I agree with several other posts regarding the apparent proliferation of BOT market trading. To my observation, this roughly coincided with the introduction of free play alpha clones. These clones can train the Trade skill to 3 which will allow them 12 active market orders which can then be BOT controlled. Since this is a free account, there is no investment in or attachment to EVE and the account can be banned and remade indefinitely.
My proposal is to place a cap on the number of market trades (Buy/Sell/Modify interactions with the market) a character can make per day. The market trade cap will be equal to the “Available Market Orders” development of the character. So a alpha clone with Trade III will be allowed 12 market interactions per day; while a character developed to Tycoon V will be allotted 300 market interactions per day.
I believe the BOT density has grown to the point where “do nothing” is no longer an option. I hope this proposal will diminish the impact of free account BOT trading while allowing for Omega clone skill development to accommodate the majority of current player interaction.
Thank you for your consideration (and happy trolling!)
There are better ways to combat betting than making changes that will have significant impacts on actual players playing the game. Thus is one of those changes that I think goes too far.
I would prefer an increased transaction fee to adjust an existing market order. Right now, we pay a flat rate 100 ISK to reduce our price - maybe that should be 1000. There will be a point where algorithmic trading becomes unprofitable. This will also impact players but market success should require analysis and prediction - the right product in the right place at the right price at the right time. Mechanical process should not be a road to riches.
I was thinking something similar to this. Maybe introduce a skill that determines the number of market order modifications per day and only allow omega accounts to train it. The skill would need a certain amount of SP investment in the marketing group. Now market bots must be on an omega account, and banning them will cost the owner money.
I’ll go ahead and reiterate- fixing this issue will actually benefit everyone as it will reduce server load from unnecessary .01 isk fights.
I was thinking the same thing Ajax, maybe a skill like “Broker Utilization” that will increase the amount of market trades per day x10 per skill level. So the max skilled character will have 1,500 trades per day. The proper math should be a point of discussion with the end goal to allow current players the same play experience with Omega skill development while changing the game mechanic to make disposable Alpha market BOTs ineffective.