Here are some reasons it should be free to list and modify market orders in EVE Online
Encouraging Participation: Making it free to list (post) and modify (change) an order is the most effective way for the game to encourage the maximum number of participants to post orders. This creates a deep and robust order book—known as liquidity.
Liquidity is King: High liquidity means it’s fast and easy for players to find a match and execute a trade. This, in turn, makes the game more attractive. If the game charged for every order update, players would place fewer orders, the order book would shrink, and the market would become less useful.
2. Order Changes are Necessary for Market Health
The ability to quickly change an order is a fundamental necessity for an efficient and fair market:
Responding to New Information: As news, economic data, or unexpected events happen, players need to adjust their orders (change the price or quantity) to reflect the new market reality. Charging a fee for these essential updates would slow down the market’s response to information, leading to mispriced items and poor market quality.
Managing Risk: players use order modifications and cancellations to manage risk and adapt their strategies. The game should support this by ensuring the process is friction-free.
The global PLEX market did not fix the issue. Because as long as you charge a fee to list and modify market orders you are going to have a liquidity problem among other things.
This is a skill issue.
If you are intelligent enough, you can set a fee that you don’t need to modify. If you are less intelligent, you will modify the fee and pay the penalty.
Being able to freely adjust prices is essential for a responsive and fair market. Players need to react to new information and manage risk by modifying or canceling orders. Charging for these updates would slow price discovery, create inefficiencies, and ultimately hurt market quality.
Utter nonsense. Supermarkets don’t change their prices every 5 minutes depending on which way the wind is blowing. Doing so would itself cost money ( just as it does in EVE ). Instead they take a longer term look at trends, the prices of rivals, and so on.
That is why your pack of cookies does not cost $1.25 on Monday, $1.36 on Tuesday, $0.95 on Wednesday, and so on. In some countries ( such as the UK ) companies are not allowed to sell products at a lower price unless they have been at the higher price for more than 28 days or so. That is to prevent bogus ‘sales’ claims.
Making order listings and updates free encourages more people to trade, which means more orders on the market and better liquidity. More liquidity = faster trades and a healthier economy. If updating orders costs ISK, people will update less, the order book shrinks, and the market becomes less reliable.
