As you all know loan scamming has been going on for a considerable amount of time on ECC. The common case of someone who takes out a loan and not being able to pay back these loans. I have seen also that in lots of cases these "scammers" are relatively new players (residents on down) taking out a loan form someone who has been on the server for a long time. What I have seen is that these players do not know enough about how loans work on ECC and are extremely quick to jump on the idea of instantly getting 100k from someone. Now I have seen a lot of the same people offering loans to new players knowing that they cannot pay back these loans. I see this as a sort of cyberbullying as these same players are in my mind using this to pick on new players. This wide scale abuse against new players has caused a dramatic drop in player counts on a server that used to boast 250+ online at any given time. Of course players should not take out a loan they cannot pay back but maybe there should be some way of limiting this problem. I suggest that either we have a limit to how much a lower ranked person can take out from someone, ban loans to residents and builders or require all loans be connected to an online contract here on the forums. I know a lot of you high ranking members will disagree with this but I think it is going to save the server from player count death entirely.
Giving out a loan isn't cyberbullying, it's not the loaners fault if someone decides to get into a situation that they don't understand, they're not an advanced concept. It's also a bit ridiculous to claim that this caused the player-drop, that was due to some crazy drama that went on ages ago, which is why it happened so suddenly rather than over time. Also how would you enforce this? Even if you require loans to be 'connected' to a contract you can just do an agreement via PM and no one would know.
Maybe there should be a plug in. You TOTALLY missed my point Eek. I was saying that all to often loaners target brand new players with massive loans without telling them the consequences of not paying them back. On the topic of the player drop, do you know how many people have been banned from loan scamming? A lot of people. You are taking advantage of someone who doesn't know what they are doing and that is cyberbullying in most people's books.
I'm not missing your point, I just disagree with you. Offering a new player a loan without saying 'oh by the way you get banned if you don't pay this back' is not cyberbullying at all. It's not my job to read the rules out to someone.
It's your job to know when you should or should not give out a loan. I almost am at the point of supporting a total ban on loans to players that are completely new.
I mean... you are right in that it's hard to see new players banned for scamming, but they do get a chance to explain themselves/work out a new schedule. There's really no way of telling if a newer player knows the consequences of taking out a loan or not, and idk if there would be any way of enforcing your idea. As far as I know the rules on scamming haven't changed anytime recently, so the rules were like this even when the server had 250+ users. Erm... cyberbullying is different. It's intentionally harassing or threatening a person. As far as I know the people who give out these loans aren't harassing users or threatening them in order to give them out. And how would we enforce this? Again I like the idea of preventing the exploitation of builders, but this doesn't seem feasible at all to enforce.
Maybe we should look for a plugin that has a more formal way for payment instead of just /pay username
Also you see cyber bullying only in that viewpoint? It's like having a superiority complex that allows these high ranking players to give out loans to new players just so that they can get banned, and don't say "that never happens" because there is always that one person. This is an ultra capitalist way of eliminating competition from the market. As it stands competition in the market of ECC is extremely low due to a very low player count thus creating huge monopolies for players to exploit and make easy money.
I think this is interesting but doesn't address the real issue: Most players who initially join don't stay long enough to take a loan or loan scam in the first place. After that though, I think new-player loan scams generally fall into one of three main categories: Players who tried and failed to pay back the loan. Players who intended to scam. Players who simply stopped caring at got banned because the server didn't hold their interest. The last 2 categories are where we're more likely to see most newer players, especially the last one. We can't keep people's interest by adding more bureaucracy to the lending process though, I doubt many new players will find fascination in our administrative red tape. The same issue persists by limiting them though, and forbidding lending to these players. It's easy to say that lenders can't loan to builders, sure, but not as easy to tell builders they can't borrow. Harder still to answer the inevitable "why?" with the underlying answer, which is that we don't trust them to pay it back. This just reinforces a hostile environment for builders. Ultimately the real issue is that people don't have an interest in staying. Adding more red tape and distrust to the equation will do the opposite of helping.
Then maybe sticking to contracts because I have seen less people being banned form formal contracts than compared to pm loans.
Can't say I'd trust what you just said as you wouldn't even know about the massive majority of PM loans as they are done privately.
+1 People can't be expected to read the rules or have any common sense. We can't expect borrowers to be responsible for their own actions. It is the fault of lenders that the borrowers don't repay. It is also their fault that the server has lost players. I think it also may be their fault that I am typing this instead of studying for finals (I can't be expected to be responsible for my own actions either). We need more progressive thought like this. Bubble wrap the world. EDIT: I forgot to add that if something is on the internet and I disagree with it, it is cyberbullying.
You don't actually have the numbers to justify that, though. Just because there's more PM loan complaints doesn't mean a PM is more likely to result in a complaint, just that there could be (and almost certainly is) more of them. If there's more of them, they could still be less likely to have a complaint and have more complaints.
I've seen this happen, but its common sense for the users to know that there is a difference between a loan and a donation, unless they are <10 years old. (Noah). Soooooo +0 What I don't like, however, is the fact that the rules isn't easily accessible. We know where the rules are because we've been here long enough. Some newbies don't even know the forums exist. We need a rule board set up at spawn, although I'm too lazy to file a suggestion.
I totally agree with maybe a bit more in depth of the rules, perhaps in the tutorial area? There's not always someone around to tell a new user to check out /rules not only that, but not everyone is down to go to the forums and read however many pages on the rules in the wiki. I've thought for a long time that a plugin for loans would be amazing. I have, of course, no idea how plugins work so I'm not sure how difficult that would be. And you know what Spocklin is not wrong. There are certain users that will jump at the opportunity to give someone a loan fully knowing they cant pay them back. One thing I can say is that loans and loan scamming haven't been an issue forever. Back when we had 250-300 users, I hardly saw anyone get banned for loan scamming. If ever. It's a newer thing.
-1, I don't think this is really practical, or needed. Personally, i know a lot of people that wouldn't even give loans to residents or builders unless they have [$$] tag or higher. Also, i do think the lenders need to be responsible for there own actions. I know id give a resident a loan, but only for 20k. And a builder for 10k. I don't think the admins or server need to be 100% responsible for every little thing we do. People have common sense, they should use it. Now, +1 on the idea of the rules being more clear and readily available. And maybe a small plugin to set up reminders or an official loan payment sign or place to go to would be good for loans. Also i was thinking of saying maybe something that auto removes a certain amount from there balance but after thinking about it i realized that'd be terrible, mostly because some times people do have problems come up and cant get on or they wont reach it right that instant. P.s, i do like that you did try an idea though This is just my view on it.
