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Rengerel en Distel
#21 - 2012-07-30 19:51:41 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
I simply devastate the margins on the item that is being botted and/or aggressively traded.

When I'm trading, I don't care whether it was a 2% or 200% profit on a sale, as long as I make a profit. (And even if I don't, I've got enough income from other sources that I don't mind taking a 1 or 2% loss, just to deprive the bot/.01 isker a profit, as well. ) I've got no interest in camping the station and playing the .01 isk game, nor do I want to just drop out of the market to give the other person a win (I'm competitive (read: Stubborn) like that), so I turn it into a no-win situation.

Basically, if I find that someone is camping something I'm selling and .01 isking me, I'll gouge the margin. First by a relatively small amount, 5 or 10% of the total margin on the item. If they undercut me within a short period of time, I'll gouge the margin by another 15-20%. If they do it again, another 25%. They either learn their lesson and stop undercutting me or they don't make anywhere near as much money on their investment as they had originally planned.

The entertainment value of knowing that I'm wrecking another player's margins is satisfying enough. If I still make a decent profit on the item, it's just icing on the cake.

Now, if they want to buy my goods and put them up for resale at their original level, I've got no problem with that, haha. I made money, they get stuck with having to go through the trouble of selling the goods and .01 isking like they enjoy, so everybody wins, haha.


Damn, you're so cool, losing money ... wish everyone was as cool as you when playing the market.

I'm sure the undercutter is laughing at you for losing money or cutting your own profits down to nothing.

With the increase in shiptoasting, the Report timer needs to be shortened.
Valdearg Dragonblood
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#22 - 2012-07-30 20:06:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Valdearg Dragonblood
Rengerel en Distel wrote:


Damn, you're so cool, losing money ... wish everyone was as cool as you when playing the market.

I'm sure the undercutter is laughing at you for losing money or cutting your own profits down to nothing.


On the contrary, I'm still making plenty of money. Could I be making more? Probably, if I camped the station and played the .01 isk game every 5 minutes for hours on end. Of course, I've got better things to do than camp the station, so I'm left with a few choices. Either accept the fact that I'm going to be undercut rapidly on my investments and understand that it may take months for my investment to sell, if I'm lucky, or do what I do, and hope that either A: My investment sells rapidly for a profit, B: The campers purchase my item, giving me a profit, and allowing them a potential for more profit, or C: That the aggressive campers realize that every .01 isk they undercut me by costs them another 15-25% of their margin, and they let control over that item fall to me until my relatively small stock sells.

It's not as if I'm doing anything wrong, per-say. I just have less patience and/or devotion than other traders do. Once I get a few billion isk, I'll probably adapt my tactics to reflect the fact that a smaller percentage of my money is tied up in investments. As of right now, I need my investments to turn over relatively quickly, or I'm stuck with too much of my capital invested, waiting for it to be liquidated. A wait, mind you, that could be infinitely long if I don't find some way to deal with the campers and bots.

Thus far, my gouging tactics are working just fine. I'm making decent enough money for my purposes, my stock is turning over rapidly, and I'm not being forced to spend hours a day checking and re-checking my orders. It's perfect for my limited play time and attention span, lol.
Korgan Medel
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#23 - 2012-07-31 11:19:02 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
Rengerel en Distel wrote:


Damn, you're so cool, losing money ... wish everyone was as cool as you when playing the market.

I'm sure the undercutter is laughing at you for losing money or cutting your own profits down to nothing.


On the contrary, I'm still making plenty of money. Could I be making more? Probably, if I camped the station and played the .01 isk game every 5 minutes for hours on end. Of course, I've got better things to do than camp the station, so I'm left with a few choices. Either accept the fact that I'm going to be undercut rapidly on my investments and understand that it may take months for my investment to sell, if I'm lucky, or do what I do, and hope that either A: My investment sells rapidly for a profit, B: The campers purchase my item, giving me a profit, and allowing them a potential for more profit, or C: That the aggressive campers realize that every .01 isk they undercut me by costs them another 15-25% of their margin, and they let control over that item fall to me until my relatively small stock sells.

It's not as if I'm doing anything wrong, per-say. I just have less patience and/or devotion than other traders do. Once I get a few billion isk, I'll probably adapt my tactics to reflect the fact that a smaller percentage of my money is tied up in investments. As of right now, I need my investments to turn over relatively quickly, or I'm stuck with too much of my capital invested, waiting for it to be liquidated. A wait, mind you, that could be infinitely long if I don't find some way to deal with the campers and bots.

Thus far, my gouging tactics are working just fine. I'm making decent enough money for my purposes, my stock is turning over rapidly, and I'm not being forced to spend hours a day checking and re-checking my orders. It's perfect for my limited play time and attention span, lol.


If you knew what prices I buy at then your tactic would be relevant, As it is the perceived station margin is what you are looking at...

So play your price slicing game if you like but when you are losing 1-2% I will still be making 10-20%, Give it a week and see who can still keep it up.
Valdearg Dragonblood
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#24 - 2012-07-31 15:16:20 UTC
Korgan Medel wrote:
[quote=Valdearg Dragonblood]

If you knew what prices I buy at then your tactic would be relevant, As it is the perceived station margin is what you are looking at...

So play your price slicing game if you like but when you are losing 1-2% I will still be making 10-20%, Give it a week and see who can still keep it up.




This is true, I'm basing my assumptions about margin off of the station margins, so if you bought your goods for cheaper, your margins are obviously going to be larger. Honestly, that's fine. I'm not interested in competing and seeing who makes more than whom. I guarantee I make less than probably all dedicated station traders. Given my limited play time and current real life schedule (Summer semester university classes SUCK), I do what I have to to make money and keep a good portion of my capital liquidated. If I simply undercut by .01 isk to preserve the margins, the aggressive camper and bots would just undercut me 5 minutes later. I'd never make my investment back, never be able to reinvest, and never have any capital to spend.

As I get more capital, play time, and am able to devote more time to researching good margin slow sellers with less competition, my tactics will likely change to a more typical station trading style. Until then, I do what I can with what I have.

Of course, being a newbie trader, I'm open to suggestions if you believe that what I'm doing is wrong. :)
Kara Books
Deal with IT.
#25 - 2012-07-31 20:57:18 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
Korgan Medel wrote:
[quote=Valdearg Dragonblood]

If you knew what prices I buy at then your tactic would be relevant, As it is the perceived station margin is what you are looking at...

So play your price slicing game if you like but when you are losing 1-2% I will still be making 10-20%, Give it a week and see who can still keep it up.




This is true, I'm basing my assumptions about margin off of the station margins, so if you bought your goods for cheaper, your margins are obviously going to be larger. Honestly, that's fine. I'm not interested in competing and seeing who makes more than whom. I guarantee I make less than probably all dedicated station traders. Given my limited play time and current real life schedule (Summer semester university classes SUCK), I do what I have to to make money and keep a good portion of my capital liquidated. If I simply undercut by .01 isk to preserve the margins, the aggressive camper and bots would just undercut me 5 minutes later. I'd never make my investment back, never be able to reinvest, and never have any capital to spend.

As I get more capital, play time, and am able to devote more time to researching good margin slow sellers with less competition, my tactics will likely change to a more typical station trading style. Until then, I do what I can with what I have.

Of course, being a newbie trader, I'm open to suggestions if you believe that what I'm doing is wrong. :)


Iv probably wrecked your days more then once by putting up 5-6 items at Key price points =)

Never the less, your tactic is flawed, you must spend an incredible amount of time trying to make, Trillion ISK in the wallets botters lose a few hundred million ISK.


Once upon a time, I usto force these bots to Buy my goods at high prices then sell them back to me at low prices, either way, this was a losing battle, in order to keep it profitable for myself and not allow the bot to gain a foothold I would have to play 10+ hours every single day... as you can see that's simply not possible, its futile for a human to fight a computer at its own game, its better to Chose your own ground and bring it onto your battlefield, Losing ISK is not a good place to pick a battle.

Brewler Brings up an excellent point, its not bots we should be discussing, its bots using the EULA legal stuff out there, that gather Data and then use the data to modify orders.

We players cannot compete against bots, things need to go back to basics, some research should be done on the EULA, face it the game has changed since 2004.

a random thought crossed my mind.
Create a new skill, that every one on a full account automatically has, and the more a person reports a REAL bot, the higher the skill goes, 1 to many wrong reports and the skill is taken away, never to be returned.

at certain skill levels, a person could get a CCP medal or something, whatever, it took me about 30 seconds to think of it and write about it, have fun with it if you like it.
Izumi Misumaru
GLA Postal Service
#26 - 2012-08-02 09:12:12 UTC
I always found splitting my sell orders in 2 to be effective they .1 isk me on one and then I update the other so that for the entire time I am the one on top of the list :D
Drago Wolfbane Skorvalk
Great Black Hole of Eve
#27 - 2012-08-02 19:28:27 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
Korgan Medel wrote:
[quote=Valdearg Dragonblood]

If you knew what prices I buy at then your tactic would be relevant, As it is the perceived station margin is what you are looking at...

So play your price slicing game if you like but when you are losing 1-2% I will still be making 10-20%, Give it a week and see who can still keep it up.




This is true, I'm basing my assumptions about margin off of the station margins, so if you bought your goods for cheaper, your margins are obviously going to be larger. Honestly, that's fine. I'm not interested in competing and seeing who makes more than whom. I guarantee I make less than probably all dedicated station traders. Given my limited play time and current real life schedule (Summer semester university classes SUCK), I do what I have to to make money and keep a good portion of my capital liquidated. If I simply undercut by .01 isk to preserve the margins, the aggressive camper and bots would just undercut me 5 minutes later. I'd never make my investment back, never be able to reinvest, and never have any capital to spend.

As I get more capital, play time, and am able to devote more time to researching good margin slow sellers with less competition, my tactics will likely change to a more typical station trading style. Until then, I do what I can with what I have.

Of course, being a newbie trader, I'm open to suggestions if you believe that what I'm doing is wrong. :)


Yes you are making a major mistake and your ideas are poorly based. You originally said you do not care if you make a 200% or a 2% return. That is silly. I hope you are not in any business classes.

Look at it this way, if you sell an item and make 5 isk profit or you sell an item and make 500 isk, you either need to sell 1 item or 100 items to make the same profit. You would be better off buying less stock and keeping the higher margin, and as others pointed out you have no idea what the other trader bought his items at, or what their average buy in price is.

I sold my RL business several years ago, but the best thing I read once explained that if I sell my services for $1,000 per job and after all expenses I make $50 that the best thing to do is to try and sell my service for $1050. My profits are 2x's as much for the same work, sure I might not sell as much business but even if I did half as much work I would make the same money, and be working half as hard. It actually suggested to push the price up as much as possible and just provide better service. For example instead of $1,000 per job and make $50, sell it for $1,500 and make $550, At that point you can do way less jobs and make more money. It also went into the benefits of less jobs saves on employees, less overhead, less costs in general which also increased your profits.

I now am a commercial insurance agent and have suggested this simple concept to a few of my clients and they were blown away but such a simple idea. I have had several clients implement this in todays economy and are VERY happy with the results.

More work is not always more profit, sometimes less work is more profit.
Valdearg Dragonblood
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#28 - 2012-08-02 21:42:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Valdearg Dragonblood
Drago Wolfbane Skorvalk wrote:


Yes you are making a major mistake and your ideas are poorly based. You originally said you do not care if you make a 200% or a 2% return. That is silly. I hope you are not in any business classes.

Look at it this way, if you sell an item and make 5 isk profit or you sell an item and make 500 isk, you either need to sell 1 item or 100 items to make the same profit. You would be better off buying less stock and keeping the higher margin, and as others pointed out you have no idea what the other trader bought his items at, or what their average buy in price is.

I sold my RL business several years ago, but the best thing I read once explained that if I sell my services for $1,000 per job and after all expenses I make $50 that the best thing to do is to try and sell my service for $1050. My profits are 2x's as much for the same work, sure I might not sell as much business but even if I did half as much work I would make the same money, and be working half as hard. It actually suggested to push the price up as much as possible and just provide better service. For example instead of $1,000 per job and make $50, sell it for $1,500 and make $550, At that point you can do way less jobs and make more money. It also went into the benefits of less jobs saves on employees, less overhead, less costs in general which also increased your profits.

I now am a commercial insurance agent and have suggested this simple concept to a few of my clients and they were blown away but such a simple idea. I have had several clients implement this in todays economy and are VERY happy with the results.

More work is not always more profit, sometimes less work is more profit.


Well crap. I had a decent response typed up to this but my browser ate it.

I agree with your assessment, 100%. More profit for less work is absolutely what I'm looking for. However, sitting idle, not making money is worse. You're approaching this from the perspective of an experienced trader who knows his markets, knows which items are heavily camped, and knows where the profit is for the most part. I, on the other hand, have only been doing this for 2-3 weeks, and started with literally zero knowledge of the Eve markets. For a while there, I was investing what pittance I had on best guesses based on graphs of a market history with literally no context to frame it in. Sure enough, there were plenty of items that I invested in that turned out to be highly camped, or that hit peaks right as I bought them, or I simply ran out of liquidity and needed a quick injection. In those cases, I simply wanted to get my money back (ideally with at least some profit) as quickly as possible. I didn't have the liberty to sit back and let the sale do the work for me. I still don't, in some cases.

Luckily, I'm starting to get enough baseline income off of easy to manage investments that I'm able to afford to allow my isk to remain in slow moving or highly camped items in some cases. With a bit more steady investment income, I'll be able to move away from my gouging strategy completely.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry that I failed to provide more context to my comments originally. I failed to account for the fact that most people on here are experienced traders with a good supply of isk to work with, haha. In hindsight, that was a mistake. Nobody could possibly have known that I was a brand new, incredibly isk-poor trader still learning the markets without that context, haha. :P

Edit: Also, upon rereading my original comments, I can see where they may have come off a bit standoffish, haha. (Read: I sounded like a total ****.) I must have been in a confrontational or otherwise agitated mood that day, lol. Sometimes it manages to seep into my comments undetected. >.<
Pankas Carter
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#29 - 2012-08-03 04:42:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Pankas Carter
Just wanted to say, these guys calling you out for being wrong are working off the assumption that if it doesn't get you MAXIMUM PROFITS!!!!11!eleven, then you are failing.

If your net worth goes up, then you didn't fail. Just because you are not as "optimal" as them doesn't make you wrong, or them right.

Disclaimer: I pick stocks in RL. Poorly, but Ive managed to not lose more than I've put in than I would have spent on BS anyway.

Adama: Starbuck, what do you hear? Starbuck: Nothing but the rain. Adama: Then grab your gun and bring in the cat.
leocaldari
leo's Corp
#30 - 2012-08-07 09:16:25 UTC
if somebody can give me an item where a bot is active,I can show you the way to kill a bot.
Kara Books
Deal with IT.
#31 - 2012-08-07 11:50:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Kara Books
leocaldari wrote:
if somebody can give me an item where a bot is active,I can show you the way to kill a bot.


Nah, il just post it here or somewhere else on the forums when I think the person running the bot is asleep, at school or being wasted on a Russian/American/Chinese Friday night.

Edit:
also I just want to note something very important, just because all this attention is given to market bots, doesnt mean we should ignore future ratting/mining bots
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#32 - 2012-08-07 17:47:15 UTC
Rengerel en Distel wrote:
I forget the exact numbers, but wasn't it as few as 10 market bots which had thrown the market off so much the last time? It really doesn't take many with good skills to have a large impact on the markets.

Yes, it was 10. What happened is one day early this year a bunch of traders suddenly started posting "Whats going on with trading? Suddenly its so much less crowded!" CCP Sreegs came on and said he got the bot killing effort re-started and was surprised us players noticed a grand total of 10 bots being removed from trading. (Many more mining and mission bots got killed too).

Just shows the amount of damage bots do to the game play experience.

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Kara Books
Deal with IT.
#33 - 2012-08-07 18:55:08 UTC
Vincent Athena wrote:
Rengerel en Distel wrote:
I forget the exact numbers, but wasn't it as few as 10 market bots which had thrown the market off so much the last time? It really doesn't take many with good skills to have a large impact on the markets.

Yes, it was 10. What happened is one day early this year a bunch of traders suddenly started posting "Whats going on with trading? Suddenly its so much less crowded!" CCP Sreegs came on and said he got the bot killing effort re-started and was surprised us players noticed a grand total of 10 bots being removed from trading. (Many more mining and mission bots got killed too).

Just shows the amount of damage bots do to the game play experience.


I vividly remember it was just a handful of us, it was really sad.
So much more life now, the difference is just incredible, its actually interesting to be a Merchant nowadays, Im personally thankful to Mr.Shreegs for his initiative with the market.

and there's plenty of room left for more people to come on in and join the Market community.
LoreSpade Indigo
Diabolical Dominion
#34 - 2012-08-10 04:49:59 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
I simply devastate the margins on the item that is being botted and/or aggressively traded.

When I'm trading, I don't care whether it was a 2% or 200% profit on a sale, as long as I make a profit. (And even if I don't, I've got enough income from other sources that I don't mind taking a 1 or 2% loss, just to deprive the bot/.01 isker a profit, as well. ) I've got no interest in camping the station and playing the .01 isk game, nor do I want to just drop out of the market to give the other person a win (I'm competitive (read: Stubborn) like that), so I turn it into a no-win situation.

Basically, if I find that someone is camping something I'm selling and .01 isking me, I'll gouge the margin. First by a relatively small amount, 5 or 10% of the total margin on the item. If they undercut me within a short period of time, I'll gouge the margin by another 15-20%. If they do it again, another 25%. They either learn their lesson and stop undercutting me or they don't make anywhere near as much money on their investment as they had originally planned.

The entertainment value of knowing that I'm wrecking another player's margins is satisfying enough. If I still make a decent profit on the item, it's just icing on the cake.

Now, if they want to buy my goods and put them up for resale at their original level, I've got no problem with that, haha. I made money, they get stuck with having to go through the trouble of selling the goods and .01 isking like they enjoy, so everybody wins, haha.


I prefer dealing with your kind rather the .01 iskers. Just So i can buy your stuff :D
Valdearg Dragonblood
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#35 - 2012-08-10 18:55:07 UTC
LoreSpade Indigo wrote:

I prefer dealing with your kind rather the .01 iskers. Just So i can buy your stuff :D


Heh. And I don't mind that we both make profit in that regard. I've scaled back my gouging considerably, however, now that I've found a market with less vicious competition than the ones I was trying to edge my way into. I can actually update my orders in the morning and still have ~20% of them as the best offer when I get home at night. Much higher turnover = much more liquidity = no need to gouge profits just to liquidate my investments. Also, I'm much happier .01 isking when I only have to do it two or three times a day, as opposed to once every 10 minutes, hahah.
Drago Wolfbane Skorvalk
Great Black Hole of Eve
#36 - 2012-08-11 01:45:57 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
............

Edit: Also, upon rereading my original comments, I can see where they may have come off a bit standoffish, haha. (Read: I sounded like a total ****.) I must have been in a confrontational or otherwise agitated mood that day, lol. Sometimes it manages to seep into my comments undetected. >.<



I am actually pretty inexperienced in the game and am learning a lot everyday (3 months playing now). You made a great point about having ideal isk sitting around and as long as you are happy with your results then you are "correct". Anyone is playing it right if they are getting the results they wanted the way they wanted and are having fun. Keep up what works for you and see what you can do to improve it and have fun.

Good Luck and Have Fun!!

Pirate Happy Pirates we all be mateys!!!
Blurtmaster
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#37 - 2012-09-27 01:57:13 UTC
Well; I frequently met botting sctipts on various markets.

One way to filter them out is to filter through the logs and see if someone makes a change every hour, more than 20h of the 24h per day. This is in reference that people needs to sleep. (hopefully)

You can of course add more filters and add another cloumn to the database that just marks activity (I do not know the DB structure you have/use). Making a change with an almost exact time difference indicates a bot. So you can use a nice statistical program for deviance between changes and sort them out that way.

You might already have this in place - but these filters are a good combination for removing false positives.
MolotovBeats
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#38 - 2012-10-12 03:00:06 UTC
Valdearg Dragonblood wrote:
I simply devastate the margins on the item that is being botted and/or aggressively traded.

When I'm trading, I don't care whether it was a 2% or 200% profit on a sale, as long as I make a profit. (And even if I don't, I've got enough income from other sources that I don't mind taking a 1 or 2% loss, just to deprive the bot/.01 isker a profit, as well. ) I've got no interest in camping the station and playing the .01 isk game, nor do I want to just drop out of the market to give the other person a win (I'm competitive (read: Stubborn) like that), so I turn it into a no-win situation.

Basically, if I find that someone is camping something I'm selling and .01 isking me, I'll gouge the margin. First by a relatively small amount, 5 or 10% of the total margin on the item. If they undercut me within a short period of time, I'll gouge the margin by another 15-20%. If they do it again, another 25%. They either learn their lesson and stop undercutting me or they don't make anywhere near as much money on their investment as they had originally planned.

The entertainment value of knowing that I'm wrecking another player's margins is satisfying enough. If I still make a decent profit on the item, it's just icing on the cake.

Now, if they want to buy my goods and put them up for resale at their original level, I've got no problem with that, haha. I made money, they get stuck with having to go through the trouble of selling the goods and .01 isking like they enjoy, so everybody wins, haha.



Ah, so that's the imbecilic reasoning behind that gouging. Interesting to look into the mind of a moron.
Stigman Zuwadza
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#39 - 2012-10-12 03:21:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Stigman Zuwadza
This thread made me smile. Big smile

I was just going over my orders and I always have someone thats dropped their price by a stooooopid amount and I do what I always do ...0.01 isk them.

I was thinking, man, don't be that guy, it just doesn't work for you, then I come across this thread and find one of those guys. Big smile

I sometimes cringe when I have to follow a big cut with a 0.01 isk but I just assume they can't cope and will eventually drop out of the market and I win. Big smile

Let it be said though that I'll 0.01 isk erry day, all day (eeerrr at the weekends, wouldn't want you to think I was a total no lifer Big smile)...til I make a sale then I'll let someone else sell their shiz, gives me time to have a quick fap.

Fly safe. o7

It's broken and it's been broken for a long time and it'll be broken for some time to come.
Echo Belly
#40 - 2012-10-12 08:24:27 UTC
Stigman Zuwadza wrote:
This thread made me smile. (...)

Your post made me smile too, and so did those of the whining traders :)

Guys, will you ever understand one day that some people have much better to do than refreshing the orders window every 5 minutes and have "quick faps" ? ^^

The 0,01 ISK game is your game, but not every trader has to play by your rules. And honestly it's incredibly funny to put just one item for sale and watch the big traders compelled to follow the price dive like lemmings... and lose litterally billions and billions in a couple of hours just because of one player who wants to get rid of one item quickly.

By PvP standards that would be like losing a big fleet of T2/T3 ships to a T1 frigate... WTG l33t trad0rZ :P
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