Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP wont change anything because they gather all the lost tax from the cancelled orders.

its an isk sink easily avoided by looking at the market before you go clicking your mouse button.

only the stupid and greedy get caught out.

You can already do that. You just sell your item at ~25% of the listed price (the minimum escrow amount with MT5).

Of course, if they already did that...




Why? The only person hurt by a failed order is the one who posted the order. They lose their broker fees, and don't get a successful transaction.

Besides, the entire point of the skill is to allow you to have more buy orders than you can afford right now.



Why not? Why should the order complete if the buyer doesn't have the money to pay for the goods?

If the order completes, it changes from a scam to an infinite, free ISK fountain.

(I posted this in a new topic, but seems to fit here) - The mechanics for margin trading that allow for the scam make no sense. Which is why so many fall for it once. Once a player corners the market on some rare item, it is too easy and risk free to lure a noob in while emptying the escrow. It allows these scammers to just sit there, bot some messages about a great deal, and trap someone who would never have guessed that it was possible to place a buy order that had no funds to back it up and which would cancel as soon as they tries to redeem it. That kind of mechanical flaw strikes me as crazy, and the use of it seems more like an unfair exploit than a legitimate tactic. I also have some trouble seeing how margin trading carries any risk at all, either done legitimately or as a scam. All that a player who puts up a buy order without enough funds in escrow or wallet risks are the fees and taxes. Everything else in Eve carries risk, but why not margin sales, especially when run as a scam?

I would suggest the following: it should not be possible to reduce the escrow below what is required for the skill level to place the buy order. The player placing the buy order should at least be required to always have that escrow in place. The scam will still be possible but will be a little trickier. And to make a real risk, if a margin buyer has a buy order out and fails to have the funds needed for the order in escrow and in their wallet, the escrow should be forfeited to the person who tried to make the sale, or forfeited to eve as a fine. Margin buyers can still try to work a version of the scam, but will have to keep track of it and will face real risk if someone out-thinks them. It would certainly be more interesting if there was a way to hunt margin scammers and try to beat them at their own game, since they never leave station and mostly operate as bots.

The scam also will not work as well if there are sufficient items out there. I have tried to trap a margin scammer, but he has control of every one of the items he uses. Not sure how this would work, but perhaps Eve could inject a number of items into the market whenever the number available falls below a certain amount. The only way I can think of now to trap a margin scammer is to wait for someone to fall for it, then try to buy the items the victim tries to resell before the scammer buy thems back cheap for further use, but catching the event at that exact moment is pretty impossible, especially if there are no other items out there that can be planted in the scam mechanics to alert me when a victim has fallen for it. Just a few items would be sufficient, not something that would alter the legitimate market, but if only enough were floating around to defeat the scam, that would put a lot of risk on the scammer b/c someone on to the game who can get access to those items on the market can potentially trap the scammer (if the escrow remained) or at least short-circuit the scam. A scam hunter could find the items and boom!

Markets work in part because of some knowledge of the players involved. It should be possible to find out who is making buy and sell orders, instead of having to wait until the transaction occurs. Why not have the player's ID in the market window or at least available if searched for in the transaction box? This might create a process for players to alert others about scammers, since the scam itself is usually "run" by a different character than the one who is advertising it. And if I can see that the same character has put up a bunch of sale orders and also has put up cheap buy orders below the scam buy order, that will be a good hint that something odd is going on. In a real market, people know who they are dealing with at some level. Just as in a real market, alts (front companies) could be used, but that is an additional piece of effort for the scammer.



In the end, the ability to place a false (and risk-free) buy order is not something a noob would suspect was possible, and that ability makes no logical sense anyway. I can see how a scammer could pull this off without that mechanism, buy placing the sale and buy orders as needed, then rushing to cancel the buy order as soon as someone falls for the bait by buying the items for sale. But at least that will require some constant maintenance by the scammer, and some resulting strategy and counter-strategy by the parties - a player trying to defeat the scam would know that they need to buy the items or provide their own items from the market and get to the buy order before the scammer can cancel it. If there has to be at least the necessary amount in the escrow, the player trying to beat the scam will have to calculate if they will still make a profit if they do this, or at least seriously damage the scammer's isk, which would carry its own satisfaction.

Eve has security ratings and standings. But running scams does not affect that. There should be a mechanism to score honest players on the market and scammers. Sort of a Better Business Bureau for Eve. Bounties don't work b/c the margin scammers rarely leave station and use alts.

Another problem with margin scams is the use of what amounts to bots, placing messages in trade hub local chats every two minutes. And the ease of the margin scam promotes this, b/c the scammer just plants the landmine in the market and then bots the messages on locals until, inevitably, someone bites. Make the scammer stay at the computer because there is a way to defeat the scam if they are not monitoring the market, but keeping the amount in the escrow and not allowing the order to just fail without any risk to the scammer.