EVE General Discussion

best tip in the whole world if your in a market hub jita,rens,amarr, and whatever the gallante one is. never ever ever trust contracts in local. 90% of them are scams. always make sure you check the contracts, what the it has the price the whole shebang,

check market prices the works.

Or better yet just close local.

Underlined the important bit OP.

You can avoid margin trade scams by understanding the "true" price of items. Look at market history, go back several months, you can see average figures. Compare one or more regions prices. If the buy price is substantially higher you need to ask yourself if this is a patch speculation price hike or a margin scam.

If the buy prices are consistent over several regions and you know it's an item affected by a recent patch like ice prioducts or battleships - or something people may be speculating on such as T1 Industrials due to the forthcoming patch - you have enough information to make a reasoned decision.

You can also use eve-central for price checking across all regions, although it is not guaranteed to be timely, but for high volume items it's generally gives a good idea of prices.

Also, given you said you are a month old player, how could you have lost a large sum of isk?

Black Dranzer is absolutely right. Everyone coming down on Jonathon Oday for being greedy or naive, is off base. This was NOT an instance where you'd expect to be tricked by an IN GAME MECHANIC.

I'm not an in game trader, when I see a buy order on the game market system that is set up by CCP, NOT a player, I trust that the system, MANAGED BY CCP, is not going to screw me over. I didn't know that you could put up a buy order in the system, MANAGED BY CCP, without enough escrow to cover it.

Everyone getting all haughty and snickering at Jonathon Oday, is off base. He was a new player, there HAS to be a minimal safe threshold for someone that inexperienced. He was not tricked by another player, he was blindsided by CCP and the system THEY implemented.

This is a game. I know that. Being pissed about something that happens to you in a game has nothing to do with not being able to distinguish reality from fantasy. You know what? I invest REAL money and REAL time to play this game. The "sandbox" concept means it gives freedom to all the PLAYERS to do what they like, not for the devs to find ways to bring you down as well.

Finally, CCP got the concept wrong. I do margin trading in real life, and this is NOT how "margin trading" works. The person placing a buy order on margin doesn't simply get his/her order cancelled, and then get to walk away, while the seller is left holding the bag. The consequences of not meeting your obligations are to the buyer, the risk is NOT to the seller. You all are talking about greed, well guess what, true trading OPPORTUNITIES present themselves from time to time, and people try to make the most of them.

There is no other reason for this skill to even exist in game, other than to allow people to implement this scam. CCP got this one wrong. If I get scammed by another player, I'm ok with that, I expect they're out to get me. I'm not ok with an unknowable, in game mechanic (not being able to verify full escrow coverage), programmed into the game, causing damage and taking me completely by surprise.

This "Tough luck, figure it out" attitude from many of you is off base as well. You keep harping on the fact that this isn't real life, yup, you're right, it's a game, and games have RULES that people get to learn ahead of time. And new people are hardly expected to know all of them, or even most of them right away.

It's not the first broken mechanic in a game, but it's still a broken mechanic.

Not quite, he purchased an overpriced piece of tat (the scam) with the hopes of making a killing on it by selling it to a ridiculously priced buy order (the bait), the buy order failed because the character who placed it didn't have enough ISK. OP is now down some cash and up an expensive piece of tat.

Stuff, junk, garbage, trash, useless item.

Sure there can be. For new players at least. New players don't have much money to lose, so their downside risk is very limited. That's the benefit of holding long positions.

Of course, if they borrow money against their future income (i.e. buy plex against the idea that they will no longer pay a sub in the future), that leverage allows them to dramatically increase that risk, but then that's just the nature of leverage.



I'm having an Econ pedantry funtime kick.

I fell for the escrow scam in my second week (not so long ago). I was suspicious of 'too good to be true', but I remember distinctly thinking 'it's a buy order. It's there. I just fill it, I'm good, right?'

At that stage, I'd been warned in Rookie Help not tp trust cobtracts in Jota local etc, but I assumed that since this was through the market it was legit.

I think a stickie on the New Players forum specifically explaining the kibd of scams that exist in Eve would be plenty enough warning to noobs to put all onus on them for falling for scams, but the 'highlight escrow buys not covered' idea is fantastic too. Would that hurt legit margin traders?

Yes it would.
As the game will have a hard time to decide which one of the orders is the one not covered. So it will finally just show all orders as not completely covered ignoring the fact that for say 80% coverage is actually there.

Fix what, exactly? Giving people free hints about the skills of other players does not stop them from buying overpriced goods, which is where the “problem” actually resides. Buy orders being removed for lack of ISK is no different from buy order being removed after being fulfilled by someone else or buy orders being removed because the buyer says so or buy orders being removed because they've expired. None of it is a problem.

And no, constantly polling the wallet of everyone who has an order on the market every time anyone looks at the market breaks more things than it could ever hope to fix. A better solution is for people to learn that buy orders are not promises and are never guaranteed.

The seller (because it's the seller we're talking about since margin trading affects buy orders) has no say in the matter. The order will be filled by the one with the best price. If that happens to be someone who's buying on margin, then the seller will sell to that buyer regardless of the seller's opinion on margin trading.

Also, there is functionally no difference between legitimate and “illegitimate” buy orders, and irrespective of their legitimacy, they can all fail to give the seller the trade he was expecting.

Oh ok, so this scam cant affect someone who is legitimately trying to sell an item? It only works on a ridiculous "set up" item? If im trying to sell a billion in tritanium to a buy order the transaction will go thru rite? unless they dont have enough money, in which case i'll get back my trit anyway rite?