EVE General Discussion

It's amazing what you can learn purely through research and observation. And a great deal of what you learn boils down to "People who don't research or observe are easy targets."

Lies, you play EVE, and no EVE player gives a flip about the consequences of their actions or about taking responsibility for their gameplay experience by properly informing themselves BEFORE hand, what kind of dope are you smoking?

Also, it's it opposite day?? Where is my xanax?

I'll give you some oregano for that powdered sugar you've got there.

I find a great deal of the ideas in this thread both amusing and disturbing at once.

"Eve is a game, it's not real"
I have news for you, Eve is a part of the universe. This is akin to saying that a conversation over the telephone is not communication because it wasn't done face-to-face. Side stepping the trolls and narrow-minded people who will argue it's all imaginary because their brain cells which contain the thoughts don't actually exist in an objective sense, we can conclude that it has an impact on THE universe. If there are additional parallel universes, perhaps someone might be exempt but I'll leave that to the quantum physicists to work out, and another topic.

"I love the mechanic because it punishes the stupid, careless and greedy"
I hardly even know where to begin as this shallow and partially thought-through sentiment has more holes than Swiss cheese. Having a user interface which is inconsistent linked to a skill which is poorly represented by name and has the potential to annoy anyone makes no sense to me. A person doesn't have to be greedy to be affected by this mechanic. What if I was a person trying to help others by selling items to their low buy price and the mechanism fails?

"Working as intended!"
Following the line of thinking behind why displayed buy orders may or may not work all of these would be excellent additions to the game: Allow people to manufacture ship modules which optionally function 50% of the time and are indistinguishable to anyone but the manufacturer while simultaneously ensuring no one knows who is selling them. The modules should look exactly like normal ship modules and conceal who created or sold them. Introduce a new line of ship modules where some of them list an attribute such as "increases ship maximum velocity by 5%" and make a couple variations on the item where in one case it increases velocity by 5% and the other it decreases velocity by 10%. This will make the game more fun because we'll be 'rollin the dice having a blast more as we learn how information which appears to be straight-forward can be incorrect. We should have buttons in the game which when pressed have a 35% chance of performing the action shown otherwise they activate another random module. A new skill should be introduced called Expert Communications which when trained allows you to farm pigs. How about if Eve just formats your hard-drive when you think you're actually going to be closing a window.. hah-sucker, got you - chalk it up and LTP better luck 'rollin them dice next time.

"It's all a part of the learning process of Eve"
Hey buddy, just buy both modules showing 5% velocity increase so you can determine which one actually doesn't slow you down. I did it and so you should too, it's grrrrrrrrrreat!

"Everything would be okay if you had just researched ahead of time"
Okay, so what if I create 100,000,000 alts and decide I'm going to place bogus buy orders all across the galaxy with no funds backing any of them. Maybe you don't even want to make a fast buck - you simply want to create your own buy orders to be something like, a space-trader, in a space game or god forbid to actually just use the items like a real sinner. Oh... wait... well, the first thing you should do then is uhhhh ignore every single buy order you see when determining what value you'd like to place your own buy order at because 99.999% of them can be bogus. Secondly, make sure you're in simple mode 99.999% of the time so you don't lose ISK, you fool!! Research that.

"It's so cool we can scam people, nooooo don't take our ability to scam people away"
In the big picture you cannot have light without dark. Nothing would exist without contrast and evolution requires conflict. I'll accept scammers should exist but on a more personal note I think scammers are short-sighted lamers. Biomass all you like, I won't trust someone who just rerolled as easily as someone who has earned trust over time. Slow and steady wins the race. Dishonesty and fast money runs out of gas quickly and karma is a *****. If you haven't figured these things out yet, your loss. I find it interesting that because Eve presents tempting opportunities for people to play like scum that many act as if it were in the player handbook that you must act like scum. For people like this, you won't get any of my tears - only pity. For people being constantly trolled by the emotionally disturbed, like-my-posts, always-got-a-counter-reply, pompous preening potpourri of poopery popularity contestants (off the tip of my head), you have my sympathies.

Don't take this the wrong way, I think Eve is a great game. I just think the inconsistency in this particular element which is largely centered around the otherwise logical and intuitive user interface amounts to nothing more than poor design. I was never scammed by this mechanic and I still think it sucks. It degrades my desire to participate in trading since I see the problem it could present. It is the potential I see in this game which evokes my response.

No, it's like saying that regicide is not only legal, but desirable, and ultimately the goal of chess. In other words, what goes on in the game has no particular bearing on what goes on outside it. Look up the concept of the “magic circle”.

It's not inconsistent and the behaviour is not linked to a skill. People buying overpriced items punishes the stupid, careless, and greedy since they have all failed to use this rather simple interface (to say nothing about the vast information sources linked to and derived from it) to figure out what the stuff they're buying is actually worth. This is a trivial task and you have to do a lot wrong to fail at it… but you can skip it if you feel like being uninformed for some reason.

…if the devs say it's working as intended, it is. That's really all there is. It's also no different from any of the myriad of other reasons why a buy order might no longer be valid by the time you try it — after all, it's an offer, not a promise. This interesting fact makes your example pretty much entirely misapplied since it relies on a fundamentally incorrect assumption.

No, it doesn't work that way. After all, there is no gambling or randomness involved.

…then you've just wasted trillions of ISK on market orders that will all fail, after which the market returns to normal.

Again, doing your research and finding out the real value of an item is trivial and irrationally absurd suggestions about what one might possibly do with infinite (real) money doesn't change this. No scammer will every waste the vast sums required for the kind of market manipulation you're suggesting — it simply doesn't pay off. For much the same reason, this whole notion that they keep biomassing their characters is nonsensical. Why on earth would they throw away good ISK and time doing that when it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference as far as being able to perpetrate this (or really any) kind of scam?

This particular element of the game is centred around people not doing their research and not understanding the fact that the players control the market. Period. It has nothing to do with the interface or any kind of inconsistency. They falsely believe that a buy order is a guarantee (when it can be gone at any point for any reason); they falsely believe that the highest (as in: way inflated) price is the actual value; they falsely believe that the reason the order is still on the market is because they're smarter than everyone else (when everyone else have actually already spotted the trap). The problem the skill and the scam presents is zero.

LOL so every part of my post was addressed... EXCEPT for the part that actually asked a question.

It was addressed at least twice. There's a big bunch of red text included in the market order confirmation screen that tells you that the price you are buying/selling for is well out of whack compared to regional average. That constitutes a warning.

How many times has your short attention span gotten you scammed?

My first point was that events in Eve can and do have impact in the so-called "real world" as everything is in the "real world" eventually. At this time in my post I made no mention of whether I was personally a saint or a demon. The sense of immersion itself does not change the nature of the universe. If a person reads a fiction novel that makes them cry, they are still missing the physical tears.

Failed reading comprehension replies:
* Assumption I would hate someone who bluffed me in poker.
* Questioning whether I might physically threaten someone over a game of poker.
* Assumption I am personally uncomfortable playing a game where people lie.
* Stating that regicide is not only legal but desirable and ultimately like chess.
* Stating what goes on inside a game has no impact on what goes on outside it because of the "magic circle"
* Telling me I should read a game development term which I was familiar to begin with and does not refute what I said.

My second point was that a system of unreliable buy orders being displayed can impact a player regardless of whether they are careless or greedy. The single example presented of the person who wants to play the game by selling items cheaply to people is ignored. Apparently the response is addressing whether or not the buy orders can be relied upon or not, and not even if this is a good game design element. Suddenly they are "not inconsistent" and the behavior I was discussing is not linked to a skill, such as Margin Trading (which enables buy orders to fail only after an attempt to transact is made.)

Irrelevant replies topped off with assumptions:
* "A person has to be either greedy or stupid to fall for this scam" - what if I enjoy getting scammed?
* "It's not inconsistent and the behaviour is not linked to a skill." - it must be true behaviour, if you say so.
* "People buying overpriced items punishes the stupid, careless, and greedy" - what if I enjoy buying overpriced items?
* researching item prices: "This is a trivial task and you have to do a lot wrong to fail at it… but you can skip it if you feel like being uninformed for some reason." - please direct me to the web site which shows me which buy orders are covered with funds and which are not.

My third point asserts that buy orders which can fail with no indication which are valid and which are not is a bad game design element.

Replies:
* "I tried to make sense of this, I really did. It seems to boil down to "Waaaah, orders cancel if the buyer can't supply the money!" Which is surprising...how?" - I'm surprised you cannot comprehend. The impact can be further reaching than Waaaaah I clicked a button and it didn't work but since you're already having difficulty understanding I won't try to explain further.
* …if the devs say it's working as intended, it is." - where did I say the devs did not create it to function as it does?
* "That's really all there is." - but what is your point? Are you suggesting if Eve were to crash on startup because the devs were responsible, that's all there really is..awesome you must be some fan girl, can I sell you something?
* "it's an offer, not a promise." - Nowhere did I say as it currently stands that it's a guaranteed promise. Sure it's unreliable information... that's what I said before you defended with "It's not inconsistent".

My fourth point demonstrates how while it's a learning process, to learn which buy orders function and which do not requires attempting to use them.

Replies:
* "Well, I suppose I'm not surprised that you don't like learning." - O.K. buddy right on topic! Nice personal attack based on little to no knowledge about me.
* "No, it doesn't work that way. After all, there is no gambling or randomness involved." - Please demonstrate your perfect ability to tell me which buy orders will work and not work in a station 100% of the time provided that you did not create all of them.

My fifth point shows the potential the buy orders can have if used as any sort of metric. Since so far it's only been displayed in the context of a fairly obvious scam I gave examples how it could be further utilized with far-reaching implications.

Replies:
* "Speaking of learning, go learn how Margin Trading and escrow works before you spout drivel." - An assumption that I know nothing about margin trading is made and an order is issued to me.
* "…then you've just wasted trillions of ISK on market orders that will all fail, after which the market returns to normal." - If I were to do that, it would only be a waste if I considered doing it a waste. You also assume that it must end instead of being an ongoing-state for no apparent reason.
* "Again, doing your research and finding out the real value of an item is trivial" - There is no such thing as the real value of an item as the value of any item is relative to what a person is willing to pay for it, and one method for which this information is relayed is incidentally what I am discussing.
* "Why on earth would they throw away good ISK and time doing that when it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference" - Why would anyone do anything? Are you so ego-centric you believe everyone has your motives? How are you substantiating your claim that if someone were to do this it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference?

Some more misc. interesting replies:
"Given that most scammers are alts" - Is this a given? Define an alt please. If I play 5 characters an exact equal amount of time and they each have the same skill points can you tell me which one is the alt? Can you please explain how the player is not scamming if they act nicely on one character and not on another?

Damn, you got me to reply. 9/10 good sir, very subtle.

What normal procedure is bypassed? The normal amount of escrow for someone with their level of the margin skill is set aside every time an order is placed. EVE is an exception based skill system; you cannot do "X" without skill "Y." Everything you can do because of a skill is an exception to the normal that's (often) hidden to other players. In this case, it's hidden because the amount you put into escrow is entirely irrelevant.



An order failing cannot hurt you. You retain your stuff and are not charged any ISK for the sales attempt. Why should you be "warned" about something that cannot hurt you? Or, explain how you can be hurt by something that leaves you exactly as you were before attempting it and takes very little time (remember, if the hurt is caused by you carelessly buying something for too much, well, that's what hurt you, not your inability to turn around and sell it for even more).

Oh, and the market interface tells you how much something's worth. The only way you can be tricked into buying something that's way overpriced now is by failing to read the market interface.