That it was in contracts was your first indication that it was a scam. You nailed it as such.

That it was in contracts and could be bought/sold on the market was the second indication that it was a scam. You missed that point completely.

That it was in contracts, could be bought/sold on the market and was "too good to be true" should have been the final indicator that it was a scam. You missed that point as well.

Don't drink and think. It's bad, mmmm'kay?

btw there are sometimes cheap navy slicers for sale in contracts, just gotta be quick enough to get one. check jita for those

It's funny how the first two sell so quickly, guess that is why the seller was in a hurry to post the third contract and mistyped the number of zeroes.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

Wrong forum. Crime & Punishment, Market Discussions... Ok but GD?

As for your post - yes this uses a poorly implemented game mechanic. Yes it's been discussed before repeatedly and I imagine CCP will "eventually" get around to addressing the problem.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

As for your post - yes this uses a poorly implemented game mechanic. Yes it's been discussed before repeatedly and I imagine CCP will "eventually" get around to addressing the problem.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

I'd rather have all buy orders that cannot be covered by the current wallet amount be removed from the market automatically.

or it should be able to put your wallet into the negatives as you'd have a debt towards the broker, cause I think that not being able to pay for what you owe should be on the shoulders of the seller and not the buyer.

as it was pointed out before, this would be an infinite ISK-generation machine. Creat alt, place uncovered buy order, sell to alt, biomass indebted alt...

A scam hurts actually no one. It's just an expensive lesson for on side of this special kind of transaction.

Then remove that skill altogether. While I understand the concept beneath it I don't get why a broker would accept to buy something for you while you don't even have the money to pay for it.

Then remove that skill altogether. While I understand the concept beneath it I don't get why a broker would accept to buy something for you while you don't even have the money to pay for it.

I had though about making the rest to cover never higher then the profits that could be made from sell orders, although someone could simply put a sell order for a very high price and it would be circumvented. The alternative would be to use the sell orders average value.

EDIT: The player would get into the negatives, and the sell orders would be "Locked" from being canceled or sold for lower then the average value.

Even in real stock trading - depending on how you do it - there is the possibility to have orders that are not fully covered. In one tool I used you set up orders and further orders would be cancelled (after some have been executed) should your margin no longer cover them.

Further, I'd assume the skill to be quite important for the Eve economy. If all traders can only set up buy orders in maximum of their current liquidity, there just would be far less of these orders, making it far harder for a seller to sell his stock.

So what you're proposing is to make live harder for many in order to protect some few from a lesson they might be better off learning in Eve than elsewhere.

Any mechanic by which a player can force another player into the negatives and pocket the resulting ISK is an immediate gamebreaker.

How are you forcing someone to go in the negatives? You'd put yourself in it and it would be your problem.

because the 'YOU' in this scenario is a burner alt.

There, said it without resorting to sounding like a 5 year old. If I can do it, you can too Peers!

[quote=embrel]
I don't think that it changes that much in the economy that you place buy orders for higher then you can afford

Btw, something that I started seeing:

- Place buy order with no margin available at 20% price from sell to buy
- Wait until someone place his sell order at the same price
- Rinse, repeat until you brought the market down
- Buy stuff
- Wait until the market steps back up
- Sell stuff
- ...
- Profits.

How are you forcing someone to go in the negatives? You'd put yourself in it and it would be your problem.

I know that it's a stupid idea, but it's less stupid then trying to buy stuff with money that doesn't exists.

I am not placing orders for something I can not afford. I place just lots of orders and am sure that not all of them will be executed at the same time. All of them at the same time would be higher than my liq, most of them at the same time I could cover. If I place less orders I get less orders executed reducing my trading activity. If all traders place less orders there are far less buy orders meaning you will always have to wait till someone buys your sell order as there will simply not be enough buy orders for you to sell at a reasonable price.

If I understand your proposal you're welcome to try. In general you'll notice that a) you'll be only the highest bidder at 20% from sell order price in very illiquid assets b) you'll hardly ever get an executed buy order. Together this leads to: not enough profits.

I dare to say that your scheme would only work if margin trading skill was removed.

Even in real stock trading - depending on how you do it - there is the possibility to have orders that are not fully covered. In one tool I used you set up orders and further orders would be cancelled (after some have been executed) should your margin no longer cover them.

Further, I'd assume the skill to be quite important for the Eve economy. If all traders can only set up buy orders in maximum of their current liquidity, there just would be far less of these orders, making it far harder for a seller to sell his stock.

So what you're proposing is to make live harder for many in order to protect some few from a lesson they might be better off learning in Eve than elsewhere.

I'm fairly sure that was the Enron defence too.

IMO, just somehow indicate buy orders that will fail--color them red, or something.

as i said he has to be fast. obviously the 1 mill slicers are gone within seconds (and no, not by alts... at least not my slicers; can't speak for the copycats though ^^)

I was under the impression that with real life margin trading you actually had to cover the bill if your sales didn't end up covering your buys when it came due one way or the other. Either through sales of other stock, often at unfavorable prices, or through loss of other assets.

That would be the best thing to do and also the easiest one.

The overhead for that would cripple CCP, every buy order would have to be constantly compared to the current wallet balance of the person who placed the order and the appropriate filter applied to the market.

How do you decide which orders will fail and which ones won't? I and many many other people have multiple buy orders that often exceed our ability, in liquid ISK, to complete if they all came in at once, we rely on our sell orders to provide the liquid ISK to complete those buy orders.

So far I brought up 4 ideas that would fix this topic's issue and I'm pretty sure that any of them would fix the scam part of the issue at least:

- In contracts, show the same value you get when trying to buy or sell something (Warning: This sell order is 9001% higher then the market average, are you sure you want to continue + a warning in the contract before clicking accept) + Add a way to filter orders by minimum quantity

- Show the buy orders from people who cannot afford their current margin in red. (I prefer the first one)

- Remove the Margin Trading skill

- Base the maximum margin on your wallet + sell orders value at market averages, you cannot cancel sell orders until you have cleared your negative ISK wallet and cannot lower the price under the market average. (Most complicated method, fixes everything and is more clear about the real use of margin trading)

So far I brought up 4 ideas that would fix this topic's issue and I'm pretty sure that any of them would fix the scam part of the issue at least:

- In contracts, show the same value you get when trying to buy or sell something (Warning: This sell order is 9001% higher then the market average, are you sure you want to continue + a warning in the contract before clicking accept) + Add a way to filter orders by minimum quantity

- Show the buy orders from people who cannot afford their current margin in red. (I prefer the first one)

- Remove the Margin Trading skill

- Base the maximum margin on your wallet + sell orders value at market averages, you cannot cancel sell orders until you have cleared your negative ISK wallet and cannot lower the price under the market average. (Most complicated method, fixes everything and is more clear about the real use of margin trading)

Having a negative wallet is currently a big fat red flag imposed on a character by CCP for RMT, changing the system so that trading puts you in that situation would make that flag less meaningful.

To pick nits, you can also go negative due to Customs fines.

Wrong forum. Crime & Punishment, Market Discussions... Ok but GD?

As for your post - yes this uses a poorly implemented game mechanic. Yes it's been discussed before repeatedly and I imagine CCP will "eventually" get around to addressing the problem.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

I thought they'd kind of fixed that by improving the dialogue so that people knew to eject their contraband when collared by customs for smuggling, but TY for the info, edited my post accordingly.

and which one would that be?

e.g. 10 open buy orders at 100M each, available liquidity 800M.

Now, which order would you like to see cancelled?

In the above example you can assume that usually the 800M will be sufficient for these open orders. You just drain the market of liquidity cancelling uncovered orders. And why? In order to protect people from their own greed?

Maybe instead of canceling the buy order, all market traded buy orders should be colored differently to indicate there is a risk that the order won't go through?

The problem here is that one of the party in this transaction has insufficient insight to make an informed choice about whether they want to participate in this transaction. In real life I guess the equivalent would be to be able to perform a credit check on a customer before ordering the raw materials for an expensive custom job. Sure, they would still be stuck with the materials at the end of the day but at least they had an inkling of what they were getting into.

I'm actually sitting here in my leather thong right now...

RL trading on margin has very little to do with what EVE's Margin Trade skill does.

RL trading on margin is trading (as in actually buying securities) with borrowed money. That's why there are margin calls, because you're reaching the limit of your credit line.
IRL, you can place an order, and the broker doesn't have to check how much money you have in your account* until the order fills, no skill needed.

*A good broker may check as the clearing price approaches your order, so he can give you a heads up if you're short of funds, but that's just customer service. The brokerage house may also cover your shortfall temporarily (as a loan), again as a customer service.

it is used by some to manipulate prices of certain items.

- Allow people to check the status of any order by right clicking it and select "Check if funded" option
- Since this would only be on a on-demand request, this requires very minimal overhead to the server. Basically it would allow to check if the order is good without have to actually having the items in hand and having to try to sell them.

The problem here is that one of the party in this transaction has insufficient insight

How? or do you mean in the scam-cases?

You are suggesting CCP to add a mechanism which can be used to add DB server load on demand? Now shuuurely that wont be abused.

If you place a buy order, the value of that order could be removed from your wallet and placed in holding until the order is filled or expires. Problem Solved.
If you cant pay, you cant place the order.
LoopHole Closed.

How? By putting a large buy order close to the sell orders giving false impression the item is in demand. This is not aimed to be a scam but manipulate the perception of supply and demand for the asset. I have seen it done, believe it or not.

I don't see why my proposal to add an option to check if an order if funded or not (example 2 above) can be controversial except if you are a scammer or a price manipulator.

Your proposal is controversial also to non-scammers as it would imply that scamming is something that needs to be limited. My question remains why you would technically limit margin-scams and not prosecute other forms of scam.

And I for one think that it is a nice feature of eve that scamming is allowed.

Scamming fits the general atmosphere of Eve.

[quote=embrel]
Personally, I wouldn't care much about scamming if it didn't mean spamming of local.

Nonetheless, I dislike the margin scam because I find it based on a misleading representation of the game to new (or returning) players.

How? By putting a large buy order close to the sell orders giving false impression the item is in demand. This is not aimed to be a scam but manipulate the perception of supply and demand for the asset. I have seen it done, believe it or not.

I don't see why my proposal to add an option to check if an order if funded or not (example 2 above) can be controversial except if you are a scammer or a price manipulator.

btw there are sometimes cheap navy slicers for sale in contracts, just gotta be quick enough to get one. check jita for those

Wrong forum. Crime & Punishment, Market Discussions... Ok but GD?

As for your post - yes this uses a poorly implemented game mechanic. Yes it's been discussed before repeatedly and I imagine CCP will "eventually" get around to addressing the problem.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

This comment doesn't make any sense. There are tons of on-demand data request to the server, one being asking for market price of any item.

Is requesting market prices abused to put the server down? Are you suggesting to remove the market from the game?

So after having last played in 2007, I decided to come back to EvE two weeks ago. Back in 2007 I lived in nullsec so you can imagine I'm not very educated on the markets.

As I was trying to get my bearings, I saw a Tag contract for half a billion. The contract had two tags in it. Normally I laugh at contracts and realize that most of them are scams anyway, but this time I was bored and buzzed from alcohol so I just right clicked to check market details, for fun (why the heck not).

I saw that there were TONS of sell orders for 600 mil. MULTIPLE buy orders for ~500 mil. I was extremely confused. This contract had TWO tags for 500 mil! I spent several minutes, not even kidding, just COUNTING the number of digits in the buy order to make sure it was 500 mil and not something else. Being buzzed didn't help with the counting.

After determining it is indeed 500 mil, I then decided to check what the hell this item is, and why it is so expensive. I googled it and saw it is an officer tag. +1 for legit. I then logged in on my alt in a different empire region. That region ALSO had buy and sell orders for ~500 mil. +1 for legit. I was now convinced each tag did indeed cost 500 mil. Why? Well, I remembered reading patch notes and remembred something about tags for sec status, which is why I figured these items were so valuable.

I bought the contract. Try to sell it... BOOM, can't, minimum quantity is 6! I am undeterred. Flying around, I find two more contracts for 500 mil each having 2 more tags. I figure these are leftover from before the patch that made them jump in value. I buy them.

Try to fill the order with my 6 tags. it vanishes. I then google the tag's name, and then add "exploit" at the end, figuring it was some sort of an exploit. I am finally taken to a forum page where Margin Trading Scam is discussed. Alas, I wish I saw that page earlier.

Lesson: Don't drink and fly EvE

So after having last played in 2007, I decided to come back to EvE two weeks ago. Back in 2007 I lived in nullsec so you can imagine I'm not very educated on the markets.

As I was trying to get my bearings, I saw a Tag contract for half a billion. The contract had two tags in it. Normally I laugh at contracts and realize that most of them are scams anyway, but this time I was bored and buzzed from alcohol so I just right clicked to check market details, for fun (why the heck not).

I saw that there were TONS of sell orders for 600 mil. MULTIPLE buy orders for ~500 mil. I was extremely confused. This contract had TWO tags for 500 mil! I spent several minutes, not even kidding, just COUNTING the number of digits in the buy order to make sure it was 500 mil and not something else. Being buzzed didn't help with the counting.

After determining it is indeed 500 mil, I then decided to check what the hell this item is, and why it is so expensive. I googled it and saw it is an officer tag. +1 for legit. I then logged in on my alt in a different empire region. That region ALSO had buy and sell orders for ~500 mil. +1 for legit. I was now convinced each tag did indeed cost 500 mil. Why? Well, I remembered reading patch notes and remembred something about tags for sec status, which is why I figured these items were so valuable.

I bought the contract. Try to sell it... BOOM, can't, minimum quantity is 6! I am undeterred. Flying around, I find two more contracts for 500 mil each having 2 more tags. I figure these are leftover from before the patch that made them jump in value. I buy them.

Try to fill the order with my 6 tags. it vanishes. I then google the tag's name, and then add "exploit" at the end, figuring it was some sort of an exploit. I am finally taken to a forum page where Margin Trading Scam is discussed. Alas, I wish I saw that page earlier.

Lesson: Don't drink and fly EvE

Wrong forum. Crime & Punishment, Market Discussions... Ok but GD?

As for your post - yes this uses a poorly implemented game mechanic. Yes it's been discussed before repeatedly and I imagine CCP will "eventually" get around to addressing the problem.

IMO - treat margin trading like flying a T3 - if the order collapses due to insufficient funds, they lose a skill level and must retrain it.

I think that if you fail to fufill a trade in say JITA.... the station manager might make it illegal for you to trade there anymore... or in regions.. or faction space... buy... yes... but never sell... same with contracts.

... As I was trying to get my bearings, I saw a Tag contract for half a billion. The contract had two tags in it. Normally I laugh at contracts and realize that most of them are scams anyway, but this time I was bored and buzzed from alcohol so I just right clicked to check market details, for fun (why the heck not). ...

So after having last played in 2007, I decided to come back to EvE two weeks ago. Back in 2007 I lived in nullsec so you can imagine I'm not very educated on the markets.

As I was trying to get my bearings, I saw a Tag contract for half a billion. The contract had two tags in it. Normally I laugh at contracts and realize that most of them are scams anyway, but this time I was bored and buzzed from alcohol so I just right clicked to check market details, for fun (why the heck not).

I saw that there were TONS of sell orders for 600 mil. MULTIPLE buy orders for ~500 mil. I was extremely confused. This contract had TWO tags for 500 mil! I spent several minutes, not even kidding, just COUNTING the number of digits in the buy order to make sure it was 500 mil and not something else. Being buzzed didn't help with the counting.

After determining it is indeed 500 mil, I then decided to check what the hell this item is, and why it is so expensive. I googled it and saw it is an officer tag. +1 for legit. I then logged in on my alt in a different empire region. That region ALSO had buy and sell orders for ~500 mil. +1 for legit. I was now convinced each tag did indeed cost 500 mil. Why? Well, I remembered reading patch notes and remembred something about tags for sec status, which is why I figured these items were so valuable.

I bought the contract. Try to sell it... BOOM, can't, minimum quantity is 6! I am undeterred. Flying around, I find two more contracts for 500 mil each having 2 more tags. I figure these are leftover from before the patch that made them jump in value. I buy them.

Try to fill the order with my 6 tags. it vanishes. I then google the tag's name, and then add "exploit" at the end, figuring it was some sort of an exploit. I am finally taken to a forum page where Margin Trading Scam is discussed. Alas, I wish I saw that page earlier.

Lesson: Don't drink and fly EvE

... so my station bound trading alt will get a suspect flag in the unlikely event that I am not psychic and thus unable to perfectly predict the future performance of the commodities I invest in? Okay...

yes... and subject to immediate revocation of your Captain's Quarters and POD ejection. I'm mean what is a Station official supposed to do with tons of merchandise (trafficked or legal) that some ******* can't pay for... turn around and put it back where they got it from?!?! What about all the overtime/holiday pay the material handlers union (Local 399547459323 "Heavy Lift") has to deal with every time some capsuleer can't pay his/her bill....

Maybe a restocking fee! I know some of you are thinking they can't possibly had to get the stuff out of Capsuleer "A" Item Hangar... and have it moved 1/2 way to Capsuleer "B" hangar before the deal was canceled... but in reality... when I make a buy.. that stuff shows up in my hangar IMMEDIATELY!! so they gotz to be knowing what they be doing!! maybe they can PREDICT what is getting ordered.