Kapten_Klitoris [1873683] —
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Do you have standards? Moral issues? If so, kindly turn around.
Welcome students. And yes, you are welcome. For what you are about to read is all you'll ever need to make a fortune in Torn. Forget about the conventional education system. Who cares about picking up history lessons when you can scam your way all the to the bank?
What do you think of when you hear the word scammer? A conman. A thief. A cheat? No, we scammers are noble people - some of us at least. Usually, we take from the rich players and give to ourselves. Although sometimes, we take from the poor too, if they happen to chat up the wrong guy.
I'm sure Woolis would love to explain how this feels, but unfortunately, he ignored me when I enquired about the issue - I assume he's busy being a Lvl 100 punchbag. Not many players pull Faction scams due to the consequences which await them. Those who do are difficult to track down since they either go underground or straight to federal jail for other reasons.
Welcome students. And yes, you are welcome. For what you are about to read is all you'll ever need to make a fortune in Torn. Forget about the conventional education system. Who cares about picking up history lessons when you can scam your way all the to the bank?
What do you think of when you hear the word scammer? A conman. A thief. A cheat? No, we scammers are noble people - some of us at least. Usually, we take from the rich players and give to ourselves. Although sometimes, we take from the poor too, if they happen to chat up the wrong guy.
Bah, who am I kidding? We take money from everyone. I love money. I love drugs. I love money and drugs.
Just like Robin Hood, but worse.
Just like Robin Hood, but worse.
However, that's not to say we swindlers are all the same. There are many different kinds of scammers. Myself, for example, I like to scam people using trades. You would be amazed how hard such deception actually is when it looks so easy. Using trades to sell items is, for the most part, incredibly safe. But like every system, it has a flaw. And flaws like that are a scammer's best friend.
If you use trades properly, you can tweak the whole system to your advantage; not only for scamming but for trading in general too. Ask yourself this: How come people always ask YOU to start the trade? Well, they might be lazy, but the real reason becomes apparent when you encounter muggers and scumbags who consistently waste your time.
Let's assume you've started the trade, and you've asked me to add my items first, to prevent me cancelling and mugging you all over the place. In this situation, it is better to start the trade if you are dealing with muggers since they need to put up their items before the money comes up. However, if you are dealing with a scammer, you are screwed.
If you use trades properly, you can tweak the whole system to your advantage; not only for scamming but for trading in general too. Ask yourself this: How come people always ask YOU to start the trade? Well, they might be lazy, but the real reason becomes apparent when you encounter muggers and scumbags who consistently waste your time.
Let's assume you've started the trade, and you've asked me to add my items first, to prevent me cancelling and mugging you all over the place. In this situation, it is better to start the trade if you are dealing with muggers since they need to put up their items before the money comes up. However, if you are dealing with a scammer, you are screwed.
A scammer like me will add my items and wait for the money. Meanwhile, I might go and grab myself a cup of coffee and come back a few minutes later. This is important. It is essential for me to go afk for a while, so you don't sit there and hit the refresh button all the time.
When I come back, you are doing something else. You are checking your inventory, or maybe you're at the racetrack joining up another race. And then you see the icon, the trade is accepted. Maybe you are a little afraid of getting mugged, so you rush to complete the trade and hide your money.
And then you realize, you just bought a snowboard for the price of a skateboard.
Hermoine, here with a brand new snowboard.
Since you started the trade, I was able to swap the items before accepting. It won't even flash red or give you a warning. It is evil; it is beautiful.
When I come back, you are doing something else. You are checking your inventory, or maybe you're at the racetrack joining up another race. And then you see the icon, the trade is accepted. Maybe you are a little afraid of getting mugged, so you rush to complete the trade and hide your money.
And then you realize, you just bought a snowboard for the price of a skateboard.
Hermoine, here with a brand new snowboard.
Since you started the trade, I was able to swap the items before accepting. It won't even flash red or give you a warning. It is evil; it is beautiful.
Of course, it's possible you might have spotted me swapping the items and pressed decline. At which point, I assume you would ask me if I'm stupid because there's no way such a simple ruse could fool you. Alright then, I'll just cancel the trade and mug you instead.
A fair compromise, no? Unfortunately, many factions refuse to house scamming players due to their poor reputation, which often stems from the victims complaining to their respective leaders and demanding you should be kicked. So unless you want to end up with AIDS as a faction leader, you should probably keep rejecting trades from scammers.
To combat this prejudice against our noble craft, one scammer decided to create his own faction, Outcasts, as a safe-haven for people like himself. Unfortunately, scammer safe-havens don't last long, and the faction is now deleted. The man who set up this faction was Potion_Seller, and his claim to fame is that he's made about $1 billion selling DVD-Players - a pretty impressive achievement.
"My gameplay consists of medding out of hospital burning all my energy, nerve, drugs, points etc between bounties and Eagle attacking me every chance he gets. I would say I'm pretty much permahosped."
A fair compromise, no? Unfortunately, many factions refuse to house scamming players due to their poor reputation, which often stems from the victims complaining to their respective leaders and demanding you should be kicked. So unless you want to end up with AIDS as a faction leader, you should probably keep rejecting trades from scammers.
To combat this prejudice against our noble craft, one scammer decided to create his own faction, Outcasts, as a safe-haven for people like himself. Unfortunately, scammer safe-havens don't last long, and the faction is now deleted. The man who set up this faction was Potion_Seller, and his claim to fame is that he's made about $1 billion selling DVD-Players - a pretty impressive achievement.
"My gameplay consists of medding out of hospital burning all my energy, nerve, drugs, points etc between bounties and Eagle attacking me every chance he gets. I would say I'm pretty much permahosped."
Potion_Seller and CHunger, best friends forever.
As well as being a dirty scammer roaming around our neat game, Potion_Seller also enjoys taking a walk around the Speedway racetrack with his best buddy CHunger, who also helps him out with mugs when Ultimatomato decides to cancel his trades. Cancelling trades might feel a bit dirty, but the community doesn't see this as a pure scam, it's just somewhere between being a douchebag and being a scammer.
This example illustrates that there is a grey area regarding people's perception of what constitutes an actual scam. A thin line between what is and is not acceptable. What about selling Vicodin and pretending its Xanax? In this situation, strictly speaking, you're not pretending to sell Xanax, but the buyer does think they are buying it.
Hedas says he doesn't consider this as scamming, rather making stupid people pay their tax.
"Usually it's people buying one or two, and that's about it. But occasionally there are some guys that buy several hundreds of them."
As well as being a dirty scammer roaming around our neat game, Potion_Seller also enjoys taking a walk around the Speedway racetrack with his best buddy CHunger, who also helps him out with mugs when Ultimatomato decides to cancel his trades. Cancelling trades might feel a bit dirty, but the community doesn't see this as a pure scam, it's just somewhere between being a douchebag and being a scammer.
This example illustrates that there is a grey area regarding people's perception of what constitutes an actual scam. A thin line between what is and is not acceptable. What about selling Vicodin and pretending its Xanax? In this situation, strictly speaking, you're not pretending to sell Xanax, but the buyer does think they are buying it.
Hedas says he doesn't consider this as scamming, rather making stupid people pay their tax.
"Usually it's people buying one or two, and that's about it. But occasionally there are some guys that buy several hundreds of them."
"But if someone from my faction or a friend of mine would buy something they did not intend to buy I would send the money back right away due to respect. I also make sure to check out for threads like this to make sure they understand what just happened."
Do it like the pros - buy Vicodin today!
Right, enough with this paltry nonsense! Let's move on to the big league scams. If stealing from friends is something you think you are capable of, scamming entire factions can be even more rewarding. This is fairly uncommon since players who attempt this level of scam usually get flogged in public. It often results in endless bounties for months on end, and a huge impact overall for years to come due to their persona non grata status.
I'm sure Woolis would love to explain how this feels, but unfortunately, he ignored me when I enquired about the issue - I assume he's busy being a Lvl 100 punchbag. Not many players pull Faction scams due to the consequences which await them. Those who do are difficult to track down since they either go underground or straight to federal jail for other reasons.
Factionbank, a game of trust.
So what about the victims? Do I care? Actually, I do care somewhat about people getting scammed by using faction banks, because they are an incredibly stupid and unsafe place to store your cash. Your cash is exposed to several people all the time, some of which you probably don't even know, and you let them have access to your pile of money?
What if one of these strangers decides to ragequit. They may have just lost a bunch of money in the casino or decided that your faction can go and screw themselves for no apparent reason; both of these things happen on a daily basis. Thankfully, most players are pretty honest and would never do that. Or would they?
Given a long enough timeline, I believe it's a matter of when and not if someone will run off with your faction's entire bank. It is an event that seems to occur with alarming frequency in Torn City. One victim of this scam, CloudJumper, lost over 6 billion thanks to such a theft, and he believes Factions with weak leadership are often the most prone.
"I lost 6.2 bn. My networth at that time was around 9 bn. I was selling my things and stocks to start a TV for myself and had 6.2 bn stored in the vault from all the sales."
"Faction banks are safe in my opinion, as long as only a limited number of users have access to it. Basically, you need to trust the guys who have access to the faction bank. Moreover, you need to have trust in the faction leader that in case things go south, he should be able to provide at least some (if not full) form of compensation."
"Seeing the growing number of cases, leaders have become much more alert about giving access to the members, Back in Memento Mori, around 5 people had access to the faction bank, but all of them were long serving members. Tascon also made it a point to not store too much in the bank to avoid scenarios like this."
"If any member had banked heavily in the faction, he would usually remove and place it in his company and restore it back on a need to need basis. I have, however, seen other factions with as much as 300 billion stored in faction bank with only the leader and co-leader having the access."
CloudJumper & Weeman, not very good friends anymore.
Anyone can be a victim of theft. Therefore, I and my fellow gangsterbuddies would recommend everyone in Torn City to be constantly aware of future scenarios where you can be the victim. You can, and you will be mugged or scammed when you least expect it. And also when you expect it, but that's because you think you can outsmart me.
The truth is, as a scammer you can get away with pretty much anything. Offer to sell a TV company for 500m, and stupid players looking to make a quick buck will form a line around the block. I sold my golden AK-47 several times for 100m, and each time the buyer received nothing but a regular AK-47. Or, for a less visible scam, why not sell some cans of X-MASS for 2.2m each and swap them to munsters? It works, believe me.
If you are utilizing Torn to the maximum, you can make plenty of cash from nothing. Just go nuts. People are stupid, and many of them deserve to be kicked in the groin.
With all this said, it seems pretty rough to be a scammer these days - especially if you decide to go hunting for the big birds. Countless bounties, angry people, and mistrust from other players will be your unfortunate rewards. So, after all is said and done, is scamming really worth it?
With all this said, it seems pretty rough to be a scammer these days - especially if you decide to go hunting for the big birds. Countless bounties, angry people, and mistrust from other players will be your unfortunate rewards. So, after all is said and done, is scamming really worth it?
Let's just say I don't have to worry about plushies anymore.
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