Market Bug / Exploitation

[Foltest]

If you have 5,000 food, you can't post an offer selling 20,000 food as it lists you don't have enough to sell.

 

You can post four offers of 5,000 food each even though you only have 5,000 total food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason I mention food is because someone posted a total of 8 offers for 20k food each the other night and lowered the price of food by 21% over the course of minutes. No idea if they actually did have 200k food on-hand or not - but they crashed food prices seemingly to their own detriment.

 

Fair play, Laissez faire, whatever - if you don't have the actual resource on hand, I don't think you should be allowed to crash prices and create a feux-multi-million dollar barrier to raising the price again.

[Alex]

I mean, you still can't sell 20,000 food, so does it really matter?

[Foltest]

Short answer? Yeah.

 

 

 

Long answer? People will post below the most recent price in order to compete on the market / get their offer bought.

 

 

 

 

Extrapolating: someone could post 100 offers for every single resource, continually lowering the price and crashing every single resource.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Corvo

[Kastor]

Short answer? Yeah.

 

 

 

Long answer? People will post below the most recent price in order to compete on the market / get their offer bought.

 

 

 

 

Extrapolating: someone could post 100 offers for every single resource, continually lowering the price and crashing every single resource.

This....actually sounds like fun

[Alex]

Short answer? Yeah.

 

 

 

Long answer? People will post below the most recent price in order to compete on the market / get their offer bought.

 

 

 

 

Extrapolating: someone could post 100 offers for every single resource, continually lowering the price and crashing every single resource.

 

I don't understand what the difference between this and posting one offer at a very low price is.

 

Other players cannot accept trades when the offerer doesn't actually have the resources to sell.

[Kid Winchell]

I don't understand what the difference between this and posting one offer at a very low price is.

 

Other players cannot accept trades when the offerer doesn't actually have the resources to sell.

People don't look at the market index when pricing resources, they look at what the current offers are on the market to try to undercut them. (Also because the market index is often an average of the current buy price and the current sell price that fluctuates wildly, and thus is not a useful guide for posting new offers of either type due to the large difference between going rates for the two offer types. But that's a wholly separate issue.) If people see a large number of offers to trade a decent chunk of resources at a certain price, they will undercut that price, because they have no way of knowing that the majority of those offers are phony.

[Abu Haddad]

Take a look at steel I've single handed lay crashed the market.

Make it so resources stack on the market and each resource you sell cannot be sold for different prices. Eg

I sell 100 steel for 2500 and another at 2600 make it so the first price is the only price

[Abu Haddad]

Demonstration

[Abu Haddad]

Alone I caused the average price of bauxite to drop by 200 or so and I made profit of 200 bauxite on the way

[Jessica Rabbit]

The difference is the extra units give the impression that the market is flooded with supply. Supply volume is an important piece of information when deciding when to buy and sell. It's not broken. It's just misleading.

 

One possible solution could be asking players to define price and inventory for each resource rather than posting individual transactions. So for example I could have 20,000 Food and set my public sell price to $115 and my inventory to 10,000. It would show on the market, and if someone buys 1000 units my inventory would drop to 9000. That way all inventory would be clearly visible. And players wouldn't be spamming the market with transactions every time they adjust their price.

[Kid Winchell]

One possible solution could be asking players to define price and inventory for each resource rather than posting individual transactions. So for example I could have 20,000 Food and set my public sell price to $115 and my inventory to 10,000. It would show on the market, and if someone buys 1000 units my inventory would drop to 9000. That way all inventory would be clearly visible. And players wouldn't be spamming the market with transactions every time they adjust their price.

Or, in other words, only allow players to have one of each offer type up at a time. Which would eliminate the perfectly valid strategy of having multiple offers at different prices when anticipating a market swing that you might not be online for.

 

The simplest way to prevent people from having more offers on the market than they have resources for (without impeding their ability to otherwise trade) would be to subtract your resources currently on the market from your reserves available for making more trades. The reduced inventory would have to apply to bank deposits as well to fully eliminate this market manipulation tactic. (Technically you could get also rid of your resources by deliberately losing wars, but the costs of war are high enough that it's unlikely to be profitable.)

[Abu Haddad]

so yesterday i had 20 bauxite up but all my bauxite was gone

[Abu Haddad]

I'm using at as a loophole to drop prices and make make money.

It is basically manipulation 

[Abu Haddad]

it is offers that actually aren't there

[Alex]

Or, in other words, only allow players to have one of each offer type up at a time. Which would eliminate the perfectly valid strategy of having multiple offers at different prices when anticipating a market swing that you might not be online for.

 

The simplest way to prevent people from having more offers on the market than they have resources for (without impeding their ability to otherwise trade) would be to subtract your resources currently on the market from your reserves available for making more trades. The reduced inventory would have to apply to bank deposits as well to fully eliminate this market manipulation tactic. (Technically you could get also rid of your resources by deliberately losing wars, but the costs of war are high enough that it's unlikely to be profitable.)

 

That's how the game worked originally, but then when you know you're about to be attacked you just put all of your resources and money into trades on the market at ridiculous prices no one will accept. Then, after you're "looted" (and the looter takes nothing) you cancel the trades and get your money and resources back, unpilfered.

[Ole]

yeah im with sheepy for once, i dont see how messing with the market is an bug/Exploit.  

[Kid Winchell]

yeah im with sheepy for once, i dont see how messing with the market is an bug/Exploit.  

Technically it isn't, it's just a form of market manipulation that could be seen as a bit unscrupulous.

[Guinevere]

This....actually sounds like fun

Thanks for the steel baby gurl.

[Lu Xun]

Nice exploit. 10/10, would try again.

 

@Sheepy: IRL, it's illegal to naked short sell (sell shares you don't actually own), which is basically what this exploit is doing.

 

Actually, let's propose a scenario. Imagine that you have 40,000 steel, and full control of your alliance bank. You sell steel at $1, and fill the entire trade screen with $1 steel. Then you load your 40,000 steel into the alliance bank, and none of your offers can be utilized. Further traders, in order to sell steel, would have to sell below $1 to get the trade offer sold.

 

This then comprises a way to shut down the markets.

[Lu Xun]

It looks like it got fixed or patched. I just tried to create a set of dummy trades using only 1 steel, but the game stacked them all into one trade. Then I tried to use bank dump/delete to clutter the market, and it auto-canceled the trade once my steel quantity dropped to 0. Seems to work. I could try again with 2 steel, though

[Avruch]

It looks like it got fixed or patched. I just tried to create a set of dummy trades using only 1 steel, but the game stacked them all into one trade. Then I tried to use bank dump/delete to clutter the market, and it auto-canceled the trade once my steel quantity dropped to 0. Seems to work. I could try again with 2 steel, though

 

It always stacked offers of the same product at the same price. 

 

Also, Abu Haddad's "exploit" was stupid and proves nothing. 

Edited May 12, 2016 by Avruch

[Jessica Rabbit]

Or, in other words, only allow players to have one of each offer type up at a time. Which would eliminate the perfectly valid strategy of having multiple offers at different prices when anticipating a market swing that you might not be online for.

 

The simplest way to prevent people from having more offers on the market than they have resources for (without impeding their ability to otherwise trade) would be to subtract your resources currently on the market from your reserves available for making more trades. The reduced inventory would have to apply to bank deposits as well to fully eliminate this market manipulation tactic. (Technically you could get also rid of your resources by deliberately losing wars, but the costs of war are high enough that it's unlikely to be profitable.)

  

I almost mentioned that "perfectly legitimate strategy" then didn't because it's so stupid and nobody cares. But yup. I agree, this is a better solution.

 

That's how the game worked originally, but then when you know you're about to be attacked you just put all of your resources and money into trades on the market at ridiculous prices no one will accept. Then, after you're "looted" (and the looter takes nothing) you cancel the trades and get your money and resources back, unpilfered.

Make the trades lootable.

[Marco Polo]

If aint broke, dont fix. Since this market is not broken, it does not need to be fix @ all.

[Dwynn]

I'm not sure why people think it's fine. I mean, if it actually IS fine, then why have the "must have on hand" requirement to begin with. Seems like it's lazy to not fix it. Because in essence they are actually simply abusing a loophole to get around the coded requirement for you to have resources on hand for the offer.

 

Also I'd be interested to see how many race conditions happen based on people accepting offers at different prices at the same time. I'd be willing to bet it breaks things.

[Abu Haddad]

it is market manipulation 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoofing_(finance)