Skill Discussions

So I had some Savlave Drones posted for sale in the market, and some guy comes along and undercuts my price, by a LOT, like 100,000 per drone, which just seemed stupid, how can you make any profit on that? I do not mind being under cut, it happns all the time, and I do it myself.

In ancy case, as you might well imigian, he put them in the market for three months...so am am stuck with this guy's silly prices for three months, or until they sell.

The more I thougth about it, the more it seemed like I should be able to do something about this. There is so much focus on combat in the game, PI and other things often feel like an after though.

So how about a skill that lets me attack another players market transaction?



Market Sabotage

Target another players market posting.

For each skill level, the targeted players market transaction post time is reduesed by 10%

Note: Each market posting (buy/sell order) may only be sabotaged once per day.



You could also have another skill that reduces the effectivness of Market Sabotage on your market postings.

You may have a point; but you are assumeing that the poster is chacking all there postings all the time. Heck I never do. Throw it in for three months and forget about.

In any case it was just an idea.


But on second thought...if they have to keep paying to relist, they will have to increase their price to cover the expenses = I win.


Also, if my proposed skill had a 100,000 expense each time I use it, it would help take money out of the economey, which is something I know CCP keeps an eye on.

Depends what they are really worth. By which I mean the cost to build them using minerals at Jita sell plus a small markup.

If they can be reprocessed for a profit, buy them, repro and sell or use the mins, if not and they are selling below build cost, buy and relist, whatever is easier.

You are aware that modifying your market order resets the time the order is active to its specified maximum again?

And even if that were changed, simply chancelling and relisting the order would circumvent any "Market Sabotage". Not to mention the fact that in 99,8% of all cases any order that still exists after 6 weeks should be reconsidered.

This is happening right now. In fact, it is happening all the time. The market place is in a state of constant pvp and it is people like you, who don't grasp what's going on, who are the primary victims of that pvp.
You want to fight an economic war? Easy: find a decent target, bring smarts and lots of isk. Boom. Shots fired.

I don't like your idea.
I don't like the premise of your idea.
I don't like the way you went about proposing your idea.

Please don't let this discourage you from posting in the future, just spend a little more time thinking before posting. Some guidelines for decent idea-proposals:
- Try to understand what's going on. What is happening; why is it happening.
- Determine if what is happening actually is a problem. Why is it a problem?
- What can be done to alleviate the problem? Is that effective? Does it create other problems?

Once you've thought about all that, then is the time to make a post. Make an elaborate post, explain everything you've thought about (try to use proper terminology) ((do use proper spelling)).

Now, let's look at what went wrong with your idea above. You had an issue. You didn't know why it happened ("(...) which just seemed stupid") but you found it annoying for you and thus it must be a problem which must be fixed. The 'problem' was you being undercut by a lot, so you propose a solution: reduce the order duration time. Let's think about this, does this fix the 'problem'? Oops, no, it doesn't. Who keeps orders for three months? Pretty much no one, but if people do it's people who don't care about selling/buying fast, who are in for the long term with a sit-back-and-relax attitude. Who undercuts orders? Traders who update orders regularly. What happens when you update an order? The duration gets reset. Not only does your idea not fix the 'problem' of undercutting, it doesn't work.

Let's take a few steps back and try to understand what the "stupid" trader who undercut you was thinking. He might have several motives, one being that he wants to sell his drones fast. Undercutting big means he'll have a good chance of selling fast, as other traders might be unwilling to drop that low, or another trader might think what I told you to do: buy and relist at a higher price. The "stupid" trader got his drones sold fast, the second trader makes some more isk, everyone is happy. This is just hello-kitty-online level 'pvp' though. Maybe the "stupid" trader doesn't like you being his competition. Maybe it is true that he (and you) can't make a profit at the undercut price. Here's news: he doesn't care. He will gladly take a loss right now, because you will decide this all this stupid, you will stop selling drones, and he has eliminated a competitor. Once the competition is gone, prices can go up. Is this a risky strategy? Yes. Can it backfire on the "stupid" trader? Yes. Can he make big money doing this if it works out? Yes.

Ok, turns out that what is happening is not a problem at all. What is happening is the pvp you seem to long for, you just didn't understand it and called it stupid.



Don't have a blog to link to so I wrote you something. You're welcome. Pro Tip: lurking the Market Discussions subsection of the forum will sometimes allow you to catch glimpses of what's going on.

We already have one. Buy them up and re-list them at your price. If you think your price really is optimal it shouldn't be a problem.

As is, he's taking a loss (you think; apparently you didn't check) and may and may not have motives for it. Find a way to profit from it either way. We already have mechanisms that cover these possibilities.

You know what, perhaps the other player is being stupid. Are you running a social institution for stupid people? No? So take advantage of him. This isn't rocket science. Other people being stupid is what makes you rich.


I figured my going into lengthy detail about what might be going on and what could be done would be wasted on you.
Be careful what you ask for though: you getting a way to screw others will mean that others get a way to screw you. Judging by your reactions to adversity/opportunity so far, you won't cope very well.

Shrug. Up to you. Since blueprints really don't depreciate, most people consider them capital. Even if you want to calculate a payback I'd suggest you do so in months of continuous use. For a 20/20 salvage drone blueprint, your cost is ~33,500 and you can make one every 5 minutes 11 seconds. The blueprint costs ~30mil isk.

If you want to amortize that over a month of continuous production, that comes to 30mil over 8334 units or ~3600 isk/unit. I'd say a month is on the low side already, but let's say you wanted to reduce that to 10 days of continuous production instead: you're still looking at 2778 units and 10799 isk/unit. The range you're talking about is absolutely absurd: hundreds of thousands of isk/unit to pay for your cheap blueprint? You're not going to make it ahead that way. Markups like those would make carriers cost hundreds of billions of isk instead of 1 billionish.

And so yeah, charge that markup when you can get away with it. But don't expect everyone else to let you have takings like those all to yourself.

Buy one of his drones, get his name or corporation name, confront him about it.

Trade somewhere else if the prices are better for you to compete against.

Plus all the other suggestions above.