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Trade Bots
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Belissaa
Clepsydra Bureau
#1 - 2011-10-19 08:20:20 UTC
I was inactive for last 4 months. Came back to trade in Jita. And noticed something im sure lots of other traders noticed too. Undercutting prices in semi-random way. Going for example from 55,993,332.02 to 55,992,122,87. It happens on most items i trade. Cant believe some1 is doing it for fun. Its easier to change the order by 1k, 1 or 0.01 ISK then type whole price again. Especialy if u have 100 sell/buy orders. My question is are those sell orders modified by bots. New kind of bots. And this semi-random price cutting is just a new alrotythm making its harder to detect.
Tekota
The Freighter Factory
#2 - 2011-10-19 08:34:05 UTC
Might be, might not.

Might just be result of spinning the wheel to change price, sure you can delicately click your wheel one notch down and reduce by 0.01 but it's far more satisfying to give it a good spin and where-ever it lands is the price you pay. It's like recreating a 1980's game show in the comfort of your own home.

It's been said before but if you think someone might be a bot then report them to CCP, there's a feature for doing so from the char info window if you know their identity or I think there's a petition category if you don't. Simple fact is we the end users will never know for sure as we don't have the server side info that CCP does, best we can do is make an educated guess and let CCP figure it out - whatever activities look botlike can invariably also be caused by humans being random, being mental, being glued to the computer 23 hours a day high on caffeine & amphetamines, or all three.
Amaranthia Lamarr
24th Imperial Crusade
Amarr Empire
#3 - 2011-10-19 10:39:00 UTC
Mouse-wheeler reporting in.
Adunh Slavy
#4 - 2011-10-19 10:59:10 UTC
Amaranthia Lamarr wrote:
Mouse-wheeler reporting in.


+1

Use the wheel, don't have to type anything.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
Chevalleis
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2011-10-19 11:54:56 UTC
The darn thing reduces the price even when I spin it forwards.
BornToDieAnotherDay
Tarazed Technology
#6 - 2011-10-19 12:06:08 UTC
Mouse-wheeler.

Sometimes I'm also worried about the price changing by the time I update mine, so I do it by more than 0.01 just to make sure, which is easiest done by mouse wheel spam.
Plyn
Uncharted.
#7 - 2011-10-19 20:52:01 UTC
Not a mouse wheeler myself, but I often will make significant changes to my prices just to mess with the other traders.

Market bots are an insidious, evil thing in this game. However, it's illogical to think they would cut their profit to avoid imitating something that most living, breathing players of the game do. You changed your order by 0.01 and no one claimed you were a bot, did they?
Borkers
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2011-10-19 23:05:29 UTC
I set goofy prices fairly often in hopes of confusing my competitor, making him drop his own prices by too small a margin to actually undercut mine. Also to make the price distinctive so I can more easily tell which order is mine in the list. And sometimes it just makes me giggle.
malaire
#9 - 2011-10-20 09:05:08 UTC  |  Edited by: malaire
It could also be someone copy-pasting prices from external trading application.

My private app currently uses logic that if competitor changes price a lot, it suggests 0.01 change for me and if competitor starts 0.01 ISKing it suggest random smallish change. (The app only shows suggested new price for me which I then copy-paste into modify-order window so nothing illegal here.)

Belissaa wrote:
Cant believe some1 is doing it for fun. Its easier to change the order by 1k, 1 or 0.01 ISK then type whole price again. Especialy if u have 100 sell/buy orders.


Since I can change the source-code of my app, and 95% of time I just copy-paste those prices, it is just as easy for me to change the order by 0.01 ISK, 1k ISK, random amount, or according to any other logic I care to program into it.

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Belissaa
Clepsydra Bureau
#10 - 2011-10-20 12:47:02 UTC
I just made a small calculation on time efficiency. To roll the price down to the new vaule (below the value set by another trader, i needed 10s. with .01isk vaules on) lets say im slow and dumb and every1 else does it in 5s. If u add 10s for each order to check the price, find your order press ok and so on u need 15s for each order. That would mean that if u want to check the prices of all your orders every 5min your max order count is 20 buy/sell orders which is pretty low. And my prices are undercutted constantly very fast on most of sell/buy orders - i have usually 40-50 orders on each alt in different hubs. Player / trader base didnt grow that much in last 4 month to make me believe thats the cause. Im not whining. Its just a game. But its much more frustrating now than it was before.
Tekota
The Freighter Factory
#11 - 2011-10-20 13:08:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Tekota
And if Jita routinely has >1000 players at any given time, and if just a fifth of those are attending to orders aggressively then 20 * 200 = 4,000 updates to orders every five minutes. Or one every 0.075 seconds.

Now sure, there are a lot of different items to spread those orders around but is it not possible that your four month abscence finds you temporarily lacking in knowledge of current niche markets and subsequently you find yourself trading in items which are better known and hence more heavily competed for?

Now none of this means that what you're encountering are not bots but whilst reasonable explanations exist your only recourse is to make an educated guess and report to CCP who are the only ones with the logs to know for sure.


EDIT:

As an addendum, without wanting to discuss bots too deeply as it's naturally going to be an icky subject, I'd expect screen reading market bots to actually perform slower than humans in most instances in that they have to wait for the same windows to open up as we do, only they have to factor in a safety time window to ensure bots aren't clicking on windows which haven't opened and loaded fully yet. Humans adapt and can counter lag and the like, whereas bots must always work on the assumption that every window will open at the slowest possible pace. The advantage of a bot in Eve would not be it's speed but it's lack of any need for sleep/food/social contact etc.
Adunh Slavy
#12 - 2011-10-20 13:16:16 UTC
I do have to say, and do not take this as an insult, that the 0.01 game is for suckers. The time you spend messing around with prices is better spent looking into new markets and doing some basic research about those markets. The 0.01 game is playing the spread, and that's pretty much it.

Trade profit is based on one simple economic idea known as "transaction cost". That is the "value added", in Eve a trader can increase value by moving goods though space and time. The only thing the spread play profits off is the convenience you are providing to the person selling to you, and the person buying from you.

Spend your time finding ways to increase the transaction cost and less time wasting your efforts on the peanuts. Of course I am a crack pot and no one should listen to me, ever.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
xxArchangelxx
Open University of Celestial Hardship
Art of War Alliance
#13 - 2011-10-20 13:33:43 UTC
Adunh Slavy wrote:
I do have to say, and do not take this as an insult, that the 0.01 game is for suckers. The time you spend messing around with prices is better spent looking into new markets and doing some basic research about those markets. The 0.01 game is playing the spread, and that's pretty much it.

Trade profit is based on one simple economic idea known as "transaction cost". That is the "value added", in Eve a trader can increase value by moving goods though space and time. The only thing the spread play profits off is the convenience you are providing to the person selling to you, and the person buying from you.

Spend your time finding ways to increase the transaction cost and less time wasting your efforts on the peanuts. Of course I am a crack pot and no one should listen to me, ever.


I can confirm, he is a crackpot .....
Adunh Slavy
#14 - 2011-10-20 13:34:17 UTC
xxArchangelxx wrote:
I can confirm, he is a crackpot .....



LOL

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
Belissaa
Clepsydra Bureau
#15 - 2011-10-21 12:03:16 UTC
Btw it would be nice if the prices were editable directly from order page. Without having to righ-click "modify.. bla bla". If the price was changed - confirmation window and done. Much more simple and less unnecesary clicking.
Kara Books
Deal with IT.
#16 - 2011-10-21 12:51:02 UTC
I posted a few items for Amarr that have market bots on them here

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=24042&find=unread



Now for the random numbers, I noticed when fighting in a station over a list of 50 items at a time, tossing in random numbers just makes the other person tired faster.

you can do this with your mouse wheel.


Market bots, remember are made to make as much ISK as possible, so I would see no sense in that.

the only other 2 time when you see BIG jumps.

1.
you run into me trying to hike up or down a market bots prices to well, screw it out of ISK, be it not much but, when I want the item for myself I will hike prices by 2-20% at a time.

2.
When say,I have, 50 Navy Omen's I want to sell, so I will hike up the buy order prices by as far as they will go and then unload a butload on the buy orders (market manipulation)