Creature Handler Archive

My friend (who for various reasons refuses to post on these forums at all--mostly I think because he has too much of a temper to deal with the typical aggravations on here) relayed this story to me, because he knows I post on the forums and wanted me to put it up for debate.

He feels there should be some way to control the transfer command, because it is an opening for griefing, since it allows people to fill up your datapad and transfer items to you without your permission. While in theory one could just then delete these items, I can only imagine from what I've read the anger and pain of a MCH who didn't realize that someone had transferred a level 2 kaadu to him (since of course there is no text message to the window of the person who -receives- the pet) when he finally found his bull rancor (baby) and then by the time he finally went through his entire datapad tab literred with vehicles, droids, and schematics, to figure out WHICH pet shouldn't be there and deleted it, the bull rancor (baby) aggroed on him and got killed.

Anyway, he was in Coronet hanging around, and with his Master Creature Handler title up, accepting people who were sending him tells asking him to train pets for him. A guy gave him a pet to train which was growing and too young to be a mount. My friend trained him in all the commands the guy asked for, and then said, "This pet is too small to be mounted, he needs to be at least 3/5ths grown." And gave him back to him. The guy first said, "Well, then give it back" to which my friend replied, "I did. It's in your datapad. I gave it to the transfer command." The guy said "Ok". Then he took it out, said, "He's not a mount." and used the transfer command to give it back to my friend. My friend, who was in the middle of trying to train someone else's pets at the time, patiently said, "Your pet isn't big enough to mount, yet. Wait a day or two, and then he should be large enough, and then I or anyone else can train him to mount. Right now, we cannot. Now please let me train this other person's pets." And transferred the pet back again.

Then my friend's girlfriend needed him for something so he politely told the person for whom he had been training that he had to go AFK, gave back the pets, and went AFK. Well, suffice it to say, while my friend was AFK, this guy transferred the mount -back- to my friend, and was now running around Corellia shouting that my friend had "stolen" his pet, and that if he didn't give it back immediately, he'd report it to a CSR and get him banned.

Since then, despite requests, he won't teach the transfer command to any pet, because it's so easily useful for griefing.

It's not that critical of an issue, per se, because the trade window is a vastly better (although it shouldn't be) interface for creature trading, but it's a bug/grief/exploit that I think should be locked up.

Deuces Malloy
Master Musician / Master Entertainer / Enthraller / Merchant
Starsider

I would be happy just to get the message XXX has transferred YYY to you. An email might be better. I have had mystery pets show up in my inventory before. I also get tired of transferring back to people who look in their inventory and insist they never got their pet back. Alot of people do not understand the difference between inventory and datapad. Using the trade window for pets is borked as it is. I get trade terminated messages 3 or 4 times on average before the trade completes.

With non-CH pets I always use the trade window. Lots less confusing, even if the pet does know the transfer command.

Unfortunately, there's no cure for jerkism or stupidity...

Tsiya Ama-Valcyn
Tsiya Ama-Radiant
3 accounts cancelled as of 9/19/04