Broker Relations

Algathas · February 25, 2020, 3:20pm

There are two issues with hypernet.

although a person can search for items they can only see the amount that show up in the window. Those are pretty random. So if there are too many injectors in the hypernet then it would be random if yours shows up to potential bidders at any given time. There is no way to know the total number of competing items if they exceed the window display amount.
the time limit is short and you can only put 1 of an item per hypernet. I think you would have to slowly trickle injectors through it. But if your farm is too large the volume of bidders might not be there and you will lose cores. Otherwise it is too slow and cumbersome to deal with for large amounts of things.

Good luck putting hundreds of injectors in the hypernet and hoping they all sell in a timely manner. Plus you aren’t going to be buying Plex on the hypernet. Arguably the profitability of skill trading is more affected by small movements in Plex price than injector price. Those ticks and fees will hurt.

Sheldon_d_Albion · February 25, 2020, 3:23pm

It forces you to sell to the max BO in your region, forces all the players in fact .
The time when my orders were fullfilled in less than a minute ( 2013 - 2014) is over .
Welcome to the slow market motion and especially in Jita: the dump order land .
With a Buy Order calculated so that the rich traders have their 10% net margin

Sheldon_d_Albion · February 25, 2020, 3:33pm

The raffles is not adapted to the sell of high volum during a pic .
For example if you have 300 injectors to sell, better use contract than hypernet
less costly and much more trendy.
Hypernet = legit scam

Danmal · February 25, 2020, 3:58pm

I hardly play EVE anymore, and I am not a trader, but I understand a thing or two about economics.

First, the statements CCP are making in their own devblog are contradictory. On the one hand, you want to mirror real-world markets, on the other you are committed to prevent bots. Bots or automated trading systems are part of financial and commodities markets in the real world, and everything traded in EVE is a commodity (with the exception of abyssal modules). So what you are committed to is not aligned with real-world markets.

Second, granted that you want every activity to be PVP rather than PVA (player versus automaton), your goal is to suppress bots. The changes you are proposing include:

Four significant digits to market orders,
Relist fees (or an increase thereof),
Elimination/conversion of the margin trading skill in favor of a relist fee skill.

The first two changes are sufficient to assure that market PVP is indeed player versus player. Trading would become less stressful for those who actually trade in person rather than by bot. A higher relist fee will assure that the constant undercutting stops, and the four significant digits should mean that traders set the same price (if relisting is sufficiently expensive), which makes sense given that all items are commodities. However, there are ways to improve on that system: the first is to only charge a relist fee if the seller is trying to set a price lower than the cheapest standing order (if s/he is not the only seller). The reason for doing so is this: If a seller sets a price of, say, 110,000,000 a new seller might come in at 109,900,000, and the older seller might find it prohibitively expensive to relist because of the relist fee. Creating this kind of market friction is certainly not what you have in mind. By charging a relist fee only if the relist price is below the lowest standing sell order would allow the first seller to match without the .01 (or in this case 100000 ISK) undercutting nonsense. Only the nonsense gets penalized.

The second is to draw the seller at random from or to sell in proportion of those sellers who offer the same lowest price. Say A and B both offer an X-type whatever at 350 M and are the cheapest sellers. Customer C wants to buy one unit. In this case, draw the seller at random between A and B. Say A and B are the cheapest sellers and want to sell 10000 and 5000 units, respectively, of Mercoxit at 7000 ISK per unit. Customer C wants to buy 6000 units. Sell 2/3, i.e. 4000 units, from A, and 1/3, i.e. 2000 units, from B.

There is no need to eliminate the margin trading skill to implement the change above. Let’s assume the change of the margin trading skill is implemented to kill margin trading scams instead. The elimination of the skill, however, pours out the baby with the bathwater and might do more harm than good to the economic system. The positive aspect of margin trading is that it increases the liquidity in the market because there are more buy orders out there. It is similar to credit and helps both the traders (to make more volume) as well as the small guys (who find it easier to sell one way or another). If you want to get rid of margin trading scams, you could just ban it (i.e., make it unlawful), rather than ban it by design because that incurs other negative consequences for the economy. Another way of trying to address it is to put a limit on wallet transfers in a such a way that prohibits a character’s wallet from containing less ISK than his or her most expensive buy order at any given time. It is like a minimum upkeep/safety in futures trading.

Stephan_X_Janau · February 25, 2020, 4:07pm

Not particularly crucial, since trying to avoid a particular seller could just meant purchasing from one of their alts. even if identities are revealed… just who is exactly behind that identity ? The very person you are trying to avoid ? Identity of the toon does not really reveal the identity of the person behind the toon.

Rossonius_Pun · February 25, 2020, 4:11pm

I believe that this is in fact exactly what they have in mind. This is the extra “consideration” they mention in the notes, rather than simply undercutting every order that comes through. I agree that adding this extra friction might not be beneficial.

Nindae · February 25, 2020, 4:31pm

Seconded.
I was playing the small trader and you just taxed my business to death.
CCP you just destroyed another part of EVE PvP sandbox, which is trader game. Now only big supertraders will rule the markets, creating monopolies with sky high prices. This will be enjoyed by all players for sure.

Alexis_Aylet · February 25, 2020, 4:57pm

It’s quite obvious you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to anything.

Sheldon_d_Albion · February 25, 2020, 5:07pm

As the deterrent factor when changing an order is now the isk, why not suppress the 5mn timer before changing it .
The only purpose of the 5mn timer before was to be able to be on the pole buy/sell position which was circumvent by multipling the number of order .
That would make the market reflecting more the real one .

@ Nindae there will be no more new station-trader, it will be reserved to the wealthy traders.
All beginner traders have to sell directly their items to the Buy Order .

Nindae · February 25, 2020, 5:19pm

@ Sheldon_d_Albion Exactly. They killed the small business.
Congratulation CCP, you just created old Vanilla World of Warcraft Auction hall from year 2000. Simply by killing one of the last free market in whole world (including real ones).

Kezrai_Charzai · February 25, 2020, 5:22pm

I think these two quotes show my range of opinion on the topic. To the Meridian_Knight “so CCP must know it” point, I’d reply that very little CCP has done in the past 10 years indicates that they have a good idea how the changes they make will actually affect players and activity. I think the planning process goes something like this:

CCP Manager 1: “Any ideas on how to shake up the market?”
CCP Coder A: “I think we could do this and this, without taking more than 5 programmers 2 weeks to implement it, with a 60% chance it will actually run without crashing anything.”
CCP Manager 2: “Hey! Those estimates are way better than the stuff we usually do! I don’t actually play and I have no idea what all this .01 ‘isking’ is about, but I say we go for it!”
CCP Manager 3: “I always agree with Manager 2, and they haven’t fired me yet, so I think past data indicates that is the way to go!”
CCP Manager 1: “All right. The players wanted change, and this is us giving them exactly what they asked for, so it’s a done deal! Off to the pub then lads?”

A bit exaggerated perhaps but honestly I can’t see them implementing some of the things they have unless the process is fairly close to the above.

Definitely on-board with Neaux_Baudi and “I think they’re just trying stuff.” Whatever their goal here it certainly isn’t targeted to what they say their goal is. I think they just came up with some proposed changes, and then got someone to toss in some babble about how good it would be for everyone.

For myself, I’m OK with the Citadel fee change, OK with 4-digit (although I agree with others that the EVE markets probably want 5-digit given the price range), I think the relisting fees would have been better with either a scaling % increase (or scaling cooldown) for each time you relist, and the margin trading should have been handled with an indicator as to whether funds existed to cover it and/or how many were covered. I’m fine with more ISK sinks in trading as well.

I assume these changes will simply shift behaviour towards posting more orders in smaller batches, something bots will be able to manage fairly well. Additional expenses will simply get passed to the end buyer so likely lead to somewhat higher prices. Final result will be a small ISK sink, higher prices, less active trading markets, and bots simply adjusting their algorithms to sell in a different manner.

I would also predict these changes will favor larger and more active traders (bots and human both) against smaller/more casual traders (even more than the current system does).

Meridan_Night · February 25, 2020, 5:24pm

I’m not crying. I’ll survive these changes.

As a ongoing producer i hate Jita since selling products there means i put my product in, and 1 Minute later 3 people have gone under my offer and i have to sit around for 4 minutes doing nothing, then adjust it again and just waste my time there till i sold my stuff.

That’s crying. You need a napkin?

Sheldon_d_Albion · February 25, 2020, 5:26pm

There is only a really poor way to do the trade , taking advantage of the item at a bottom price ( to be determined …) and selling them at a peak price or when a certain profit margin reached.
Meaning hoarding during maybe several month some items , then fighting with all the other traders ( they would do it quite at the same time ) with the new system of relist fees that will eat probablay more than half your margin .

It would be better to let the market setting the new BO and SO price ( few month ) to have a stable dynamic in which you can make plans.
Probably there will be some items on the market blocked by all the dump order …

Time to sell some trade skill ( wholesale and tycoon ), that would be a must-have.
Some traders will be completely incapacited due to all their isk blocked in the market .

There will be some strange effect :
When an item is at peak price : the actions of the traders will be to quickly to smooth the curved.
So less roll-coasted price
WHen an items is a bottom price : the action of the traders will probably crash it furthermore
To sum-up , items will cost less with this system
If the item is manufactured , the producter need to anticipate it furthermore .
It would be so costly now to get rid of a “bad” stock.

Price will be driven to the ground .

Nindae · February 25, 2020, 5:41pm

Hey CCP I have another super idea, how to kill the EVE market. And you can say you are inspired by real world markets as well with fancy wikipedia links. Put the SWAP on!
(For those who did not know, its the daily percentage fee broker charge you to keep your order on market. Normally it ruins all your profit and you start to loose your money after three day, max one week. Its more complicated but it simply has this effect.)

Celengan_Babi · February 25, 2020, 5:46pm

I would agree with swap rate. Any overnight orders will be charged by percentage-based rate. This will be a really good ISK sink, and only those who are determined in trading and knows what they’re doing can be sure to put their orders. This will also be fair for anyone, as bigger orders will get charged by same percentage as the smaller ones.

Using this incentive, people will be forced to either close their positions asap, or just instabuy/sell any available orders.

Sylvia_Kildare · February 25, 2020, 5:49pm

Maybe that’s part of it, but most of it is to convince people the price is lower than it really is.

It also makes it harder to mentally calculate/estimate local/state-province-what-have-you/national sales tax depending on your locality.

I’ll say one thing for dollar stores: $1 beats $0.99 for honesty any day of the week.

Sylvia_Kildare · February 25, 2020, 5:52pm

Like I said yesterday, it encourages people to either go haul something to somewhere there’s demand for their supply, to undock and do something besides market trading… or to stop playing EVE and do something else for awhile.

All 3 options seem pretty engaging to me compared to sitting in the hive of scum Jita is 24/7.

Algathas · February 25, 2020, 5:55pm

Why do you care what other people do? You are free to haul/trade wherever you want and if someone wants to stay in Jita it doesn’t harm you in the slightest.

Jade_Wiggin · February 25, 2020, 6:03pm

This! So… very much this! 0.01 ISKing is so popular because CCP gave huge advantage to 0.01 ISKers, their order is guaranteed to sell first even amongst later matching orders due to FIFO execution of multiple orders at the same price. This, proposal combined with reduced granularity removes partially gains from undercutting. Especially if new API would allow buyers to place one large buy request bigger than individual available sell orders and selling to any randomly selected ones below proposed price. This might result in overpaying slightly per item but would be still used by lazy not wishing to go through the hassle of placing tons of repetitive individual requests and and/or allow conscious “undercutting haters” to act against this practice with their wallets. Also this is the first proposal I see here that mitigates partially bot agility advantages.

Sylvia_Kildare · February 25, 2020, 6:03pm

Cool, keep up the good fight, then.

… CCP is PVPing with the market PVPers, I guess?

… Well said, that’s kinda what I was trying to describe in my “cautious optimism” yesterday about this whole update.

For now. CCP reducing HS spawns from 3 down to 1 last June (when Trig Invasions began) was a harbinger of the eventual removal of sansha incursions, I believe. I do hope they’ll either bring back drifter incursions when and if they do that, tho… or else Guristas incursions, anyone? mmm, droneboats and FOF missile spam EVERYWHERE while dozens upon dozens of NPC jams are going off per site.

Amen. For our eyes while looking at local (even with 100s and 100s blocked)… for the servers (hey, maybe one day the reinforced node won’t even be required)… for everyone, really.

Well, Burn Jita’ll kinda suffer, I guess.

I mean, I don’t personally mind either, but I only fly subcaps, so… yeah. Ish! ;D Still use 'em but not as much as I did before all the changes, I liked my shield PVE Ishtar for Caldari HS ratting/mishing. Miss it. Ah well, my armor RR Ishtars (Lovetars) get the job done these days instead, just wish they hadn’t nerfed sentries along with the multiple nerfs to the Ishtar herself.

I did go on ONE PVP Ishtar roam/camp with Spectre Fleet literally the week of the big nerf(s).

Pretty much. People act like deferred gratification is a bad thing. It’s a good thing, folks! Diversify your portfolio as a trader. Diversify your variety of EVE activities as an EVE player. Use this as an opportunity to crosstrain like all who undock have to crosstrain from time to time to adjust to “rebalancing”.