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Feedback Request - Margin trading and accurate market UI

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Sigras
Conglomo
#661 - 2014-04-29 07:54:31 UTC
As a programmer who deals with database issues, I feel that the only way to potentially solve this issue without putting MASSIVE load on the database would be to store some meta data for comparison.

Here is how I would solve the issue:

1. store a double in the database that is the value of the largest single minimum purchase order that each character has active. IE an order with a minimum quantity 10 for 1,000,000 ISK is worth more than an order with a minimum quantity 1 for 5,000,000 ISK

2. Every time that character's wallet decreases check to make sure their wallet is above the double value. (this is actually a really simple thing to do because it is a read only operation so you can set up several sequential read servers to handle it)

2A. if their wallet dips below the stored double then mark that order as "de-listed" and store the minimum purchase amount for that order

3. every time that character's wallet increases check their de-listed orders and re-list them as appropriate (again mainly a read only operation)

4. Every time a character modifies an order or an order gets sold through, check to make sure your double is still accurate.

This is the way to completely fix this issue with the fewest table-joins for the database, and would not be exploitable... Thoughts?
Erroch
STK Scientific
The Initiative.
#662 - 2014-04-29 15:44:10 UTC
The more I think about this, the easiest way to allow people to "protect" themselves against Margin scams would be to allow a "show info" on market orders.

Show who gave the order, at this point check the available balance and show if this is fulfillable (or what portion is currently fulfillable for large volume orders.) The percentage above or below market (like the actually sell window does), etc.

Perhaps even give the user the ability to 'block' a seller's buy/sell orders from their view of the market so once you find someone scamming, you can remove any future scams from that person from your market view.

To use the pizza example from earlier, while yes we can order pizza without having the means to pay, the pizza company has the ability to say "No, we're not dealing with Erroch anymore, he's known for writing bad checks"

Being able to see who is undercutting you on the market without selling/buying from them could have some other interesting repercussions as well.

This leaves the ability to pull a quick scam using margin trading intact, but reduces it's viability for those who actually bother to look.
Akth Eryou
Kaos Studios
#663 - 2014-05-02 07:12:56 UTC
Quote:

The solution we proposed to the CSM initially was based around the idea that if you didn't have enough money in your wallet to back an order, that order would be cancelled. This would still allow traders to benefit from being able to have multiple orders for which they couldn't cover the total. For example, I could have one buy order for a thorax at 5 mil, and another order for a rupture at 5 mil with only 7 mil in my wallet. If my wallet went below 5mil, it would cancel both orders

There are several problems with this solution, the biggest of which is that it puts unwanted pressure on legitimate up-and-coming market traders who need to be able to leverage the ISK they have. There is also some advanced market gameplay around putting up very large buy orders which you can't technically cover, but which also will never realistically get filled. If you guys have feelings either way about this solution please share.


How about this;

Instead of cancelling the order it simply becomes marked in red (similar to the way personal orders are in blue).
This lets anyone use the UI without complaining that it's lying to them.
Legitimate up and coming traders can still leverage their isk without losing out on broker/contract fees when extending themselves farther into the market.

As for the large orders that will never be completed, assuming the people involved know whats up it would allow them to still put up orders and for people to observe them but be somewhat wary.
Senjiu Kanuba
Risk Breakers
SONS of BANE
#664 - 2014-05-08 15:01:04 UTC
I came up with a bad idea. I only realised how bad it was when I started typing here so I'll leave it for you to be impressed with how bad of an idea I came up with:

BAD IDEA! DO NOT IMPLEMENT!
Margin trading allows you to have negative ISK (so the order does get fulfilled). Margin trading is only trainable on non-trial accounts. Characters with negative ISK cannot be deleted by the player.

Why this is bad: I could buy a PLEX, turn a trial account into a non-trial account (700m investment) and train margin trading on 3 characters. Then I move them to some backwater station, bring some obscure module that doesn't have buy orders in the region, create margin-trading buy orders at astronomical values and sell my own item to that character. Repeat 2 more times (3 characters) with increasing amounts of money. I return to where I came from with a few trillion ISK. Or more. Then I forget about that account I created for that with it's characters a few trillion ISK in the negative.
Repeat once I want more ISK.
Gospadin
Bastard Children of Poinen
#665 - 2014-05-08 17:26:43 UTC
I think the original proposal from CSM/CCP was the right one.

As soon as your wallet is unable to cover an outstanding order, the system cancels orders (suggest oldest first) until all outstanding orders have enough wallet to cover them.


Margin Trading isn't about leveraging 100% of your wallet into a small set of buys, it's about leveraging your isk into a higher volume of orders than you could normally have in flight at once.

A character with 10M isk and Margin Trading V can freely make 20 buy orders of 1M each, leaving them with 5M isk still in their wallet. They've leveraged 5M isk into 20M worth of buy orders, but to cover expected purchases, they have to manage how much they leave in their wallet. As those orders start filling, they'll need to turn around and sell stuff to keep their wallet balance sufficiently high.

As soon as their wallet drops below 0.75M isk (amount needed to cover one of their buy orders, since they already had 0.25M in escrow), the database starts cancelling their outstanding orders, until the wallet goes back above 0.75M isk.


To me, the player deciding how far to leverage their wallet is *exactly* what we want players to be managing themselves, and it nearly eliminates scams. It's still possible to setup the buy/sell orders at different locations and manually cancel a buy order as soon as you see the sale go through, but that's much less of an issue than majority of margin trading scams.



On top of this, I'd probably add that as soon as a character goes negative isk, that account stops skill training, and negative ISK characters cannot be deleted.
Kate Blaze
True Power Capsuleers
#666 - 2014-05-08 17:31:27 UTC
Why do people care about this? Why does CCP care about this? At worst, few people daily are scammed. Because they are greedy. I say, good for them, learn life lesson.
Titan Andronicus
Rookie Mission Tax Haven
#667 - 2014-05-08 18:24:55 UTC
SMH ...

CCP Rise wrote:
...I want to make another thing clear about this issue which came up when talking with the CSM:

This isn't about scamming or whether or not it's okay for people to trick other people, which is obviously extremely EVE and we have no problem with. The issue here is that the client (via the market interface) is essentially lying to the player by showing an order which can't actually be filled.


I haven't waded through every single page on this topic, but it would seem sensible to look again at the intention and assessing against reality. Others more knowledgeable of the mechanics than I am have already suggested improvements, but the counterparty should be afforded some protection when the trader has over-extended themselves.

I'd suggest an auto-cancellation of the order, defaulting on the broker fees.

30-day skill queue for a 30-day subscription! Many thanks
DetKhord Saisio
Seniors Clan
#668 - 2014-05-09 13:48:49 UTC
No matter how margin trading is changed, the demand for all goods is the cause of margin trading scam visibility. The more players buy goods, the more easily the economy absorbs risk like scams. Therefore, this scam becoming an issue tells me eve playerbase is shrinking. Actually, ccp loves swinging the nerf-bat any chance they get, so never not balancing is another factor affecting player population.
Darin Vanar
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#669 - 2014-05-09 23:23:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Darin Vanar
I don't like the proposed solutions at all.

Some ideas:

A) If you don't have money to cover your buy orders and they do sell, the money could go into your "Bills", along with the items bought. If they are not paid for within, say 2 weeks, the items are returned to the seller since you can't pay your margins.

B) Another idea would be to take the total ISK in margin trading and apply it to your sale orders. That means if you have say 20% higher totals in operating costs than you have money in your wallet, that 20% will be taken off whenever you sell something until the money is paid in total. (If you end up buying more than you can afford.)

(It wouldn't come from your wallet, but your are trading the margins of your sale orders.)

The system could leverage itself based on buy orders and sell orders relationship, and how much you actually get in return in ISK versus actual bought goods. You would have to properly code this system but I think you get the idea.
Lord Jita
Lord Jita's Big Gay Corp
#670 - 2014-05-10 15:58:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Lord Jita
I have the solution.

* Add menu option on right clicking an order -> Verify order legitimacy (or Check order fraud status or whatever)

* This will then check the order to ensure the funds are available (either for minimum buy quantity or entire order? TBD) and will tell you in a pop up
(a/k/a The broker reassures you this is a legitimate order / The broker cannot verify the legitimacy of this order)

* This will cost the person checking a trivial amount of ISK (a broker fee for verifying order legitimacy, say 10k or something)

* Optionally add a skill to reduce the "order legitimacy check" fee X% per level ... call it... Fraud Detection or somesuch.

* Optionally make this take X seconds (the broker will get back to you after he researches this order)

Results:

A) Checking order legitimacy is now an ISK sink. CCP loves ISK sinks
B) Can add new skill, CCP loves time sinks
C) Does not create extra load that checking every single order on the market would
D) Still gives margin scammers a chance with people that do not make use of the feature
E) Normal people using margin trade for non-nefarious uses will be completely unaffected

I will now accept your isk donations for solving this problem.


update: In response to concerns that new players wouldn't know about this feature.... Have a warning box the first time they try to sell to a buy order "would you like to check the legitimacy of this order? << link to read about fraudlent orders here >>"
then you have a checkbox to "never show me this warning again"

While it might not save the occasional over-reactive noob who immediately buys overpriced items the second he sees the fake buy order, it DOES give a tool to the rest of us to combat this problem, which is better than what we have right now which is nothing. It is VERY common right now to see 1 unit margin scam orders for rarer high price items in attempts to inflate the price. hell I do it myself sometimes.
Ryan Leonard Thorne
Pointed Sticks Improvement Inc.
#671 - 2014-07-27 11:47:20 UTC
Well, this strange game mechanic seems to be unknown even to non-noobs, at least none of my corp mates that play for much longer than me told me about that. And after a hauling corp mate and me failed to get some billions for rather rare stuff that I had (bought quite cheap, not from scammer for fantasy prices), still nobody knew how that was possible. We were thinking of bots and exploits and nobody knew or even thought that this can be done in a legal way...Roll

So after a friendly GM sent me to this topic and I was reading and thinking, here's my 0.02 isk:


  • As this skill is useful for honest traders, it should not be changed in any way.
  • The taxes that you have to pay when buy order fails and you end up having a sell order is the most annoying thing about that, at least for me. If I want to make use of a buy order, I want to make use of that buy order and not placing a sell order. That's stupid. If I have 4 units of something and want to sell 5 units of that something on the market, does that even work and additionally mean that my sell order suddenly turns into a buy order for that one lacking unit of something that I want to sell? I don't think so. At least some kind of warning message with clickable "Continue" and "Cancel" would have been nice.
  • I don't consider this as a scam although it's used for scamming. It's just protecting scammers and their alts from any finacial loss.
  • Some people call this "market PvP". Okay, but isn't PvP about having the ability to shoot back? And especially in hisec this "market PvP attack" should mean that Concord blows up some hangars or wallets. (jk) But which negative consequences does it have for those "market PvPers"? None. They always win.
  • Solution: Introduce some kind of debt obligation. If a margin-traded buy order fails due to lack of isk, seller gets the amount of money that was put into market escrow plus that debt obligation (sum of isk and debt obligation = full price of buy order). The traded goods stay in buyer's hangar in a secure password protected container with a unique name and that can't be moved. Buyer then has 4 weeks to pay his debt. If he does, password for container is mailed to him. If he does not, traded goods are transferred back to seller's hangar and seller keeps the partial amount of isk that he got in the beginning.
Dally Lama
Doomheim
#672 - 2014-07-27 14:08:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Dally Lama
I think the first solution is fine.

Yes, it would remove the ability to place many buy orders with a total sum of ISK far beyond what you have. It would however add the ability to confidently flip sell orders into buy orders when you happen to find them.

So we lose something, but we gain something too. IMO we gain more than we lose.

If you want to market with ISK you don't have, take a loan from a friend that trusts you. EVE is a player driven game after all. Do we really want NPCs playing the role of a bank anyways? They shouldn't offer us margin trading to begin with IMO.

New Fitting Window | Distances above 10km | Maximums for buy orders
w3ak3stl1nk
Hedion University
#673 - 2014-07-27 16:44:07 UTC
Complicated solutions leads to exploitation. Easier to just remove it or change it to tax reduction.

Is that my two cents or yours?
Cliverunner
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#674 - 2014-07-27 17:25:49 UTC
How about this:


  1. The quantity shown in the market windows for prospective sellers is the number of items there is escrow to cover. (hiding ones that are at 0).
  2. The market window for the buyer shows a split amount (total amount of order / amount available in escrow).
  3. Allow buyers to add isk to the escrow of their buy orders.
  4. Cancel any order that would show up as 0 items for more than 3 days (or whatever period of time is considered appropriate).


Example:
I have Margin Trading at V and place an order for 100 DCUs. The system takes 24 DCUs worth of isk from my wallet and puts it in escrow. At this point, the market window for everybody else would show that I am buying 24 DCUs. My windows would show 100/24. As people sell me DCUs, the number showing in the buy order would reduce. If I notice that I am running out of isk in escrow, I can add more to increase the number being shown. If as some point I buy all 24 DCUs and don't notice it within 3 days, then the remainder of my order is canceled (and I loose the brokerage fees).

This should preserve the legitimate usage of the margin trading skill while make sure the UI is always telling the truth.
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#675 - 2014-07-29 08:22:59 UTC
Skipped all the posts and kind of late to the party, but here's my thought: Either (1) Remove the margin trading skill entirely or (2) issue a warning when purchasing the skill book that you can go severely into negative wallet balances if you screw up. Nothing in between, no remorse, and no mercy to people who really feel like taking the risk for option 2 ... means I'd just prefer option 1 to keep things simple.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Lothras Andastar
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#676 - 2014-07-29 11:51:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Lothras Andastar
Remove Skill. Refund SP, just like Learning Skills.

or, fufill the order, put the person into negative isk. Characters with Negative isk can't be biomassed.

Because the Legacy Code has too much Psssssssssssssssh, nothing will ever get fixed until CCP stop wasting money on failed sparkle MMOs and instead rewrite the entire backend of EvE from scratch.
Careby
#677 - 2014-07-29 12:47:11 UTC
Allowing negative balances from order fills would create opportunity for abuse. Removing the skill would reduce the number of buy orders in the market, which would impact all players, not just those using the skill.

Margin Trading is a useful skill that adds liquidity to the market and benefits almost everyone in the game. For the most part it is used as intended. All that is needed is a minor change to gracefully handle the cases of orders that cannot be filled. I still believe the best answer is to simply not show orders that cannot be filled.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#678 - 2014-07-29 14:10:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Gizznitt Malikite
Careby wrote:
Allowing negative balances from order fills would create opportunity for abuse. Removing the skill would reduce the number of buy orders in the market, which would impact all players, not just those using the skill.

Margin Trading is a useful skill that adds liquidity to the market and benefits almost everyone in the game. For the most part it is used as intended. All that is needed is a minor change to gracefully handle the cases of orders that cannot be filled. I still believe the best answer is to simply not show orders that cannot be filled.



To restate an old idea from earlier in this thread:

If, and ONLY if we really need to "fix" the margin trading scam (which I don't believe we need to), the ideal solution is very simple:

Add a "verify order" function.

Simply right click on an order and select "verify order with the broker". The broker will send an EvE mail within a few minutes stating whether the buyer has sufficient funds to fulfill the order's minimum purchase at that point in time.
-- If the order does not have sufficient funds, the order is auto-cancelled.
-- It costs 1m isk to perform a "verify order" action, as you're taking up the brokers time and gaining info on the buyer's wallet.
w3ak3stl1nk
Hedion University
#679 - 2014-07-29 15:24:18 UTC
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Careby wrote:
Allowing negative balances from order fills would create opportunity for abuse. Removing the skill would reduce the number of buy orders in the market, which would impact all players, not just those using the skill.

Margin Trading is a useful skill that adds liquidity to the market and benefits almost everyone in the game. For the most part it is used as intended. All that is needed is a minor change to gracefully handle the cases of orders that cannot be filled. I still believe the best answer is to simply not show orders that cannot be filled.



To restate an old idea from earlier in this thread:

If, and ONLY if we really need to "fix" the margin trading scam (which I don't believe we need to), the ideal solution is very simple:

Add a "verify order" function.

Simply right click on an order and select "verify order with the broker". The broker will send an EvE mail within a few minutes stating whether the buyer has sufficient funds to fulfill the order's minimum purchase at that point in time.
-- If the order does not have sufficient funds, the order is auto-cancelled.
-- It costs 1m isk to perform a "verify order" action, as you're taking up the brokers time and gaining info on the buyer's wallet.

For the 1m isk trade off the buy order placer goes into negative for order and gets carbon for good measure.

Is that my two cents or yours?
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#680 - 2014-07-29 16:02:44 UTC
w3ak3stl1nk wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Careby wrote:
Allowing negative balances from order fills would create opportunity for abuse. Removing the skill would reduce the number of buy orders in the market, which would impact all players, not just those using the skill.

Margin Trading is a useful skill that adds liquidity to the market and benefits almost everyone in the game. For the most part it is used as intended. All that is needed is a minor change to gracefully handle the cases of orders that cannot be filled. I still believe the best answer is to simply not show orders that cannot be filled.



To restate an old idea from earlier in this thread:

If, and ONLY if we really need to "fix" the margin trading scam (which I don't believe we need to), the ideal solution is very simple:

Add a "verify order" function.

Simply right click on an order and select "verify order with the broker". The broker will send an EvE mail within a few minutes stating whether the buyer has sufficient funds to fulfill the order's minimum purchase at that point in time.
-- If the order does not have sufficient funds, the order is auto-cancelled.
-- It costs 1m isk to perform a "verify order" action, as you're taking up the brokers time and gaining info on the buyer's wallet.

For the 1m isk trade off the buy order placer goes into negative for order and gets carbon for good measure.


Why? The buyer has his order canceled and he loses his broker fees. I could see giving them a standings hit to the station's corp and faction (which will result in higher broker fees on future orders) may also be reasonable. However, there is no reason to suddenly drain the buyer's wallet. That just comes across as petty.