Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As the title says. I was wondering if anyone had this idea before. What if stocks were implemented into the game and you could buy and trade stocks much like the real world. Im not exactly sure how it would work at this point so im asking any who are interested to help. maybe ccp will like the idea. Also please no trolling. thanks

Queue Goons pushing Gallante sub-prime derivatives...

Valid points, the combination of which imply that the current stock system is broken, and needs fixed.

That said, before you get into the thorny mess that arises from a stock market in player corporations, I think it'd be entirely reasonable to implement a "let's offer a place for people to play with ISK" type stock market, by letting capsuleers buy interests in NPC corps. If you had NPC corps regularly issue payouts based on some values loosely tied to in-game factors like taxes collected, business done in their owned stations, and successful missions run for them, then you already have a fairly chaotic set of initial conditions, upon which players can further speculate and drive market pressures. In the process, you might also consider the problem of what you want stocks to actually do beyond 'provide a basis for dividend payouts'; you'll doubtless want to have a series of things that you can meaningfully vote on and influence within the context of NPC corporate operations, if you want to employ the context of voting stock at all.

Once you've got a viable and robust market system that can handle trade of NPC stocks, then you can use the same system to handle higher-risk player corporation stocks. Given a proper underlying market system, the whole 'this is likely to be a scam' thing is something you can work around. Remember, there are plenty of people who are already running in-game financial services of this type anyways, even without direct in-game support; accordingly, the goal here is not to prevent anyone from possibly ever swindling anyone with the stock market ever, but merely to provide tools with which some people might legitimately conduct stock-market-type trading, within a reference frame that also allows for all the moustache-twirling villainy that people expect from EVE.

My point wasn't that "there's an easy way for you to track down ISK after it's been stolen and laundered". My point was that, given the existence of voting stock that actually has notable effects, you could use that to make certain investments safer, by letting the stock imply certain rights on the part of the shareholders. Not MUCH safer, since if it's possible for corp assets to make their way into a guy's pocket, that's the game right there, but a little bit safer, in that people could notice when that's happening.

Now, even if we acknowledge the default 'scam case', where the CEO holds a majority of the voting stock, and as such can do whatever he wants, regardless of the wishes of his shareholders, you could still have different levels of information and protection. For instance, there could be votes that might be held on 'shareholder rights' for any given stock; one of the things you could vote on is visibility of corporate holdings, access to audit logs, and that sort of thing, which might help disciplined investors notice embezzlement. Similarly, different rules might be laid down regarding under what circumstances corporate assets are allowed to be removed from the corporation, limiting the ability of scammers to take the money and run (while also being somewhat of a hindrance in terms of day-to-day running, in the sense of having a list of things that you need to get a vote on). This wouldn't necessarily be the case all the time, but corporations that allow shareholders this access would have a competitive advantage when trying to raise money... at least to the point, in the default scam case, that you'll know instantly that you're being scammed, since a vote comes up whose specifics essentially mean 'and now, I'm running off with all the money'.

The non-majority shareholder case offers a few more possibilities, mostly in the sense of the shareholders seizing control of corp assets. This might be anything from a 'hostile takeover' (I buy enough of the shares of your corp that I essentially take full control of it, and proceed to empty all corp assets into my pockets... or perhaps I only got there by support of other investors, in which case I merely have the ability to replace the leadership in whatever way I and my allies can agree to) to a 'liquidation' (losing confidence in the corporation, the shareholders agree to empty the corp wallets, splitting its contents equally among them; also sets up a framework for the sale/auction of all remaining assets, proceeds to be taken proportionally by the shareholders).

Your point about EVE corporations generally not wanting to run with other people's money is valid. That said, some people do want to play with their money this way, and I think there should be a system out there to better support their intentions, part of which would involve an actual in-game stock exchange system, as opposed to a player-run thing. And, as before, I think that system should start by listing NPC corps first, and getting into player corporation stocks only after the market gets ironed out a bit.

We disagree strongly on this point, then. As is, there's only a minimal market for player-run financial concerns, because there's very little in the way of in-game support for them. Having dedicated game systems to handle stock transfers and sales, rather than 'some guy who may or may not do anything for you if and when he gets around to it' is a necessary requirement for there being a real stock market.