Skill Discussions

You know I have this knife and I can do all kinds of stuff with it, slice bread, carve a boat out of bark, make a whistle out of a branch of a willow tree, make some kindling, cut a rubber hose. I can also carve the eyes of someone from theirs sockets with it. You're saying that we should ban knives because of that one bad thing. Silly.

Oh and one more thing, just because you use UPPER CASE a lot does not make you post any less full of drivel.

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Some simple solutions:

Change the colour of buy orders where insufficient funds exist to cover the purchase to red.
Straight away it obvious something is up with that particular buy order. Anyone asking why in local, corp etc would find out very quickly.

Also it's my understanding that the skill used only covers a percentage of the deposit. Say for example 80% at level 5 ( that's probably too high ). So another solution would be if your buy order fails due to insufficient funds then you forefit a portion of the funds you did deposit to the seller without the seller giving you the goods.

Using my made up numbers of : the skill at 5 reducing the deposit by 80%, and choosing a default penalty of 50% this is how a typical market trading scam would look now.
Buy order for 1 billion costs 20% ( 100%-80% ) to put up ( ignoring fees for simplicity ).
= 200 million deposit.

Another player comes along and tries to sell the requested item. Sale fails due to insufficient funds.
Seller ( who is the victim under current rules ) gets 50% of the deposit = 100Million simply transferred to their wallet.
Scamming buyer gets the remainder 100M refunded.
The buy order is cancelled and removed automatically straight away ( to stop it being repeatedly milked ).
Item does not change hands.

This scam type would simply stop overnight.

To minimise the impact on genuine traders you could do a few things:
The rule only comes into effect for buy orders over a certain value, say 500 millionish - or choose a different number.
The penalty could be capped at any amount - even a low amount around 10 million would hurt the scammers.

Add the two together - red font for insufficient funds in the buy order lsitings, and an ISK penalty for a failed buy order and the scam would no longer be viable.

I think the real problem we aren't addressing here is that the Republic Fleet is selling the Astronautics Skillbook for 400k near Hek. That's a real travesty.

No ISK faucet at all.
The fine is paid out of and deducted from the deposit initially put up by the buyer.
Also the buy order is cancelled upon failing - preventing repeated deliberate milking.

When a buy order fails nothing has been lost, unless some less weary player bought some junk at a hugely inflated price precisely because the buy order led them to believe they could make a quick profit.
Also if a player has spent time and effort getting the good together, shipping them, then they are out of pocket - money and effort.

If you want to argue that falling for the scam is the penalty for being less aware of what's going on combined with greed then I would accept that as valid. If you want to argue that it shouldn't be changed because it would interfere with a valid scam tactic and scamming is a part of eve then I would accept that too. But I do find it disingenuous to look at a failed buy order in isolation, especially when we are discussing them in the context of the scam and pretend there's nothing going on. You're obviously not stupid, so I can only assume that little bit of crooked thinking on your behalf is you trying to protect a vested interest.
If you want to argue that it's a valid scam tactic and shouldn't be changed because it would interfere with a existing gameplay then do so.

Your middle point has the most merit - low skill means higher up front deposits and greater losses on a buy order fail.
Maybe use the skill level to determine the ISK fine on fail as a percentage?
e.g fine on fail = ( (skill level -1 ) *5 ) percent of the deposit..
This would give fines of:
Skill Fine % of deposit
0 0 ( Already hard coded in by game mechanics - ignores formula above )
1 0
2 5
3 10
4 15
5 20

That's only example numbers, for illustration. Obviously CCP would play with and use their own numbers.

Alternatively remove the fine completely if a character has completed trades over a certain threshold over the last 30 days.
Or divide total value of all items sold by total qty of item sold for the selling character in the last xxx days to spot those characters specialising in low quantity high value items - and only apply it to them.

I believe the correct figuer is 76%. Or 24%, depending on what side you look at it from.

Or you just use common sense and do not buy items on the market/contracts that will be filled to a buy order that is highly overvalued and has a minimum item quantity. Simple as that.

Neither have I because i know of it but it also keeps me from relying on any of the buy orders to try to fill them THE REASON IT KILLS THE SYSTEM = WHAT I JUST SAID!!!

idiots


I cant put up a buy order for something rarely traded, to try to boost it, because people think like you and I do, well they dont think as logically as me.

for all i know, you're trying to defend your illegitimate use of this, as in you being one of the culprits

If only margin trading gave the buyer the item without paying the seller the money, that would be a valid comparison.



Good to see you're keeping EVE and the real world well differentiated...





"I hate people who try to poison the well with baseless accusations"

"Pay no attention to the bucket of cyanide I'm dropping in the watering hole"

I critique what I have in front of me. You made a proposal, I pointed out a flaw.

Now you're implying that I'm a dishonest thinker for not editing your proposal for you.



For anyone to be constructive in solving a problem, there first has to be a problem. Nobody's bothered to explain what exactly the problem with the Margin Trading skill is.

There's been a lot of bleating about somehow deserving to automatically sell things at above market value prices just because you bought from an overpriced order, but no explanation of who exactly gets harmed by a buy order failing, or what's special about buy orders disappearing due to an escrow failure rather than being beaten to the deal.

But hey, there's that attempt to poison the well again, to disguise the fact that you can't put together a cogent rebuttal. (Hint: It's not the calling me smart that's poisoning the well. It's the implication, which you just repeated, that I have an untoward interest in the subject.)



You should see the new model of this scam then, an overpriced WTB contract for a Officer whatever and a T2 BPO. No Margin skill needed. Someone buys the officer whatever and T2 BPC and whoops.

The Interface actually gives no misleading information. People do tend to misinterpret what a buy order actually is, but that's their problem, not the interface's.



The game interface provides all the information needed to clearly identify and avoid this scam. This information is presented in a way that guarantees that it's been presented to anyone who does their normal due diligence before investing in an item. What more do you want?