EVE General Discussion

I always thought it was ******** that the sale always goes to the lowest price order no matter what order you click on. I agree we should be able to choose who we buy from.

The problem with that is that it would massively reduce the efficiency of the market, so you would no longer be able to pay (or charge) what stuff is actually worth.

The way it works now, there is very little reason not to price your goods as low as possible because going higher just means someone else gets the sale. Likewise, offering less then something is worth is pointless since it just means someone else gets the goods.

Thus, there is always a downward pressure on sell orders and an upwards pressure on buy orders. The net effect is that both buy and sell orders will automatically tend towards that much-extolled equilibrium where everyone “agrees” that the “right” price is achieved.

If you remove the mechanic that dictates these upper and lower bounds on a meaningful order, they will no longer converge (at least not as automatically and certainly not as quickly as before). By being able to pick your order, there is no longer any reason for anyone to price their wares reasonably because there will always be some sucker who misreads the numbers, sorts the prices incorrectly, or who just likes to spend more money than is needed for no good reason. Remove the brokerage aspect, and suddenly, the upwards and downwards pressure towards the “right” price is, if not gone, then at least very weakened.

Oh I see now. So like the way I can choose what to buy in real life and it made a can of soda cost $10,000. Wait, that didn't happen? Well then I guess people aren't going to suddenly stop caring what things cost just because they can choose who to buy from. What it does mean is that nontraders like me can buy the one that costs 5000 instead of the one that costs 4999.99 because that one is being sold by a friend or even just to spite the undercutter. I think what people are worried about is that they might actually have to do some work and move those items to a system with less competition instead of just undercutting by .01 once in a while to automagically force everyone to buy from them and never undocking from jita 4-4.

I think the main point is though, that if people select a market order, that should be the one they get to buy from however. If I only need one item, I might finish off that one person's one item buy order before the big order if I could. Just cause.

I buy tons of stuff in Jita every single day, but today I also bought...

Mechanical parts in Uedama, Suroken and Kaimon... because they were ~much~ cheaper, and I had free time for travel. No-one said you can't shop around to 'choose' where you buy...

…and again, the EVE market is a commodity brokerage market, not a supermarket — the two can't really be compared since they operate on completely different principles and with completely different goals.

The fundamental design decision remains: they've gone for the former because it makes for a much more efficient market that tends towards the equilibrium price for any good that much quicker. Would there be competition without it? Yes, but it would be much less efficient.

Yeah that doesnt make sense to me either

You're right, nobody said that. Why are you bringing it up?


No it still doesn't make any sense. People are thinking supermarket because that's what it's like.

Because it's the parallel to what you're looking for: a way to pick and choose your source. You did bring it up, but your continual assumption that you're dealing with a supermarket means you're not quite grasping either of the differences and parallels.

No, it's nothing like a supermarket. You're not buying anything by picking up item X from the shelf and paying for it at the exit — you're placing buy (and sell) orders with a brokerage house, and they go out and find sell (and buy) orders that match your wishes. There is no picking one shelf over another, only a selection of a desired price point and trade volumes. The brokers are doing all the actual picking and buying and selling, and they simply deliver the results of these exchanges to you. They don't particularly care where stuff is coming from because their only goal is to fulfil your buy order and get the commission. There's a reason why you're paying brokerage fees, rather than VAT, on those market orders…

People are comparing it with a supermarket because that's all they know of, not because it's what they're dealing with, and it's this mismatch between familiarity and reality that is causing things not to work the way they expect them to work. What they're dealing with is that brokerage model, where all trading is indirect and through proxies and where you as the customer have no control over the source or destination beyond the reach and range of the trade floor.

Again, as soon as you stop thinking of it as a supermarket (which it isn't) and start to think of it as, say, something more like a stock market (which it is), it makes perfect sense.