The system should not choose players randomly. The people who receive the funds need to be selected using some sort of rational algorithm. This is because the value of money is variable depending on the person who worked for it. Consider this:

I am nearly a three year veteran player. I have 30-something towns, 10 million ECD worth of spawn town property, millions of ECD in ore blocks, and I have access to star tools. If I am scammed 10k, for instance, then I barely lose anything of comparable value when compared to my other assets. However, if a new resident is scammed 10k, for instance, then he quite possibly could have lost nearly 50% of all the money he had ever made. In this case, one can EASILY decide that the 10k is more valuable for the resident than it is for me.

It is possible to objectively determine whose money is more valuable. This talk of randomness should be completely abandoned. @knears2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility

You should study that knears. It completely contradicts your argument. Goods are more valuable to certain people and less valuable to others (see law of diminishing marginal utility).

In fact, you can calculate exactly how valuable something is, in respect to a particular individual, by taking the first derivative of the total satisfaction obtained from a unit good in respect to the total amount of consumption of that good. There is no bias here.

 

Staff is gonna pick the guy with all the money and towns, not the resident. That's been proven time and time again. So no, it doesn't contradict me. You're point about choosing the resident is right, that's what I was trying to get at, but staff would still pick the man with a lot of money. That's who they would choose everytime, no matter what.

 

Notice how I said "rational algorithm." The staff wouldn't be able to just pick someone without justifying their pick.

 

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-slip-opinion.htm

We could write something similar to a slip op after we select who will receive the funds.

 

Yeah thats a good idea on paper but for this agorithm to work one must add your current wealth in the calculation. As you said you have money in your bal you can easily check, maybe some money in signs you can add to that but how much money exactly do you have in goods? I dont have 1/20 of what you have and I can't tell you exactly how "wealthy" I am. Thats the only reason this wont work otherwise I think its a good idea.

 

You are correct and you've brought up a good point, @silencedterror. There is a margin of subjectivity in the calculation and there will be slight errors whenever you calculate the wealth of a player. But, those small errors shouldn't be enough to make the entire system fail. It is hard to compare the values of lost money between two relatively new players--who are essentially equal--but these cases would be in the extreme minority. They could even be solved using a discussion between scammed players, a 50-50 type deal, or by just making a hard decision and justifying it in a slip opinion.

Factors that would determine the wealth of a player could be their ranks, donations, assets, towns, star tools, liquid money, ect. These things can be evaluated during the selection process. I know that it wouldn't be 100% accurate, but it is better than doing nothing at all.

 

One thing that does concern me with the following is that this takes quite a lot of time to compile, and I'm not sure there are staff members who have the time to make this assessment on every scammed player.

EDIT: It is based on the idea that it is actually possible at all to locate all of someone's assets. It really is pretty easy to hide assets in chests. Without either a GA+ to look into chests (which also needs you to know the location of every chest owned by the players) or a pretty in depth log dive from SA+ to look for buying items to 'store and hide' money in, I really can't see how it is possible to put even a close to accurate estimate on wealth on some players.

 

Yup there should be someone (a team) that has to do all that and if the scammed players do it themselfs they can make it look like they are poorer than they are so they can get the money. And staff are busy with all sorts of stuff and I really don't see them doing the job of an IRS department.

 

Sorry I edited my post above just before you posted. It kinda answers this:

EDIT: It is based on the idea that it is actually possible at all to locate all of someone's assets. It really is pretty easy to hide assets in chests. Without either a GA+ to look into chests (which also needs you to know the location of every chest owned by the players) or a pretty in depth log dive from SA+ to look for buying items to 'store and hide' money in, I really can't see how it is possible to put even a close to accurate estimate on wealth on some players.

 

As Dewsy said, it's way too much work, and I don't think someone would be willing to look for everyones chests to calculate their wealth. It's just too much.

 

And as dewsy said some people can hide chests with goods or signs to get picked to get the money.

 

Exactly. The system is like communism, it looks great on paper, but not when put into practice.

 

I know that Clou and all that agreed with this suggestion have good hearts and are absolutely tired of the scamming that has been running rampant as of late. I feel the answer is not to refund money to those scammed, but to better get the word out on how to do research before proceeding with any major transaction. The distressing part of this whole thing is when I see Presidents, Tycoons, and higher ranks loaning money to those that scam.
The worst part is that I have now seen some players stating they have been reluctant to "take a chance" on these transactions, but would feel safer if this were in place. That is a shame.
Obviously the rewards of scamming far exceed the consequences. When that changes, scamming will ebb on our server.

 

If you are suggesting stiffer punishment for scammers I am backing you up 120%!

 

But that defeats the purpose of helping "everyone", because if it does work like that, then, well, the line will be out the door, and across the country.

 

Sorting by post order seems fair, it is random (in a way) and there isn't really too much room for cheating the system.

 

How exactly would this "order of filing complaints" be ordered? Will it be continual, and a complaint this year may be compensated next year? Or is it done weekly?