Inappropriate behaviors in AL (Constructive Discussion)

[Analytical]

[Disclaimer: No, this has nothing to do with name calling or IGN sharing of people who exhibit frown upon behaviors in game. Please do not disclose any IGN related to any incidence you encountered in game. (To Cinco: Delete the specific post/comment that instigates such unsolicited drama aforementioned, not this entire thread that myself and possibly many others later would take the time and effort to write and contribute to) This is a matured discussion of what's currently going on in the game and would be a good opportunity to gather people's positions on this issue to have a better understanding and hence quality of life here while we all enjoy the game. Gameplay can on many occasions, already be boring enough (as uncomfortable to hear as it may be), so this issue I'm about to discuss here should not be another reason for loyal players to quit this game, simply because of the indifference both the dev and some of the community sometimes may show to the acts of a few rotten apples.]

List of Under-addressed Inappropriate Behaviors (Not exhaustive list/examples, feel free to add)
1. Market Scams (Preying mostly on innocent, inexperienced, hasty players)
a. Auction scamming with a ridiculously high priced item hoping that people would buy it by accident,
b. Listing one/a few item(s) in auction at an astronomical price using character/Identity X/multiple identities, then selling in towns or forums using character/Identity Y (hoping that innocent and inexperienced buyers fall for it and buys them thinking it is cheap)

2. Market manipulations
a. Deliberate Price manipulations using Fake Offers, Fake Sold through multiple new accounts/identities
b. Collaboration among a selective few rich players to discuss on what items to manipulate
c. Sharing mis-information on market price of an item to guildmates, to friends in an attempt to drive prices up
d. Creating a false shortage in supply of items, then calling an item RARE to hopefully sell for more
e. Highballing: Deliberately paying more than an item's actual current worth then immediately selling it right after, in hope to push prices up
f. Lowballing: PMing sellers using different accounts with lowball offers hoping that they will sell lower

3. Dishonest Sales
a. Use of adjectives such as OP, RARE, while the items in fact could just be trash awake or of common rarity
b. Selling Item A but marketing it as Item B
c. Fake selling without having the actual item (not the same as helping friend sell - can be verified)

4. Unbased Intimidation of reports
a. Ostracism of certain players to enjoy the game because they can't afford the gears to play
b. Forcing sellers to sell at the price they want if not they will report for "manipulation"
c. Spreading false information to intimidate players to behave in certain ways - for example calling them as scammers in towns and invite people to report them

5. Toxic fights (Cyber Bullying in AL)
a. This is self explanatory basically all the names calling, swear words, personal attacks especially in PVP context and during market negotiation.

Questionable (may not be Inappropriate) Behaviors (taken from the above)
2d. Creating a false shortage in supply of items (with different intentions: for personal keeping, for investment, for market monopoly etc.)
2e. Highballing (many versions of this, can be done using multiple identities or same identity)
2f. Lowballing - can be annoying merchants who actively destroys players experience although some sellers do invite them in by shouting "sell RUSH" themselves

Appreciate any inputs you may have on the list above, you are invited to be as constructive in your perspective as possible, this is meant to be a matured discussion (:
If you agree drop them down below! (you may also find my replies to your commentaries below as EDITS at the bottom)

Here are few pointers for discussion - credits to @Demon for the inspiration
1. Do you think any of the above, while being well known for most, is still under-addressed/under enforced by sts? Do you have any constructive suggestions?
2. Which one in particular do you think is not inappropriate nor questionable? Why do you think so?
3. Which one do you feel is the most important to address, in players perspective, and in a developer perspective?
4. Any lessons you learned so far, to any of the above listed behaviors, which you wanted to share and thought may help others not be victims of them?
5. Did you notice anything else not mentioned above and feel is important to be shown to light too? (Will add them in and credited)

Common Positions AL players may be holding:
"This is just a game, why are you so serious?"
"Mind your own business, this is my sale and my right to do how I want it to be"
Bystanders/Silent Observers of some if not all of the inappropriate behaviors mentioned and others not mentioned

My Response:
Hey man, these are people, real people with a heart and soul who are playing behind the screens with all their unspoken insecurities, issues and challenges in life to deal with so on top of that, are we really saying this is just a game and not people who are playing this game who deserved to be treated like how they rightfully should be in real life? We have no idea these players may very well be on the verge of developing depressional and suicidal tendencies, so what we do in game does affect them on some levels, to how they perceive the world they are living in today, for whether it provides them with evidence that the world is (more or less) hopeful and kind or it is no longer worth fighting for all together. We play a part to that perception, no matter how small it is in reality. Surely it would not hurt to use a little bit of empathy and compassion here in AL.

Further, the game context here in AL should not be an excuse for frown-upon behaviors or at least behaviors that you would likely not do 9/10 occasions in real life but because it is just a game, you feel justified enough to do it. For simplicity sake, say, if you truly believe it is not okay to disrespect people, you adhere to that principle and personal belief regardless of where you are, no matter how inconvenient it may be for you to do so especially if you are surrounded by people who are incongruent with what they themselves believe in.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely no saint here, I sure have made my fair bit of mistakes both in game and in rl and definitely is not putting myself on a moral high ground to judge people who may have committed the above unconsciously, or who may be early in this discovery journey. Essentially, by sharing the above, I'm also examining my own actions in the process and exposing them to light and reflecting on myself. And here I am inviting you, not morally guilting you or forcing you to be this way but I do hope we all can at least be aware of this.

As a final note, I would say this.

More often than not, in the name of making more gold and be rich and ultimately be respected and recognized in game(regardless if whether or not we are already so in our real life), some of the actions (not saying all) we may do in game can be surprisingly non-existent in RL. Some if not most of us may behave vastly differently based on what's allowed and not allowed instead of based on what we feel is the right thing to do (no judgement). There may not be consistency in our actions and we may even wonder why we don't know who we are sometimes. Despite my awareness of the fact that I may not be someone that's of any significance or relevance to you, what I want to share here remains to be so:

Don't let others judgement of you to stop you from being you no matter where you are, actually have the audacity and balls to stand up for something you believe to be right deep down your conscience. If some of the above listed actions feels right for you to do even in real life, then by all means as long as it is not illegal and you can sleep at night peacefully. All I would humbly ask is that you be consistent with it here too and not make it an excuse for certain acts. Whether we admit it or not, what we do here does reflect our characters and who we are as a person, even if we may be completely anonymous with our IGNs.

And yes, I'm well aware that I may lose some friends (or at least I thought they are) because I took a stand here today as well as for the remaining time I may spend here, and that's okay, all peace and acceptance; but I'm equally confident that I will make some new friends too who believe in what I believe in and is willing to be on this journey with me to take care of the community we are in no matter where we are or which platforms we are speaking on. That said, if by any chance this ever speaks to you now or in the future, send me a housemail IGN Vanitystats/or Hit me up here in forum PM, who knows we may end up being really good friends that support each other in our journey to learn and grow and be a better force of nature?

EDITS/CREDITS (Replies to commentaries)
@Oawaoebi - LMAO hahaah thanks for the oxytocin! I literally choked myself laughing when I saw your comment HAHAHA

@Yoloswagx - Thanks for pointing out the Trade confirmation window, will remove this one as it is relatively less severe given sts current measures, other than that imo, the rest of the scenarios still remains under-addressed. Love your perspective to defining market manipulation as a "thin line" to actual scamming, I fully agree on this one. And yes good point of actually enforcing what is written instead of it just being a few lines of words written in TOS.

@Observing - While I appreciate your input under this thread, I don't think being toxic in PVP feels good to inexperienced, newer, less competent and generally speaking, "poorer" players. Words not limited to trash, noobs, dogs, any other defaming words, etc. are hurtful by nature and may likely inflict uninvited pain on top of what some if not most are already suffering from (which is why players by and large even come to this game for, to enjoy, to chill/relax, to get away from real life issues momentarily which unfortunately only make it worse for them) Maybe if you ask yourself when someone does that to you every single time you PVP, regardless of how many kills you successfully land or the match that you win, they curse and speak about you, your mum, your dad basically everybody that is related to you, how would you like it? This is a genuine question, and heck this can even include the case where rich players calling poorer players noobs or poor as well, it destroys and robs away their right to enjoy the game. We are all beginners at some point in our life's no one is born a GOD except GOD himself for that logic to stand.

@Papas - Thank you too for supporting this (: I really like your unique take on TT in PVP, like you said, it is players versus players. I do appreciate you saying whatever happens at pvp should stay at PVP, and I can see how that would work for people who are just calling each other names with no intention of harm or inflicting pain on others but rather as a joke that's meant to tease and have genuine fun with one another, personally do have some of them in my friends list where we call each other "nabbbyy" and "Hey kid :P" in a very nice and friendly way to tease each other with good knowledge that no one is hurt silently. (That said, before I comment any deeper I would love to hear more on the other side of the story, i.e. those that legit mean harm to others when they say it and often times evict them out of tdm or ff arena because they are "noobs" and cost the team the scores)

@Alome - Dammm I love it when people speak from their experience, sexy as f XD. Hell yes lol sure have wanted to throw my phone a good couple of times HAHA, less so for now but I do feel you for real <3. For the merch yes, it can be pretty time consuming on top of the uncertain risk you have to bear with to reach the goal of 1B. Merching is still working for money (trading your time for money) instead of using money to work for you(investment in the right items at the right time but this takes a lot of market knowledge and patterns of behaviors and while is simple to learn but is definitely not easy to do- which btw is 70%-80% of where my wealth comes from Shhhhh :P probably gonna get some hate on this :/). So coming back to your classification of players who stayed in the game, no I'm neither Group1: Gold Farmers nor am I Group 2: Event Runners, I'm a casual player who runs events sometimes, farm a pathetic bit of gold but spent most time making investment decisions in AL, I identify myself more as a long term investor rather than a short term mercher (no judgement) (:

@|Ares| - (lol absolute function, I legit hate math despite being good at it :P hate me all you like haha :P) thanks for pointing this out, included some pointers above for people to discuss about. Yes the above list is not uncommon, in fact pretty well known already as you mentioned. The purpose here is to discuss why some if not most are easily dismissed by either the dev or the community to address or in some cases where there are already clear rules about it yet lacks enforcement of the rules.

(As for the second part of your comment, slightly long reply ahead, bear with me)
Pieww, you brought up a very good point to discuss and address. Yes you are right, I surely can't deny that we do have the responsibility to take care of ourselves, no one or nothing should ever become the excuse of not taking ownerships of our experiences we encounter in life.

That said, what you just brought up is analogous to:

"It's on us if we walk on the street and got killed suddenly by a gun shot.".

The analogy above, despite being imperfect, helped to communicate an important perspective, I.e. while I understand each of us bear the most responsibility for our individual life experiences; that doesn't immediately mean the frown upon/inhumane actions are the right thing to do and should be silently allowed without laws/regulations/rules in place for everyone would be doing anything they like without a tiny bit of considerations on the potential negative effect/consequences therein it has on others. For sure, it is obvious that people don't really get imprisoned for any "crimes" they do here except the most is getting banned and they can still carry on their life with another new account if they want, so there's no real consequence to their actions. I fully acknowledge this limitation of anonymity here. Nonetheless, in any platforms there are always systems in place to keep things in order and in harmony. In a country, there's laws. In a game here that's mostly business centered, these kinda issues tend to be placed on the side line, while understandable, can often be subtly enabling such inappropriate actions.

Another way to think about this is Imagine expecting a baby to be able to protect himself from such harm(gunshot), heck before we even talk about surviving a gunshot, would he even be able to not get injured from trying to walk (let alone run) in the first place if no one is guiding him? The point is, players in AL by and large are teenagers and young adults who are at an important developmental phase in their life that needs a safe space to grow and learn, otherwise they would grow up to be insecure, low confident people, now I'm not saying this is sts responsibility alone or the instigator alone to bear, but I'm saying we all, regardless of our individual positions, have a part to play in cyberbullying as the victim, the instigator and the bystander. Not forgetting that the current literature on cyberbullying across internet, social platforms, gaming are already significant contributors of suicidal and depressional rates.

My stance is simple: they can coexist. Both having the responsibility as the individual and having rules (with good implementations not just a few lines of words in paper) in place. The existence of one doesn't negate the necessity of the other.

@Susanne - Ohh yess! Doesn't take away any piece of our flesh to be nice for sure (: Thank you for sharing how you are handling toxic behaviors in AL! I'm curious though, what would your approach be in the case where you see someone bullying the other person?

@The Untamed - (Lol nice name, an untamable beast huh XD) Yes yes haha, calling them out!

@Juicymango - Np, you are most welcome! Thank you for supporting this too!

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@To others who commented, truly appreciate you for taking the time to write your perspective on this! Just to let you know that I most likely would have read them but can only get back to them one by one as soon as I'm done with some responsibilities in RL, thank you for understanding!