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Vehicle Transfers
Demystify the process...

Here is the situation: My character was buying a used bike. This character asked their friends before hand if there is anything to watch out for when buying a new bike, friend replies to make sure that you can authorize other people, or you are not the real owner of the bike. Character goes to buy bike, the whole process for transferring was difficult, and required GM help. We both were xhelping, and trying to get this to happen. Due to confusion OOC I thought things worked out IC, and the deal was done. Now I find out a week later that I can not authorize other people on the bike, and my reply from GM's is to fix it IC. My issue with this resolution is that this whole transfer process was super unintuitive, and my character being aware this was in issue, should have known that the transfer did not go through correctly, as she was aware she wanted to be able to authorize other people, which we tried and thought worked. Both I and the seller OOC thought things worked out, when it should have been clear to them IC that it did not. Is there a way to streamline this process so that it is easier to understand when things are done right or wrong?
Guess what... The process to transfer ownership of a vehicle in Washington, USA and Germany are also unintuitive. It requires several steps and people outside of the buyer and seller. You have to research carefully how to do it to be sure you aren't messing something up. Every time I bought a car I had to learn the process all over again too. Especially when doing it in a new country.

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.

Grey: That is ridiculous. I have bought many used cars in my day, from Craigslist or otherwise. All you do, is sign the shit, and take the info the DMV and pay for transfer. It is simple. I had no moment of utter confusion wondering if the process had worked or not.
there's GM stuff involved and the easiest way is to simply try authorizing anyone you know on the vehicle to see if it works or not. think of it as master codes and guest codes on pads
We were having a hard time getting anything to work, and were working with the GM's in the process. My problem isn't that I got fucked over, my problem is that I got fucked over because the OOC process and the IC process were both confusing, blurring the lines between whether I was confused IC or confused OOC. My character should have known something was wrong, as she was tipped off to this -exact- issue, yet she apparently did not due to the OOC process confusing the hell out of me and the seller.
icly, the condition to know whether or not you are the owner of a vehicle is a pass/fail for one coded action

cant speak on anything else, havent done it in ages

what Royce said. I honestly don't think the process is very very confusing -- just try the coded action you were tipped off about right at that time and see if it works or not. even if you're confused. an ancient Chinese proverb says;

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!

You sure the seller ain’t trying the ol Withmore buyback?

Grizz: Yeah, I mean. We were both doing a lot of OOC about it, trying to figure it out. I genuinely got the impression they didn't know how to do things either. In retrospect, I can see that I should've known it didn't work, but again.. The confusion was OOC, and I thought I made things clear enough as to my characters knowledge and intention regarding this to get things right with GM help. At least, to know that my character knows things didn't work. It is what it is. I would just like to help future sellers and buyers to be clear about whether or not their characters should know if things worked out or not.
I can understand your frustrations, and hope you can understand the difficulty on the staff side. A GM can't tell you that you're getting scammed ICly. Fake selling a car to someone is a common enough scam in Withmore. GMs are not responsible for policing this or making you the player or your character aware of it. If the GM seemed confused it was probably because they figured out halfway through you were being scammed and didn't want to give anything away. That's my take on it anyway.

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!

Slither: I understand, thanks for the explanation.
I kinda don't like that the assumption is that the seller pulled a fast one if there was clear confusion and a lot of ooc was used as the OP said. Maybe it's just a technical error as I have also had similar issues and it was because of other similar vehicles present.
It's deeper than that even. IC information needs to come from IC sources. So even in a case where it is clear to GM staff that the Seller wants to make a legitimate sale and the Buyer wants to have the sale be legitimate, we still won't tell you OOCly how to do it right ICly beyond syntax.

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 feel for mindkontrol on this one. Ownership transfer is a GM controlled process because otherwise a player could just steal cars constantly and re-sell them with zero recourse and accountability before staff inevitably caught up with them.

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.

I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about this, but here's a reminder that THINK is a valid IC way to toss around serious, private thoughts.

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?

doubt GMs would think back the answer to that ynk :-)
Hmm. I see both sides. But for my situation, I did xhelp as it was a legitimate sale, so I don't know what happens beyond that and if help was just with held beyond the syntax which I thought made things legit and turned over ownership, I guess there's more to that which I wasn't led to believe there was in my situation.

I know now!