Assembly Hall

So for this example we assume that Margin Trading issues don't exist and the buy order is technically covered? In that case you can identify with 100% certainty if the buy order is technically legit: it is because all buy orders are technically legit if no MT is involved. If it asks for 10 items and you bring 10 items you will be paid. That doesn't mean the buy order can't be used for a scam like if the issuer knows you probably won't be able to find 10 items, but that's not a problem IMO, that's what I would call a proper scam. As I said before it falls into my technical scam category, but you can 100% identify/avoid it just by reading the buy order properly and noticing that you'll need 10 items, no interpretation or common sense required, so that's fine in my book.

Now here's a little problem then, you can't be informed enough to identify all possible ways of MT manipulation.
Consider this example:
An item that is traded in rather low quantities has sell orders for 1 bil and buy orders for 800m. A "scammer" has 1 such item and wants to sell it for as much money as possible. He creates a buy order for 900m and uses MT to not cover the order. Now there's no way anyone can be informed enough to notice that this is a fake order because this looks like a normal thing that happens all the time. (And should you think that these numbers are suspicious, then just use subtler numbers instead, it's about the principle.) This new buy order will likely manipulate the market price of this item upwards eventually, cause it looks like there's increased demand and other buy order issuers might feel inclined to increase their order prices to match the fake order and sell order holders will maybe increase or at least not lower the prices on their orders. I consider this a problem because the "scammer" increased the price of an item with a buy order while never risking that he had to pay the price of that buy order.

I totally agree with you on the station trading thing, scams shouldn't use technically induced lag.

The thing is: a buy order on the market is a promise that you can sell that thing for that price at that place at that time. And you might spend time and money (not necessarily on a scammer's overprized sell order) to make use of that promise. So there is inherently a loss incurred if this promise doesn't hold true.

As I said, I don't really fight the MT scam as such, which I think would survive in some form even without MT, probably by just using minimum buy amount or by being logged on and manually deleting the buy order after the sell order sold, which both are proper scams in my book and not a problem. What I'm fighting is the crappy game mechanic of the MT skill which IMO is hurtful to the economic system.

I agree on the automatic sell order creation if that's what happens when you pop a fake buy order, but that's another issue.

Silly troll logic. While Eve's space travelling is not based on RL space travelling, Eve's economic system is based on the RL one. So anything in the economic system that is a problem in RL is likely a problem in Eve too.

I already asked for RL examples of working payment systems which have technically invalid orders combined with anonymity. The one example I got so far is anonymous pizza ordering, which does exist but clearly is not a very solid system and gets abused, just not often enough to make it completely unusable (though many pizza deliveries don't use it in this form because of the abusement issues).
If you can enhance the discussion with more examples feel free to do so.

Well, could you provide a reason then why the particular MT issue is only a problem on a RL market but not on Eve's? What are the relevant differences between a real market and Eve's in this regard?

Oh come on... Of course I could have used friendlier wording, but you basically pulled the equivalent of the old "You can't expect consistency in a story with dragons and magic." trolling. I'm pretty sure you're too smart to actually consider it a serious argument.

That's a rather bold claim. I have to admit I can't name any specific market with an anonymous broker system in RL, but I would be quite surprised if such a market didn't exist at all. I would expect something like this in stock trading maybe.

Yeah, I think with the exception of maybe the OP everybody in this thread agrees that scams as such are fine in Eve. However, that doesn't mean that the MT mechanic isn't crappy. And I don't want a crappy game mechanic to stay just so one more scam is possible.

No.

The only reason margin trading is allowed to exist in Real Life is because there is accountability for actions and orders, accountability which is lacking in EVE. If orders fail, if trades go bad, there are assets which can be seized and liquidated to compensate the victims. If accountability is not present, margin trading as a parallel should not be present.

As it stands, margin trading is a vital part of EVE's economy that lets traders leverage their assets and increase liquidity, and without it, much of the bulk buy orders that are key to trading would disappear, removing margin trading is not an option, but giving buyers more information on buy orders would be much welcomed.

A simple example would be (open to tweaks)

If the buyer does not have sufficient isk to fulfill the minimum buy amount allowed, the order is shown in RED
If the buyer has enough isk in wallet and escrow to fulfill the minimum buy amount, but not enough for the whole order, the order is shown in ORANGE
If the buyer has more isk in wallet and escrow than the complete value of the buy order, the order is shown in YELLOW
if the buyer has lots of isk available, more than the total value of all total market obligations, the order is shown in GREEN.

Information available to a player should be plentiful and accurate so we can make the best decisions in our situation. this lack of information regarding market orders is a oddity in EVE.

The best metaphor for margin scamming right to the rest of EVE regarding the unreliability of information would be like this.

You see a hauler in low-sec, but it could also be a bait tanked drake, the only way to know for sure is to bump the ship. Experienced players might be able to determine what the ship is by looking at the behavior of the ship, but the UI will only tell you it is a hauler. Now how many players would be happy with that situat

Imagine the rage that would ensue if combat UI was not absolutely accurate, or if a module was introduced that let you camouflage your ship as another. that's what margin trading depends on right now, the inability of the EVE market UI to give the needed information.

Thanks, finally someone agreeing with what I've been preaching in this thread.

I'm not sure I'd call it leveraging your assets as MT in Eve will work without any securities and I guess that often buy orders are covered in the future by selling already completed parts of the order, but that's not important really. I don't think the MT skill is that integral to the economy as you think, professional traders (which I guess are a small minority on the market) would need to have 4x as much ISK to put on their orders or alternatively just make new orders more often. IMO not a game breaker but a mild inconvenience, as I said before it's not my prefered solution though.

I don't like this solution though, because while it would solve the MT issue IMO it gives way too much information about the buy order issuer. IMO the information that is missing is about the order, not about its issuer, and allowing people to gather information about someone's wallet balance is not something I can agree with.

How do you like my earlier proposed solution of automatically removing individual buy orders as soon as they become uncovered? It's even easier to implement than yours and while it does limit the abilities of professional traders a little bit compared to now, I feel it's easily manageable to keep your buy orders individually covered while still making good use of MT.

You know how you can avoid falling for this? Apply a bit of common sense, lad! A hauler in lowsec is obviously too good to be true! If you weren't so greedy to go for a hauler killmail and just settled for a mission running noob Caracal you wouldn't have fallen for this. You also could've looked at the killboard history of killed haulers in that system, but you just like to jump into lowsec uninformed, don't you?

Sorry, what?

When you asked what the difference was, I assumed (wrongly it seems) that you were already aware I don't think the Eve market is like any RL one. I was pointing out that scams in real life, affect people in a far more disproportionate way, than any Eve scam.
Plus Eve is designed to include scams as part of it's game play. They even advertise it as such.
Do I have to mention why scam are bad in real life? What exactly are you missing here?

Banks have recently found themselves having to pay very large fines, for scandals of late. The libor scandal, springs to mind.

Differences? Let's list one simple difference shall we, the skills we buy and train. If you can point to every skill and a counterpart, then be my guest. But like I said, the MT skill is not solely responsible for the scam and it can so easily be avoided.

As far as the skill is concerned, many many players use it for exactly what it was intended for. It works well, so doesn't need change.

Common sense comes, with looking at the prices and finding out what a product is worth. I personally have never had an issue with this and wouldn't blame an unrelated skill if I did.

Now let's ask you about something you stated.
Can you show me proof? I've never seen anything from a CCP Dev regarding this.

You might reason that it is actually the returning of the ESCROW that is broken.

If somebody tries to sell to a buy order, but it fails due to insufficient funds of the buyer, he is at default. To my knowledge when this happens the order is removed and the (23% at MT 5) ESCROW is returned to the buyer.
This is WRONG. The ESCROW should be given to the "damaged" party, the party willing to sell without the seller having to deliver any of the requested goods. This way he is partially compensated for the fraud and he can try to sell the goods to orders that do go through.

MT scams will be more riskfull and it might trigger the creation of a new profession: MT scam busters.

In order to not completely penalizing honest traders, the change could include a 1 (X?) day notice period in which the buyer is emailed that he is is at default and has limited time to get the extra money in order to get the goods that he wanted) however he should not be able to change/cancel the order any more

There is one very simple fix for this.

It would not only eliminate the margin trading scam except for the excessively lazy. But would improve the margin trading functionality for the traders that use it as intended.

Add a show info for market orders. This would allow you to view stats of the order. Such as the available escrow, total units of the original order, blocks of goods sold to the order, and possibly if the traders who placed the order has enough isk available in the appropriate wallet to cover the order if the escrow is not sufficient. This would not need to show the owners wallet balance, but only a green/red icon to indicate in the required funds are covered.

Any time you see an order you are not sure or suspicious about, you can check the info to see if it is a valid order or not. Not only would this expose scam orders but allow you to double check larger orders to make sure they will not fail before completing them. This would benefit the trader who owns the order by allowing the order to show it would fail if the owners wallet drops to low while they are offline. Allowing the order to stay active and be available once the owners wallet recovers.

It is not like this would be a major inconvenience. You do not have to show info on every order, unless you are OCD paranoid. But will allow you to double check any suspect orders.

For example if I placed a constellation wide order for 100,000,000 units of tritanium with a 100,000 minimum buy, And I have margin trading trained to 4. I have no intention of this order to fail, but as the escrow is limited there is a chance my buy orders could fill before my sell orders. Rather than have my order fail and come back the next day to a limited amount of trit and have to place another order. Potential clients could view the stats of the order and not sell to it until my wallet recovered giving the order an increased chance of completion. Better for me and better for the client that would have suffered a failed order otherwise.

At the same time any true margin trading scam would be transparent, and an obvious scam to anyone who bothered to check the info on the order.

As a result margin trading, as it was intended to work is actually improved, while margin trading scams are all but eliminated.

No, it isn't. What you told is an example for sell orders, not for buy orders. For this example to be anything like the Eve buy order thing he would've had to tell the store to deliver some stuff to his house promising a certain amount of payment for it. And we were already discussing half a thread ago why real world stores don't like to do this when anonymity of the supposed buyer is involved.