I have one question: Where do you go if you want to buy anything?
Chances are, you and everyone else in New Eden just said “Well, Jita of course!”
But fellow pilots, what about all the other trade hubs and local markets? How can any market compete, if the greatest volume, cheapest prices and also the most well-connected trade hub in the universe is just around the corner?
Don’t you think that’s unfair?
Yes, it is unfair! TRADE TARIFFS NOW!!
I am with big corporate, and I hate perfect competition and a fair polypoly market!
0voters
Me too.
Introducing a brand new and fun concept: TRADE TARIFFS!
From now on, every item in existence will be subject to taxes imposed by the local trading region. The greater the revenue in sales, the higher the taxes, simulating the natural factor of human greed and hubris.
But conversely, less revenue will mean less taxes, creating an incentive to seek out lesser known markets and potentially strike untaxable gold with your trade deals.
Also, every manufactured item in existence will have it’s place of origin listed in it’s description and when hovering over it with your mouse. Depending on the region where it is produced from, it will be subject to additionally taxes or sanctions, creating an incentive to decentralize the industry and create job opportunities all over New Eden.
What do you think? Have any more suggestions to improve upon this concept? Let me know below!
If you can’t compete, then you can’t compete. EVE manufacturing isn’t like real-world manufacturing. If you were a small producer, but you made a higher-quality product than the big producers, people would buy your product instead, even if it was a bit more expensive.
In EVE, that isn’t a factor. Every ship and module is the exact same stats and quality. So, if you are selling those items for cheaper than your competitors, everyone is going to buy from you, and not have to travel to the middle of nowhere to buy it…
Regional Tax discounts to stop the centralizing around jita and reward people for doing trades/industry elsewhere have been discussed in the past. I believe even very experienced Marketeers (@The_Oz ?) were in favor of a variable system.
I personally think it wouldn’t hurt and would reflect some RL politics, where underdeveloped regions try to lure business towards them with lower taxes, while highly populated regions usually don’t need to give discounts since they are so attractive already.
So, I’d personally woudl vote “yes”, but not for “fairness” reasons, but for game design reasons.
This I wouldnt like at all. Knowing where certain lucrative items are from, even regionally, would screw up a lot of things in the final end and would create a matter of I know who lives there so I wont buy their products. Now the buy 1 and check whos selling tactic has been around for ages but this would add an imposed form, also if its traded multiple times on market then would where its originally from still hold? Id be curious how youd handle this. Itd add a need, in some cases, to “launder” the item through alts, etc in order to sell.
As for the trade tariffs CCP has already done this with manufacturing and R&D taxation. Jita is incredibly high in its tax rate and so is anywhere near Jita. Manufacturing outside that region is a lot cheaper. All in all adding more taxation isnt a really good mechanic to try to force people away from Jita imo.
3 players oppose Jita, 1 is honest about the status quo and the other 100,000+ players (including the 4 who voted) were too busy undocking at Jita to sell their various wares to notice…
I don’t think tariffs would necessarily work - but maybe a lower tax rate outside of the major trade hubs as well as a further discount depending on the security status of the system in question?
That way players might be willing to stock smaller markets with more of the most sought-after items. Anyway, just a thought…
You’re basically wanting to tax corporations for being successful, not unlike certain people in RL want to do. Oh, look, this huge corporation is doing quite well and has a good logistics stream and planning. Let’s tax the ■■■■ out of them…
If you want more distributed markets, start seeding other places. The_Oz and most other people are just too lazy to do it. Bringing Jita down will have nothing but downsides as it makes actual trading harder, makes getting what you need more cumbersome and tedious, and it leads to more wasted time instead of time spent doing what you like to do.
People keep forgetting that EVE is not the Earth when it comes to population, but a tiny town. Tiny towns don’t need far and wide distributed markets. They naturally developed one market square where everyone trades.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that they’re lazy - there’s just no advantage (or increased profit) with it. Why would you go to all the effort to make less money? That’s like going from ratting to mining just on general principal…
It should also be pointed out that Jita sits on a separate server node just to handle all the trading. This isn’t to suggest that desegregating the market couldn’t be achieved - just that it’s very unlikely (even with a commitment from the large market players).
I think the best that you can hope to achieve is lowering the tax rate outside of the five major trade hubs to incentivize players to establish small local markets for the most sought-after or common items.
Tariffs aren’t the way forward - null-sec, low-sec and wormhole space would be taxed disproportionately (leading to higher prices and trade wars). Sounds fun in theory - but would probably cause a small riot in-game…
We already have these markets. Stacmon, Osmon, Orvolle, Keberz/Agil, Sasta, Esescama, Rens, Azer, Dodixie. Without any tariffs or other hostile features. People just need to put more items up for sale there and, most importantly, don’t try to gouge their customers for maximum profits.
People like Oz who argue for tariffs and mechanical features to break up Jita don’t want to do this kind of work. They just want to make trade way more frustrating for everyone involved so that more people stop doing it, and they get to control more of the market trade.
