MMO Proves GIFT Once Again

[cmdr_zoom]

CoH on Saturday went well; I had fun and made good progress. STO on Sunday was also okay... until the end.


It's been about a month since I got my first captain up to the level cap, and so, in the time-honored fashion, I've been using their accumulated war chest and higher earning ability to finance a new alt.

In Star Trek Online, your captain has a number of Bridge Officers - other members of the cast with useful skills/abilities. Among other things, these can be traded face-to-face or on the Exchange (auction house). I'd gotten one from the latter with the qualities I desired, trained up a few of their skills with the plentiful skill points available to my main, and needed to hand them off to the alt through an intermediary. Because I'd bumped them up a step in rank in the process, the new player who I'd been helping and chatting with wasn't able to handle this for me this time, so I went looking for someone else.

I really should have looked harder.

Now my thought, in as much as I thought of it at all (it was late and I wanted to be done with this) was that a blue-quality officer worth, at most, the 20k I paid from the auction house (a modest sum, perhaps equal to a few hundred thousand in CoH's current inflationary market) would offer little temptation to an Admiral sitting at the level cap, awash in both currency and officers. What I forgot is that some people will steal anything, even basically "free" stuff, simply for teh lulz.

"Hey, can I ask you to hold this BO for me?"
"sure"
[trade]

And just to hammer it home, they beamed out immediately - before I could even log out of my main, which in STO is practically instant.

"... Are you coming back?"
"nope ty for the bo"

All it was missing was the "lol" at the end.

So I'm out 20k. Oh well, right? I should chalk it up as a lesson learned and move on. Except I don't want this jerk taking advantage of anyone else. I know I can't call them out/warn others on the forums; such things are not allowed in STO. Half an hour later, I'm still considering my alternatives (and browsing the Exchange for a replacement, to try to get past it) when "she" pops up again in zone chat, wanting to know where to find a certain quest - it seems this player is directionally challenged as well as morally.

So I call "her" out in game chat, and the excuses start - mostly back and forth between the themes of "u said I could have it" to "well it's mine now, what u gonna do about it." Somewhere in here they attempt to quote the proverb about 9/10ths of the law and spell "possession" laughably wrong. They also offer to fight me in ground PvP for it, a solution I immediately reject: it legitimizes that they have any claim to my stolen property, and should they win, it becomes "rightfully" theirs. After a few minutes of this, I have a couple of other people calling them out on their transparent prevarications douchebaggery, which is the satisfaction I really wanted; I figure the officer is lost at this point, though I did, at one player's advice, submit a GM ticket that I doubt will result in anything. "All trades final", as they say in YPP.

Another thing that helped me leave on a better note for the evening was giving away 30k to someone who was short of funds to get a new ship, even after selling some things to vendors. As I said earlier, it's really not all that much money at the cap; and as I tried to explain to them, it was a matter of me not wanting to let a jerk make me a jerk or less charitable player. A little more cautious, though... "fool me twice, shame on me."

Comments

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

That sucks man.

On a related note, let me know if you ever want to do something in STO.