Market Discussions

One might assume that the market value of items might improve as the distance from Jita increased. In fact, it is just the opposite. Prices generally go down, because the game's design intentionally limits the number of potential buyers as you get further from market hubs. Also, players in adjacent regions (where they are still only a few hops away from Jita) can't see market items for sale in the hubs, so there is now way to know if they should take the item to market or just sell it locally. It's also impossible to know if the local price is better or worse than that in the market hub (unless you happen to be based in a system that is in the same region as the market hub. This is blatantly unfair.

There is also value in getting a faster sale. The number of buyers (who are actually re-sellers) that are operating in Jita and taking about a 10% mark-up on items purchased for resale is high enough to ensure that most items can be instantly liquidated for around 90%, or more, of the current market price.
A nice quick sale is worth the trip to Jita, but why should the market hawks in Jita be able to dominate the markets? These players frequently have bots that are running their buy-sell orders for them. You can tell, because a sell order to one of these players, quickly generates a refresh on the items for sale list.

The way to fix all of this would be to create a universe-wide market place where all buy orders and all sell orders can be seen at any time from any location by any player. But, to make this work, a freight transportation system would be required.

It's simply not practical to physically move around the universe to pick-up or deliver one item here and another item there.
I run L4 missions, and after say 10 missions, I will typically collect about 400 different stacks of dropped items that I need to sell off. Going to Jita is my best option at present, but what if I could sell the items to anybody in the universe who was willing to pay delivery freight charges? The range of my potential sales market would still be effectively limited -- but not because of some arbitrary game mechanic, but rather by the cost of freight charges in relation to the cost of the item.

For relatively expensive items, the range of the effective market would be high, because freight charges would be relatively low. for low-value items, the range would be small. A larger number of potential buyers would be able to see these items however, and it would be their choice to decide if the purchase price, plus freight ,was still a good deal, or not.

It sounds like CCP does not want to set up an NPC freight system, at any rate, because it violates the sandbox principles.

One alternative, would be to allow private corporations to handle this. (The game mechanics would need to be changed only very slightly for this. For all intents and purposes, it would just be a cargo delivery "mission", but the cargo would be actual player freight being transported under contract.)

The idea would be to use NPC (virtual) delivery to haul freight items to or from individual stations and freight hubs within each constellation only. (This would eliminate the need for private freight contractors to make a bazillion stops).

Items for delivery within the same constellation would be transported by NPC for a small charge (based on the same algorithm that I outlined earlier). This would also serve nicely to reduce the dependence on physical presence in market hubs. Transport to/from adjacent or nearby systems would be quick and cheap.

The items for other constellations would be packaged in secured containers that would be delivered to other freight hubs by private (player) contractors for a contract price based on the volume of the container, the number of hops, and the security rating of the hops being traversed. The delivery from the remote freight hub to the individual station, would again be done by the NPC freight corp.

The private delivery contractor would not know what he or she was hauling - only the destination and the volume -- and a bond would have to be posted by the player contractor before the contract would be granted. A delivery fee would be paid upon successful delivery, along with a bonus for meeting a time constraint.
Hauling contractors would be able to refer to a real-time listing of all of the available loads at all of the constellation hubs in the universe at any time, in order to look for loads that were going to systems they wanted to transport to.
Players who wanted to go into the delivery business would make good money, plus they would earn LPs with the shipping corporation.

Items lost, or not delivered within a pre-determined period would trigger insurance payouts to the individual(s) who requested and paid for the transport service.

How does this sound to everyone?

-TZ

Ok, a couple of points:

First, learn to use the "search" function of the forums. This is not a new or original idea, nor did you add anything to the idea compared to how it's been posted before. For not searching, you get one demerit.

Secondly, you are trying to make NPCs do the job of players in a sandbox game, despite the availability of player-driven services that accomplish this very task (Red Frog Freight, PUSH Industries, ...). This is 100% AGAINST the core concepts of EVE, and for that, you are awarded a second demerit.

Third - the only thing this idea suggests is laziness. You don't want to have to go to Jita, or the nearest hub, to get something. Hubs ARE realistic and happen in real life as well, for several good reasons that have already been mentioned here. You want goods to "magically" appear in your hangar for a fee. This does not happen in EVE! An additional demerit for laziness.

Finally, you posted in the wrong forum; although, what could we really expect from someone not smart enough to use the search function in the first place? This crock of **** belongs in the Features and Ideas Discussion forum, where it would have been promptly (and rightly so) obliterated. One last demerit is awarded!


Please either learn more about the game you play AND how to use the forums, or biomass your character immediately.

What limitation? Do you mean the limit on contracts in general (i.e. the contracts and corporate contracts skills)? An individual in a one man corp can create 21 (personal) and 60 (corp) for a total of 81. That's a lot of contracts. It's also just a limit on outstanding contracts. You could conceivably have hundreds or thousands in progress. I don't know many people who put up 81 courier contracts at a time (81 Charon loads of minerals is ~7.9 billion units at ~4.8 billion units per titan = 1 titan [maybe 2]), but anyone who is moving that much stuff has a gigantic wallet and probably many other people involved. He probably also would be smart enough to add more alts to his corp to take advantage of the 500 contract limit ( 500 Charon loads of minerals is ~49 billion units at ~4.8 billion units per titan = 10 titans).

The more I think about this thread, the more it seems obvious what OP and friends want is incredibly cheap, instant gratification.

There is fedex and there is Maersk shipping. The function is the same, the size of the content is different. I believe I mentioned I believe we should get an UI upgrade to creating contract, and for that matter orders as well. Being forced to do one at the time sequentially is horrible. Ideally you would have the option to open more then one location from your assets, corp or personal and add the same destination location to the couriers, and the same collateral, and (hopefully) standing minimum.

Advertising. If Eve had better advertising, players could more easily set up a hub based transport service. If customers within X jumps know to create a courier contract at Station X in order to move goods to Hubs A through D, then it would be easier for hauling corps to run a more efficient transportation system (and would encourage people to use it.)

An no, an anchored can isn't what I would call good advertising. Something that uses the agent finder interface (i.e. a phone book) could probably make a big difference in player run businesses. The in-game browser could point to an advert site where players could buy advertising space on.

Indeed..

I would also like to have ccp consider using the player and corp ingame info directly linked with EVE-gate, and make it more browser friendly, and open for more formatting. This might make it possible for players to create the store fronts talked about a while back, themselves..

The Billboards are what we need to get ccp to give a function. These should show the local adverts. Bill boards should have owners in the local system, and the price for an add would be standing adjusted in price. When players enter a new system the local channel MOTD should link directly to the advert bill board. We need something like this sooner rahter than later, it would be very useful having this introduced before WiS, and would potentially add a new level to integration of DUST. I imagine DUST mercs getting adds by networking EVE players.

Also it would be very useful if DUST players got access to the same forums and EVE-gate? Dont know if that is planned already..

The quoted poster got it dead on in what sort of contract finder is needed for couriers. We need something similar to agent finder, and the weird route market order highlight feature, that is a bit useless from what I can tell. Also a standing based access to couriers, this would make it easy for both the issuer and the shipping corp to handle new outstanding contracts. Using the freight finder would be easy if you could filter to only show issued by good standing or above, and issuer of contracts could better sort and control collaterals with setting different collateral depending on trust.

There is, and has been, a huge need for a shipping oriented overhaul to the game.

No there was never an active npc shipping service, there is a npc corp called interbus, that is the neutral shipping corp. Same way scc is neutral regarding trade and concord regarding security..

Ok. let me lay it out from scratch (with evolutions based on input in this forum).

Player A wants to sell goods
Player A takes goods to be sold to a freight hub (one freight hub would be set up in each constellation within the game)
Player A offers items for sale at the freight hub.
Player B is in a system in different constellation (anywhere in Eve)
Player B sees an item being offered by player A on the open market. (now universal instead of just regional)
Player B buys the item from player A.
Since player B is not in the same constellation as the item being purchased, player B is automatically given the option of having the item shipped to a freight hub of his/her choice.
Shipping is not mandatory, however, and the player can decline and simply opt to pick up the item or make other arrangements.
The freight shipping price is calculated and quoted (by the system) based on the volume of the item, the number of hops to the destination station, and the security rating of the systems that must be traversed to get to the destination freight hub.

If player B opts to have a item shipped, he is immediately charged for the freight costs.

Standard freight costs include a flat amount of loss insurance based on the volume of an item shipped, but optional loss insurance is available at 20% of the amount of insurance purchased.

Items are pre-packaged into secure freight containers (by the system) based on the destination hub.
(To your question) The advantage in doing this is that shipments from multiple different players could be combined into a single container going from the same origin hub to the same destination hub.

Containers are different (but standard) sizes to accommodate different traffic volumes and object sizes.
When a container is filled, a freight contract is offered on the open market.
Each contract listing shows: the container volume, the pick-up hub, the destination hub, number of hops, the security rating of the systems that must be traversed for the least risky course, the required security bond that must be posted, and the potential compensation for completing the contract.

Player C (who is in the hauling business or just wants to make some extra ISKs) can scan a listing of all available hauling contracts to plan container pick-ups and drop-offs.

Player C can make ISK by going to freight hubs and accepting container delivery contracts. Contract haulers would not know what they are hauling - only the volume, the destination, the compensation, and the delivery deadline.

Bonuses would be offered for faster delivery. Haulers would also be eligible to receive LPs and faction standings bumps (which they can't get from handing player-to-player contracts)

Player C must post a security bond prior to to accepting a hauling contract. The bond will be refunded if the container is delivered with the time limit provided.

Player C can opt to drop a container at an intermediary freight hub that is closer to the designated destination and receive a pro-rated portion of the contract delivery price (any LPs or standings bumps would also be forfeited) . In this case, the contract is terminated, the bond is refunded, and a new container delivery contract is generated and publicized. This process would repeat until the container is delivered at the final destination freight hub.

If the container is not delivered within the maximum time period provided, the bond is forfeited, and the players who did not receive the items they paid to have shipped would be compensated based on the volume of the item shipped and the value of additional insurance purchased.

Player C could accept as many freight contracts as he/she wished to.

When a container is delivered at the destination freight hub, the players who paid to have the items shipped (Player B in the example) would receive a notification to come pick up the item. Items would not be delivered other than to freight hubs.

The proposed delivery process does not use in game bots to do anything except organize the shipping (by packaging items into containers) and manage the contracts. Delivery times would not be reliable or predictable.

All market buy orders would be broadcast throughout Eve. It would be the seller's responsibility to pay freight charges when filling a buy order and it would be the buyer's responsibility to pick up items from the nearest (or specified) freight hub.
(The logical effect of this rule would be to get buyer/resellers to relocate their operations to constellation freight hubs. )



The advantages would be:

De-centralize markets. All of Eve would be one big market, separated only by the cost of freight and the time to get items delivered. Buy/sell anything, anywhere, as long as you can pay the freight charges or are willing to travel the distances to pick it up yourself

Opens up more systems further away from existing market hubs.

Allows player freight haulers to be more efficient, make more money, LPs, and receive standings bumps.

Players still have the option (and economic incentive) to haul their own stuff and/or use market hubs.

Makes inter-system transport more efficient by enabling sharing of transport resources by multiple players.

Others have said it, but I'll say it too. We don't need anything NPC related at all for couriers. More features for setting them up, perhaps, but nothing else. I want the ability to set up fast delivery bonuses myself. I pay about 5 million per trip, and everything gets delivered withing 24 hours, very rarely a bit more. But I want the ability to put right in the contract that if they get it there in an hour, I'll double my payment, or something like that. Right now, I could promise to do that, but whoever takes my contract would have to trust my word.

Look at Red Frog. 58,972 contracts completed in less than a year, with only 69 failed. That's about a .1% failure ratio, or 99.9% reliable. They have moved 21,038,568,194 m3 715,748 jumps with a total collateral of 41,471,875,882,992 isk. Why would I ever use NPCs when they work so well?

I'm actually surprised that nobody from RF has come in here screamed bloody murder about someone suggesting something that could mess with their business. As far as the shipping hubs and making the contract value based on NPC numbers, NPC payouts don't get updated often enough to account for the changing markets in EvE. I would rather have the choice to use someone I KNOW will get my stuff there safely and in a reasonable time frame. With the shipping hub, I get whatever hauler grabs the contract, whether it be some idiot who will lose my (not fully insured, according you your plan) stuff, or someone really good. That's another point. Everything I move with RF is, essentially, fully insured. If they get ganked, or for some other reason fail to make delivery, my collateral completely covers the cost of whatever I'm moving. I lose nothing if it was goods going to market (its essentially the same as instantly selling everything in the shipment), and I actually gain if its materials (as I usually price collateral to cover the price of the end result of my goods).

The only problem with the shipping industry in EVE is the cost. It's practical for some people, but when it comes to large-scale industrial manufacturing, the costs of shipping destroys the profit margins, requiring it to be done manually. Everything else about the player-driven shipping industry is perfectly sound and has no need to be changed.

But, realistically, there is no way to reduce the cost of shipping to preserve industrialist's profit margins because prices are based on time when it comes to shipping. An unfortunate, but also unavoidable, problem for industrialists.

I can tell by the comments that I still haven’t done a good job of explaining this.

It's not about cost. It’s about expanding the size of the market (i.e. the number of other players) that you can routinely sell goods to or buy goods from. It’s about improving the system of getting buyers and sellers together and reducing the dependence on middle men in the market hubs. The heart of the proposal is to introduce a new feature that will allow normal markets (i.e. not contracts) to become universal, not just regional.

Why is this a good idea?
Limiting the range of market to the region a player happens to be in artificially limits the number of the buyers that can be seen by sellers or the number of sellers that can be seen by buyers. This encourages players to cluster near market hubs instead of moving out to more distant systems or even null-sec.
There is currently no way to easily move goods from individual transactions a long ways, so, at first blush ,it looks like limiting the size of the markets to the systems within a region is not an issue. But, consider the following:

1. Players can't see the prices for all of the items for sale in all of the regions, so there is no way to assess the market value of an items if one is outside of the region where there is a major market hub. (Price check on register 3, please!)

2. This, in turn, compels players to use market hubs where buyers and sellers are concentrated to pretty much the same station.

3. This then gives the market hub trolls an unfair advantage in the market.

4. The whole system gives players an incentive to stay in systems within a relatively short distance from market hubs instead of moving into null-sec where the opportunities may be better, but good markets are impossibly far away.


Markets for goods are frequently inflated (or depressed) because of pure speculation on the part of market hub trolls who apparently do nothing except put out buy orders and then re-sell items. (Using bots?) To be fair, these middle-men do add value by creating a ready "instant" market for players who wish to quickly liquidate items that are no longer needed, but the game would be much fairer if the markets were opened up by changing some of the mechanics.

The way to counter the impact of market trolls is to enable players to purchase or sell items anywhere within the Eve universe.
Practically speaking, the hub market trolls will still be in business, because freight charges will still be a factor. But they won't be able to take advantage of a "captive" market as easily because they will be bidding against the whole Eve universe -- not just the folks that happen to be in the station.

Now, to the second (and most contentious point) of the proposal: In order to make universal trading this work a system is required that will be able to move individual purchases from one system to another -- and this is simply not practical using the contract freight carrier system that is in place now.

The "gimmick" of this proposal is that it allows small items to be automatically containerized along with other small items, from multiple players, on the basis of the destination location. This is something that can *only* be done with an automated system that is built into the game. It simply won't work with player-to-player contracts because their are simply too many individual transactions and too many different hubs (67, if there is one hub per region) for a player to be able to handle it.

In effect, all of the new freight hubs (one per region) will become market hubs.

The player-to-player contract system will still continue to work best for moving things like ships, really valuable items, or a whole hangar full of stuff. Private haulers will deliver from station to station (not just freight hub to freight hub). Plus, haulers will now be able to pick up new contracts -- that they wouldn't have gotten with the current system -- from in-game Agents for the transfer of containers of small, less expensive, items from multiple players between freight hubs.