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Feedback Request - Margin trading and accurate market UI

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Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#701 - 2014-08-08 17:59:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Pelorios
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
A collateral system doesn't work for a lot of honest traders because they are putting up more total buy orders than their net worth. They don't have the funds to put stuff up for collateral, and often don't have the assets for it either. They intend to get ISK from their sell orders before they run out from the buy orders.

It is also faulty because items don't have a static ISK value. The market can choose an approximate ISK value but almost every time one side will feel cheated on the amount. You just can't let the server place an ISK value on goods, and you also can't expect players to be willing to accept goods in place of the ISK they were promised.

I might be missing something here, your post is pretty convoluted. Perhaps you can offer a short version--it doesn't have to explain the post, only needs to tell the end result. Anyone who doesn't believe you can go through it thoroughly and check.


of course it would upset honest traders In the sense that for 10 years they had been used to having leverage risk free. Its a game, I understand but leverage in real life is far from risk free. Gamewise of course I would be perfectly happy to leave it as it is, as i said in the first section of the post

As far as re-writing it i am afraid that its not something i need to do. At the same time I am sorry its convoluted. I do try to make it as simple as possible, true I might throw a rant here or there, but this is not a simple issue is it?

CCP sure dug a hole with that one...

Do not despair though, well not unless they announce they are removing margin trading. I dont see why they would though. Sure, it's sort of a defect, but its a sandbox game after all.

If i had to sum it in one sentence i would say, faced with doing it this way or removing margin trading alltogether, at least this way you get to keep some leverage. If they remove it, you lose it all.

I am sure they'll "figure" it out. It might still be "broken" but less so. They always do. Personally i don't use the skill, I havent even trained it and I am glad I didn't because it seems it forces you in an extra step during the order placement process.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#702 - 2014-08-08 18:02:13 UTC
Pelorios wrote:
(a) it would add to the functionality load of the market. Currently bids and offers stay there and are only interacted with when someone tried to buy or sell (i think).
If CCP is forced to check every order against a players wallet, every time a players wallet changes balance..that's a lot of checks.
It can have a check timer, such as once per 15 seconds, or maybe once per minute. Even once per 5 minutes would all but eliminate margin trading scams.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#703 - 2014-08-08 18:05:51 UTC
Pelorios wrote:
As far as re-writing it i am afraid that its not something i need to do. At the same time I am sorry its convoluted. I do try to make it as simple as possible, true I might throw a rant here or there, but this is not a simple issue is it?
I wasn't asking you to re-write it, I just wanted you to provide a TL;DR section. I didn't read all of it and I didn't fully understand the parts I did read, so I just wanted to make sure I wasn't grossly misrepresenting your post with my criticisms.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#704 - 2014-08-08 18:12:03 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
Pelorios wrote:
As far as re-writing it i am afraid that its not something i need to do. At the same time I am sorry its convoluted. I do try to make it as simple as possible, true I might throw a rant here or there, but this is not a simple issue is it?
I wasn't asking you to re-write it, I just wanted you to provide a TL;DR section. I didn't read all of it and I didn't fully understand the parts I did read, so I just wanted to make sure I wasn't grossly misrepresenting your post with my criticisms.


Don't worry, i could be wrong after all :)

The devs might read it, if its of any use to them.

whats a TL;DR?
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#705 - 2014-08-08 18:25:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Reaver Glitterstim
Pelorios wrote:
whats a TL;DR?

TL;DR literally stands for Too Long; Didn't Read. The history of this acronym goes back to the early days of forums, at which time people were growing more and more accustomed to having information readily available at their fingertips. Attention spans diminished, or perhaps more people with small attention spans got on the internet. More and more long, winded explanations would bore people, and they loved to express their disinterest with being expected to read a huge swath of text. Many of these people wanted to make a short but clever response and would copy those of others they saw if they liked them. The response "too long; didn't read" became a very common one, and so people started shortening it to just TL;DR. They would post this acronym on large threads which they either didn't read fully or just wished to express their annoyance over its sheer magnitude.

Some forumers could not find a good way to shorten their posts as much information needed to be explained in it, so they offered a shortened version at the end for the lazy readers or just for those who didn't have a strong interest in the subject. This section contained enough info to give the gist of the situation, and didn't bother backing up its assertions with sources or explanations, as all of that was contained in the main post. This smaller section was often marked TL;DR, and was generally made easy to spot, so people could skip past the rest and get to that section if they so chose. This had marvelous results when applied well, as the comment quality generally improved and some responders who were bored of the topic initially would find interesting bits in the TL;DR, which would provoke them into reading the entire post thoroughly. It definitely improved the discussion quality, and that is why people continue to use this strategy pretty commonly today.

TL;DR
Too Long; Didn't Read - the section of a long post that gives you a brief summary. Also used to tell someone their post is too long.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#706 - 2014-08-08 18:34:44 UTC
It can have a check timer, such as once per 15 seconds, or maybe once per minute. Even once per 5 minutes would all but eliminate margin trading scams.[/quote]

They can easily add a skill that allows only x number of margin orders. X being very low like 1 to 5. this way there would potentially be less orders to check less load on the database

And if you need more, we'll see how it goes. they can always add another skill to take it to 10 orders.
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#707 - 2014-08-08 18:55:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Pelorios
TL;DR *sigh*

the mechanic of margin trading "buys" time

You can buy time by agreeing to sell an asset way below market value, *if* the market ever gets there. Normally, for a liquid deep high volume market, that takes a looong time.

So you "lend" assets this way and you get isk to place margin orders.

When the margin order gets filled you still have time to make money to pay back what you used when you "loaned" your asset.

You then can get your "loaned" asset back.

Another way:
Lets say Tritanium can be sold for 5 isk. You have 50mil units of it, but only 5mil actual isk in your wallet

You say to someone " i need 50mil isk, You give me 50mil isk and i 'll give you 50mil of tritanium for 1 isk per trit. But you can only sell it if Tritanium can ever be sold for 1isk". [that wont happen overnight, normally not even in a month].

So you give him the Tritanium, you get 50mil isk, do your stuff and pay him back 50mil and he gives you your Trit back.

Of course you have to pay him back. Otherwise he keeps it...

But even if it goes to 1isk in a week you will be able to buy Trit cheaper than you 'sold' it for!! Where is it going to go? to 0? Eve will have degenerated to a shootthemup if that ever happened

And that someone you lend to is CCP; I dont think its a good idea to let players get into this business..yet...if ever
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#708 - 2014-08-08 19:20:52 UTC
I'm still a little confused on the details but it sounds like you're saying that placing a buy order up on marginal escrow would require you to tie it to a sell order which can be instantly sold to secure the needed ISK. Is that what you're saying?

Pelorios wrote:
They can easily add a skill that allows only x number of margin orders. X being very low like 1 to 5. this way there would potentially be less orders to check less load on the database

And if you need more, we'll see how it goes. they can always add another skill to take it to 10 orders.
This would prevent many traders from putting up the high number of orders they put up on a regular basis and would put unreasonable strain on traders to put up the majority of their orders with full ISK. I don't believe any such limit should exist, besides, it isn't high number users of the skill that are causing trouble on the market. The whole point of the change is to prevent scamming due to a misunderstanding of the user interface. Normal use of the skill is working very well.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#709 - 2014-08-08 19:30:15 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
I'm still a little confused on the details but it sounds like you're saying that placing a buy order up on marginal escrow would require you to tie it to a sell order which can be instantly sold to secure the needed ISK. Is that what you're saying?


yes. You want to buy nanotransistors to make components and you put Tritanium up as collateral. The Tritanium can be sold instantly at half its value but only if it drops to half its value. This gives you time to buy loads of nanotransistors with the collateral money , make components, sell them, make a profit and get your tritanium back

Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
it isn't high number users of the skill that are causing trouble on the market. The whole point of the change is to prevent scamming due to a misunderstanding of the user interface. Normal use of the skill is working very well.


believe me, it can happen that everyone will start using it. You have to assume that to calculate database loads
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#710 - 2014-08-08 20:36:29 UTC
Frostys Virpio wrote:
Decarthado Aurgnet wrote:
After further throught, a wild idea appears!

Don't remove the skill, but do create a "debt" balance which appears in the wallet beside one's actual balance. Whether it'd be interest-bearing is moot, but with a debt balance comes a 90% tax on all income (payable prior to paying corp taxes, which then subsequently tax the remaining income amount) until the debt is paid. In this way, the market and legitimate users remain unchanged. People who try to scam and people who screw themselves in the market can still have a dribble of income so they can pay additional market order fees and buy some ammunition or fuel in order to slowly and painfully grind themselves back out of debt.

Characters with debt should not be able to be biomassed or sold.

Edit: This would also open the window for lenders, and it could be tied into the contract system being reworked (since that's also under discussion).


Hold on while I use my open character slot to loan my main a few hundred bajillion ISK before letting this characer to rot until the end of time. If you do not have a free slot, then creat a trial account and PLEX it for the low price of under 800 million so you can loan yourself a few more hundred bajillions ISK and then let the account lapse to never EVER resub it.


You're making a lot of assumptions here about infinite credibility with regards to negative balances. I never suggested anyone should be able to give money they don't have to another player because that would be stupid.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#711 - 2014-08-08 20:38:57 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
Why not just make the faulty buy orders temporarily invisible? That will have the added benefit of assisting honest traders by preventing their buy orders from getting cancelled when their ISK runs out.

This can also work, but it kind of nerfs the risk aspect of the market in a way.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Alia Ravenswing
DARK HAT
#712 - 2014-08-09 16:59:29 UTC
I like the scam, its a lot of fun. But maybe there should be a bonding option. A buy order can be bonded and if the buyer does not complete the obligation, they could get a financial penalty.
Angeal MacNova
Holefood Inc.
Warriors of the Blood God
#713 - 2014-08-09 17:22:58 UTC
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3746822#post3746822

http://www.projectvaulderie.com/goodnight-sweet-prince/

http://www.projectvaulderie.com/the-untold-story/

CCP's true, butthurt, colors.

Because those who can't do themselves keep others from doing too.
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#714 - 2014-08-10 02:57:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Pelorios
Angeal MacNova wrote:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3746822#post3746822


This is another deficiency of the eve "market"

In rl markets if there is a sell order at 10.15 and you put a buy order at 10.30 then you buy at 10.15 not at 10.30! If your buy order is more than what is offered at 10.15 then you get everything that is at 10.15 and then it checks the next highest offer up to 10.30 and keeps buying until your you get all that you asked for.
If there is not enough from 10.15 to 10.30 to cover your amount, then after you get everything up to 10.30 the system places a buy order at 10.30 for the rest.

This is how order driven markets work and its fair. When you put your buy order at 10.30 its like you are saying 'i am prepared to buy X amount of Pye end pay up to 10.30'. There is someone offering at 10.15. And its the best price which earns him the right to get his order filled first. This way people try to make the best offers and the best bids so that you end up with a nice tight bid-offer spread and a liquid market that has a price.

The more I think about it, I dont understand why CCP have messed this up so badly.
The server has to somehow fill your order, so it has to check anyway, both the prices and the amount...


I started proposing something about how to get margin trading to work fairly and I have thought of how to improve it further so that its doesn't involve excessive real-time calculations, but then I too yesterday went to Jita and bought one rocket fuel from an order higher then the lowest order available. I realized that if such a fundamental function of markets is still not implemented by CCP... its dangerous to start building more sophisticated functionality on top of it even if its possible. So let them do it if they want to.

Anyway the upside for you is that if you ever get involved with or use RL markets you will be pleasantly surprised. But believe me..don't make the mistake of assuming this is an accurate simulation of markets. This stuff is fundamentally plain wrong from the viewpoint of real life. But it works it has its advantages and disadvantages.


Here we are complaining about truth and lie about the margin trading scam and on the other hand ..you have been "lied' to for so long [about where you get to buy in the rl markets if you place an order to buy at 10.30 and there is an offer at 10.15] that you have gotten used it ...because you didn't know!

Its not a market, its a stall in a middle of a desert [we call a sandbox]

So yes games do have a responsibility to prepare people for real life but this is a sandbox. Its a little bit different. Not right.. not wrong just different. This is the diplomatic conclusion. And its fair I guess. And hey...now you know :)
Enosh
Absolute Order XVI
Absolute Honor
#715 - 2014-08-10 04:19:53 UTC
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
I'm still a little confused on the details but it sounds like you're saying that placing a buy order up on marginal escrow would require you to tie it to a sell order which can be instantly sold to secure the needed ISK. Is that what you're saying?

Pelorios wrote:
They can easily add a skill that allows only x number of margin orders. X being very low like 1 to 5. this way there would potentially be less orders to check less load on the database

And if you need more, we'll see how it goes. they can always add another skill to take it to 10 orders.
This would prevent many traders from putting up the high number of orders they put up on a regular basis and would put unreasonable strain on traders to put up the majority of their orders with full ISK. I don't believe any such limit should exist, besides, it isn't high number users of the skill that are causing trouble on the market. The whole point of the change is to prevent scamming due to a misunderstanding of the user interface. Normal use of the skill is working very well.


How many orders would you need?

To help transition things the could introduce Collateral Units which is like free money for margin, as you had before, but which were going to be phased out gradually. They could also start with high number of margin orders if they decided to go that way and reduce those too, i they felt they needed to

This way you'll have the time to build margin capital to use as collateral :)

There are also ways to provide collateral by checking once a day instead of real time while at the same time minimizing the loss to players and CCP_collateral. It would increase collateral cost for the players a bit, but reduce the load on the servers
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#716 - 2014-08-10 05:12:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Decarthado Aurgnet
Alia Ravenswing wrote:
I like the scam, its a lot of fun. But maybe there should be a bonding option. A buy order can be bonded and if the buyer does not complete the obligation, they could get a financial penalty.

This is something like what I was saying. The exact mechanics may be different, but the idea holds true: the order goes through no matter what and the person who was unable to cover their buy order is somehow forced to make good on the transaction after the fact.

The same idea I expressed previously could also be put into an updated contract system. For example, a contract says I get a billion of your isk today and I pay you 1.1b in 3 days. Let's say something bad happens and I end up not having that isk in my pocket when the due date comes. The contract automatically closes and my "debt" wallet shows -1.1b. At that time, you'd automatically get paid the extreme majority of whatever isk comes my way until the total debt is repaid.

There would, of course, need to be mechanics for who gets paid first and possibly an option for party A to click a "forgive debt" button in their wallet menus. Further, this concept would open the gates for multiple personal wallets. People could "tax" themselves so they can set aside a certain portion of their income for a specific purpose or just keep different balances for different things and be generally more creative in that aspect.

Edit: This could also open the doors to a whole new type of scammer: the corporation-seller. If a corporation has a bigass debt, and somebody's dumb enough to buy it without checking into it first ... then the scammer gets away with shoving their old corp's debt onto some poor schmuck. Lots of good and bad potential here as well.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Kaarous Aldurald
Black Hydra Consortium.
#717 - 2014-08-10 05:48:25 UTC
I have to say, I think being able to saddle other players with "debt" rather than that being an exclusively GM power is fraught with peril.

It would almost invariably lead to far, far more widespread griefing than a simple trade scam ever could. I can think of at least 3 ways to horribly abuse a debt mechanic about seventy seconds after I read that idea. And I am far from the smartest scammer out there.

I genuinely cannot think of a worse idea.

"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

One of ours, ten of theirs.

Best Meltdown Ever.
Decarthado Aurgnet
Imperial Combat Engineers
#718 - 2014-08-12 03:29:22 UTC
That may be true, and it did cross my mind. A fix could be as simple as a non-supressable warning stating you're walking into any kind of scenario which could kill your income for a while. Might make indebted corporations unable to transfer CEO power or maybe make corporate debts transfer to a CEO before he resigns his post. Lots of things can be done about that so people just don't get surprised.

On the flip side of that coin, I'm sure there might be some crazy traders out there who'd use their Margin Trading and the debt balance as a single risky tool to try to get themselves into the green faster than normal. Might make billions, and might screw themselves.

Remove T2 BPO's or make them inventable at extreme cost.
Extractor Bill
Hynix Galactic Industry
#719 - 2014-08-12 05:35:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Extractor Bill
I think that when examining such a key skill in game the most effective path that causes least harm is the most ideal.

As with most forms of game to user punishment this should be RETRIBUTIVE. EVE is not fair, and getting tricked is part of the game. However abusing a game mechanic is not.

The Solution is to slightly change the mechanic to fill the order partially "in good faith" and apply a minor penalty. This is designed to make the scam undesirable by making it fiscally less lucrative.

The following new rules/changes can be applied

IF a purchase sale is made to a buy order that is using margin trading, and a seller attempts to fill it through a sale in an amount that exceeds the amount the buyer has in their wallet once the order escrow is used...

  1. All market buy orders are canceled, and the funds are used to fill as much of the buy order as possible
  2. If the funds held in escrow from all canceled orders was not enough to cover the purchase of goods, the order is only partially filled using the combination of wallet, and funds formally held in escrow from all orders. The total value for the remainder of the buy order is calculated, and a 25% penalty is applied paid to the SCC. This penalty can make the characters wallet negative in value.
  3. When a player has a negative wallet, they are unable to place any market orders or contracts with the exception of immediate sell orders (the ones that are instant).


The above changes would cause a painful penalty to somebody who was abusing the game mechanic. Typically when you are doing such a scam, the isk at stake is higher to make things look more appealing.

These changes would make abuse of margin trading undesirable because...

  • Part of the buy order would still be partially filled even if you had a minimum order quantity as the above "fail safe" rules kick in when a market order with margin trading becomes insolvent. As a result the person you scammed would recover some of their funds back by selling to the scammer at the inflated price since 1/4 of the order will be filled (approx) due to the funds held in escrow.
  • The penalty would be applied in the amount of 25% of the remainder order total. If this was an inflated fake order, that would be a painful penalty that would set the wallet very negative. When combined with the above partial perchance, the scammer might be screwed more as this penalty combined with a bad purchase would wipe out any benefit they had.
  • The game should not allow you to delete characters with negative wallet balances. This would limit the players ability to avoid the penalty by starting a new character since eve only offers limited character slots, and other than paying off the negative balance, the only other way to avoid this would be a paid character transfer to a new account, or starting a new paid account with subscription.


While this doesn't compensate the person who is the victim, that was never the intent for the solution as such scams are part of playing Eve, and the pvp market economy. What this does, is removes the financial benefit for systematicly cheating the system.

THE PROPOSED CHANGES would also not affect legitimate use of the skill...

  • Most characters legitimately using margin trading will have multiple sell orders active at the same time, and are using the skill to leverage their isk for more items to re-sell at a higher price. Should they accidentally run short on funds the balance in their wallet, combined with the isk recovered from escrow for all unfilled orders should be able to fill most if not all of the order that ran short.
  • With legitimate use of the skill, and the aforementioned point in mind, it is unlikely that in the rare event an order is still not able to be filled after the fail safe kicks in, the remainder balance on the order would be large. Should this happen the penalty on the remainder of the balance would likely be small as a result and easy to recover from with a few liquidations or thru fulfillment of existing sell orders.


This I think is the best solution because...

  • It doesn't damage the legitimate functionality of the skill
  • It makes the abuse of the skill undesirable and uneconomical since it imposes a financial penalty, and allows the seller to partially recover their isk through partial order fufillment
  • It would require minimal changes to the existing game system and mechanics and therefore less resources from CCP
  • It would have a minimal to zero effect on the economy
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#720 - 2014-08-12 06:16:08 UTC
Extractor Bill wrote:
This I think is the best solution because...

  • It doesn't damage the legitimate functionality of the skill
  • It makes the abuse of the skill undesirable and uneconomical since it imposes a financial penalty, and allows the seller to partially recover their isk through partial order fufillment
  • It would require minimal changes to the existing game system and mechanics and therefore less resources from CCP
  • It would have a minimal to zero effect on the economy
Actually, it would only hurt legitimate traders. Legitimate traders might have one order fail, and their entire market comes crashing down. But a scammer will beat your system by just not having any other orders up.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."