Assembly Hall

Crossposting is frowned upon; I expect this topic to be locked once a mod notices that you posted this thread in both here and the F&I forums.

The overall idea is to post in F&I first. Get a general feel of how people will react to the idea and if it will actually garner support and then post in Assembly Hall when you think it might succeed. If people like the idea and assuming the CSM members are doing their proper job and reading Assembly Hall posts, it will be seen and forwarded to CCP if deemed worthy. Either way this has been beat to hell in the past and I believe several working options have already been submitted to CCP. Whether they do something with it or not is up to them.

Not if the system pops the order once you no longer have the funds available to fill the minimum buy order.

I think someone in the other thread was basically on the right track when they interpreted what the OP said in a slightly different way, where instead of:

"if your minimum amount is 100% of the quantity of the order then you have to put 100% of the isk up for escrow regardless of your margin trading skill level" (thinking of it this way seems to break the point of having margin trading)

it is actually:

"the minimum amount cannot be set to an amount that would be worth more than the amount of isk you put up for escrow."

This simple semantic difference in the interpretation of the proposed solution much more obviously does not break the margin trading functionality, AND it doesn't allow for this catastrophic game-ruining flaw to harm the customers in a game-mechanic sanctioned way.

(it's not like you were gullible and trusted a player saying something rediculous in a chat, you trusted the in-game market mechanics that are supposed to be the method that prevents you from harm - the very thing that you are SUPPOSED to trust. but then that very system is what harmed you. it was not the other player who scammed you. it was THE GAME itself that scammed you on behalf of the other players wishes. That right there is the very difference between a legitimate scam and a straight-up sploit.)

So now, if the existing method isn't reasonable, we get into a discussion of "how do we properly resolve margin buy orders that get fulfilled when the buyer doesn't have enough money to pay for it?"

How about, the seller sells the items, and gets the money, just like they deserve to for going through all the hard work to fulfill the order.

Then, the buyer gets the items FOR WHICH THEY PAID THE ESCROW, and FOR WHICH THEY HAVE THE WALLET FUNDS... As for the rest of the items, well, those go into some sort of post-order escrow limbo.

Then, in order for the buy order to serve it's PURPOSE of buying things, and in order for the margin trading to serve it's purpose of buying those things without having the money, the MOMENT the buyer (who of course didn't have enough money to pay the buy order and is therefore sitting at a balance of 0) gets any isk at all, it AUTOMATICALLY goes into the limbo order until they reach the point where the order is fulfilled and the items are taken out of limbo and delivered to the buyer.

This way, the main that does this can never do anything else until they fulfill the very responsibility that they have ordered to be required to fulfill when they placed the order in the first place. Thus forcing them to live up to the responsibility they agreed to take on.

Then if people try to find ways to exploit this method, it can be dealt with by having limbo items only last a certain time. say 30 days, and the items go out of limbo and up for general sale at the location where they are, for the amount of money that was paid to the seller for them. That way the items go into the game, the isk eventually goes back into the game, and no one gets hurt in the process. and that can give rise to another skill that allows you to extend the amount of time by so much each level, etc.

So in that case, if an alt tries to do a margin buy order and ends up leaving a whole bunch of items in limbo, and that alt gets biomassed, all that has to happen is those limbo items instantly go up for sale. or just say "sorry, you cannot biomass this character at this time because it has outstanding buy orders" or something like that.

every proposed solution has the potential of being exploitable, so the developers would have to figure out how to do it right.

trouble is, ANY time you allow people to buy things without actually having the money for it, you get into dangerous territory, unless you FORCE them to pay ASAP.