Player Features and Ideas Discussion

TLDR; Players who create buy/sell orders on the EVE's public market should be visible, rather than 'anonymous until interacted with'. This would improve the game significantly, with relatively little programming effort on CCP's part.


One thing I have always wondered about it why it isn't possible to identify which players are creating market orders?
After all, mere presence in a system generates a visible signature, warning all players in the form of 'local radar'? Why are industrial players using the public marketplace tools for profit - exempt?

It is not necessary to cloak participants in the market in a layer of secrecy. As the marketplace is a public tool, all participants in it should be visible in one form or another. Transparency is a good thing, for the reasons described below.

I'm NOT proposing to allow players to buy and sell to specific trade orders as this would fundamentally change the way the market works. I AM suggesting that the name of the player who posted a buy/sell order would be listed on the market window (or at least an option exists to reveal this information ) - for anyone who browses the market to see.

Yes, I understand that you can learn the identity of a buy/sell order by triggering the order. However, in most situations this is impractical - especially if the items being traded are expensive. Yes, I understand that many players handle market orders through market alts. It still would provide valuable information to the buyer/seller, and make patterns in market participation much more apparent.

Advantages:
--1. Identification of market bots becomes FAR more easily accomplished, without requiring players to engage in direct transactions with them to file a petition, which imposes a needless cost on the petitioner.

--2. CCP was soliciting for information on how to handle margin trade scams. Something like this, while not solving the problem completely - would make known 'scammers' much more visually apparent on the market interface. Providing additional information to the market participant is far more appealing than eliminating margin trading completely.

--3. Industrial warfare - players/alts of players that attempt to influence/corner/dominate a trade hub (or group of trade hubs) are more easily identified and possibly targeted for aggressive action outside of the market. Conflict driver in highsec.

I understand this exposes industrial players to more in-game risk - possibly forcing them to cloak their activities behind a layer of alts. But the benefits of exposing bots/scams and increased player interactivity would far outstrip the minor costs to these already very wealthy players.

Simple: because it makes no difference. You can't choose who you can buy from anyway, and that's not going to change because it would make the markets inefficient.

None of those are particularly needed and are already covered by other mechanics.

Also, F&I →

Like I said, I'm not interested in changing how the market works, only the amount of information that is available to those browsing the market.

Increasing the amount of public information about buy/sell orders definitely would make a difference.

At a superficial level, a miner may or may not wish to buy an Exhumer placed on the market by someone who just ganked their Mackinaw. They could easily alter their choice of marketplace, or timing of their purchase if that information is available to them.

At a more complex level, consider the simple relatively recent addition of implants-info to pod-killmails.
Would you say that 'nothing changed'?

Because in terms of gameplay, almost nothing did. The implants are still destroyed 100% of the time, the pod is still dead. No player is materially enriched - more or less - than before implants were included on podmails.

Yet there is now an entire sub-catagory of suicide ganking built around randomly podding players in shuttles and noobships - simply because more information is now available.

Stating that providing more market information to the player base 'would make no difference' is surprisingly dense.
I could see many situations where player behavior inside and outside the market would be significantly different, simply by having access to this kind of information without being forced to buy or sell to the orders first.

You said 'because it makes no difference'. Please explain what you meant. Maybe our definitions of 'it' differ.

In my universe, 'It' is the simple act of providing a tab on the market window that identifies the 'owner' of the market order, visible to all.

When I said I am not interested in changing 'how the market works', I meant that the market functions in a similar fashion - the highest buy orders and lowest sell orders are automatically filled, in the order in which they exist.

The actual mechanics of how the market 'works' will not change, nor am I interested in that sort of change, so lets not waste time with that particular straw man.

You don't need to change the transactional workings of the market to change how individuals respond to the information the market provides. I've already illustrated that for you.

Please explain why such a change would 'make no difference' , as you seem to suggest it would be a pointless waste of time for CCP to address it?

I fail to see how it is 'redundant'. Currently the only way to learn about other participants in the market is to buy and sell with them directly - and this is a heavy burden to impose on a player if the items traded are multiple massive stockpiles of materials - or expensive items such as Jump Freighters.

We could refuse business to people when we disagree with their...choice of play style. Just like Arizona.

Not only that, the player you might be trying to keep from buying from could just push sells orders through an alt you don't know about.

The proposed change would seriously affect market interaction. With locator agents and watch lists you could very easily work out who is alt thats related to hauling and selling huge tons of sleeper loots for example, or regular officer mods.

Makes piracy easier. Makes trading riskier.

Certainly, it makes trading riskier. It facilitates market PVP - outside of simple .01 games and attempt to manipulate/corner markets - by helping move the warfare outside of the marketplace. Supply chains could be more easily identified if players were not required to first buy or sell to orders to learn the identity of the owner. The market would lend itself to greatly simplified information gathering for traders and non-traders alike.



OK, this is your quote in its entirety.
I've already demonstrated how it would 'make a difference'.

You stated that a player cannot 'choose' who to buy from.
This is false.

I'll provide another simple hypothetical to disprove your statement.

Suppose a trade alt is named "AryanNations69" or something to that effect. It could have a significant impact on the number of players willing to buy/sell an item from that player. A player may choose to postpone a purchase until another order underbids. A player may also choose to buy from another station.

If that hypothetical racist market alt is involved in trading in high-priced, low-turnover items like Jump Freighters or Slave Sets, it could be a very long time, indeed, before someone decided to interact with that order. Not all players are solely influenced by the pricepoint of an item, if more information is available. Hell, the entire organic food/'free range' chicken egg market is built on this concept.

Now replace the 'racial nametag' disincentive to interact with that alt - with any other you can imagine in EVE.

A player can choose to activate an order, or not activate an order. Knowing which player set up the order can impact that decision.

Perhaps you are referring to the issue of NPC alts.
NPC are currently used to cloak relationships between characters, yes. However:

- Not everyone uses market alts - or wishes to employ them. There IS a cost involved.
- Even knowing the market patterns of alts can be valuable information, making it easier to track which items they tend to trade in, when they tend to update orders - without first requiring you trade with them.
-Finally, even the cloak around alts can be penetrated.

For example - scan freighters incoming to a trade hub. A large stack of 20 Falcons is noted. Within 5 minutes, a large sell order of 20 Falcons is placed on the market under an NPC alt. You now have established a relationship between the nameless alt and the freighter pilot.

And here is the important bit - WITHOUT being required to buy a Falcon from them first.

Further investigation of the freighter pilot could lead to the identity of the manufacturer and the source of the Falcons.
If a competitor wishes to engage in industrial warfare with that market alt - wardecs, awoxing and suicide ganking could follow.

I'm still kind of mystified why you think it would be 'a bad idea', or merely a waste of CCP programming resources. You certainly seem to be in the minority.

Thread has been moved to Features & Ideas Discussion.

I'll give you guys two situations and let you run with them.

1.( Buy orders) Lets say I just made 5000 units of Hobgoblins, or whatever, and was bringing them to jeeter to sell. Now lets say I can see that someone, we'll call him JoeBlowSpaceCadet, has a buy order up for X number of hobgobs at a price i like. Now I contact him and offer him all my hobs for x amount of isk. He says ok and I made a contract that he accepts, and our deal is done.

2.(Sell orders) Now that I have my isk from the hobs, lets say I want to pick up a few hundred Rifters to bring back for my corp newbies. I see that HackJobMarketAlt has a pile of rifters for sale. I contact him and say listen, i'll take a large number of your Rifters right now, but this is what I would like to pay. If we agree, he makes me a contract which I accept and take my rifters, and the deal is done.

Both of the above examples were possible because I was able to see WHO the buyer was and who the seller was.

More importantly, in BOTH of the above examples, somebody lost ISK. Who was it?