Minecraft Name: Expipiplusone Suggestion: Implement a better mechanism for handling debts (see details on the new mechanism). Reason: Currently, when there's a default and a complaint is filed, two things might happen: the debtor (refuses to pay|admits that is unable to pay|is unavailable) and is therefore banned; the debtor commits to pay according to some payment schedule agreed among the debtor, the creditor and staff; in this case, if the debtor doesn't fulfill the new agreement, a new complaint may be filed by the creditor, and... you get the idea. This is broken for many reasons: complying of the new agreement has to be continuously enforced through new complaints (or threat of complaints), which consumes everyone (debtor, creditor, staff)'s time; if a debtor misses a payment, he might be banned again even if he just didn't have the material time to login and make money and would have worked twice the week after; this goes against the interests of all the creditors of that debtor, even those that, aware of this detrimental byproduct, didn't want him banned again; nothing prevents a debtor from taking further loans in order to pay the old loans, as it has already happened multiple times, thus potentially jeopardizing the whole economy; even if a debtor doesn't take further loans, he might waste all the money earned in a week's work in a very silly way, such as lotto addiction. The reasons why we want to ban loan scammers are: to avoid more people being scammed; to punish the scammers so that it constitutes a deterrent against not paying back. With all this in mind, I suggest that we take inspiration from a real life legal arrangement (I think in English it would be called "garnished wage"), which would address all the problems. So, when a complaint is filed against a debtor, he will have two choices: be banned; accept that a fraction of all his incoming $ will be automatically garnished by the game mechanics; in real life this fraction is usually 20%, but it can (and should) be tweaked to another value: what matters is the mechanism; the 20% fraction in real life is due to the fact that real people need to buy food, pay bills, etc. and therefore they need most of their wage available to sustain their living: on a minecraft server this fraction could be raised even to 90%, as the basic needs to survive are minimal. Details on the mechanism: When a debtor accepts this, a "debt pot" is created where all the garnished $ will go. I guess this would technically require two new variables in every player's data file (pretty much like the one storing the BALANCE); but even if it doesn't, I'll pretend it does, just for the sake of explanation: POT, whose initial value is zero and which is actually used only when a player goes default; DEBT, whose value equals the amount the user is in debt of (it will be zero for not-in-debt players and will be set to the right value by a command available only to staff). Every time a given amount of $ would be added to the player's balance, a fraction of that will go to the debt pot instead, and only the remaining part will go the the debtor's balance. For instance: if the debtor /sells to server 100 diamonds ($2.5k), $500 is added to POT and only the remaining $2000 actually are added to BALANCE. If a player /pays another player whose DEBT is non-zero, he will be prompted with a message like "This user is in a DEBT debt, are you sure?" /pay <user> confirm confirms the payment: the amount to be paid is treated as in (2). /pay <user> cancel (or do nothing): no payment is done. The debtor can always see the amount stored in his debt pot via command, but cannot take money from it in any way. The debtor can always move additional money from his BALANCE to his POT via command, but can never do the opposite (or undo). When POT equals DEBT, staff is automatically warned so that they can handle the debt repayment (and reset both variables via command). Pros: other users are protected from scammers: if someone tries to pay someone in debt, he is warned and asked to confirm; creditors have more chances to see their money back: the debtor is not banned and will therefore keep making money while playing; a big part of the money a debtor makes (in any way) is automatically locked by the system and guaranteed to go to the creditors; debtors are punished (which acts as a deterrent) insofar they have almost no freedom on how to spend the money they earn, as most of it is guaranteed to go to the creditors. Cons: The only one I can think of is a debtor (not banned) staying in debt for an undefined amount of time; however, on an economy server such as our own, almost everything you do is related to money. The only way to voluntarily stay in debt for a long span is that you are intentionally trolling the system by being online and wasting a lot of time in chat, while doing absolutely nothing to earn a single cent. In those (I hope few) cases the user will most probably be banned for something else in a very short while. Any Other Information: I'm not a developer, so I might very well be wrong, but my wild guess is that something like this wouldn't be a nightmare to code: surely it's a big job, but not a particularly difficult one. Probably on the same level or a bit bigger than /own (which indeed was a big -and extremely appreciated- job). I think something like this would be appreciated even more, in an economy server such as our own. Link To This Plugin/Is this a custom addition?: I'm not aware of the existence of such a plugin but, should it happen to exist, then even less work for the developers.
This could be solved, however. Before players loan to other players, one could simply search up their name and see if the user is in any debt. If they see that the person they are loaning to owes 400k, then they could simply not loan to the player. It would be nice to see a feature added to loan contracts that allows the person giving out the loan to mark the contract as "complete". That way, people can see the debts they are in and the debts they have paid off, therefore preventing giving a loan to a player in huge debt.
Yes, this is true. Indeed, it's what I used to do whenever someone asked me a loan (lots of months ago, when I actively loaned money out - I don't do it anymore, currently). But if my suggestion was to be implemented, not only those who don't do prior research would get a benefit: even those who already painstakingly research in the ban history of their counterparts would benefit, because all the relevant information would be available to them in an instant, and there wouldn't be chance to miss something. On top of this, if such a mechanism was to be implemented, it wouldn't be too difficult to extend it not only to defaulted loans, but to all loans: people who loan money out could just have to make a forum contract instead of a chat contract, and then staff could update the relevant variables via command upon approval of said contract. I think the benefit for the whole community would be great; the only question is: is this technically feasible? I roughly estimated that it is, but I'm not a developer and I well might be wrong.
In theory, it's a great idea. But I feel like that would need to be a custom plug-in, I don't think there's anything like this out there. But if this were to take off, it'd be a great system for someone in debt and uses lotto all the time. +1, though.
Assuming there's a contract... I've loaned nearly 20 million out, and I'd estimate that less than a third of that used forum contracts.
Yeah, that's the tricky thing about it. You don't know if the player is in debt unless they take out a loan on a contact. Usually bigger loans involve contracts, or at least more of them should to be safe.
A forum contract doesn't really make a loan any safer as long as your agreement is enforceable and you collect evidence. I personally only use forum contracts when I need to give a loan but can't get in game. Size isn't a deciding factor.
The key point is that "as long as": on a forum contract you are almost guaranteed that, if anything is wrong in the contract, someone with unbiased eyes will notice and not approve it until it's ok. With chat contracts you rely only on yourself, and you can be confident only if you are experienced enough. I myself prefer chat contracts for the time factor, but my first contracts were on forum for this very reason.
Imagine how useful it would be if there was a public record/list of current loans. Basically a page that displays the amount owed and the due date. Obviously that would be difficult to put together, but I wonder if there's a way it can be added to the forums so that loans are automatically added to the list, and when completed, both users click "complete" and the loan goes off the list. Just an idea.
I just really like the idea of having a "debt balance". Im not sure if 90% is the right number, but that number can be easily played around with depending on each scenario. A lot of people in debt have good intentions at first and pay off a little at first, but ultimately just give-up or break for whatever reason. This would fix that because once the % was made, then they are pretty much locked in and are basically forced to pay the debt since a % of their income automatically goes into this balance and is locked meaning they cant change it or take any cash out of it. +1 to the whole concept... I just don't know if this would require a custom plugin or not. If it does, then rip this idea unfortunately because it would be "too much work".
I like the idea of being able to check how much debt a user is in before you loan them. I like the first 2 points here, but instead of the staff handling the debt repayment, why not use a command? For example: If POT = DEBT, no more money can enter the POT. Then, you simply do /debt pay, and the entire POT gets transferred over to the player, and it removes the percentage going into the pot.
People who might be interested: @ZevZero @DaEpicMiner326 @King_azaron and please tag anyone I might have forgot
AAaaanywho I can't not respond to the suggestion... Barring the obvious development and administrative nightmare... I honestly don't think this is needed. In the past three weeks, there has been exactly once successful loan scamming appeal... and it's a first offense (and I don't think a first offense should fall subject to this system). In the month before that, there were only two, both for relatively small values. I don't think this is something we need.
I once with another player tried to develop a sort of centralized bank of some sort that would basically do exactly what you are suggesting and keep a record/list of current and even previous known loans and charge loan sharks or banks for access to this list. I don't remember what happened to the idea, but it definitely had some potential. Looking at it now though, I am not sure if people want to have it publicly stated in the forums that they are currently in debt to someone. Ive seen plenty of times where people were in-game and just get bombarded with "hey aren't you in debt... you should be working on paying that" and all that does is annoy the user in debt. I know that If I personally wanted to take out a loan, I wouldn't really want it publicly stated on the forums but thats just me. People can also argue that its the bank/loan sharks' job to check for previous loan history... that is just part of the loaning business. It is your job to do some work and research a potential loan before carrying it out. That is partly why so many people get scammed, because they are too lazy to even bother to check the forums. I personally think that even if we made a forum page that held all this date...I think people would still loan in-game without even bother to checking it out, so I am not too sure if this would even help that much.
True. However, you can simply ask the player how much debt they're in. If you don't trust their answer, don't loan to them. I think a big part of loaning money to other players is trust. If they have completed several loans in the past and have a good reputation, then their answer will most likely be true. Basically- don't loan to someone unless you feel comfortable with it.
In my personal opinion. This system will barely change anything due to the fact that it will only notify people when they are unbanned from loan scamming. I would imagine this plugin would possibly be ridiculed with bugs and that it would take time for staff to setup per ban appeal and then payout per person. Would you add to their "Debt info" about a person that appeals but the other person that he owed was banned ? In my opinion if you want to counter this then A. Look up ban appeals/keep a eye on them for people that owed money. B. Look at complaints, I saw one person called out many times for loan scamming but due to the loaners being new, didn't take sufficient evidence of the loan so the loaned got off with no repercussions. C. Perhaps a centralized page where loaners can post the persons IGN, Total debt (Total property value wether it be a star tool/property/ecd sale), Time to pay off, how much per X rated time. If the persons info listed is to much you can just say no and say that your current debt is to risky at the moment. In the end if the person that appealed really wants to scam again they could take out a star tool deal or property and mess with them and begone again probably for a lot longer though.
The amount of custom development for this is not worth it. Sorry. If this was something that could be extended/expanded ontop of the forum bank system I might consider it, but in game it's far too much.
