Market Discussions

Well, RL is worse.

You don't even need to be scammed. All it takes to completely lose a lifetime of efforts in a RL market is to typo one zero too much once in your life.

I basically agree with you, and yet I don't think that's the reason why this "scam" should be allowed to continue. The reason why it should be allowed to continue is because the game mechanic in question is fully usable for "legitimate" purposes, and really the scam itself has very little functionally to do with the Margin Trading mechanic. It's a totally psychological game, and one that could be played (albeit a bit more time-intensively) even without Margin Trading.

Just to give an example of something I'm glad was greatly diminished: Contract scamming. The reason why is because those were mostly scams perpetrated with the help of really poor graphical UI. There was no reason for the UI and graphical elements to be so horrible that they actually contributed to scamming. I'm sure a lot of old contract scammers moaned when the changes hit, but the net result was an actual benefit to players in the form of a more informative UI.

With Margin Trading, if we gimped the mechanic in order to satisfy these bitter scam victims, we'd be wrecking the game for a lot of legit players who use Margin Trading for non-scammy purposes. That's why Margin Trading should stay the way it is, not because we need to "preserve the scams" or whatever.

Block?

Actually, the most valid reason why the Margin Trading scam shouldn't exist is because you don't have to earn it. The skill itself takes very little to train and anyone can do it within a very short period of starting the game.

Effectively it functions very simply: Train Margin Trading to 5, place buy order on market using it for x item, put up contract for x item or place sell order for x item, then profit.

x item can be any item, from collectible to standard market item; it doesn't really matter, but it functions more effectively if x items isn't a commonly traded item. If it is commonly traded, you of course have other orders to deal with, so you might have to either buy people out wait until they have sold out stock.

To make it more effective, simply place multiple sell orders up and buy and sell through your alts to create a market history, then run the scam, then profit.

Functionally speaking that is fine, but with time considered, it is not. This can all be done with a character just out of trial, one alt to place the sell order or contract, and an investment in one PLEX to cover the details of buying x item in quantity and setting up the history. You lose a bit on buyouts maybe, and certainly a bit on taxes and fees for the setup, but you stand to make a lot more.

In real life, there is no way any financial institution would finance you that capital in that short of a term and you would have to build up credit and history before they would allow you to place such an order. In EVE, all you have to do is train the skill, which doesn't take very long.

There is very little psychological game to this or need for one. There was none with regards to the OP. In my case, (last year), there was a bit the second time. There is always psychology on the buyers end of course, and on the sellers, but not such that there is any interaction between the two required.

The buyer is dealing with the market. This is a function of the game engine, whether players are running it or not. Margin Trading functions within this engine and thus it is extremely hard to identify without a very broad knowledge of the market and a great deal of experience, as well as knowing it is there.

The first time I got scammed by Margin Trading was early on and I didn't have any idea what it was. This occured in much the same fashion as it did for the OP. Never figured it out IIRC, and thought it was some wierd bug or someone had filled the order at the same time as I did, only beat me to it. Possibly, this has happened many times without anyone being the wiser.

The second time, I was still uninformed, the item was collectible in quantity and the rest of the contract contents should have covered the cost of my investment. Unfortunately, they didn't sell very well, the market dropped out on them, (more T2 Rigs following the first purchase and in the same day, less than an hour later IIRC), and the collectible was an MT scam and turned out to be worthless.

I found out what Margin Trading was, but only following the third hit from it. I thought I had just been hit by an elaborate scam involving multiple players working together on Teamspeak or EVE Voice or something.

The third time was the same day and shortly after. I saw another one and checked the market details. This time they had placed a large number, (7), of buy orders and I thought I could beat them at their own game, so I opened up multiple windows and completed Contract then sold within seconds, hitting each order in random sequence. They all collapsed of course and I ended up burning another 1.5 billion on that one.

Of course the rest of the items in the contract sold, but it wasn't even close to the investment and took some time. I found out shortly after on the forums here that Margin Trading was a game mechanic; naturally I was pissed. At that point I didn't feel I had been scammed by the players, but rather cheated by the Devs.

Naturally I'm still not happy about it, but recognize it as a "valid" game mechanic even if it is one I don't like. ..and you can't beat it. All you can do is ignore it and any 'good' deals.

Learn the way the markets work please, ALL the information you needed to tell this was a scam was already available for you.

all you had to do was check the price history.

And if you are not checking the price history for EVERY item you have an interest on the market, let alone those that smell like a scam, then my fried, you just crashed your car into a wall because you decided to drive shitfaced. No one to blame but yourself.

Mars:

And yet, nobody is forcing you to buy that bait once you see it. There is no rule that says you must purchase that massively overpriced crap conspicuously sitting there on sell orders, and then attempt to sell it to that juicy buy order, which is for some reason set even higher, that just so happens to have a minimum unit limit on it.

This is a COMPLETELY psychological trick. The whole thing turns on placing the bait, expecting a random mark to respond to it psychologically (in this case via the rush of finding a "good deal that can make me a lot of money"), and then pulling the rug out from under them at the last minute. If people weren't overly greedy, and generally unaware of what products are really worth, then this simply would not happen.

By the way, I've never once used this "scam." I use Margin Trading every day (if you have it, you use it, that's how the skill works) for cash flow purposes. I trade at a region-wide level always pushing the maximum number of orders. The overall velocity of trade is slower than Jita, meaning that under normal conditions, my cash would stay out of commission a lot longer than I'd like it to.

It seems to me that you're bitter because it took you so long to find out what Margin Trading actually was. And the net result is that you hate the skill because of a usage that is, relative to all the other uses of it (again, this skill is always on once you train it, not something you CHOOSE to use in a given situation) fairly uncommon, albeit particularly annoying if you get duped, and very easy to place the blame on a skill rather than on your own psychological missteps.

I'm not here to downplay the reality that it would be quite obnoxious to lose money this way. All I'm saying is that it's basically impossible to fall for this if you do your market research. It's always been a core element of trading in EVE that if something looks off or suspicious, that's because it probably is. A red flag should go up in your mind. Tasty deals don't just sit around in the wild waiting to be jumped on like that.

Also, as I noted before, nobody in this game has the right for their sell-to-buy arbitrage to play out, even if there's no Margin Trading rug waiting to be pulled out from under them. An order could just as easily be filled mere seconds before you attempt to fill it, thereby leaving you with goods that you can no longer sell to it. Would that be a scam, too? Or would it just be the dumb luck of market trading? How can you really tell the difference?

The only thing I really resent about your posting is calling people greedy for trying to make good trades. Is it greedy to expect a 6 month return on an investment of 2.5 billion ISK to be 1 billion ISK? That's more or less 170 million per month for the effort of managing your market orders and putting up the initial investment which takes you roughly 3 months to get back at minimum.

The thing about these MT scams is that the market history shows buying and selling of these products. Price History as you put it, and that price history supports the trade. They are also not all that profitable in most cases, with-as I said-months to recover the investment and roughly 10-30% profit expected in the end.

It's not as simple as just look and you will see it's fake. It may be as simple as knowing the value of every tradeable item in EVE though. Frankly, I still don't and it keeps changing every day.

Wait, people fall for margin trading tricks

Every time it crosses my mind I decide against it thinking, "nah, people dumb enough to fall for this probably can't even manage to log into eve".

I would be, I think, pretty much trivial to inactivate any buy orders that don't have sufficient backing to cover the minimum quantity at the stated amount, and that would be pretty reasonable. It would even allow margin trading to continue to be used for legitimate purposes.

Why should the market display orders that it knows cannot be completed?

No, as many would fill as possible and then the rest would fail and cancel. It is not possible to go negative with margin trading.