Player Features and Ideas Discussion

tl;dr: CCP write my market bot for me, please. Thanks!

No. You want the benefit of micromanaging your orders, do it yourself.

My reserve should be 0.01isk above yours.

Ah you guys are clever! Now I'm wringing my hands in frustration that you outbid my buy order of 1 unit of tritanium and... oh! What's this? A sell order for .01 isk above my buy order's reserve price? And the sell price is 100.0 isk per unit for Tritanium? My my. I wonder who owns this sell order that managed such a fortuitous and lucrative deal.

Also, in case it wasn't clear from my post, the reserves are hidden information.



I agree entirely! The only problem with the current system is that once you fire your market pvp shot, you have to wait at least 5 minutes until you can fire again. That's not a gameplay decision, that's a technical limitation. Imagine if pvp ship battles took 5 minutes between shots, and the shots each did 1 damage.

What I'm suggesting doesn't remove any of the strategic aspects of a price war (I don't think). It just condenses the time scales involved if at least one of the parties wants to do so. Once you get down to a price that's significantly eating in to both parties' profit margin, it becomes a game of chicken and fun, and some real risk/reward elements come in to play where you have to really figure out how much you can afford to undercut the other guy.

Says it all. Not sure how you could convince yourself this would look clever and non-abusive in any way.

Tell you guys what: in the spirit of the Features & Ideas Discussion forum, namely:



The first person who offers a good (to my satisfaction) argument for why this would be a bad idea, or the first person who offers a counter idea that works better, I will give 10M isk in game. Not a lot of money, but a token show of appreciation for the effort involved. A tip, really.

If you're trying to give reasons why this is a bad idea, an example case is going to give your argument weight. Try to consider not just the buy orders, but also the sell orders.

If you're presenting a counter idea, remember that the goal here is simply to reduce the buy-ask spread in trade hubs by compressing the time scales involved in price wars, since there's a technical limitation that you have to wait 5 minutes after updating a market order to update it again.

If you think that reducing the buy-ask spread is a bad goal, because it reduces the profit for market makers by increasing the competition, you can state that opinion, but I disagree and won't be giving you 10M for it :)

To summarize this is bad economically for you as it cuts your own profit. I would recommend checking out Google for explanations of price elasticity and producer surplus as these are economics terms.

Not empty quoting.

I was gonna start by saying "anyone who has taken a microeconomics course can..."-- but then I realized that was almost putting the bar too high to be able to see why this is a bad idea.

I actually had thought about this, but as you say it's good for the consumer. I'm willing to make that sacrifice for the health of the markets. A more efficient market, in the short term, might reduce my margins, but in the long term should make trades happen faster, which increases my turnover and helps me make up for margin loss on volume.

At the extreme, I'd be perfectly happy selling to a buy order, and buying from a sell order, if the buy/ask spread was narrow enough.



This is a valid concern, but I don't think it's a problem. The inelasticity of buy orders to go down should be countered by the inelasticity of sell orders to go up. Also, the provision I had that moves the first place order back towards its target price if there are no competitive orders behind it was an attempt to address this.

And yes, it's "bad" for market makers, in the sense that it makes the markets move towards equilibrium prices faster, but I think the added robustness of an efficient market is actually an upsell.

...

While I think the points you were citing as bad are actually good, I appreciate the effort, articulation, and style, so I sent you partial credit (5M isk). I'll leave the full 10M purse untouched, so if you (or someone else) wants to take a stab at it, I'm still willing to pay out 10M.

Also it seems that you really only have a problem with the 5 minute edit timer not the game mechanic itself.

In the long-run, it would destroy the economy. Every item would end up being within 0.01 ISK between buy and sell orders, and it would have an extreme negative affect on manufacturers, at least as far as modules go.

Modules, though they can only be brought into the game via manufacturing (with exceptions), can be acquired by non-manufacturers to be put on the market through PvP. A PvP'er doesn't care if their item is below the minimum manufacturing value because, to them, it's pure profit so long as it's above the reprocessing value. If there are 100 orders that are at 10000 ISK on an item whose minimum raw material cost is 10000 ISK, putting their items at 0.01 ISK below that has now moved the market to a point where it has become impossible for manufacturers to create a profit until the modules put up by the non-manufacturer have been removed from the market.

Likewise, the buy orders will end up at 9999.99 ISK on the above example as otherwise, it's cheaper to simply make the module yourself (again, looking simply at the raw material value). There would be many items whose value would be even lower, stuck at the reprocessing value.

This 0.01 ISK difference will happen on things that can be acquired without manufacturing simply because, to the one who acquired it "for free," it functions as pure ISK. Manufacturers could band together and say "we won't sell below 12,000 ISK" (hypothetical... the day EvE's player-base manages to achieve that will be the day the world ends), but as soon as a module falls into the hands of someone "for free" (be it through PvP, corp theft, or any other form of means without a direct ISK value), you're able to make a profit at 11,999.99 ISK. Shortly after, along comes PvP'er-2, who lists their items at 11,999.98 ISK.

Everything will trend to the minimum value based on material cost, or worse, the reprocessing value.

So long as something can be sold by someone who obtained it without direct material cost, you're going to end up in a situation where they're able to make a profit on it by dipping below where manufacturers can do so.

Edit :: Also, the "minerals I mine are free" crowd. End Edit