In-Game Reputation

[Nebster]

I am posting this thread on both this forum and on the suggestions forum. I don't know if this is the right way to do this but I would like the developers to see it as well as the lotro community to weigh-in on my suggestion.

Today I gave a level 42 armor to a new kinmate of ours and 1 minute later he quit the kin. I found out that he got a lot of other stuffs from our other kinmates. This is the second time this happened with another alt. The only thing that our leader could do is post on the OOC channel in Bree to warn others.

When I was just two months into the game, I went on trade channel and offered a barrow iron lootbox for sale and one person responded. I met him and proceeded to trade. When the trade was finished I didn't received any money so I asked him if he paid me and he said haughtily that I got scammed (most of the time I just give stuff away like lootboxes and mats I don't need, but sometimes I try the trade channel and if people don't want it then I offer it for free and if no one still wants it I go to AH). I told the guy it's okay I'm just gonna put him on my ignore list but looking back now I wonder how many other people he scammed. This was before I knew about the Report scammers/cheaters option.

It seems to me that it would be helpful if people know who they are dealing with so I suggest a kind of reputation option where people can see if the person is reliable or not. Maybe it could show on the Bio section of the character screen where people can click on the alt and increase/decrease their rep and put notes on it and say why or they can attach the chats like the way we do it when we want to report somebody.

I don't know how hard it would be to implement since I am not a programmer but I believe it will be good to the overall community. The examples I put above are isolated incidences. Most of the time people give free stuff away or give helpful advice but a few are misbehaving badly.

I know that some people believe this is just a game and not to be taken seriously but IMO the line between life and fiction is mostly blurry. For example, if I am annoyed in this game that crosses over to RL. It happens maybe conciously or sub-conciously. How we behave in the game can affect real life so I believe it is important that we are warned about people who get a kick out of scamming/tricking/bullying etc other players.

[djheydt]

The trouble is that such a function could so easily be abused. A tells the general public that B is a scammer when he isn't.

I don't have any solution. The longstanding reputation of the Royal Society (a venerable association of scientists, for those of us Yanks who don't know it) is Nullius in verba, Latin for "Don't take anybody's word for it." The results of any scientific experiment must be capable of being duplicated by other experimenters.

Turbine has taken a similar attitude about player complaints: if A says that B is doing something wrong, the GM can port in, in stealth mode, and see what (if anything) B is actually doing. If B is saying something wrong and A reports him, the GM can check the chat log. But they don't take anyone's word for it -- for reasons noted above.

[Zombielord]

Happens all the time, don't worry.

Tell your kinmate it would be nice of him to provide you with the craftubg materials for his armour or give you some silver for your trouble. Limit the access to your kinhouse chests or put in items you can afford to lose.

[Sapience]

Cross-posting is not permitted. As this is already posted in the suggestion forums, as it should be, this thread is being closed.