An Elite Dangerous player and member of the altruistic Fuel Rats group has uncovered what appears to be an insidious scheme while responding to a seemingly routine call for help.
Fans of the MMO will know that the Fuel Rats are a group of players in Elite who volunteer their services to help those who become stranded in the outer reaches of space. As detailed in the latest episode of the Fuel Rats podcast, aptly titled Exploitation Dangerous, mystery rat Mr. Purple describes a plot by an unnamed group to trick new players into getting stuck in a system from which they could not escape. Players were then coerced into mining valuable materials and selling them to the unnamed group for a fraction of market value, in exchange for a promise of future aid.
It seems the conspirators had embedded themselves within the starter system and would entice new players with promises of quick help and easy money. They would then guide the newbies to equip a mining ship with incredibly short jump range and give them a ride via fleet carrier into a system where the mining was to occur. Once the fleet carrier left, the new players were unable to travel outside the system due to the configuration of their ships.
It wasn’t until one of these players figured out that they could call on the Fuel Rats instead that the community became aware of the situation. The Rats have subsequently posted about the situation on Reddit in an attempt to warn the playerbase that this type of activity was occurring.
In other Elite Dangerous news, while the Odyssey DLC is slated to release within the upcoming year, a few wrinkles need to be ironed out before commanders set foot on a celestial body for the first time – namely, PS4 players are reporting error messages while trying to land on planets. The error messages were originally designed to keep players who had not purchased the Horizons DLC from being able to land, but Frontier has since merged Horizons into the base game, meaning no player should be prevented from a planetary visit. Frontier has acknowledged the issue and provided a workaround.
I thought you guys might be interested in this why I don’t like this crap with NPI server.
https://link.medium.com/m5gGbzPhVdb
This may be an unpopular opinion, but any game that enables this sort of behavior is a shitty game. Games are supposed to be fun. I was thinking of giving this game a shot since I got it for free on Epic, but if it allows this sort of thing that I’m not touching it with a 10 foot pole.
this game lets you play in open, solo or private groups. this event is easily avoidable just for playing solo for the first few hours, until you know how the game works.
you can completely avoid pvp if you’re not into it. technically, not by ‘playing smart’
This does fall into the category of ‘Evil Genius’.
Update : Although it appears an ‘Evil Genius’ idea. It turns out that the scammers Discord was being used to Bully those new players to stay and the discord itself was full of unpleasant content. That was more worrying than the scam itself.
Polygon Article
cannot remember the game… tabula rasa mayyyybe?
there was a clan that would help new folks. all you had to do was jump thru this one portal…
into a volcano that had hi level monsters that would wipe you out in a blink.
People used to do it in Ultima Online by teleporting newbies to a deserted island. Players could only leave by boat or teleporting, neither of which was available for a just created character, and even death was impossible; the only feasible way out for a newbie without contacts in the shard was to call customer support.
It’s one of the kinds of incident that convinced the devs to clamp down on griefing and eventually implement the Trammel/Felucca divide.
While I do enjoy me some space games from time to time…reading about the exploits of others in those games remains even more enjoyable than actually playing them.
Heh. I would just destroy the ship, character to if needed as well, and start over.
Lesson learned.
Isn’t this the kind of behavior that tends to be a bannable offense even in open PvP games? AFAIK even EVE bans those who scam new players in the starter (AKA “rookie”) systems.
My best Danny DeVito in Big Fish voice: “Are you familiar with the term, ‘unconscionable contract’?”
Who was the person in that group that first voiced wanting to get people into slave labor? And everyone else just kinda nodded and thought that sounded swell?
Amazing story.
Probably this guy:
This is the MMO news I am here for.
You’ll find similar situations in Eve. Would not surprise me in the least if the perpetrators came from there.