By comparison, the process in Withmore is quite streamlined - if your character knows the process. I guess that many simply don't and I feel it's on them to get informed.
one that asks a question might be a fool for five minutes, but those that don't ask at all remain a fool forever.
so try and see if it works!
Could we make the process easier and remove all doubt? Yes. But that would remove the ability for anyone to pull a fast one on anyone else. We don't want to do that because it's kinda the natural of the game ya know?
Hopefully that makes sense!
So if we are called to help and Seller asks how to authorize a person because they want to sell the vehicle, we will point them to the 'help drive' file or give them the authorize command. That is what they asked for. We will not up and say, "Yo. I know you want to sell this legit but you are doing it wrong. You have to..." Because that takes away from the game.
We do this because failing leads to more potential RP. Maybe the buyer learns that the seller did this wrong and assumes that the seller had malicious intent and an rivalry is born. That would be awesome and couldn't happen if we OOCly gave these characters IC information. Same for another Seller that was trying to scam this Seller. Would us OOCly giving this Seller the correct IC info ruin that other Sellers scam? Sure would. So we are not going to OOCly give characters IC info, even if they are clearly doing things wrong ICly and their IC actions do not line up with their OOC desires.
This isn't just about cars either. We will let you all kinds of things ICly that are not what you want OOCly. Within reason. We will provide help on commands as makes sense. We will not lie to someone and say that jumping off high things is always perfectly safe. But we won't explain IC systems, lore and the like OOCly.
There are a lot of IC resources available to players that want to make sure things their characters know who a thing is done ICly. Use them. Have your character go to an IC expert, slip then some chy and learn what they need to know. Then have them go to another expert, slip them some chy and see if the first expert was lying.
I think a ownership transfer request system that can be facilitated ICly but managed OOCly by GM's would help remediate this problem. And if the car is stolen - maybe a decker helps middle-man the process to keep everything looking above board ICly?
It's always a bummer when I see people ask for help with something ICly on SIC and I can't reply with "You need to xhelp, dude." For those interactions, a process or even just a slang term to help point people in the right direction would be great. Being ICly scammed is solid and a part of SD but when the obscurity of the internal system is literally documented nowhere AND within someone's IC legal rights - it creates a slippery slope.
Maybe you could ICly reply to the victim with something like...
"THINK back. Replay and verify the situation in your head."
...and that could lead to someone doing:
> THINK I can't get into my car. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it possible I got scammed?
I know now!