Change Trade Reversal Process

[ActualWoodelf]

I would like to suggest that the process for reversing trades be changed. Currently, it appears that if a trade is reversed due to someone being hacked or some other legitimate reason, then any subsequent trades that involved the C$, pets, items, etc. in the initial rule-breaking trade are ALSO reversed, which causes mass chaos, distress, and unfairly punishes players who did nothing wrong.

While it has been suggested that when a trade is reversed, the player also receives back whatever they paid on their side, this is not sufficient: often, players express that they were lucky to get a chance to make a certain trade, and it can be very unfair to take away that success. Additionally, values, particularly of "ex-list" pets, change substantially over time, and if a trade is unexpectedly reversed for a high-value pet, the player who lost one pet may receive back a pet that, while at the time was a fair trade, is no longer anywhere close to the same value.

There are many additional consequences of this trade reversal system that need to be seriously considered as part of a potential restructuring. I hope other players will add their thoughts in this matter.

Finally, because of how these reversals currently work, it is possible for people to go into a negative balance of C$, which are acquired through trading, yes, but initially by paying real dollars/money. It is not a good way to run a business to suddenly withdraw goods that have been purchased by players, and I hope staff can understand that this WILDLY endangers the trust players have in Chicken Smoothie as a product worth investing in.

MY SUGGESTION is that the trade reversal process be overhauled. Essentially, I suggest that when a person is hacked or otherwise cheated, a COPY of the pets "lost" is given to the player, with true dates or RR dates to match the lost pets, but new IDs, and that in the case of C$, new C$ are simply generated. It is just not viable to take away real-world purchases like this willy-nilly.

Thank you for considering my suggestion.

[Lex.]

Support everything here. Not only that, but lack of communication NEEDS to be fixed. Too many instances have been made without any word from a staff member regarding your trades.
There NEEDS to be an accompanying PM with the details. Who was affected, what occurred, and how you were involved as well as how things were made fair to you.
Having negative amounts of c$ is ridiculous. If the only way to get it back is through purchasing c$ yourself, doesn't that seem exploitative?

[ActualWoodelf]

Support everything here. Not only that, but lack of communication NEEDS to be fixed. Too many instances have been made without any word from a staff member regarding your trades.
There NEEDS to be an accompanying PM with the details. Who was affected, what occurred, and how you were involved as well as how things were made fair to you.
Having negative amounts of c$ is ridiculous. If the only way to get it back is through purchasing c$ yourself, doesn't that seem exploitative?

Thank you Lex, I couldn't have put it better.

[lyney]

I support this! I at least think priority should be pointed toward those that were pushed into debt.

[skyegawla]

Full Support. I don't believe I was personally affected with all of the trade reversals, but just reading the experiences of other players has me extremely frustrated. And the lack of communicating and transparency is completely stupid (sorry not sorry). I understand that things happen, but for there to be ZERO information provided to the community is completely outrageous.

I'm so sorry to everyone who lost pets, items, or C$ in these trades. Hopefully something will be done. <3

[Cygnetta]

Agree! This affected like 20+ people just to fix one hacked account... I would also like to suggest the following:

1) When possible during regenerating/duplicating a pet, they should simply use a deleted pet's ID of the same date that is closest to the lost pet's ID. If it's important for the pet to sit in the right place and "behave" just like the pets that got taken, that would be a great way to do it.

2) If that's still not enough for the hacked user (maybe the pet had a special ID for example) then the best solution could be worked out by communication between mods and all affected parties, for example a 1-1 trade between the regenerated pet and the original pet.

3) Trade reversal should be the last resort and should only happen if the aforementioned steps don't work out (for example, if the hacked user absolutely needs the original pet and the user that has the pet is inactive).

One fear is that generating more pets and C$ could cause inflation, but I would like to point out that inflation is already happening anyway, and the small amount of extra that would be generated is not enough to make a huge difference in the scheme of things. It's merely equivalent to what would happen if one old user decided to come back.

It's traumatizing if you get your dreamie, dress it up, name it, etc., only to find it's gone and to top it off you could be thousands of C$ in debt too...

[Pinkie Cooper]

Full support! 36 people voted yes on my previous thread, 26 of those being rares and up... not to mention the real life money that has to go into completely recovering from a lot of this.

[Miss_Believer]

I agree, especially considering how drastically demand can change in a period of time, even with pets that aren't super rare.

I understand wanting to help a user who lost things due to being hacked. I think my most valuable pet is my UR avocado. If I lost my avocado, I would be DEVASTATED. I've heard of an instance where a user was simply compensated for what they lost when they were hacked.

I also COMPLETELY understand not wanting to disrupt demand/the trade economy by just adding more stuff into the game, but at what point do we decide it is worth it to mess things up for 100s of users (and thus damaging the trust they have in the game) just to make it right for a few? I feel at that point it would just be better to compensate the user that was hacked, and carry on with our day. Part of me wonders if that would also just be easier for mods/admin/whoever would handle the tech side of that situation (I am not a game developer though, so I could be entirely wrong on that). Is the mild inflation caused by adding things into the game truly better that the inconvenience/confusion/upset done to a reasonable portion than game users (especially since some are children- and that is a genuine question, not me trying to be snide).

Honestly, I was wanting to buy some C$ within the next few days, but I'm worried about what could possibly happen if I traded them and possibly get tied up in this mess. So I won't be buying them at the moment, at least not until this issue dies down.

As for the response issue, I'm willing to give the team the benefit of the doubt there...do they have enough staff available to support this kind of situation? I know more staff was brought on recently, but are they the type of staff who would be equipped to handle this type of situation/the type of staff who would have this type of issue in their job description? If I had more free time, I'd be glad to apply for such a position, just to take the load off of people...I imagine they're currently facing an issue the needs about 3 times the amount of people they have able to handle it. I appreciate that Nick noted somewhere else that he would be adding in a way for users to be notified of trade reversals, as this was an issue some users brought up.

[eleventh hour]

support! I really don't like how they lock every thread regarding this issue/issues that make people upset on the site I hope this one stays up! we really need more transparency on this kind of thing, and to be allowed to speak on issues that affect players negatively without worrying about being locked. I also think they should address this issue to help with confusion, instead of just saying for everyone to submit a help ticket, putting a larger work load on the staff.

[beemo]

Full support.

And also, confusion, as I've stated so many times, why were the pets not just re-created? There have been instances where pets have been re-created in scenarios like this. We have the proof of these pets! Those weird little TD pets that sit with newly adopted pets because their ID is all funky. There was no need for any of this to happen. There was a very simple fix and I just can't see any reason that this wasn't applied here. It wouldn't have crashed the economy? Like I am just genuinely confused as to why certain situations are okay to re-create pets but others aren't.

Please give us answers.