Thread is now tl;dr for me to go find if this has been mentioned - but as part of changes to the trade UI - please allow for modification of quantity of an order too.

For example, I stick up 20 frigates in a station - a month later only two have sold, so I decide to I want to take 10 back and resell them in Jita to recoup some of the loss.

I should be able to take back some of my stock - of course loosing any brokers fee and taxes I have already paid.

Export the market screen to excel, check the initial qty vs the current qty.

here:

Margin Scam (highlighted in yellow)

The "vol remaining" is the qty left on the order

Vol entered is how many were initially on the order.

There were initially 20 required, with a min qty of 10.

The buyer then sold himself 10, clearing the escrow and leaving it looking as if there was an order for 10, min qty 10.


EDIT: There are ofc, other uses for this information aside from margin scam checking

GǪand EVE is not GÇ£most gamesGÇ¥. All orders are real, by the way, for the simple reason that there is no way to mechanistically determine the intent behind an order that isn't fully covered. They can also all fail without there being anything wrong or shady with what just happened. That is the lack of guarantees that players need to learn about. For you as a seller, it doesn't matter one whit why it failed. Just move on to the next order and cash in GÇö problem solved. If this means you take a loss, the problem was never with the buy order but with you buying overpriced goods.

Tbh, I think it rather is, but that's besides the point. The thing is that they need to learn how this game works, and how to get the information they need to make intelligence choices in their purchases. So it's not about mechanics or about fixing the skill, but about UI and education.

Again, why? Why does this particular reason an order might fail need so many safeguards when there are so many reasons for the same thing to happen? That just seems like an awful lot of redundant db-thrashing to do something that isn't particularly needed to begin with, and which will end up being wrong by the time you press the GÇ£sellGÇ¥ button anyway.

If anything should change about the skill itself, it would be to allow the same thing for sell orders: you want to sell 10M units of trit, but only have 3M at hand, so you put those up and try to gather up the rest before the order is filled. We need the item escrow to be properly parallel to the ISK escrow.

The issue here is that the client (via the market interface) is essentially lying to the player by showing an order which can't actually be filled.

There is also some advanced market gameplay around putting up very large buy orders which you can't technically cover, but which also will never realistically get filled.

In my opinion, the best way to deal with this issue is to simply hide the buy orders that can't be fulfilled with the current amount of ISK the buyer has in their wallet. The legitimate users of the Margin Trading technique would benefit from this change as they wouldn't have to re-post buy orders that have failed due to temporary lack of funds in their wallet, and would be able to resume their orders as soon as they get the necessary funds.

However, this change would render all margin trading scams impossible, as fail-able buy orders would no longer be visible on the market. As I believe EVE should remain a cold and dark place, an additional mechanic should be implemented to give scammers a way to continue practicing their craft, while also keeping the benefits for the legitimate traders.

When placing a buy order, buyers should have an option to choose what happens to their to their buy order once their wallet drops bellow what is needed to complete the order. One would be to hide the order while the wallet remains bellow the funds needed, while preserving the order expiry timer, and is something legitimate traders would use. The other option would be to keep the order visible even after the wallet balance drops, but incur some sort of penalty if someone tries to fulfill the order and fails. This penalty could be forfeiture of escrow, an escalating cost of escrow for all future buy orders which would escalate with every failed buy order, higher broker fees or something similar. The important thing is that on the surface, in the eyes of the seller, all the buy orders would look the same.

One thing that could be shown to sellers who have triggered a failed buy order is the name of the character that has set it up, as well as giving players an option to set "Ignore Market Orders" on whoever they want.

The scam consists of the scammer predicting that the victim will falsely conclude they can make a profit from the information the UI provides and uses that against the victim, correct?

Then the fault lies not in the UI, it lies with the victim, because it's his or hers wrong conclusion.

if you really have to do something you have to absolutely make sure that the legitimate traders don't get hurt by it.

Here is a fix I see:

Put the minimum escrow at 1 unit, or the amount allowed by margin trading, whichever is higher.

Meaning, margin trading would still have it's full power for the intended usage, but if you wanted to pretend the price is higher than it actually is, it would force you to put at least 1 units worth up escrow at risk...killing the scam completely in most ways.

eg, compressed unit of supershit for 1.2 billion isk....you have to throw up the escrow, because the you are only selling 1 unit.

I suppose this would have the side effect of making margin only useful if you are buying more than 2 - 3 things at a time.

The solution we proposed to the CSM initially was based around the idea that if you didn't have enough money in your wallet to back an order, that order would be cancelled. This would still allow traders to benefit from being able to have multiple orders for which they couldn't cover the total. For example, I could have one buy order for a thorax at 5 mil, and another order for a rupture at 5 mil with only 7 mil in my wallet. If my wallet went below 5mil, it would cancel both orders.

Right now, we take it for granted that the order will be filled.

This right here is the problem.

Nowhere does anything in the game suggest you make that assumption.

Incorrect.

Placing buy orders on the market suggests this.
Unitl a player trains MT which is some time into most players game experiance.

Incorrect, for PVP oriented people that is.

Have all trading alts trained up to LVL V.

A better choice would be to allow the user to 'Check credit status' of the order (from the right-click pop-up menu), to see if the order is fully covered by the funds in escrow (or not). The user can then make an informed decision, and the UI is as accurate as it can be (unless there's some way to manipulate the escrow amount after the order has been placed).

As CCP Rise stated, the problem is basically with the UI. If we can find an equitable way to warn potential sellers that a particular buy order may not be fillable, that will be sufficient. No changes to the margin-trading feature are needed.

The main problem with marking an order as "yes, there's enough cash to fulfill the order" is the fact that wallet balances can change quickly, and drastically. And, they can easily be manipulated. Right now, we take it for granted that the order will be filled.

We would be in an even worse situation if the UI said specifically "Yes, the funds are available and the order is guaranteed to go through," just to have the wallet emptied 2 seconds later, or after the user has purchased an over-priced item intent on selling to the buy order.

A better choice would be to allow the user to 'Check credit status' of the order (from the right-click pop-up menu), to see if the order is fully covered by the funds in escrow (or not). The user can then make an informed decision, and the UI is as accurate as it can be (unless there's some way to manipulate the escrow amount after the order has been placed).

Simple, (might be) easy to implement without exhausting the hamsters, and it doesn't affect existing gameplay. Done deal.

...A trader gets credit ??????

...Remove MT , reimburse the skill points and move on.

Its irrelevant what type of char main or alt you eventually train MT on.

Until you discover the MT skill and train it on any character the absolute implication from using the market and prepaying 100% isk into buy orders is that buy orders are guaranteed because player has no control over promised isk on a listed order.

MT doesn't let a trader buy stuff on credit. It just lets a trader show interest in buying more stuff than he can actually buy all at once. It probably does as much good for non-traders as for traders, since it gives them a greater pool of buyers to sell their unwanted stuff to.

But even without the MT skill, a buy order is still not guaranteed for other reasons. So what should we do, nerf those reasons too? Or do you think simply telling people that they shouldn't assume anything and that buy, as well as sell orders, are not guaranteed?

Can I get 5 buy orders and only pay for 1 yes ?

No, you have to pay for all 5 orders, up front, regardless of your MT skill. The cost of an order is the broker fee. An order is not a purchase or sale, it's just a public advertisement that you are willing to participate in one. The question is whether you should be able to place the ad if you don't have what you're advertising.

As every other profession has to survive without game granted credit its not unreasonable to remove it from traders.

what things make a buy order non guaranteed apart from MT please enlighten.