Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In the Real World, Businesses deal with non-guaranteed buy orders all the time. Why should we implement some utopic marketplace in our dystopic EvE-verse?

Examples:
Have you ever ordered drive through only to discover you don't have your wallet?
Ever have a prescription filled but never picked it up?
Ever had PIzza prank delivered to someone?

RL businesses, just like traders in EvE, can implement good business practices to avoid future losses (like researching the true value of your goods, as well as their sales volume and volatility). And unlike the above scenarios, when the buy order fails in EvE, you keep the goods, which are NOT perishable, meaning it is even easier to avoid losses like the above.

There is no reason we need guaranteed buy orders... and the solution to the "market trade scam" is simply....

Tell everyone that buy orders are NOT GUARANTEED.

It is really simple!!!

I don't think repeating your arguments makes them more valid. The eve market is incomparable with your pizza pranks. There are broker fees, so the broker should guarantee that his orders are coverd. There is a system in place, that takes an escrow from your wallet (min 24%) if you place a buy order. All of your examples are not compareable with this system.

EDIT: And don't get me wrong. I'm not pissed because I was scammed or something. In my opinion this is just a stupid mechanic. If you scam someone with a "2 PLEX for 1.4 Million" contract it's totaly fine. But showing orders in the market, that are invalid is just stupid.

wrong

Pretty bad service for all the taxes we pay.

Ever pre-ordered a playstation 4? Say, from bestbuy? They require a $25 deposit for the $400 dollar item. That's a 6.25% deposit, compared to our 24% deposit. If you can't afford the playstation, you can then return the "pre-order" for a full refund on your deposit.

How is this "different"?

Best Buy plays the broker, and assumes the risk that they won't be able to offload the playstations they ordered for you. You don't even have broker fees to pay, although some companies keep the deposit if you don't pick up the order.




Orders on the market are not "invalid" UNTIL they fail. Before that, they are standard buy orders, and any competent trader in eve knows the order can fail because funds aren't available.

To be frank, you don't need, nor deserve, guaranteed buy orders...

Many Margin Scammers will use high value, single item buy orders to create their scheme. This is often coupled with contracts to sell their goods, or with goods located in a different station in system.

Before I touch on the margin trading scam itself, I would like to support calls for the ability to decide whether or not to use the margin trading skill when placing orders. Currently, once you've trained the skill, you are forced to use it on every single buy order, forever. This has discouraged me from training the skill at all, because while it might be useful for some orders, it would not be useful in all situations, and there is no way of going back if the pattern of my business changes at some point in the future.

This would not have to add extra clicks to the process for players placing their typical order type, as defaults could be used as they are for duration and range.


Now, in relation to the margin trading scam, I see support for the scam basically arguing along the lines that the buyer should be able to tell that the order is unrealistically priced, and orders are never guaranteed to be available.

I would argue that there is a significant difference between losing out on a trade because another player beat you to the order, and losing out because the other player was able use the market interface to lie to you about their intention to buy.

Similarly, while players should be expected to do their homework to identify that an order is an outlier, there is no way for them to tell the difference between a margin trading scam they should avoid, and a genuine mis-typed or ill-informed order that they should take advantage of.

While lying to other players is allowed (and in some cases positively encouraged) within Eve, this is generally in the context of one-to-one dealings between players. In these situations it is generally clear that the game mechanics are not actively preventing a lie, and you are able to determine who the other character is in order to be able to make an informed decision about whether you wish to trust that character or not.

The margin trading scam is different, in that it allows you to lie to other players anonymously, and within a framework that strongly implies that the declaration of intent to buy is genuine (even if that is not strictly the case). I cannot think of any other game mechanics in Eve that allow this.

The balance that needs to be struck is between allowing legitimate margin traders to place orders which they genuinely intend to fulfill while efficiently leveraging their available isk, and preventing scammers from being able to use it to anonymously lie to the market.

Marking orders placed by the margin trading skill doesn't really fit with this balance, which is why I am not in favour of it. It still does not let you identify the character behind the order so that you can make the informed decision about trust that you can in other lying venues within Eve. It also raises the index of suspicion against legitimate margin orders, significantly reducing their utility.

Market fines for failed orders are unlikely to be effective, because in the typical margin trading scam the scammer has made their profit before the sale to their buy order is attempted. If the fine was of a fixed value, this would disproportionately impact newer traders while being insignificant against the potential value of a margin trade scam. A fine based on a proportion of the order value would likely hit legitimate traders far harder than the scammers, as the scammers are generating much larger margins than are achievable normally and would therefore be more able to absorb the fine.

This brings us back to the principle of trying to determine whether the player genuinely intends to fulfill the margin order or not, and the balance between the protection this offers vs the onerousness against the margin trader. This principle is essentially what is being targeted by all the proposals around cancelling orders when certain conditions are met - the only difference is the isk commitment used to judge intent.

I feel there is a very strong argument for saying that an order should be cancelled if there is insufficient isk on hand (escrow + wallet) to fulfill a trade of the minimum volume of the order. At this point, no possible trade against the order could be successful so it would be very hard to argue that there is a genuine intent to continue servicing the order. This would not act as full protection against margin trading scams, but it would discourage them and limit the size of the impact they can have. It also provides a trader with the opportunity to adopt behaviors that further mitigate risk (such as selling in batches of the minimum order volume, doing one minimum volume order to identify the character behind the order etc), at the cost of potentially losing out to a player who dumps onto the order less cautiously.

At the other end of the spectrum, the requirement proposed by CCP Rise (that you must always have sufficient isk to back an order) seems to be very limiting to legitimate uses of the margin trading skill (including various brokerage strategies that improve the efficiency of markets). While it does offer stronger discouragement of margin trading scams, I'm not convinced that it is a sufficient improvement to warrant the significant additional limitations on legitimate traders.



Sure, if you order something once and then don't complete, the RL business would generally suck it up. But if you came in and did it every single day, that RL business is quickly going to realise that you are not a legitimate customer and refuse to do business with you. The anonymity of the Eve market and the inability of the market to self-regulate intent in the same way as such human decision-making prevents that from being a viable option, hence why other options like minimum collateral levels are being explored.

This is very simple, solution #1 is close to the right answer.

Deactivate (hide from the market interface and make temporarily ineffective, not outright cancel) buy orders when the balance of the relevant wallet falls below (Minimum Quantity * Price) - Escrow. Reactivate when the wallet's balance rises back to the same threshold.

No margin trading scams appear on the market, real traders aren't affected.

Instead of cancelling the order, can you just hide it while the buyer doesn't have enough money to cover buying the minimum volume? A hidden order will not be visible in the market window, and won't be attempted to be sold to. When the buyer acquires enough ISK to cover the minimum quantity, the order will appear again.

This does nothing to legitimate traders, as your order is only hidden while you wouldn't be able to utilize it anyway. Even better, your order won't be cancelled and you won't lose broker fees if you temporarily run out of money and someone tries to sell to you. Scams would be obviously eliminated.

I agree that scams using deceit, misplaced trust or false advertising are okay. Scams using faults of deficient UI are bad. (And the correct solution is not to hand out bans, but to fix the UI problems in the first place.)

"Don't count on the order being displayed being there tomorrow" (or in an hour) is a good rule. "Don't count on the order being displayed being there *now*" is bad UI.

I would like to have this option, too.