Restricting Market Trades

[Prefontaine]

Hello everyone. We're currently looking at reducing trade spam, reducing the number of active trades a player can have for a certain resource.

 

• Players can have at most 3 active buy offers and 3 active sell offers for a single resource - Credits are not effected for this.
• If a player has multiple trade offers for the same amount due to trying to buy/sell a large amount of resources above the posting limit, these trades will count as a single trade. (Example: Someone posts 5 offers of 1M food at 100 PPU to effectively post 5M food at 100 PPU - This counts as 1 trade offer for the counting)
• Optional Poll Content. Do we want to automatically delete the oldest trade offer if a player goes above the posting cap, or do we want a player to select which trade their deleting and block new trade offers until the player does this?

[Krampus]

I'll be real, clicking through the buy offers of a trader who just ran out of money, thereby deleting his offers is one of the only things in pnw that bring me real joy

[Flavee]

Making the player delete one of their active offers before allowing the new trade posting manually is a good option.

If i am right it might solve the problem of those who are using scripts/bots etc to trade since they'll have to cancel the older trade offer manually.

[Krampus]

2 hours ago, Flavee said:

they'll have to cancel the older trade offer manually.

Unless you add a captcha or something along those lines to there, deleting older offers is not complicated to code into a trading script. Not that I script trades or something like that 👀

To clarify I am not advocating for a captcha. I'm merely saying that it's not impossible to code a function to delete offers

Edited April 28, 2022 by Krampus

[Flavee]

36 minutes ago, Krampus said:

Unless you add a captcha or something along those lines to there, deleting older offers is not complicated to code into a trading script. Not that I script trades or something like that 👀

Yeah i agree with this. A captcha would be great.

[Tartarus]

Please God, no more captchas. Part of me dies every time I try and access the alliance trade market. Actually, @Prefontaine@Alex that really makes no sense, why does the alliance trade market have a captcha to access but not global market if scripts is genuinely a worry? Please in the name of all things holy remove the alliance market one.

Also not sure of how high of a priority this feature would be?

[Flavee]

4 hours ago, Tartarus said:

Please God, no more captchas. Part of me dies every time I try and access the alliance trade market. Actually, @Prefontaine@Alex that really makes no sense, why does the alliance trade market have a captcha to access but not global market if scripts is genuinely a worry? Please in the name of all things holy remove the alliance market one.

Also not sure of how high of a priority this feature would be?

I think it's somewhat important. People are earning like +1.1b a month just from trading. There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade offer continuously.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Flavee

[Tartarus]

2 minutes ago, Flavee said:

I think it's somewhat important. People are earning like +1.1b a month just from trading. There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade officer continuously.

Makes sense, without naming names I can think of a few people

Edited April 28, 2022 by Tartarus

[Steven Hoffmann]

Honestly even as a major trader, I would support limiting the number of open offers in a certain resources since it will make navigating the trade page easier.

[Death LordSK]

24 minutes ago, Flavee said:

There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade officer continuously.

*Sweats* 

[Canbec]

1 hour ago, Flavee said:

There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade officer continuously.

You'd be surprised.

-----

I fully support this change too as it will help address the issue of people leaving a bunch of old trades on the market that influence prices even if the players making the trades no longer have the funds/resources to back them up. I don't think the removal of the older trade should be automatic. Make the trader do the work. Also, from experience the oldest trade may not necessarily be the one a trader would want to delete, so I don't see any value in having the deletion be automatic.

Also, @Prefontaine can you confirm private trades would not be included in this limit?

[Dullard]

1 hour ago, Flavee said:

I think it's somewhat important. People are earning like +1.1b a month just from trading. There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade officer continuously.

You’re an idiot 

[BelgiumFury]

2 hours ago, Canbec said:

Make the trader do the work.

Nah that's dumb. Unless deleting trade offers becomes easier.
Optimally you'd get a pop up wiht you three current trades and just be able to choose which one to delete instead of doing weird click trougjh things. The trade UI isn't optimal no need to make people interact with it more than needed.

[Flavee]

2 hours ago, Dullard said:

You’re an idiot 

I think you have some great ideas and I'd like to hear your opinion more. Next time, give me a little more context about why you choose to call me an idiot, instead of making a counter argument. It will help me better understand your decision making process. Thanks!

Edited April 28, 2022 by Flavee

[im317]

why not just implement a check that prevents placing sell offers for resources you don't have and buy offers for money you don't have? or at least make it so a buy/sell offer when the nation can not cover the resources or cash defaults to covering as much as possible instead of removing the offer outright. just because someone only has half of what there trying to sell does not mean i should not be able to buy any of it. that just lets people post offers far beyond what resources they have and disrupts the market.

[Canbec]

1 hour ago, im317 said:

why not just implement a check that prevents placing sell offers for resources you don't have and buy offers for money you don't have?

This is already the case, but the problem persists since someone can, for example, post 5 offers to sell 20k lead at 5 different prices, giving the impression there is 100k lead to sell on the market (exercising downward pressure on prices) even though they only have 20k of it on hand.

2 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

Nah that's dumb. Unless deleting trade offers becomes easier.
Optimally you'd get a pop up wiht you three current trades and just be able to choose which one to delete instead of doing weird click trougjh things. The trade UI isn't optimal no need to make people interact with it more than needed.

I don't see how that's dumb. If traders are able to spend so much time spamming away trades by undercutting the market continuously, surely they can afford the time required to delete an old trade. And I say this as someone who does a fair amount of trading.

I do like your proposal of the pop-up screen and agree that would be ideal but I also get the feeling it would be more complicated to code than the solution the dev team is currently contemplating.

[Nokia Rokia]

9 hours ago, Flavee said:

I think it's somewhat important. People are earning like +1.1b a month just from trading. There's no way someone is watching screen for several hours just to update their trade offer continuously.

I disagree I've literally wasted hours in a VC with friends flickering thru the trade page

[hidude45454]

Happy to see people are generally okay with this given I proposed it a few months ago. (And to those wondering, this doesn't mean we aren't talking about the other more important changes atm lol, just they take a lot more time to come to consensus on)

12 hours ago, Flavee said:

Making the player delete one of their active offers before allowing the new trade posting manually is a good option.

If i am right it might solve the problem of those who are using scripts/bots etc to trade since they'll have to cancel the older trade offer manually.

This 100%, even if traders can semi-script that cancel as well that's still 1) Even more of a reason to have this, and 2) Adds an additional decision to make when cancelling anyways. Although plenty of traders do sit for hours at a time and trade (and I used to too way back in like 2015 when scripts weren't even created yet)

7 hours ago, im317 said:

why not just implement a check that prevents placing sell offers for resources you don't have and buy offers for money you don't have? or at least make it so a buy/sell offer when the nation can not cover the resources or cash defaults to covering as much as possible instead of removing the offer outright. just because someone only has half of what there trying to sell does not mean i should not be able to buy any of it. that just lets people post offers far beyond what resources they have and disrupts the market.

Also agree with this 100% and have actually already proposed this in the dev team as well

Also, re: captcha discussion, does anyone know what the captcha rules actually are for trading pages? I don't ever get them, but apparently some other people I talk to do, so idk how it's applied realy.

[BlackAsLight]

8 hours ago, hidude45454 said:

Also, re: captcha discussion, does anyone know what the captcha rules actually are for trading pages? I don't ever get them, but apparently some other people I talk to do, so idk how it's applied realy.

I believe it’s about 20 mins of continuous activity. 

16 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

Nah that's dumb. Unless deleting trade offers becomes easier.

Deleting a trade offer is literally clicking a button. How much easier do you need it to be? 

20 hours ago, Flavee said:

If i am right it might solve the problem of those who are using scripts/bots etc to trade since they'll have to cancel the older trade offer manually.

You’re wrong. This would only reduce the number of unique open trades on the market. Any bots would just need to be updated to handle the change. 

[Prefontaine]

21 hours ago, Canbec said:

Also, @Prefontaine can you confirm private trades would not be included in this limit?

At this time there's no talk of impacting private trades. 

[Raphael]

22 hours ago, im317 said:

why not just implement a check that prevents placing sell offers for resources you don't have and buy offers for money you don't have? or at least make it so a buy/sell offer when the nation can not cover the resources or cash defaults to covering as much as possible instead of removing the offer outright. just because someone only has half of what there trying to sell does not mean i should not be able to buy any of it. that just lets people post offers far beyond what resources they have and disrupts the market.

This is a good point and should also be added into the update.

[Zukran]

On 4/28/2022 at 4:35 AM, Prefontaine said:

 

• If a player has multiple trade offers for the same amount due to trying to buy/sell a large amount of resources above the posting limit, these trades will count as a single trade. (Example: Someone posts 5 offers of 1M food at 100 PPU to effectively post 5M food at 100 PPU - This counts as 1 trade offer for the counting)

Would this update the date offered for the market items? Eg. There are currently 5 people currently trying to sell food for 129. The market currently displays the earliest 129 offer on top. With this addition if it doesn't update the date offered that person could remain on top for a very long time(assuming the price doesn't lower) because the new trade offers would be lumped into the same trade. Alternatively if it does update the time, people would likely not want to offer more resources at the same amount because it would lower the position of the offer in the list, making it less likely to fill.

I do support the suggestion, however that's primarily due to increasing the clicks for active traders. I don't think it will have very much impact to the average gamer and I don't think it will change much(if anything) in the market. Aside from potentially creating large gaps in the market prices. As prices lower, earlier higher trades will be removed for lower prices creating a large gap between the active traders with lower prices and the casual players prices that are higher. 

Is there any data on how many trades this would eliminate at the current time? - Im sure this would be high.

However how many of those would be on the front page of the market?(aka 4+ trades from one nation on the front page) I'm guessing very little to none. In which case again most people would never see the results from this implementation.

[BlackAsLight]

9 hours ago, Zukran said:

Would this update the date offered for the market items? Eg. There are currently 5 people currently trying to sell food for 129. The market currently displays the earliest 129 offer on top. With this addition if it doesn't update the date offered that person could remain on top for a very long time(assuming the price doesn't lower) because the new trade offers would be lumped into the same trade. Alternatively if it does update the time, people would likely not want to offer more resources at the same amount because it would lower the position of the offer in the list, making it less likely to fill.

What you’re talking about already exists within the game. When you make a second offer on the market at the same price as one of your existing offers they get lumped together to make a new offer. The created date does get updated and they do get pushed to the back of the line. Personal trade offers don’t get lumped together.