Market Discussions

Some intresting points here:

Margin trading scamming is good for every carebear that is not too stupid to select "advanced trading options'
- why? Because to set up a scam the scammer needs a monopoly and thus he needs to pay pretty high prices for the goods.

Margin trading scamming is good, because it is very easy to make very good money on margin trading scamming newbs.

Margin trading scamming is good against bots. Again, good money to make here.

Margin trading scamming is good because it teaches someone, in 1 lesson: if it is too good to be true, dont trust it
(if more ppl fell for margin trading scamming, illegal toon sales would not occur and thus, ccp should love those margin trading scammers because that saves them a lot of work to help those ppl that tried to buy a toon for 50% of the market value

Margin trading scamming is good because you will get positive feedback in your mail even if you just ripped someone of for a couple of 100m's

I dont see any negative impact on margin trading scamming. Its actually not scamming, most of the time it s a free lesson for life

About margin trading itself... Dont see anything negative there.

Escrow.... Different story, i believe that if someone has enough standings in a station, that it must be able to ask an agent to check the available escrow on a certain order.

One of my biggest problems with the margin trade scam is it's entire effect on the market. It's not just the fact that you can never tell it's a scam until you actually try to sell the item. Lets say I'm a miner and I've got a bunch of isogen to sell. I pull up the market window and see there is a pretty decent order 12 jumps from me. I load up my hauler and fly over there only to find out when I go to sell that it's a margin trade scam. Great so I just wasted my time on a scam and now I must fly to another station to sell my isogen. I'd actually be completely ok with that IF there was a way for me to filter out the person/order from my market window once I was able to determine that order/person is scamming. As it is now that order can remain on my market window forever if the expiry time keeps getting refreshed and there is nothing I can do about it. With contract scams you can filter out the person doing the scam. You can block a person thus cleaning your local from the other scams. But there is no way for me to filter a market scam at all. Not only that but it completely screws up price info on sites like eve-central. If goonswarm really wanted to **** with the isotope market then setting up a margin trade scam on the different isotopes when the price is still high is 3 months where everyone would have ****** price info on their spreadsheets unless they switched to manual price entries because the highest buy price would be not be the actual highest buy price that can be sold to.

A non-ISK solution to the scam (I don't even like calling it a scam, it's really more of a soft exploit, even though 2 seconds of research should render anyone immune to it).

Cause skill loss in trade/social skills that could possibly be related to margin trading/business ethics when you fail to fulfill a margin order. Don't like the idea of losing "skill?" when you used "skill" to steal billions in ISK and tears from some ******? Could just as easily rename some of the trade skills as "business licenses," with no material change in gameplay except the circumstances being addressed, and you know what happens when your business breaches contract. In real world terms, failure to fulfill margin is a serious breach of contract, never mind ethics.

What about standings loss with the corporation/faction whose reputation you are sullying with your questionable trading activities? I don't imagine the people who run a place like Jita 4,4 would be pleased to have the reputation of a fraudster paradise, and they'd take steps to repair that reputation. Standing loss could even be in proportion to the size of the failed margin order.

Just tossing these out there, but I'll wager (on margin ) that someone has mentioned them before.

edit for moar ideaz:

"Your margin trading privileges at this station/system/region have been revoked until... due to a material breach of contract related to market order # 6666666666"

See that bolded part, it tells me you don't have a clue on how the market works. It is incredibly easy to spot these scams if you had half a clue regarding how the market window works.

Here's a hint, if you see a buy order that has a minimum quantity AND that buy order is higher than the market sell orders....it is the margin trade scam.

So for your example. Someone is selling Julien Tags via a spammed contract order "for way less than market!". You look at the contract and see the Julien tags and do a quick search of the market. Julien Tags are selling for 199m each and you look at the buy order. OMFG someone is buying Julien Tags for 395m and they want exactly 18 tags!!!! You quickly do the math; they only want 2 billion for the 18 tags and you can quickly sell them for 7billion that buy order and make a quick 5 billion in profit. You would be stupid not to accept right?

Well if you think that's legit you deserve to lose your isk.

So lets recap: If the buy order is higher than the sell orders it is a scam. If the buy order min quantity is the same # as the contract you are buying, it is a scam. If you think someone is nice enough to sell you items at below market prices 'just because' then it is a scam.

Your isogen scenario isn't a scam but actually a function of margin trading. Just because someone doesn't have the funds to fulfill the order doesn't make it a scam. That buyer probably wanted the isogen at their production station and was willing to pay a premium (say buying at 50 or 55, something still reasonable) but their wallet couldn't cover the transaction as they maybe bought another material on market which depleted their reserves.

However, if isogen is selling at 44 and the buy order is at 650 for a min quantity then you really need to assess your gullibility factor. Sure it could be legit but that kind of price difference should scream illegitimate scam.

The margin scam isn't trying to get you to cart your crap 15 jumps away so you can get a little extra only to find out someone won't buy it. They're there for one specific goal, to get someone to buy their overpriced stuff and try to do an instant resell.

Yes they advertise contracts and yes they may buy up all the quantities of an item and relist it with a limited quantity at an incredibly inflated price in hopes of someone buying all the item in hopes of quick return with an instant sell. Regardless the premise remains the same, min quantity order on a buy order that is out-of-sync with the rest of the market buys is the scam. They aren't doing this on goods with lots of vol, it is limited almost solely to rare/worthless items (such as certain tags) where the quantity available is very small and they likely control most of the listed orders.

If they are stupid they leave out min quantity and are no longer margin scams but stupid traders. Min quantity is the key to the entire operation as it safeguards them from using escrow to cover a sale. If they listed a buy of 10 items with min quantity of 1 they will probably have more than enough in escrow to cover that 1 item and the market will complete the transaction, at least once.

The real problem seems to be when the Buy Order is for X items and the Minimum Amount is also set at X items.

If such an order fails because of insufficient ISK, yes then I agree that some penalty is in order. Obviously it can't be negative wallet balance, because as others have said that's a license to print ISK. But some kind of corp or even faction standing loss might work.

Legtimate Buy Orders utilizing the Minimum Amount functionality are always such that the amount desired is X items and the minimum is Y item, where Y is a figure that is lower than X. Always. Such Buy Orders are fulfilled over time, rather than all at once, and it may well be the case that a legitimate trader runs into a cash flow problem and so has one or two such Margin Trading-based orders fail after they have been partially fulfilled, every now and then.

Obviously the penalty for failing a Buy Order that has already been partially fulfilled should be much less severe than for failing a completely unfilfilled Buy Order. And by that I mean one or preferably two orders of magnitude less severe. The first represens a legitimate and honest desire to purchase. The second does nothing but create confusion in the market as to what the real value of the item should be (since inflated scam Buy Orders drive up the perceived average price).

You must have lost a ton on this type of scam since you are alt posting in only margin-trading threads. How much did you lose?

Out of ALL the issues in the game, you honestly believe this is scam is the one forcing customers to quit eve. Seriously? Out of everything that can and does occur you really think CCP is losing people over this issue?

CCP has never said use in-game mechanics to get scammed. CCP has stated time and again that scamming is legal as long as they use valid in-game mechanics. That underlined part is something you really fail to seem to grasp. Scamming is a legitimate play activity in CCP's view. There is no flaw here, there is a clever use of the margin trading mechanic to create a scam but the scam requires a large failing on common sense on behalf of the scammed to pull it off.

You proposed CCP destroy margin trading for all the legitimate traders using it just because some scammers were able to take your isk by using your greed to override common sense. Scamming is legal and you must use your common sense to know when you are failing for a scam. If it is too good to be true then it's a scam, even if you don't quite understand how.

And seriously, its hilarious you think this issue is the one causing customer flight

my oppinion is that the OP and most other ppl here should learn to use all the tools CCP left at your disposal. such as the market window, and the damn market history.

under a strict definition of "scam" theres no way in hell anyone could scam using any tool ingame. hell, not even station trading is susceptible to scams, unless youre a complete moron.


do show info on all goods, use market index sites like eve-central.com or evemarketeer.com , CHECK THE MARKET HISTORY.


and for once and for all get it through your thick heads, the market window is NOT a snapshot of the "market" its just a listing of active buy and sell orders that may very well be far off the actual price point of the goods.

the "market" you're looking for won't be shown on any in game window, it's an aggregate of the market history, volume traded, actual supply, estimated demand, and houndreds of other factors of wich one of the least important is "active buy/sell orders".

welcome to capitalism.