I’ve been setting up hauling contracts for a while now, and I’ve noticed that haulers are reluctant to accept courier contracts to citadels. Everyone is afraid of having their citadel access removed as part of a scam, to the point that I’ve had to do a lot of my hauling personally.
This is really going against CCP’s stated goal of having players move into citadels. I propose that there be a 24 hour grace period in HS and 1 hour grace period in LS for revoking docking access. What do you guys think?
You can just have them deliver to a station in system instead, which limits your hauling to and from that station. As for the problem: Yep, that definitely a thing because CCP and the CSM thought it would be an amazing idea to let the most idiotic feature of null sec (revoking access on a whim) spread to high sec because everyone was enjoying that in null sec so much.
There was talk about a dropbox on citadels accessible from space without docking rights for the purpose of delivering courier packages. No idea where that went. Maybe we will finally get that with Upwell 2.0
Absolutely right, totally lame that stations deny courier packages to be undeliverable because “scams” trump people’s gameplay of space trucking, I stopped doing them specifically because I’m not wasting time figuring out if I may dock.
From the hauler’s perspective there is plenty of information available to determine if a contract has potential for scamming. On the other side of things just do what a previous poster mentioned and contract to a station near your drop point.
Players are moving into Upwell structures just fine. Eve is a game of trust, and for it to be a game at all there has to be ways to violate that trust. If a player owns a Citadel, they should be able to decide who it will admit and who it can shoot.
That said, I am fine with the dropbox idea which CCP seem to prefer. That still allows access control for the owner which can have important tactical implications in a fight, but would make hauling contracts safer if CCP decides that this is a real problem. Personally, it seems just to be another scam which can easily be avoided with some quick research, and mitigated by player-run validation lists of “safe” structures, but they might get around to it someday.
A game of trust is alright. But if 95 out of 140 contracts in my courier contract search results with rather restrictive filters (20M min reward, max 350k volume, inaccessible excluded, ignored issuers excluded) are access denial contracts to citadels, something is wrong with the system.
Does it? That just means people are indeed issuing and presumably using courier contracts to Upwell structures which you are filtering out.
Of course if you are not willing to take the risk, then your pool of available contracts will get smaller and smaller as more trade moves to Upwell. That is just more work for savvy players who are willing to see if a structure is on the approved Hauler channel list or a major trade port with no history of scams.
Hmm. Risk, reward, choice. Players trying to outwit and outplay each other. Almost sounds like a real game, doesn’t it?
No, it does not really sound like a game. It sounds more like a game of a disabled mouse trying to navigate a minefield laid out by 10 cats. Like a real annoyance. The remaining contracts in my list are mostly to or from stations and those few people who want assets delivered to their citadels, are put under general suspicion and have a really hard time to convince other people of there legitimacy.
The pool does not get smaller because I am not willing to take risks. The pool gets smaller because the overwhelming majority of contracts to citadels are scams and there is no way to figure out what is a scam and what not until at least some people have failed contracts. And even then there are easy ways to hide the contract histories by just closing the corp. I would be with you if haulers didn’t already have enough playing cat and mice as it is, but this state is nothing but a nuisance.
You are contradicting yourself in a single sentence. How can you know the “overwhelming majority” of contracts are scams when you also say there is no way to figure that out?
I don’t believe that vast majority of hauling contracts to Upwell structures are scams, and I am sure plenty are delivered safely everyday to structures “validated” by Red Frog, PushX or the Hauler Channel lists, as well as even those of randos with some history or reputation. I have had no problem moving stuff to and from Perimeter Fortizars with lowball public contracts, and while I can see the advantage in guaranteeing delivery for anonymous, upstart structure owners who have no public record of trust to get people to take their contracts, the system is not “broken” as the OP is hyperbolically asserting.
We’ve lived with docking restriction and contracts for years now to outposts, and there are ways to establish trust outside the contract system.
I still don’t see why you are complaining as a hauler though. If you are not willing to tolerate any risk, you can check the box in search filter and ignore all such contracts as you are currently doing. It’s a cat-and-mouse game you can completely opt out of, and leave it to those with more gumption and risk-tolerance to suss out the profitable hauling contracts from the scams.
Where’s the contradiction? According to my filters, more than 90 out of 140 available contracts are scams. That’s an overwhelming majority. And for the few that are still visible to me and which have no clear history marked with sprung traps on others, I have no way to see whether they are traps or not. There are some trusted citadels, that is true, but these are only few and far between and mostly in the hands of big groups. Besides, thanks to impersonation attempts even their reputation can and is being tainted on a regular basis.
Yes, and that was a thriving business. No wait, next to no one delivered to sov null sec outposts outside the holding alliance’s own hauling services. And now we have the same thriving business model in high sec and low sec, too. As said, very good idea.
That checkbox does not exclude contracts which are not yet on my ignore list, or which have their docking rights not yet revoked but are either obviously a trap destination based on historic evidence or which have no clear evidence for either or. Thanks to CCP’s infinite wisdom, I have no way to completely ignore contracts to player owned structures.
You don’t have any evidence how many of those 90 are actually scams. I have no doubt some are, but certainly not most of them as even the OP’s contracts innocent contracts from a new unknown station owner could fall into your filters.
I see why the OP is unhappy that you are ignoring him, but I don’t see why you care. Just take the contracts you are comfortable with and ignore every one to an Upwell structure. If you want a better filter to do so I have no objection, but it is clearly marked in every hauling contract that your docking right can be revoked so just don’t agree to that if you are unsure or unwilling to take the risk.
The evidence is that they are ignored. If I uncheck the boxes, I see only citadel destinations to citadels that I have found out to be access denials in the past; that have their access with active contracts already revoked, and only of characters that have issued access denial contracts in the past and that impersonate legit haulers. It is very clear and very conclusive proof.
Yes, that is what I do. However, how is this enjoyable gameplay? Personally, I am very hostile towards the player owned structures idea, but since CCP won’t budge from that path, I at least want to be able to use it without having to tell every hauler to not take contracts to structures and every contractor to deliver their stuff to a station in system and move the assets themselves. This is tiresome.
The scam contracts take longer to find a sucker, than proper contracts do to find a hauler. ie that the majority of visible contracts are scams in no way means that the majority of posted contracts are scams.
its a trust based gameplay, which requires a little more conscious effort than hoover up all the packages going vaguely in your direction for your mostly afk hauler alt, and it should include things like convincing clients to just contract you directly instead of setting public contracts.
it never struck me as necessary, but I’m sure if you keep at it long enough CCP can add an extra filter control.
I know that the scam race means to understand how a potential target can identify a scam, but this same scam race means the potential target should not reveal his methods.
Assume he has a way to find scam contracts.
This way tells him that 90% of the citadel contract are scams.
This is an issue because then nobody (with same way) wants to haul from or to citadels.
This leads to people doing genuine contracts from or to citadels that have to wait more, pay more, or even can not get their contract accepted.
This means that citadel hauling is broken.
He doesn’t. He would only know if he accepted them and was later denied access (or someone else did). He is just making a guess based on several characteristics common amongst actual scams. He probably is often correct, but he is also throwing out more legit contracts than actual scams.
His determination of “scam” wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but does protect him from scams at a cost of ignoring potentially valuable (but riskier) controls. Such a system works for him, but his numbers don’t represent the actual number of scam contracts out there.
Having any real chance at all to scam someone this way requires you to be online to revoke access between acceptance and delivery. This severely limits the window such scams can operate and means that most of them are probably legit ones, perhaps to private citadels like the OP has.
This I understand and would be a reason for CCP to implement the dropbox for contracts they have discussed. This would increase the utility of Upwell structures by making them even safer and I get why station owners would want to see this functionality.
I still maintain though that the status quo isn’t broken. People move stuff to and from Upwell structures via contracts all the time. There are other ways to establish trust other than the contract system.
There is a list of trusted citadels available also you could always ask in haulers community about certain citadels contract owners in terms of secure or possible scam.
You are so blatantly and criminally naive, it’s funny. Have you heard of the concept of deleting contracts when you go offline? Or account sharing? Or corp contracts with other people logging in to keep watching? Please, if you do not know how these things work stop telling people how you think they work.
With citadels, almost nothing is legit. And not even a clean history make a citadel contract legit, as an example of a formerly “trusted” citadel near Jita demonstrated.
And whether my definition of scam would not hold up in court is completely irrelevant to the matter. For illustration purposes, I suggest you check the contract histories of Johnnyy Boy or Bitter Old Veteran or FionaFirelfy. All characters I have blocked and who are guaranteed access scammers. I am not throwing out any “legit” citadel contractors because there are nearly any. So far, I only know 3 people who do legit citadel courier contracts. Nearly 100, though, who are scammers.
That list is there but it also only works retroactively. Only once someone had to fail a citadel contract or someone finds a closed citadel with an active contract, people land on the black list. And it is almost impossible to get on white list because every entry there is a potential compromising citadel to the legitimacy and reliability of the white list. Not to mention that sometimes places and people land on the black list because some of their corp mates screw over their own corp without them immediately noticing. There are truly marvelous stories happening in the haulers community.
Then they wouldn’t appear in your list to be filtered.
This is against the EULA and no one would risk doing this when your next point is an option. But if you think they are, please report them.
Sure, possible, but still doesn’t change the fact these scams require constant attention. That means that most of them are not real scams, especially the ones that persist for days and weeks.
Your paranoia is without evidence. Yes, there are scams, but stop selling the line that 90% of all hauling contracts are scams that people are parroting here.
