Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Although I have seen this in some form of another I don't see it being brought up very often and I really don't see why it hasn't been done yet.

The whole process of buying items in EVE as is right now is clunky as hell. It would be great if there was a way to create and save a list of items to buy. Then we could just pick a list and have it purchased automatically. This would greatly streamline and reduce the prep time for ship fitting and would make shopping much more enjoyable.

Now I can see there are a few issues with implementing this. How would the system pick suppliers? If it simply chose the cheapest supplier that would open up the system for some nasty market exploits where anyone with the cheapest price takes the cake (and we all know thats not always the case now). Also, what would happen if there weren't enough of one item to purchase at one price, how would it move on to the second best price? Finally, what if there just weren't enough of the items you wanted to purchase, how would the system work?

My proposal is that there would be an interface similar to that of a contract. You pick a previously created list which is then displayed on the interface. Then it would query the market for cheapest price based on the search region you pick. Once you click purchase it will buy whatever it can at those prices, whatever can't be purchased will be shown on the following screen. For the remaining items you simply pick the next available price (or whatever you want to pay). Anything that isn't available at all can be ignored.

Anything I'm missing?

No one will use it if it is "cheapest in region" because then you will invariably be running around many jumps just to pick up stuff. Everyone buys stuff at trade hubs even though the hubs are rarely where the cheapest item is at - I am not flying 12 jumps to get a 100k ISK discount on my Gyro II. Bulk purchases should be done per station or per system.

There should be two screens - one in which all the items you want to buy are entered (+ other information like the station you're buying at). The second screen should show the list with the price each is being bought at, the total price, and any items that cannot be purchased at that station.



These are all easy.

-Cheapest price already gets the sale within a single station (and no one is going to want to bulk purchase stuff all over a region)
-Presumably it would buy up all items for sale at the lowest price and then the remainder at the second lowest price
-The second screen would say that only X items on the list could be purchased.

No one would ever use this functionality.

Sorry but I fail to see how that would be the case. I don't see any bad side to this mechanic other than people can use it to scam fools that don't check stuff before hitting accept.

Right now there is NO efficient way to buy large quantities of a list of items. Say you want to fit 10 navy comets. Buying fits for all 10 of them would take you a significant amount of time. A feature such as this would make it take significantly less time. This means its a boon for both industrialists and pvpers. Newer players also benefit because it becomes easy for them to buy fits without having to dig through menu upon menu to find items.

Its ridiculous to cut a time saving feature that would let you focus more on playing than menu fumbling just because someone can use it to scam someone that doesn't read stuff properly. Alas, it really makes no difference in the market other than it now takes less time to buy a big list. Finally, as much as I hate to say it, EVE is not a game for new players. It takes a year to be able to do anything decently in this game. Thus following that logic, it makes no sense to base market UI mechanics on new players.