Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Here is the dilemma: a scammer puts up their 25% margin for a worthless good at a stupid price and fixed quantity. They then put their stockpile of worthless items a few jumps out for 1/10th the price (still inflated compared to the market). Someone notices a potential arbitrage opportunity - buys the goods and then tries to sell at the fixed quality price only to discover the order fails because the buyer doesn't have sufficient ISK to cover their margin call.

That player is then out both what they paid for the goods they bought PLUS commission on the sales transaction because the existing game mechanics establishes a sell order at the inflated prices so the person is now out twice. The scammer however is only out the commission and I think they get their escrow funds back once the trade fails.

In real-world markets you aren't trading with other traders directly but you are using a Market Maker in the middle that is assuming the risk for any items you buy or sell regardless of whether this is done on margin or not. There are established rules in place to prevent exactly this type of trading from occurring.

As much as I would like to suggest the idea of an Eve Stock eXchange, I realize the mechanics simply don't allow for 150,000 separate exchanges which is essentially what we have currently but without the market makers in the middle. I also realise that the existing mechanics don't allow for people to go into "debt" as part of their gaming. In real-world markets however buyers and sellers leverage debt all the time and the markets account for that as part of the trading rules.

What I would like to propose however are a couple of things that I think are doable and would fit the existing mechanics without too much programming effort.

1) ESX Trading Rule Changes: Establish some new trading rules that would require trades to meet minimum criteria before being accepted. For example,

• establish an ESX status indicator (-10 to 10) that informs people of the player's trading status and mitigates the level of trading proficiency one has has in the marketplace;


• The ESX status indicator would be the same across all three alts allowed on a single account;


• not being able to place margin calls that are more than xx% of your total assets ( a very reasonable restriction that all financial institutions use as the basis for how much you can margin at any given point in time ) based on your ESX status (-10 = 0%, 0 = 25%, +10 = 50%);


• if a trade fails due to the buying party not having sufficient funds, being able to offer the goods based on a price level that is consistent with what funds the buyer does have available (including escrow).;


• if a trade is still not possible then checking with the seller if they still want to continue placing their order on the open market;


• penalize the player's ESX status for each NSF trade that occurs on their account;

2) New Skill: Margin Trading Specialist - the purpose of this skill would be to allow people to margin more than 50% of their total net worth. So Levels 1-5 might be (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) which would be a guarenteed amount added to your ESX percentage even if you had an ESX of -10 and would require Margin Trading Level V as a pre-requisite.

So the calculation would look something like this for margin trades

Maximum Trade Value = Total Assets x (ESX Status % Value + Margin Trading Specialist % Value )

So if I had 10B in assets in eve, an ESX status of 0, and MST Lvl III my maximum trading limit would be

10B x (50% + 30%) = 8B

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Korr
o/

I find it interesting that if CCP catches someone making ISK in a way that violates the EULA (usually botting) they will not only take away all their ISK but actually put them in debt. Their wallet will have a negative balance.

Why can't this be done to margin trading scammers as well? Don't have that ten million ISK to cover your margin trading scam bill? No, you don't go to zero ISK, you now have negative ten million ISK. All further buy orders of any kind are hereby automatically cancelled by the SCC until your balance is positive again.

Problem solved.

Because it would get used to make free isk. Simply Biomass the character with negative balance and train another one.

Exactly, works in both cases. Some free isk are better than others?

Because in one case you transfer the ISK, while in the other the negative wallet is a consequense of CCP deleting ISK from a wallet. Transfer of ISK means infinite free ISK for some players at the expense of dummy characters/accounts. Deleted ISK means ISK is only removed from a player and no one gains anything.

Wouldn't make a difference. Ability biomass is irrelevant.

Because MT scams don't break any rules.

For this scam to work, the buyer needs to buy over priced items first. If they rely on the buy order pricing, as a true indication of value, then they only have themselves to blame. Why should the MT skill be blamed for their bad investment and the user punished?

At least CCP could change the automatic creation of the Sell Order when the buy order cannot be executed.

This automatic sell order creation makes really no sense !

because in one case it's an EULA violation, and in the other case it's someone being an idiot? Scams are allowed, this one is about as fresh and original as the old 'send me ISK and I will double it!' game.

The market is here and has been here for ten years. It works pretty well, I do believe, and has worked pretty well for all of those ten years. I am confident that the market will work pretty well for another ten years to come.

There's no reason to change it.