Assembly Hall

So I've been considering this for a while and am surprised I have yet to see it brought up to the CSM or even for discussion. A quick search yielded no results.


This is a proposal to the community to see if anyone would be interested, besides myself, in a column added to the market window under buy and sell orders that displayed the name of the character / corporation that placed the order.

In the current system, the orders on the market are anonymous. In order to see who is selling or buying certain items, you would have to buy or sell at least 1 of a certain item. This is not too much of a problem on small priced items, but on larger ones, it can be unrealistic.

As of now, I see no value in the anonymity factor except for that of market manipulators, who usually tend to profit heavily off of the average player.

Why do I think EVE should show who is placing the orders?

- It adds accountability to not only the marketplace, but in the entire economy of Eve.
- It also adds to the value of namesake for an individual, corporations, and alliances alike involved in industry.
- You'd be able to see obvious market manipulations and who was behind them, possibly choose to attempt to not support it/them.
- Possibility to lower the amount of market manipulation.
- It aligns it with the rest of the current marketplace namely the contract system, character trading, etc... in which all display the party initiating the transaction.
- Potential for more strategy / tactics in PVP & Industry by easily being able to identify targets, supply lines, & economic warfare, industrial warfare, etc... adding to the sandbox effect.
- Seems like a reasonable and attainable request for some future patch if ever supported.

Why not? Although I did think up a few potential cons, I'd rather hear from the EVE community on what possible cons they believe there to be for this proposal.

Regards,
Oslo

Of course. And I do not propose any change to that mechanic.


I believe your reply is referring to the following statement:

"You'd be able to see obvious market manipulations and who was behind them, possibly choose to attempt to not support it/them."

If that is the case, then I didn't mean to imply that someone would be able to choose who to buy from/sell to, but simply when to buy or sell. Time is one of the most integral factors in the market.


Example:

You're in the market for a new ship. You go to Jita or the nearest hub and check the market. You either choose to buy from the lowest sell order or be patient, place and a buy order waiting for it to fill.

In the current system, if you were not in a rush or had no care for spending ISK, then you'd probably just buy the ship. If you were a little more ISK conscientious, then you may choose to place a buy order or even wait for the prices to drop. In anycase, you still have the choice of when you purchase an item or place a buy order.
If you choose to place a buy order, then your best bet for information is the price history table/graph to tell if the item is over or underpriced.

If there were names displayed, then there is another source of intel/information to play off of. You would theoretically be able to gauge if the market seems somewhat normal, or manipulated.
For instance if one name or corporation was attached to the 10 lowest sell orders, or if one name was attached to the highest 10 buy orders, you could choose not to compete with that entity by simply not placing a buy order higher or not placing/adjusting a sell order to below their price. This not only helps the average player, but also adds flavor to marketeers.

Now, just to note, I understand how easy it would be to combat this by using numerous alts. This proposal is not meant to cure any single problem that exists like market manipulation. It is meant simply as another tool or access to information that I believe should be public. The current system of anonymity makes no sense to me or does not seem to serve any real purpose, except that of protecting market manipulation.
Also, like stated before, it seems like an easy change (comparatively) to implement and wouldn't take programmers/developers away from more important issues like PVP changes.

- Oslo

Surely you'd just find out the names of a bunch of market alts with no connection to whoever their main happens to be?

I don't disagree that there is some information that could be garnered from this, but it is pretty limited. Especially against those doing many of the things you would probably be looking for. Player name would only work for those traders who use a single character to work the market. Corp name could provide a more aggregate view related to a player or group working in concert through multiple characters, but I think this quickly gets buried by the fact that so many trade alts are from NPC corps. Could it provide some information, sure. Enough to matter? Probably not. Would it be a big deal to program from the developer's standpoint? No.

The bigger question would be: is this more information than should be available publicly and in real time? When you make a transaction in the stock market, individuals don't know who they bought from or sold to. It is a brokered transaction. Institutional investors see who is buying and selling, but even there it can be disguised to some extent.

I'm not entirely adverse to the suggestion here, but given the shady nature of EVE from a gameplay perspective, I highly doubt the developer would view market transparency as something they would choose to endorse.

Before they ever get to this, I would prefer that they fix what Steve was describing. You do always buy from the lowest seller, but you don't always pay the lowest price. If, because of volume reasons you select a higher price, you buy from that seller along with all the sellers at prices below him. However, you end up paying the higher price for everything. Seems a little silly, but perhaps its just a feature. Doesn't work that way on the sell side, but v0v

That's actually not true or you've misunderstood certain things.

Because I'm quite sure that if I click on them Nightmares on the market for 970mil my wallet will buy that selected item for that exact price. From the seller who was selling it for 970 mil ISK. The game doesn't automatically assign you the lowest price. If it did, there wouldn't be any point to all them swindlers setting prices of simple items to 1.500.000.000 ISK at the top of the item list.

Last time I brought a cargo of 75.000 units of Morphite to Amarr, there was about 6 buy orders with prices higher than the one that actually wanted more than 75.000 units. I set the sale price to match that buy order and the other 6 buy orders weren't fulfilled.

What I think you're referring to is the default sell interface, where it's going to offer you the maximum price and clicking sell without adjusting the price sells it to the highest bidder.

If you set a price of X, and you're buying, it'll take them from the lowest priced order first, and work its way up, until it reachs your price, or you have bought all you wanted. Each person will be paid X times the number of things you get from them.

While I agree with the above statement I'm afraid that I'm cynical enough to believe all this proposal would encourage is the creation of yet more marketing alts in solo corps. Never leaving station and existing expressly to insulate the source corporations from just such "shooty" interaction.