Market Discussions

Troll or not?

If serious: And what will happen when 3 people set the range from 100 to 130 mil? They undercut themself in 2 seconds down to 100 mil? And when suddenly all people use this?

Also F&ID is this way.

EDIT: And for last... -1 from my side. If someone other is better/faster than you you have to change yourself not the game.

Hi there.
Whilst I appreciate your idea it's probably not a good idea. I'll explain with examples why below.
The reason you got accused of being a troll, is because complex solutions for perceived Eve problems usually end in tears. They are also almost always to solve an individual's problems within Eve and not thought out from a greater good point of view.
"I don't like xxxx, here's my alternative solution that suits me."

If you genuinely believe there is an issue with an Eve mechanic my advice, and I think this comes originally from the devs, is to define the problem clearly before any attempt at a solution. The problem should be an everyone in Eve problem, not just you.

OK on to your idea.

It can cause confusion - unintended.
A newbie wants to buy 100 widgets. You have 100 widgets up for sale using your price range option you described above. Someone else has 10 widgets on the market 0.1 cheaper than you at the station the newbie is trying to buy from.
He intends to buy all 100. He buys the cheaper 10, but now your widgets aren't being pegged down by the lower price 10 and yours shoot back up in price to the top of your range. All of a sudden he can't afford them any more and he has no idea why.

Second example - and this is the killer. Believe me the market hawks would be on this like a fat kid on a smartie. Eve players will exploit any loophole they can and eat you alive.
You have 100 battleships for sale. An evil player wants to buy them all, but as cheaply as possible off you. He exploits your idea massively.
He manually lists 1 battleship up for sale. Yours automatically go 0.1 isk cheaper using your system above.
He walks the price of his one battleship down and down and down watching your auto system undercut him each time.
At some point he has found your lower limit - your order refuses to undercut him.
He now knows your lowest possible price.
He lists a second battleship - or even the same one - for 0.1 ISK more than your lowest price.
Your auto system lists all 100 of your battleships at the very lowest price in your range.
He buys all 100 battleships off you having exploited your system to force you to sell at the very lowest price.

If there is a way to exploit bad design in Eve the players will find it I promise you. The above only represents 30 seconds of analysis. God knows what they could do to your idea after a week. CCP has to deal with this every day. In general the simpler the better. Also as I said before, before coming up with an idea put a lot of effort into identifying and defining the problem before even thinking about a solution.

I think comparisons with ebay are a little disingenuous at least..
There are several differences that I would have thought make it obvious even to the casual observer that a direct comparison of the two has little merit.

In ebay not all items are equal - some are brand new, some are used, some are already broken and sold as spares. In Eve all items of the same type are exactly the same. A DCU 2 that has been used for several years is exactly equal to one that has just been produced. There are no brands with differences in quality between the brands. An item purchased off the Eve market will function exactly as defined by CCP. An item purchased off ebay is a gamble. The expectation of buyers in these two different systems is not the same.

In addition as an occasional user of ebay, I find ebay exhibits human factors during the purchaser's decision process. How good and professional is the listing? How many similar items does the seller have for sale? What is the seller's feedback like? A myriad of other human factors come into play on ebay that don't at all come into play in Eve.

And lastly, items sold on ebay that are "similar" are not grouped into a large single listing as in Eve. All DCU2s are listed in a single auction in Eve. In ebay each one gets its own listing. Ebay is far more similar to the contracts system in Eve than the market listing for a given device. This one massive difference alone torpedoes the Eve ebay comparison well out of the water.

For the reasons above I feel a comparison of the Eve market to ebay is a very poor idea because the two systems are so different. Any idea based on the logic "Eve is like ebay so any idea that works for ebay would be good for Eve" relies on a an assumption that can be easily shown to be false "Eve is like ebay", no it's not.


I showed with my original second example how easily exploitable the idea is and would be in practice.
Any problem that it purportedly proposes to solve still exists after it's implementation. I demonstrated this with an example. If original problem still exists what is the point of implementing the solution?

Is 0.1 ISKing a problem?
Is it not a valid form of market PVP in a predominantly PVP game?
Is it not a valid game mechanic?

For me the only problem with 0.1ISKing is when it is done by bots and that's against the Eve ELUA anyway. CCP can and will take action against botting. See the security team presentation from fanfest and previous fanfests.

If you believe that I am wrong can you define and explain why 0.1 ISKing is a problem for the whole of Eve and not just because you find it annoying please? It will help me debate you better if you can explain what problem you think this proposal fixes, because I believe that the assumption that "0.1ISKing is a problem for Eve" to be wrong. And the idea appears to be based on that assumption.

I demonstrated to you that your "exploits" are not exploits , and you did not respond, but merely continue to call sales "exploits", If I make a price range for my battleships of 65-80 million, and they sell for 65 million, wherein lies the exploit? They were sold at the price I wanted.

There is in fact no "problem" with 0.01 iskers that "needs" to be solved. What I said was that the idea in the OP is a great idea.
0,01 isking is a form of primitive gameplay that any monkey could do - which is why bots are always suspected of doing it. We can have something better.

The OP's suggestion would evolve the market towards the domain of the mind rather than the domain of the index finger raping the middle mouse button. Just like the EVE market was previously evolved from a primitive npc market with fixed prices to a more challenging player-run market.

Ok, I think you didnt get the point virm wanted to point out (although I may also have misunderstood it due to the fact, that i am not native in english ).


Let´s stop calling it "exploit" but "using the game mechanik to work around the newly implemented feature of the price range". There is no real gain from introducing price ranges if anyone can just explore the lowest range through trial-and-error-games and resort again to a simple 0.01 ISK less than the order of your opponent.
But thats not the only flaw in this idea, like virm said there is a real "killer" inside.

In fact, it would also render any effords to compete with a skilled trader meaningless.
Reason: even I (as a small trader) pay way less taxes and fees than a newbie do - with a feature OP described, he ultimatively could never compete with me. Because I actualy could set my lowest possible price just below his lowest possible price (which I can explore through the method virm explained) and he could not do anything about it. I would have a margin of maybe 0.X%, but hey - the market is mine alone... until someone else with a even better standing shows up or I stop updating my orders.

Now it is a "battle" who can adjust his order more often a day.
With price ranges, there would be no battle at all - just a "I slept with the broker and the whole caldari navy"-game, where the one with the best standing (most likely the one who don´t charge extra for bareback and swallowing) will win the day, when he/she set the range of his price. Right now I dont know the margin of my fellow traders - and thats a good thing, otherwise i would simply push my standing to 10.0 and rule over 305 Items with a 0.0X% of margin.


A few words to the OP: in the market (regardless which hub you prefer) are bilions to make, even for newbies like you.
At the start it may be an normal 0.01-ISK-business - but after 1-2 months into the game and some intelectual efforts, there is no real need to play the pesky 0.01 - game anymore.

I personally enjoy playing the .01 isk game but I'm a market rat in every MMO I play. While I would love for more of my items to sell when I'm at work and can't monitor my orders, I think the system we currently have is fine and doesn't need any changing. Sorry OP it is a good idea, it's just not a good idea for EVE.

You don't know the margin that precisely when you buy the items.

If the maximum skilled players set their orders so that they would gain 0.1% profit, they would lose money every time the market went down 0.2%. EVE markets, even PLEX, often move 2-3% within hours. Every hardcore trader would think very carefully about where he set his range.

As I keep saying, setting ranges would demand more thinking about what you are doing. And as I also said, many players will hate on ideas that involve thinking.
Anyway, it will never be implemented, so enough from me on the subject.

You dont need to "sigh" - I hope we can discuss this like adults, because thats what I am trying to do.

Yes, i have a specific range I sell my stuff for.
But - and thats the crucial point - I dont adjust my orders automaticaly.
Following the idea of the OP, the price adjusts himself just below the price of my competitor.
Solution for always beeing on top: I enter the lowest possible price as the lowest price in my range. If I have perfect standing, I am always on top and it all comes down to a battle of chars with maxed out standings.

Lets make an example:
I pay 0.40% taxes+fees and a newbie pays 0.70% (not actual values, just an example).
The item sells at 9,000.
I can drive the newbie completely out of competition, just by setting my lowest possible price between 9,036 (my lowest possible price) and 9,063 (lowest possible price of the newbie).
Now I can (!) in theory (!) set a possible price of 9,063 ISK per item from the start to drive out all competitors. It is my decision and my action and will only happen, when I am online and adjust the price myself.
But with the system of said price ranges, the price would be automaticaly forced to come down to the lowest possible margin of a single player, because otherwise it would be hard to sell the goods at all. Especialy when we start to talk about markets, where it is pretty easy to maintain days of demand inside the orders.



Most markets would be plain dead, not evolved. Because it would not be an itty-bitty-process in moving prices but a single "wham" and we would need a magnifiing glass to spot the difference between sell- & buyorder.

You could pretty much say that the same thing would happen, what happens right now in the real world with amazon and the book store around the corner. Amazon does not make a single cent of profit but can (and do) cut every price, enhances its market power and drives many competitors out of the market. In EVE, this market power would be your standing with the corp which runs the station and the fraction. In Jita 4-4 this would be the navy and the caldari state.



Like I said: there are many opportunities besides playing the 0.01ISK-war. And even inside it, there are many possibilites and niches which are highly profitable for a newbie. I started with 5 millions myself a few years ago, it all comes down to patience and brain. And even if someone lacks brain, with patience alone he/she can make his/her way to becoming a multi-billionaire in 2 or 3 months, just by sitting 1 hour a day on updating the orders.

I don't like to be mean, but seems that is working as intended, moving on.

Don't like the .01 isk game add x100 times normalize the price, do something about it.

Have fun trading !

Totally agree, and thats why trading is fun. You can spend a lot of time without docking. Or do some research and move items from one place to another one. I don't think one way is better than the other since both of them can provide profit depending on the market. Have fun trading.