SPF Trading FAQ
Trust
This is what we base all our trades on. Without trust there can be no trading, simple enough. If you don’t know someone, you can try to read the previous trading threads on the forums to see if that person has had many trades in the past, if people are trading often with that person. That generally means that the person is trusted.
Do not simply look into a persons post count and think "gee, that guy has over 1000 posts, he must be well known player here, it must be safe to trade with him", this is simply not true. There are numerous different forums within the RPGForums.net, there are forums for Warcraft 3, which is a completely different game. There are forums for general chit chatting, also known as Off Topic discussion forums. There are simply so many ways that a person can do to get high post count, so that doesn’t tell you anything.
Also, there is no telling if an perfectly fine and legit looking item is in reality a dupe. Anyone can trade their legitimately found Windforce away and still keep a copy of it on their own computer.
Common courtesies on trading
Posting a trade
Actual trading
Possible problems while trading
As we are all playing in Single Player games, where editors, dupes and hacks are a possibility, we all wish to avoid those, yet at times it feels impossible when the items don’t seem to be any different from the legitimate ones. Here’s some tips on recognizing an problematic item and avoiding such situations.
General tips
Trading runes
With the trading of runes, you have a whole bunch of other things to worry about. Runes don’t have a "fingerprint", there is no way to tell if the rune you’re trading for is legit or not. This can be solved by two things really, the simplest being that you choose not to trade any high level runes at all, thus making the whole problem not exist for you. The other option is again to trade only with people you trust.
The runes that are clearly hacks or created with an item editor:
Remember that the abovementioned isn’t a foolproof method on knowing whether something is real or not. There are numerous ways of passing fake runes as legit ones and not all of the methods involve editors, so again, please be careful in your trades
Final words
If you feel that there's something missing in this FAQ, please post about it either in this thread, a new thread about the FAQs or then PM me (Borlag) about it. Other than these advices and general guidelines here, remember to be fair on your trades, that way you'll have alot more pleasant trades in the future aswell
SPF Trading FAQ
Trust
This is what we base all our trades on. Without trust there can be no trading, simple enough. If you don’t know someone, you can try to read the previous trading threads on the forums to see if that person has had many trades in the past, if people are trading often with that person. That generally means that the person is trusted.
Do not simply look into a persons post count and think "gee, that guy has over 1000 posts, he must be well known player here, it must be safe to trade with him", this is simply not true. There are numerous different forums within the RPGForums.net, there are forums for Warcraft 3, which is a completely different game. There are forums for general chit chatting, also known as Off Topic discussion forums. There are simply so many ways that a person can do to get high post count, so that doesn’t tell you anything.
Also, there is no telling if an perfectly fine and legit looking item is in reality a dupe. Anyone can trade their legitimately found Windforce away and still keep a copy of it on their own computer.
Common courtesies on trading
Posting a trade
- When you post a tradelist, be sure to state if you're playing an older version of the game, a modded game (even if it's "just one to change rune colors"), or if you're playing in Hardcore mode.
- If you’ve already posted a list of items to trade, or an single item, if someone shows interests in it, post the ATMA readouts about it if asked, or at the very least, PM the readouts to that person
- Do not post your trade list multiple times in the trading thread, people who are interested in trading, will see it without spamming.
- If you suspect that a person is trading suspicious items or items that are clearly hacked or duped, do not flame that person in the forums, inform the moderator of the forum (AlterEgo) and let him help resolve the issue.
- Do not post fake item lists, not even as a joke. This can easily lead into flaming and spoil the whole thread with that nonsense.
Actual trading
- With the release of ATMA for Diablo II version 1.10, the standard procedure in trading is to use mule characters sent via E-mail that include the items traded for. Note that there is an exception to this, Macintosh users, who are currently without this program, trading with Mac users should happen in TCP/IP games unless the two of you can organize some other means of the item transaction
- Another exception is really big trades, what if you trade so much items that it doesn’t fit into a mule character? Well the answer is stash files created by ATMA. These files can only be opened using ATMA and you can recognize them from the .d2x ending of the file name.
- When you’ve succesfully traded items with someone, inform that person about receiving the item in good condition so that the person you are trading with, knows that you have received the item and can safely delete the mule.
- Note that you also shouldn't delete the mule you've sent before the person you're trading with confirms that it's received in working condition.
Possible problems while trading
As we are all playing in Single Player games, where editors, dupes and hacks are a possibility, we all wish to avoid those, yet at times it feels impossible when the items don’t seem to be any different from the legitimate ones. Here’s some tips on recognizing an problematic item and avoiding such situations.
General tips
- First of all, trade only with people you trust, don’t go for that "I have a zod for trade, want Shako for it". If something feels like there’s something wrong, there’s high chances that there is.
- Always remember that you can ask questions on the items origins, you are allowed to ask why someone offers so much for an item that’s clearly inferior to the one offered.
- Note that this doesn’t always ring true, some people are Grail collectors (collecting every unique and set item in the game) and they might have been looking for some specific item for ages without no avail, thus they might be willing to pay alot for seemingly worthless item.
- You can ask for the ATMA readouts, if you see something that’s clearly wrong, an Stone of Jordan unique ring with +2 to skills for example, or an Tyrael’s Might with ilvl as 1. Anything that’s clearly wrong, then don’t fall for a trade there. Inform the moderator to ask that person about the items origins.
- Keep track on what you’ve traded with others, even if it’s just saving the E-mails about your trades and that way keeping a "trade history", this can later be used to track the origin of an item if something goes wrong later on, believe me, it can happen.
- One method on detecting dupes is to check the item you’ve traded with someone with the Dupe Detector in ATMA, simply load the character or stash with the traded item and run it through the detector, if it doesn’t say anything being wrong, then it’s not in the common dupes list. The program checks this by looking at the items fingerprint and comparing it to the known dupes list.
- What is the fingerprint? It's an code that's different for each and every item generated in Diablo II, if a person comes up to you saying that he has two SoJs for trade and he says something like "of course the print is the same, they have same stats" then he's lying. No item ever has the same fingerprint.
- Last but not least, if you feel cheated on a trade, an item shows "bad" when you receive or it’s not what you were trading in the first place, give the other person a chance to reply to your PM about it, inform the moderator of the forum (AlterEgo) and let him help resolve the issue. If you can come up with a peaceful solution of canceling the trade that’s even better. But again, do not start accusing and flaming before knowing that other persons side for things.
Trading runes
With the trading of runes, you have a whole bunch of other things to worry about. Runes don’t have a "fingerprint", there is no way to tell if the rune you’re trading for is legit or not. This can be solved by two things really, the simplest being that you choose not to trade any high level runes at all, thus making the whole problem not exist for you. The other option is again to trade only with people you trust.
The runes that are clearly hacks or created with an item editor:
- Ones that state Standard as their version. Runes were introduced into the game in the Expansion pack.
- Runes that have wrong lvl requirement, wrong stats or wrong graphics.
Remember that the abovementioned isn’t a foolproof method on knowing whether something is real or not. There are numerous ways of passing fake runes as legit ones and not all of the methods involve editors, so again, please be careful in your trades
Final words
If you feel that there's something missing in this FAQ, please post about it either in this thread, a new thread about the FAQs or then PM me (Borlag) about it. Other than these advices and general guidelines here, remember to be fair on your trades, that way you'll have alot more pleasant trades in the future aswell