Receipts in Cubic Castles: In-game Trade History
DisOriented Kookie
Member
a suggestion regarding trades, scams, and reports
TLDR - Read underlined text
Background
Scams are common and usually happen unexpectedly. Victims of those wouldn't always have been able to take a valid record of the situation as quick, especially when their mind is on panic. They are usually unaware of the proof required when they report it. And that would have been after the scam has already been done, and there's no way of going back in time.
Game moderators can't do anything about a report with no proof, only to move on and continue to try and spread awareness. The scam victims are left empty. And the scammers would have what they've taken from them. They could continue doing more frauds until their activities are discovered and stopped.
(I know this for a fact as I've seen one in action, and I've talked to people who fell victims into scams, some of whom are my in-game friends. It feels dreadful. There are stories and videos, including in YouTube, also telling and showing these cases. Scams have been a long term problem in the game, and in real life too.)
Taking inspiration from real life transactions, I think an in-game trade history would help a lot.
What do I mean by an in-game trade history?
A trade history would be a list of trades a player did in their account in the game. It would contain information about who they traded with, what they traded, when they traded, and optionally where they did it. It may also contain the medium they used to trade, either by doing a mini trade using /trade or using a cash register. (I originally considered suggesting using receipts like letters, but that would take a lot of inventory space.)
How would this help?
Similar to real life receipts and chat logs, it provides solid proof required to fact check a situation related to in-game transactions between players. As they say, there's a reason why we have receipts in real life. We would be able to identify and confirm if a trade done is true, especially when a problem, like a misunderstanding or a scam incident, happens. It would help game moderators spot, monitor, and take action against these... and so do players.
This won't directly prevent scams, spreading awareness and practicing transaction safety does. Instead, this can be used to help reduce the frequency of scams. This transaction history system is to help provide evidence. And like I said before, this will help spot, monitor, and take action against frauds, like scams. Scammers could be stopped from doing more scams, and they will be less likely to slip unnoticed.
What would it look like if it were added in-game?
If you have ever shopped online using a website or an application, there should be a list you could see that shows a collection of the products you ordered. Clicking one would show you more information about the product, like shipping and delivery dates and location. I imagined it to look like that. Maybe similar to the friends list section in the game. The format could also be more simple and text based, like the internet relay chat.
Who could access it?
I'm unsure about the accessibility. In my opinion it would be great if all players could access it and not just the moderators. I don't know if that would risk the data getting tampered or having glitches, but they can make it encrypted and those can be fixed. Although I think the moderators generally do better with handling information about the game.
Chat logs have been possible and so are digital receipts, I believe this should be too...
I've shared this idea to a couple of players. One of them asked me to suggest it here. I'm open to any thoughts about this. Thank you!
- Disoriented Kookie
TLDR - Read underlined text
Background
Scams are common and usually happen unexpectedly. Victims of those wouldn't always have been able to take a valid record of the situation as quick, especially when their mind is on panic. They are usually unaware of the proof required when they report it. And that would have been after the scam has already been done, and there's no way of going back in time.
Game moderators can't do anything about a report with no proof, only to move on and continue to try and spread awareness. The scam victims are left empty. And the scammers would have what they've taken from them. They could continue doing more frauds until their activities are discovered and stopped.
(I know this for a fact as I've seen one in action, and I've talked to people who fell victims into scams, some of whom are my in-game friends. It feels dreadful. There are stories and videos, including in YouTube, also telling and showing these cases. Scams have been a long term problem in the game, and in real life too.)
Taking inspiration from real life transactions, I think an in-game trade history would help a lot.
What do I mean by an in-game trade history?
A trade history would be a list of trades a player did in their account in the game. It would contain information about who they traded with, what they traded, when they traded, and optionally where they did it. It may also contain the medium they used to trade, either by doing a mini trade using /trade or using a cash register. (I originally considered suggesting using receipts like letters, but that would take a lot of inventory space.)
How would this help?
Similar to real life receipts and chat logs, it provides solid proof required to fact check a situation related to in-game transactions between players. As they say, there's a reason why we have receipts in real life. We would be able to identify and confirm if a trade done is true, especially when a problem, like a misunderstanding or a scam incident, happens. It would help game moderators spot, monitor, and take action against these... and so do players.
This won't directly prevent scams, spreading awareness and practicing transaction safety does. Instead, this can be used to help reduce the frequency of scams. This transaction history system is to help provide evidence. And like I said before, this will help spot, monitor, and take action against frauds, like scams. Scammers could be stopped from doing more scams, and they will be less likely to slip unnoticed.
What would it look like if it were added in-game?
If you have ever shopped online using a website or an application, there should be a list you could see that shows a collection of the products you ordered. Clicking one would show you more information about the product, like shipping and delivery dates and location. I imagined it to look like that. Maybe similar to the friends list section in the game. The format could also be more simple and text based, like the internet relay chat.
Who could access it?
I'm unsure about the accessibility. In my opinion it would be great if all players could access it and not just the moderators. I don't know if that would risk the data getting tampered or having glitches, but they can make it encrypted and those can be fixed. Although I think the moderators generally do better with handling information about the game.
Chat logs have been possible and so are digital receipts, I believe this should be too...
I've shared this idea to a couple of players. One of them asked me to suggest it here. I'm open to any thoughts about this. Thank you!
- Disoriented Kookie
Comments
I made some edits and added a TLDR, hopefully this helps with better reading and isn't messy.
I recently saw an old discussion with a similar topic: https://forums2.cubiccastles.com/discussion/comment/299184 (Reminder NOT to NECROPOST!) I've always thought this idea of a trade history is not hard to come up to or see, and is likely to have been suggested before.
I was also thinking about having the history include purchases through vending machines.