! Most of the forum users are high level players, but if the poll is accurate, it means that all the lower level players without a forum account will also encounter item stealing one day.

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4. It was your own fault. If you drop an item and someone else picks it up, it's not yours anymore. They have the right to charge you for the item because it's now their item. If you didn't want to drop the item, you should have paid attention to your inventory. You didn't think anything was off when you looked in your inventory and found a full set of armor missing? If not, it was your fault. I have accidentally dropped valuable items before, and when I did, I just picked them back up after realizing that I had just dropped something that I wanted to keep. Pretty sure I would notice if I were missing two rows of hearts and my armor row, moving at a snail's pace, and dealing pitiful damage to mobs.

Response: While that is true, in highly tense situations this may not be the case. Let's say you are in a cramped area filled with a multitude of mobs, such as in Fantastic Voyage. Or perhaps grinding among players in a sea of un-identified items and emeralds. As you log back in, the accessory glitch activates and triggers the loss of a couple of skillpoints. This just happens to break the requirements for one of your valuable pieces of armor, which could also break the requirements of another piece. Now the questions is, do you rapidly search for the item among the masses or fight off all the remaining mobs?

Either way, there is a extremely high chance of death when you are on half of your maximum hp whilst being surrounded by a plethora of mobs. Now upon dying, another player in the vicinity picks up your lost gear and asks for a fee. Is that still rightfully finders keepers? You lost your items to a glitch, and you did not have the ability to casually pick up your dropped items. Although you can claim that you would accept your fate if the event ever arose, I doubt you would be complacent if you lost something that you spent stacks of le on, only to have it be resold to you for more than you bought it for.

Additionally, there is no way you can notice that you dropped one of your accessories unless the skill points are tied with your armor. A small drop in stats such as -3 intelligence, -1/4 mana regen, -70 water defense, will not make you suddenly realize that you just lost an accessory. Also don't argue that accessories are worthless and only for small bonuses, a maxed prism is worth 1.5 stacks!

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5. If you have anymore points or criticisms against my idea that I have not addressed, please post a detailed reply and I will hopefully offer a prompt response.

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Sources:
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/game-forum-rules.111874/

 

I actually see this as an idea I'd like to be added, but I feel uncertain about it. I understand that Wynncraft is supposed to provide a fun and happy environment, but it's not a perfect world too, there are going to be mistakes, some bad times, annoying times and just full rage mode. I know how it feels to lose items ;-; (rip zight money). The reason for my uncertainty though, is based on the fact Wynncraft is not going to baby you, protecting you from every single little thing. I think at some point we just have to accept what happened, proceeding to move on.

 

It's just the person who picks it up. Most wynncraftians are kind-hearted people, who would give these back without hesitation, but there's always the bad apple of the bunch. I agree this should be a rule, but it could be easily abused
e.g:
person 1: Hey look, i found a legendary dagger on the floor!
person 2: Thats mine, i dropped it!
person 3: No, he's lying! I dropped it!
*fighting ensues*

 

Yes, that's a very good point, thank you for bringing that up. Perhaps I could include the necessity of having sufficient information and evidence about being the real owner of an item, such as screenshots.

 

Its nice and all but you cant really steal an item
This could also be abused by selling someone an item and then reporting them for stealing

 

See... I really hate it when things like this happen... I feel like it's such a greedy snobby thing to do... it makes you just feel like the person is a spoiled brat...

But then you look at it from their perspective, and then you see that they were probably like: "Holy shit, why would someone throw this away? Welp... I mean, I won't let it go to waste" and then this situation ensues.

I feel like it's a conflict/battle of perspectives. Which to be fair, is the same with every little argument in life.

 

Wow, that's a good point that I never even thought of! I suppose one could always screenshot the trade window to verify a purchase, but that would become tedious over time. Most likely, it'll have to rely on an honor system, and we'd be back in the same spot.

I'll try to think of some solution, thank you for the constructive criticism, Yuno.

EDIT: @Moe_Ronickah @Odnod @JuicedBananas Are mods able to see past chat logs in the console? If yes, we could easily determine whether or not someone is scamming in a trade.

 

All I see here is another average HAX member, not a rare sight at all.

 

Not everyone believes in a fair game between players... some really just believe in a game where you can get lucky off another's.

Sorry this happened to you @Blizzardgale , I know you aren't asking for anything, but do you want 11 LE? Think it'll help you to forget about your situation cause stuff like this is the reason why I have small doubts about some parts of the community.

 

No, I'm fine. Thank you very much though, it's nice to know that a majority of players are great like you ^^

 

I have a libra if you didnt get yours also some powders(not sure if water)

 

This is very much a Problem, and even though it must suck to lose your items and either pay for them or lose them even tho you coulds still have them, if you look at it from the other angle if you found an awesome legendary or even mythic you surely wouldn't want to give it away for free.
My idea would be to do it in real life (at least where I live), where if you find worth more than 500 euros you have to bring it to a Police Station, and then if someone has evidence that it's theirs they get it back but have to give you 10% of that thing's worth as Finders Price. Having a Special lost/found section would also be an idea but I mainly mean that whoever lost that item has to pay a FRACTION of the item's worth, that way they don't have to clear up their whole bank because they dropped their items and the finder also gets at least a Little bit so they aren't as salty.
Also wtf is going on with my text right now when I try to add a word somewhere it writes over what I've already written it didn't work like this before and idk why it is now.

 

I have mixed feelings on this subject

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Just. A suggestion might want to censor the guy's name.

 

it wont verify the purchase, it will only verify it was put in a trade window. also you expect everyone to screesnshot every trade they make

 

People definitely won't screenshot every trade, I stated that it would become tedious over time. Also, I later recognized my own error in verifying trading and made an edit for a new idea. Do you happen to know about that?

 

I dropped my tailwind a while ago in Detlas due to the skill point glitch, back when it affected armour. Someone picked it up and demanded 2 stacks of le for him to give it back, money which I didn't and still don't have. Luckily, and bunch of people I know were in Detlas at the time and everyone backed me up until we guilted him to give it back for free. Shows how selfish some people can be :/

 

This doesn't come up a whole lot from what I've noticed, only every once in a while.
When it does then you should try to ask a mod for help in this regard, but I don't think adding a rule for it is a great idea as @Thaum_ illustrated worse situations can arise when people falsely claim the item.
Along with this there is the issue of proving it was yours which like scamming is kind of difficult to do.

I do not want this to become a rule because I feel like it would end up worse if the person who dropped their items can say "you'll be banned" and start threatening the person that picked it up.
This causes another problem of the person that dropped the item possibly getting out of hand and breaking rules themselves.
It is just better to try to contact a mod for help, and we will help out in these situations as they happen. If you wait for hours though there's not much we can really do.

As it was said most Wynncrafters will give items back, I don't think we need a rule for the very small amount of bad apples that are just dicks about giving items back if they can be persuaded by some orange.
But, if this gains enough support and enough mods agree that this should be added then I will discuss it with the Admins.

 

Thank you very much for the response. I feel like the problem with contacting mods is that many users do not know that one can request for help in these situations. It isn't listed in the rules at all, and the explanation of the scamming rule doesn't refer to items being stolen at all. The addition of this rule would allow more players to contact mods about these issues. But, I also acknowledge that a whole rule might be unnecessary for simply one topic concerning items. Perhaps item stealing could be added as a sub category under rule 8 of scamming?

Also, concerning @Thaum_ , I proposed the idea of having screenshots of your equipment on you as proof of ownership. This was used by my friend in order to reclaim his mythic, and Moe_Ronickah accepted it as sufficient proof. It is certainly a bit tedious, but I'm sure many people would want to secure their more expensive items. Clearly, there are not just a minuscule amount of bad apples. Looking at the current poll, 3/5 of players have encountered item stealing. (Although the data is an extremely small number, 3/5 is quite a lot)

Anyways, I think the largest dilemma to my idea is actually @Yuno F Gasai 's statement, that players can easily trade and then simply accuse the other of item stealing. Both players would have the images of the item in their inventory. In response to this issue, I thought of moderators looking through chat logs. I'm not sure if mods have this power, but if there is a possibility to verify a trade, it could end accusations.

 

When I was in this situation, I contacted two moderators that were both online, and both refused to help, saying they couldn't do anything. I also used /report, and got no response.

 

For the love of dark themers, make it dual theme friendly.