Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Background

Currently market orders may be denominated in multiples of 0.01 ISK. Changing the value of a sell or buy order costs only a tiny amount of tax.

These two facts mean that trade hubs are dominated by bots (and traders) constantly engaged in 0.01 ISK battles. This is poor gameplay, discourages casual traders and massively advantages bot trading.

Proposal

I propose two changes as follows:

1. All market orders be denominated in multiples of 0.1% of the current average regional market price rather than multiples of 0.01 ISK

2. Changes to the value of a market order incur tax on the total value of the order, not the change in value of the order.

How would that work in practice?

Imagine you wanted to list a module which currently had a regional average price of 1,000,000 ISK, and a lowest market sell order of 1,100,000 ISK At present you could creat a sell order at 1,099,999.99 ISK, a mere 0.01 isk lower than the current lowest sell order.

Following the proposed changes you would only be able to list in multiples of 0.1% of the market average price, which is 1,000,000 ISK * 0.001 = 1,000ISK. This would mean to be the lowest sell order you would need to list at 1,099,000.00 ISK, 1,000 lower than the existing lowest sell order.

If your competitor then decided he wanted to edit his existing listing to beat your price, not only would he have to lower the price to 1,098,000.00 ISK, but he would pay the same tax as he would if he was making a new listing of that value.

Big picture effects on the market

- Minimal change in overall liquidity. A 0.1% minimum change in price isn't a real deterrent to trading.
- Significant decrease in "false liquidity" (changing of price of existing orders to beat competition) as it largely wouldnt be needed or cost effective.
- Greatly increased price fluctuation over the short term. If every "0.01" isk change is instead a price change of 0.1%, very quickly a glut of supply will create a signficant drop in price (and vice versa).
- As a result of the above points, there would be lots more profit to be made actively trading.
- Bots lose their advantage. Bots currently benefit from a system that encourages tedium. There is currently NO disadvantage except boredom/wasted time to constantly refreshing your orders to 0.01ISK lower than your competitors. This would fix that.

Tl;dr

Orders must be in multiples of 0.1% of the average price of the item
Changing the price of an order costs similar tax to setting up a new order
As a result, 0.01isking dies, and constant (but costless) competition to be the lowest order dies with it. All price changes have to be meaningful and worthwhile, not just an artificial way of being the top listed order.

No. If you aren't willing to deal with competition then you shouldn't be trading. Don't like the .01 isk game? Don't use it. Want to casually trade? Don't do it in Jita. There are lots of other slower hubs. As far as bots are concerned: Prove it. If you have proof turn it over to CCP and have them ban the bot. Until then chances are it is some of the other 2000+ people in Jita who probably have the max 300+ orders.

I monitor the prices of several hundred high liquidity items in Jita IV-4. Some of the quickest trading have a frequency of several thousand trade order price updates an hour.

Trust me when I say that several thousand changes of 0.1% value changes is going to create a MUCH more interesting market than the same number of 0.01 isk changes.

It wouldn't.
It would create even bigger advantages for bots that place orders for small quantity of units of 1 unit.

This is already present because of small advantages it brings.
If you get what you want it will make bots dominate the market even more.

You really didn't think this through did you?

If bots are forced to split orders thats actually a massive benefit to legitimate traders. The bot/player can save tax by splitting orders into many small ones, but split orders are actually an advantage to a legitimate trader trying to compete with them as it leaves a gap into which a competing order can be made to hoover up any high-volume demand.

e.g. if a bot or player or whatever has one order of 5 units at 997.08 ISK and 99 more orders of 5 units each sitting at 1000 ISK its not currently updating (to save tax), then a competing trader can stick an order in anywhere between 997.09 and 999.00 and will sell to any buyer with demand greater than 5.

Similarly, if a bot/player is wasting 100 orders on low volumes of the same market good, that hugely limits the number of different goods it can trade at once due to the order limit

If you can't handle being undercut by a penny....

get out of Jita

There are SIMPLE ways to beat market bots