Market Discussions

I though it might be a prudent time to revisit this dead horse of mine. With the changes to loot and manufacturing it will be highly interesting to give this another spin

Everyone should now have heard about the huge changes, and have felt the resulting speculation in the markets in regards to minerals. Soon a lot should follow in all loot drops and later most likely some big changes in PI. That however is for a later comment, or join the scc-lounge for discussion on these things

De-nerfing market order cap (including all contract caps)

At the moment we have all grown accustomed to the upper limit of 305 outstanding orders for max skilled traders. This was introduced so long ago, that only a few remember the markets before that. Back then a lot less items was in the game, and thus market coverage and competetion was rather effective, and equilibrium in price could be reached rather fast almost everywhere. Also since there was no cap almost all items could be sold at semi fair prices almost anywhere

So I have been advocating to remove this limit for a long time and many discussions have been had, not to much effect. Mainly because I was partly wrong in my oversimplified advocating it removed entirely. Since this would mean no benefits from skills and also potentially cause some issues from back before it was introduced

Now however I think I have a better suggestion

We remove the upper limits to all contract forms and market order

The limit changes to number of daily changes commited.

Thus making the limit the same, but it refreshes every day, and existing orders and contracts arent counted and considered
What this will do is make a lot of our current problems go away. More items can reach price equilibrium fitting the local area markets, and all regions can develop smaller market hubs with broader range of service. Thus decreasing the need for all trade to take place at the current super tradehubs

Another side effect will be a lot faster feel of gameplay, and strategic positioning of activity. There are many benefits, that will arise, but suffice it to say here, we will get better market competition. This lowers the barrier for general trade, while retaining the benefits to super hub high frequency traders

Killing the microbidding 0.01 isk game once and for all
With no upper limit to orders on market all microbidding will be removed. It simply is to easy to create price spreads according to personal price estimates and microbids will not be worth the effort, at least nowhere except extreme volume hubs

Market bots will struggl
With an upper limit to daily changes automation will be very hard. A player can strategize in his own time, and even use spread sheets and AI to do calculations, but the actual injection limit would make the human effort just as effective and fast as any bot. This would also mean a lot of trade can move from scc onto the contracts and thus bulk markets

Suggested standing limitation Buycott optio
Regarding contracts market it would be very useful to be able to limit access according to standing, and thus get a system for truly blocking and allowing only those you wish to trade with. As bulk markets become lucretive this feature will be highly effective in politics. Also a good thing with suspected changes to warfare

PI and POS boost (npc facility slots revisited
A rather old issue was the access to npc facility slots, for research and production. Back then I suggested we get a dynamical pricing system to shift things more naturally. That could not be done, was the reply from ccp, since it would hurt noobs. Well here is version 2.0 of that old suggestion. Let all but say 5 slots per npc station shift to be the rented slots PUBLICALLY from player to player. Thus as prices change from player the needed new slots would be added to the POSses in system. This would also make systems interesting according to composition of moons and planets, if PI and POS was integrated better. In all a few tweaks would be need ofc, but the general result would be a lot more strategic thinking and a lot of sensible wars or collaborations arising

A small side note shift mission items back to the general scc tradable stuff, and rotate the raw ore demands on missions, to not create those weird price fluxes on raw ore. (Especially Kernite and Omber) With the market order cap removal these things would no longer pose such a huge problem

Yes exactly.

Only new deals with brokers count.

Though Ideally I would prefer a system where you got vouchers each day to use with brokers when making contracts.
Thus making it a consumable item, that would be possible to exchange.

A sort of player produced item, linked directly to trade skills. That would be best solution, since it might get linked into the whole economy, and also be part of the LP services. Hell maybe add it as a feature much like the research agent service, and make brokers directly into agents. The short answer though is yes. :)

Mouse wheel

I am a little puzzled why people seem so accepting regarding the 0.01 isk microbiddings..

There are a lot that voice frustration about it, but seldom really want it to change?

Is it really such an entertaining game element that the majority would prefer to keep it in the game?

As I have tried to explain it really benefits very few groups of players, and it is very bad in creating a fair and stable economy.

If 3 players are all competing on selling huge stacks of goods the patty cake who comes first to the microbid is not reflecting the actual natural price agreement. In the real life markets a non verbal agreement is reached that suits all 3 traders. You can call it an unspoken contract. In real life markets you dont have microbids working like in EVE, the bids are done primarily by brokers and with bundles of product. Its a bit like the gentleman rules at auctions. You dont bid in increments of say 1,000,001 isk over a 1m bid. Its considered bad form at best and auctionary would control the bids when many are showing interest in the same object.

The best EVE example of the flaw of current system is the huge storage of product on the market of say morphite. These stockpiles are hard to shift because the microbids compete for contracts by pseudo queueing instead of actual price equilibrium attainment.

The suggestion to resolve some of these ingame market flaws, is just one example. There could easily be other and better ones. A simpler idea would be to make orders time controlled instead. So you could cancel orders within the first 2-5 minutes, but after that cancel and modify would not be available for 30 minutes.

Ofc the simplest and most fair solution to all pricing in EVE from npc to player would be that the prices would be dynamic and go up when there is high demand and go back down with low demand. It does however seem that ccp is a bit scared of opening up this model.

I hate the 0.01 isk game. However I defend for one simple reason: It is not imposed upon us. Note the "not imposed upon us" statement. CCP did not create this activity, we did. That is part of the beauty of what there is of our sandbox. It is not a complete sandbox - not at all - but where we have carte blanche we should strive to maintain it regardless of how annoying most of us find it.

As to removing market order cap: You may fondly remember the days gone by of yesteryear but I do not. Previously a single toon could have thousands of market orders - and some did have that many. Not to forget those who had thousands in one region and another thousands in a different region on another toon. The market was homogenized to the point of disgusting. With the market caps, gaps are created that can be exploited by up and comers (new or old).

Fighting the 0.01 isk game is wrong. Stop looking at the individual reaction to it and look at the big picture.

Ditto on market order caps.

Perhaps a simpler fix to 0.01 ISK wars is a one million ISK minimum fee on order changes for anyone who has injected the Retail skill. Soon as you inject Retail, you get hit with the minimum one million ISK fee. This allows new traders and smaller traders a path into trade while gimping the possible abuses.

Additionally, expand allowing changes to range, duration, minimum volume and price on existing orders. Any of these changes cost 1 million ISK. A player may change every parameter possible within the 'change event', and still only be charged the one million ISK minimum.

I would like more market orders as well, something that requires Tycoon V. Call it Racoon for all I care. An additional 139 orders per level, rounding up to a nice 1000 at Racoon level five.

I just wanted to say that the .01 game is used in real business practices. It is annoying but accepted. Check just about any item on Amazon or Ebay, even Google Shopping for that matter. Now back to your regular discussion...

+1

I'm all for limiting market interaction in exchange for also limiting everything above. It's only fair.

Light bulb!.................. Perhaps we could limit the number of actions each player may perform in a 24 hour period. For example you can do 'X' number of actions per day, counting each action you initiate - one cycle of a mining laser, plus one cycle of the microwarpdrive, plus one purchase on the market, plus one price change on the market, plus one gate jump, plus one slagging off on local, plus one can flip.

Gosh it's going to be such fun!

I have to disagree about broker fees in JIta would be higher.

In fact in RL the opposite would happen - because of high volumes broker fee would reduce via competition ( everyone would want to be a Jita broker rather than some back water like Rashy ).

But if you suggest a flat fee - that is by definition going to effect new players with small orders. The big players would be effected less as they have higher volumes per order ( generally )