I have mixed thoughts on this:

The Margin Trading Scam: The only way the scammer makes any isk at all from a Margin Trade Scam is if they trick a person to purchase overpriced goods directly from them. Any player that actually investigates teh value of the product they are buying won't fall for margin trade scams:

--- Price history gives a solid indication of how much an item has been selling for.
--- Sales Volume History gives a solid indication of how rapidly an item moves.

Both of these tell you the volatility of an item, which moreless represents the risk associated with buying an item to resell for profit. A trader willingly assumes this risk when they purchase an item.

IMO, you do not need to change the margin trade skill at all. Instead, CCP needs to make this pointt CRYSTAL CLEAR:



It is that simple.... Put it right on the market interface....

Thats it, I'm done making balance threads and sticking to market related threads from now on!

Lot of great feedback here so far. I'll make sure the rest of my team reads this (and whatever gets added over the next few days) and then we'll discuss where to go from here.

Thanks <3

Actually the problem with the skill margin trading and how escrow works is even bigger. I don't know if everybody including the devs know how exactly the escrow works so i will explain it in detail. If you don't believe it test yourself.

How escrow works !
Escrow is item tied, that means you put up a buy order for item A, x% of your ISK in wallet will be transfered to escrow. This ISK are tied to item A and only item A.

Example (with 30% goes into escrow)
Item A with 10x1m buy order worth 10m > 3m goes into escrow
Item B with 40x10m buy order worth 400m > 120m goes into escrow

Your escrow balance is 123m. Now you clean out your wallet to zero. Lets see what happens if the buy order for Item A will be filled step by step.
1. Item A was sold to the buy order for 3x times = 3m and 7 out of 10 buys remain. The escrow for item A is now ZERO but your overall escrow is at 120m.
2. Someone is attempting to sell one more item A = 1m, although your overall escrow shows 120m this order will fail as the escrow for item A is ZERO and your wallet is at zero too.

The escrow is strictly tied to the buy order for item A, if the escrow for item A is exhausted and only then EVE is extracting the amount of ISK to cover the transaction from your wallet.
To stop setups for multiple buy orders designed to fail the escrow tied to any specific item has to be deleted. Of course this won't prevent the one buy orders designed to fail, this will still work after changing this specific mechanic.

I have no idea how to change the escrow/wallet mechanic but any suggestion to change the margin trading skill has to consider how the current escrow/wallet mechanic works and should suggest how it should work in the future.

@Electrique Wizard

You don't get it, with the current escrow/wallet mechanic you can manipulate the market with nearly zero risk. I'm not talking about "scam" i'm talking about big fat manipulations in the range of 2-3digit billions with zero risk wherat the risk of getting dumped hundreds of overpriced items is eliminated.

Please elaborate on this, I didnt know you could manipulate up to 100+b with zero risk or isk! I always thought setup up orders of ridiculous size and value cost a lot of isk in transaction costs and taxes.

I have and dont see how this is relevant. That's like margin trading scams 101...

Revelant is how the escrow/wallet mechanic works and why the margin trading "scam" works in different ways.

Thats it, I'm done making balance threads and sticking to market related threads from now on!

Obligatory: "point on the doll to the place where the bad scammer touched you"
Manipulating the market is something that is done in real life aswel. Margin trading is fine. And the scamming part only penalizes the lazy, greedy and uninformed. If anything, scammers should receive a medal from CCP along with a Scorpion Ishukone Watch for their efforts to make EVE a better and more educated place.

ALL buy orders are NOT GUARANTEED

yes, please pay more attention to market and industry optimization

Don't know if this has been discussed allready but.

A simple solution might be "Do not to display buy orders that can't be fullfilled"

A player (Buyer) creates a buy order and with margin trading and puts 24% of the total buy order in escrow.

The other 74% isk does not come out of player's (Buyer) wallet, but the amount is marked against player's (Buyer) wallet.

Another player (Seller) sells said item against buy order and the player (Buyer) who created the order does not have the isk to fullfill it;

the player's (Buyer) wallet is deducted the isk amount which then becomes a negative amount.

the Player (Seller) receives isk for the item he sells at the buy order price.

I do not agree that a player can use the UI to scam someone. This mechanic needs to be fixed. So if you start to penalize the person who is trying to take advantage of this then it will stop.

The players who actually use this feature the proper way & for the reason it was implemented will not be affected.

yes, please pay less attention to ship balance

They're both worthwhile projects.

Margin buyorders should have a 40day reload time. If your order fails you cant put up buyorders with that character for 40 days. Should solve it, right? right???