Alcorak
IG.Academy
Iron Armada
64
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Posted - 2016.03.04 18:26:23 -
[1] - Quote
Quote:Market: markets currently have two taxes, transaction's tax, applied for sold items, and broker's fee for non immediate orders, which are set at 1.5% and 1% respectively. To create an environment more competitive for Citadels, we plan on increasing the transaction tax to 2.5% and the broker's fee to 5-6%. Players trading in citadels will still receive the transaction tax, but the broker's fee will be at the complete discretion of the owner. To avoid confusion for the owner, the broker relations skill will not affect player set broker's fee in Citadels.
This is a very bad idea, at least for highsec markets. When considering tax increases, it is not the base change that needs to be considered, but rather, the percentage of change. Increasing transaction tax from 1.5% to 2.5% is an increase of 67%. Increasing brokers fees from 1% to 5-6% is an increase of 400-500%. Even considering reductions from skills, the market will not easily sustain these increases which amount to a massive isk sink. Simple economic theory says that you will see significantly less trading of goods as a result, with wider gaps between buy/sell orders. 'Quick-selling' will become even less attractive with the price difference merely falling into the isk sink. Prices of goods will increase by an amount similar to the tax margins (will not be split 50-50 between buyer and seller as margins are generally not strong enough in EvE to support that). Additionally, it places a SP burden - newer players can compete on the market without training market skills due to the low overall taxes. With higher SP players able to avoid significant percentages of a larger tax, the gap widens and these market skills will become like the Learning skills of old - a 'must train' in order to avoid crushing taxation on wallet growth over time.
The question is the reasoning CCP has behind this isk sink - is there a feeling that there is too much ISK in play? Will isk faucets be increasing to account for the new sink? I understand that the plan is to forcibly drive players away from stations and towards citadels. However, this will be a difficult iterative process for successful implementation. In the meantime, broader consequences must be considered.
Now, if you really want to shake things up, make stations destructible with the same asset movement system as citadels. |