I believe EVE needs a trading-focused expansion. Why? Because in EVE, everyone is a trader. Of course most people are “traders” in the same sense as the Covetor-miner is participating in PvP. The previous expansions made several obscure or hard to handle features easier. Just consider the Odessey scanning changes. I did not scan before Odessey, besides the newbie scanning missions. I couldn’t be bothered to manually move the probes every time into the same damn formation. Since Odessey I scan a lot:
I think a trading-focused expansion would similarly increase the number of people who engage in EVE trading in a positive, satisfying manner. It would also decrease the now extreme income difference between those who know how to trade and those who don’t. I do not think I “deserved” collecting half trillion ISK by safely sitting in a station and updating orders once-twice a day. My income came from being one of the few who was ready to go upwards in the snow in the very unfriendly trading interface and lack of tools. Most people, having no love for economy didn’t care and by doing so, they locked themselves out from the big money and were condemned to shoot rocks or red crosses for minimal wage. A trading expansion could open an easier way for them, just like Odessey it opened for me in scanning.
The expansion would both contain UI improvements and systemic changes, allowing the trader to focus only on the underlying economy and not on the clicky-clicky. I do not mention the small improvements here, just the features that change the gameplay. Of course for an expansion to be an expansion it needs lot of such small improvements.
The main feature would be the automatically updating order. Currently you set an order and it stays there until you change it or someone accepts it. This leads to 0.01-ing, as without proper knowledge of the item and proper economic knowledge one cannot set a proper price. He either accepts the current buy price (sells to a buy order) or the current sell price (sets his sell 0.01 below current). In the automatically updating order you set two more options: cut size and bottom. Every half an hour if you aren’t the lowest seller, the order is automatically cut under the current lowest by your set value unless you’d go below your bottom. While most people would still set 0.01 as cut, a single reasonable cut would be soon followed, so the price would find equilibrium faster. This way more people would set sell orders instead of accepting a buy order.
The second main feature would be a Jita price follower. Jita is the economic capital of EVE, no point acting like The Forge would be just another region. The change would make the Jita 5-days average price available everywhere where a price is displayed. If you open a market window anywhere, there should be a greyed order with that value. In the price history graph, the Jita 5-days average should be visible anywhere. The value approximation of items should be calculating with this price. When you set an order, there should be a line that compares the price to this value. If you set an order away from this, there should be a warning. No need to always query the Jita market, every item could have its Jita-5 days price cached every 2 hours and that value used.
The third feature would be a reprocess value calculator for both scraps and ores. It would use the mentioned Jita 5-days average to tell how much ISK would you get if you’d reprocess the item and sell the minerals, using your skills and standing with the station. Similarly to the Jita-5 days price, this price could also be cached with perfect refine so the actual calculation would only need to modify it with your skills and standings. The refine value would be available with the price assessment and on the sell window. It would give you a warning if you’d sell below reprocess cost.
The next feature would be a “mass sell/reprocess”. It would be very useful for looters and salvagers who end up with tons of random stuff. The feature would replace “Sell this item” if you have more than one item selected. The input fields are
The final big change would be using the older order instead of the newer. So if there is a buy order for 1000 ISK and I set a sell order for 100, the immediate sell should happen on 1000ISK and not 100 like now. It would not only protect against mistypes but also would make large quantity buys-sells easier: you just type in the quantity and some high/low price and you get the items for the same price like you’d buy the sell orders or fill the buy orders one by one.
More mails from saved miners:
I think a trading-focused expansion would similarly increase the number of people who engage in EVE trading in a positive, satisfying manner. It would also decrease the now extreme income difference between those who know how to trade and those who don’t. I do not think I “deserved” collecting half trillion ISK by safely sitting in a station and updating orders once-twice a day. My income came from being one of the few who was ready to go upwards in the snow in the very unfriendly trading interface and lack of tools. Most people, having no love for economy didn’t care and by doing so, they locked themselves out from the big money and were condemned to shoot rocks or red crosses for minimal wage. A trading expansion could open an easier way for them, just like Odessey it opened for me in scanning.
The expansion would both contain UI improvements and systemic changes, allowing the trader to focus only on the underlying economy and not on the clicky-clicky. I do not mention the small improvements here, just the features that change the gameplay. Of course for an expansion to be an expansion it needs lot of such small improvements.
The main feature would be the automatically updating order. Currently you set an order and it stays there until you change it or someone accepts it. This leads to 0.01-ing, as without proper knowledge of the item and proper economic knowledge one cannot set a proper price. He either accepts the current buy price (sells to a buy order) or the current sell price (sets his sell 0.01 below current). In the automatically updating order you set two more options: cut size and bottom. Every half an hour if you aren’t the lowest seller, the order is automatically cut under the current lowest by your set value unless you’d go below your bottom. While most people would still set 0.01 as cut, a single reasonable cut would be soon followed, so the price would find equilibrium faster. This way more people would set sell orders instead of accepting a buy order.
The second main feature would be a Jita price follower. Jita is the economic capital of EVE, no point acting like The Forge would be just another region. The change would make the Jita 5-days average price available everywhere where a price is displayed. If you open a market window anywhere, there should be a greyed order with that value. In the price history graph, the Jita 5-days average should be visible anywhere. The value approximation of items should be calculating with this price. When you set an order, there should be a line that compares the price to this value. If you set an order away from this, there should be a warning. No need to always query the Jita market, every item could have its Jita-5 days price cached every 2 hours and that value used.
The third feature would be a reprocess value calculator for both scraps and ores. It would use the mentioned Jita 5-days average to tell how much ISK would you get if you’d reprocess the item and sell the minerals, using your skills and standing with the station. Similarly to the Jita-5 days price, this price could also be cached with perfect refine so the actual calculation would only need to modify it with your skills and standings. The refine value would be available with the price assessment and on the sell window. It would give you a warning if you’d sell below reprocess cost.
The next feature would be a “mass sell/reprocess”. It would be very useful for looters and salvagers who end up with tons of random stuff. The feature would replace “Sell this item” if you have more than one item selected. The input fields are
- “manual price limit”, if an item is more expensive (according to Jita-5 days) than this limit, it won’t be mass sold, you can handle it manually later.
- “Jita lowball”: it’s given in %. If you set it to 90%, and the highest buy order is below 90% of Jita-5 days average, the item won’t be sold.
- “Make sell orders” is a checkbox, selecting it opens the menu selecting the length of the order and another box allowing you to set a Jita %. If you choose this option, the item which wasn’t sold because of the “Jita lowball” will be sold via sell order, setting the percentage of Jita 5-days as price. Another checkbox appears “sell it even if there are lower sell orders”, if you uncheck it, it won’t make sell orders which aren’t the lowest.
- “Reprocess if better” is another checkbox, which automatically reprocesses the item if the reprocess value is higher than the buy order (and the item wasn’t put on sell order by the previous item)
The final big change would be using the older order instead of the newer. So if there is a buy order for 1000 ISK and I set a sell order for 100, the immediate sell should happen on 1000ISK and not 100 like now. It would not only protect against mistypes but also would make large quantity buys-sells easier: you just type in the quantity and some high/low price and you get the items for the same price like you’d buy the sell orders or fill the buy orders one by one.
More mails from saved miners:
0 comments:
Post a Comment