EVE General Discussion

Hi, I'm coming back to EVE after a long layoff. I spent a lot of time trading before and there were a lot of problems with it being too tedious, namely with the 0.01 isk undercutting that people always do, often with the help of 3rd party software.

I'm just getting back into swing of trading and the same problem still exists. I have a simple solution. It's so simple that I'm probably beating a dead horse and many have suggested it before:

Make increase the undercut minimum from 0.01 isk to 1% of the lowest selling price of the item at the station. Sellers can then choose whether to actually affect a significant change in the low price of an item or he can sell at the same rate as the current lowest price seller, in which case his stack collapses with that seller's stack and the items are sold out of it at random to buyers.

For example say that 10MN Afterburner II is selling in a hub system for 2,000,000 ISK. The top three sellers are selling 3, 7, and 10 of them for 2,000,000... 1,999,999.99... and 1,999,999.98 isk respectively. Under the new system, those last two undercutters would be able to choose between selling for 2,000,000 or selling for 1,980,000.

If they all chose the former, the sale price would be 2,000,000 (in a single stack of 20 afterburners), and if a buyer purchases one of them, Seller A has a 3/20 chance of getting the sale, Seller B gets a 7/20 chance, et cetera. If they chose the latter, the lowest three prices would be 2,000,000, 1,980,000, and 1,960,000.


This system wouldn't be only beneficial to traders, it would foster greater competition in the market. Prices would reach equilibrium at a much faster rate, and thus the customers win. It would greatly increase the liquidity of all items, not to mention cleaning up the market interface (no more seeing 20 different sellers selling for nearly the same price).


Additionally, you could add the following features to such a system:

- Remove the 15 minute limit for changing market orders, if changes result in meaningful changes in the price of items, this is to be encouraged.

- Give notifications to players when they are no longer selling for the lowest price.

- Instead of having to tediously type in a number for the sale price, offer the option to either share the lowest price at the station or beat the price by 1%.

- Graduate the percentage minimum based on the absolute cost of the item. Perhaps the minimum is 2% for a 1,000,000 isk item and 0.5% for a 50,000,000 item. People selling T2 Battleships deal in razor thin margins so a 0.25% is much different than with a cheap item.

Doc Fury is going to pimp slap you for beating him to it

Altception, we're all alts of somebody else, probably mittens

The 1% bid idea is neat and all, but no thanks. We have the best trading system and economy in gaming history and that's what keeps me in EVE. It isn't broken, so don't bother us with fixing it please.

I won't say the system is perfect as it is, but it's close enough. The 0.01isk bid is just a natural reflection of the bidding system, especially on trades with a very narrow margin.

If you think it's tedious then you're probably doing it wrong. (No offense)

Also the timer on bids is 5 minutes. Not 15.

I hate to sound like a turd about this, but there it is.

Those that are serious about their market orders are actively watching their orders and adjusting them to market fluctuations.

as annoying as it is to see someone selling 1000 of something undercut the guy selling 3, i think that's more human nature, and not something CCP can easily fix..

also annoying is prices with lots of 9's in them, but also i dont think that's something ccp can fix.. you know those people would just put the initial order at 19.999.999 instead of 20.000.000

Slight flaw with your plan is that it would break the economy - those of us with a couple of hundred billion isk (or more) and the desire to see things break could simply keep putting up market orders for everything at slightly above build prices forcing everyone who wants to undercut to take a loss (or lets us buy them out and reprocess / relist).
Effectively everything would come down to build price, except PLEX which with all the extra isk people save from buying items would inflate massively.

You're thinking too small. Ever had a large order fill in 5 minutes? Or wonder why someone bought exactly 100 of your afterburners? It's because a freighter rolled in and bought or sold a ton of what you have/want. That's what keeps the prices from deviating too far from the average.

When a price gets too low, a Haul-trader scoops off the lowest priced orders and leaves with them. When a buy price gets too high - same thing except the hauler fills those high orders and the lower ones remain.

It's a beautiful, brilliant system for a game that works (approximately) like real world economics.

The tedium only drives the price down if you're impatient. It never stays there unless there is a good reason.


Oh and PS: I read somewhere recently that CCP employs 5 real honest-to-goodness economists to keep things in line. So I think it's good the way it is.

It would fluctuate more then it currently does, that's for sure, but imo it's fluctuating enough already... I'd say check the price of a module for a whole week, making a note of the price every day (or multiple times a day). That way you can see what impact the current system has already. I also have my doubts about more fluctuation being a good thing. The average would probably still be the same since it's mainly a matter of question and demand... Also, what if people want to make a sell order of 200 ISK when there are orders of 198 ISK and 203 ISK? Would that even be possible with your system? Would I have to calculate the price every single time I want to place/modify an order or is this done automatically? What preferences would be used if it's done automatically? (not all orders placed by people are by default the best order)


Yes, it exists. Yes, it's used. Yes, it's still illegal.. So again, if you suspect someone is using it just report that player. I'm sure that player wondered the same about you in case it wasn't a bot though.


That more or less already exists - you can mark your orders blue so you won't have to look for the price every single time you're checking if they're still the best price.


Well to be honest with you, I got the feeling like you're only back for a few days and start complaining already. Or in other words you barely have an idea of what the current market system is about. Give it some more time and start judging when you got all the facts together. If you don't like the 0,01 ISK game, switch to a trade-hub other than Jita, where the 0,01 ISK game isn't played as much as in the hub with the highest population...

this could be a nice add with check option for activation.



Also this.