Market Discussions

from what ive seen and what i see now i can say at least for a jita local bot that ive spotted has been banned

the problem is that the same player as now created an alt with a similar name "yotoo" and is now in action again with the same exact scam

if someone checks local can see it now doing that and it was created at 29.02.2012 (almost two day old now), after ccp banned a bunch of bots

10 botters with max skills, assuming even half were in jita that's, what, 1500 items on lockdown by machines. Market bots swing far out of their weight. Also let's hope those accounts get locked down with several hundred billion worth of assets on the market.

Cool that people noticed so fast after it was done....shoudl really send a messege they need to do this more!

Im not that surprised that only a small number of bots had such a large impact on the market beyond the general massive number of potential market orders for a well skilled character.

I would actually guess that all the bots were run by a single person. One of the reasons behind this is competing bots from 2 different users on their own could cause the price of a single item to go up or down (depending on if they are buying or selling) by 9.2 isk per day (2[bots]x0.1[isk change]x20[potential changes per hour]x23[rough number of server up hours a day]). Now while this may not be a huge variation on markets where items are valued in the millions i assume the bots are likely to trade in items with higher volumes and lower prices for decent turnover. This also assumes that each bot only has a single market order for each item type.

Then factor in human additions and the price change increases further. Again its not a huge amount on larger items but it still adds up (~300 isk/month). Quite large variations for minerals or even a lot of moon mins. Admittedly this ignores orders being fulfilled.

Even trading bots in the world financial markets have been known to cause a few mini crashes and I think its likely safe to assume they are of a far more complex design

I will admit im not really a trader and only dabble occasionally so i may have a very incorrect idea about what items they were trading in.

Womble

By no means an eggspurt (although professionally work in a very related area) but by and large hardware identification tends to be avoidable rather simply and can has the net effect of placing hurdles in the path of honest players whilst providing no obstacle to organised bot operators.

IP blocking, as you alude to, is of limited use when DHCP ranges are in play - CCP obviously can't go about blocking ranges from BT/Comcast/AT&T/Virgin etc. Similarly, avoiding such measures by popping out the end of a VPN tunnel is trivial.

Local hardware identification, eg mac-address or whatever is initially likely defeatable by simple VMware type setups or additionally is often the type of message which with a little more work can be intercepted and spoofed. Additionally you run the risk of red-flagging legitimate players every time they upgrade their computer.


None of this is to say that such tools can't (and likely do) form a basis for further investigation but without knowing further their investigative procedures (something which naturally we'll never know, nor should) it would be impossible to comment further.

Browsing the market will rapid grow your cache which perversely slows down the market screens when it gets larger.

Therefore clear your cache, either completely from the setup screen or selectively using a market uploader.

I use a market uploader which clears market items after they've been uploaded and leaves the rest of the cache intact.

Iv noticed such a huge improvement in the market gameplay, its really, something extraordinary, thank you.

This is an incredible opportunity for CCP to tap into recruiting people from around the world to join eve and focus on the best market system of any game that I have ever played.

I would relish to see hoards of newbies flooding the forums asking for advice, joining in as my competitors and just see this game finally start moving forward!

Now, Which one of you CCP Employee's here stepped to the plate and became the hero of the day?

Well, before any of this even started, I did complain about 2 characters using the same bottling program about 5 months ago pretty much everywhere and to every one. It seems CCP has silenced them, but the characters are Not banned, so I keep a warry eye on Amarr.


Amarr seems ok for the past week or so since Iv restarted playing, come on over, be my competition, keep local open, its the Chat hub of eden =)

Interestingly, market inefficiencies work to the advantage of the seller. I had noticed particularly the last six months of last year that margins were veeeery thin, which prompted me to stop auto-piloting my product lines and actually start competing, and then all of a sudden it was like a money printing machine was restored to my empire alt and I can't even begin to keep up with sales. Obviously, any systemic change that DOUBLES my weekly profit while halving the time I spend 'earning' it gets my vote :)

The Market bots are back over the last week.